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Our Brand
our brand
“Design that holds Neighborhood Fabric[K] together”
LOCATING THE missing middle
The Transect. A gradient classification system of the built environment that orders elements of urbanism from rural to urban. Developed by Andres Duany of Duany Plater-Zyberk & Co. Image from cnu.org
Classifying a project’s contextual environment is critical to defining the types of urban patterns, configurations, orientations, buildings and infrastructural elements that must be used to sustainably support it. Concurrently, we focus on interjecting Missing Middle housing and commercial building types to help fill the physical and economic gaps that persist in today’s neighborhoods.
Similar to The Transect, this diagram classifies types of housing on a gradient from single family to high rise apartments. Highlighted is the ‘Missing Middle’, historical housing types that today have been made illegal through zoning policy or falsely labeled as neighborhood depreciators in many American cities. The ‘Missing Middle’ also applies to commercial buildings. Image by Opticos Design.
INCREMENTAL development
Illustrative diagram of Incremental Housing types that can come one after the other, exist on the same block, and be reorganized. Drawn by Michael Thompson of Thompson Placemaking during the Flint, MI Design Charrette.
Illustrative diagram of Incremental Retail Types. In order to grow a business it is typical prudent to keep expense low. These small scale incremental types help do just that for local small businesses. Drawn by Michael Thompson of Thompson Placemaking during the Flint, MI Design Charrette.
We operate on the premise that cities and towns should grow & compress the same as they have for millennia - incrementally. Beloved places the world over that have successfully weathered economic and political forces over thousands of years all began as small communities and grew systematically into larger ones. This is not by accident but by design & necessity. The thesis here is simple. A community should be able to sustainable support itself proportionate to the level of its wealth & economy. Once stabilized and wealth grows, the community can expand to the next rung of growth and then re-stabilize once again. The same occurs if the community has to downsize. This principle applies at the individual level as well. Whereas a family typically grows in size over time and proportionate to its wealth. To support this type of incrementalism we specialize in residential and commercial building types that are founded in precedent and have the ability to morph with time, based on economics and need. We call this “Grow as you Go”.
small scale & people-centric
Branching off of Incrementalism, small scale development helps to set a sustainable foundation for the future by provide human-scaled neighborhoods that are accessible to a wider variety of people across the socio-economic spectrum. Smaller scale projects can also be developed by neighborhood residents and stakeholders who don’t have access to large amount of capital but desire to take ownership in their neighborhoods nonetheless. This is a crucial component to shrinking our national wealth gap. Because smaller scale neighborhood projects are less complex and cheaper to build, residential and commercial rents can be lower and thus more affordable to the average citizen. We do not advocate against larger, all at once developments but we push to increase the ratio of smaller neighborhood projects owned by local residents. And that what we mean by Smaller Buildings; Bigger Returns
THE virtual MOBILE studio
Fabric[K] Design operates as a Virtual Mobile Studio lead by Architect and Urban Designer Marques King. Being based in virtual space affords the Fabric[K] studio great flexibility and adaptability, which has proven to be very valuable in recent months. The digital tools and communication methods available to us today allow the virtual design studio to be just as effective as the traditional in-person model. We collaborate with a variety of designers, engineers, and consultants from across the Metro-Detroit Area and the country seamlessly. Communication with clients is never completely digital but we supplement video conferencing, screen share, and prerecorded presentations in place of those unnecessary in-person meetings. We always visit our project sites and if we need to ‘pick up’ the studio and go to our clients for an extended period of time we can do that as well. It is previously thought that to do good work on large projects, the backing of a large corporate office is required. That couldn’t be further from the truth. The only requirement for good work is simply good, dedicated and talented people where ever they may be. Marques has been operating under the umbrella of a mobile virtual studio since 2013 while working under other talented designers. Many of the award-winning plans and buildings in the Fabric[K] portfolio were produced under the guise of the Virtual Mobile Studio. If COVID-19 has shown us anything it’s that the digital mode of working in some form, is here to stay.
