The American Dream

Design Concept for The American Dream

Project Overview

The American Dream exists now in a continuing state of transformation. Decades of planning and construction has presently resulted in a nearly completed mega-structure. Just as the property was poised to begin supporting its commercial objective, the 2020 pandemic changed its direction and purpose. The original focus on retail will now shift to considerably more entertainment experiences. The planned retail mall will transform again, before even starting, into something different.

The vision for this new entertainment centric direction will require massive reprogramming of a vast amount of the building complex. The design and implementation of these spaces requires a smart team of experienced architects, designers, image makers, concept and content creators. We are that team.

Project Goals

Four key words…these are our goals for a revised American Dream master plan.

Iconic

Functional

Notable

Sustainable

Creating this connection beyond just entertainment and commerce will encourage people to return frequently and make American Dream an indispensable place in their lives. It is essential to connect philosophically and emotionally to the values and lifestyle needs of the target guest, based on an understanding of the market and evaluation of guest profiles.

We need to be intentional about creating a place “to be”. A great place like American Dream must reflect the narratives and experiences that are natural to the visitor’s lifestyle but at the same time challenge convention and create unexpected experiences.

Creating a strong bond between the guest/shopper/user and American Dream is vital. The more the user is attracted to the lifestyle of a property through its architecture and tenancies, the further they relate to the American Dream as an expression of themselves and the more likely they are to continually participate. The property location demands a critical evaluation that acknowledges the proximate location of the site to the surrounding area and activities in its Metro New York City neighborhood, as well as the immediate surrounding New Jersey communities. The current project scope needed to consider the leisure experience of the guest. American Dream must aspire to be a marketplace of experiences.

Our thoughts and design philosophy align perfectly with the primary goal of American Dream which is to create what can be referred to as “The Great Good Place” or the “Third Place”. This is a fascinating concept. The third place is a term used in the concept of community building to refer to social surroundings separate from the two usual social environments of home and the workplace. In his influential book The Great Good Place, Ray Oldenburg in 1997 argues that these “third places” are important for civil society, democracy, civic engagement and establishing feelings of a sense of place.

Oldenburg calls a person’s "first place" the home with those that person lives with. The "second place" is the workplace — where people may actually spend most of their time. Third places, then, are "anchors" of community life and facilitate and foster broader, more creative interaction. All societies already have informal meeting places that develop over time or are formally planned. Oldenburg suggests the following hallmarks of a true "third place" (and there are 6 tenets):

• Open to the community and the public.  
• Entertainment, food and drink are important and focal points.
• Highly accessible: proximate for many
• Involve regulars – those who habitually congregate there
• Welcoming and comfortable
• Both new friends and old should be found there.

American Dream ownership has expressed to our design team their desire for the property to become an extension of the visitor’s life experiences. We must understand this importance of third place in our design to support informal public life as an essential requirement for the health of both our communities and us: places where entertainment, enrichment and food is important and new friends and old friends should be found. The new direction of American Dream represents this “third place” - - open areas, a place where people can congregate, a place where people can shop and eat… and a place where people connect. An important place in people’s lives.

Occupants of the third place have no obligation to be there, but they want to be there because it offers what they look for outside of the home and place of work. Third places are where people go regularly and help set the mood and characteristics of the area. Most importantly, third places are characteristically wholesome, not pretentious, and open to all individuals from all walks of life.

Our new third place will function as a regional downtown and will support commercial as well as non-commercial functions such as concerts and holiday celebrations. American Dream offers free space for social interaction. It offers necessary community-based retail stores and services. This is a design concept where the emphasis is on the expectation of social interaction and enjoyment.

For a healthy existence, citizens must live in a balance of three realms: home life, the workplace, and the inclusively sociable places. Other than the numerous personal benefits third places offer their regulars, Oldenburg advocates for the immense social value they bring and points out their historical role, amongst others:

• The American tavern in the American Revolution
• The French café in the French Revolution
• The London coffee house during the Enlightenment
• The agora in Greek democracy
• The American Dream

If the apparent deterioration of American community is to be addressed, the third place may be a solution in reframing the way interpersonal interaction is approached on an individual level. The importance of American Dream beyond its commercial and business aspirations is a profound social role. How well the framers and design professionals of American Dream understand this function will directly relate to its success. Beyond entertainment and retail consumption, our guests will come for social purposes. If we have learned anything from recent quarantines, social distancing and masking, the importance of social interaction is paramount. American Dream can provide an important role in social reconnection and then continued connection. The agora was a central public space in ancient Greek city-states. It is the best representation of a city-states response to accommodate the social and political order of the polis.  The literal meaning of the word "agora" is "gathering place" or "assembly". The agora was the center of the athletic, artistic, business, spiritual and political life in the city. American Dream, as a direct result of its size and offerings, will become this very epicenter in people’s lives if properly derived.

General Design Goals

Our design goal objective is for a continued new building design that is the opposite of the typical retail environments. We believed that the spaces should espouse a vision of transparency, clarity, openness and efficiency. We want to create a master plan and the design to create a sense of functionality and flexibility conveyed by a clean, contextual modernism.

Goals for Sustainability

The marketplace and new building codes require that projects be “green” and must achieve basic levels of sustainability in order to be successful. Visionary building owners and developers like American Dream are embracing this move with enthusiasm. There will be a demonstrable payback to our environment in the long term. Healthy building and building system design will also be critical in this new pandemic world.

Summary

In summary, place-making is about creating evocative places that are grounded in time and history. It is important to recognize that American Dream must embody the hopes, dream and aspirations as well as the contemporary character of the visitors.

Great design is an essential element of the human experience of place and interaction. Great buildings transcend location, design and physical constraints. They provide added social meaning and value becoming beacons for their neighborhoods and the cities in which they reside. This center will not just be an entertainment and retail property but a testament to the vision of a progressive real estate development firm and the skill and execution prowess of a talented group of professionals. American Dream stands again at the threshold of a new direction before ever even being completed. We are looking forward to being a part of the transformative effort. American Dream will become the Great Good Space, the third place in our lives.

Hospitality Design Theory

We need to create hotels where guests are immersed in an enriching experience of American Dream. We need a design that also reflects the site and its Meadowlands location. We need to be ambitious. We need to diverge from the aging pattern of last century's development and favor fresh thoughtful, inspiring and eloquent design solutions for this project.

Architectura is interested in creating hotel building designs which are exciting on both the exterior and the interior. Guests will respond to a dynamic exterior composition which will draw them to the project. We have the ability to create the building design which is both groundbreaking yet blends into the existing fabric of the American Dream site. The buildings will make their mark and should do so with a bold re-design. We are not looking to attract the guest that has been previously satisfied by mediocre buildings. We are seeking to make buildings that attracts more sophisticated users and families. The design language must speak to this audience.

True to our history at Architectura, we would also strive to make a design that is not only significant but cost-effective. We must still be cost conscious. We have developed design alternatives that are significant, impactful and also cost-effective. We have done this by being smart about the use of materials and incorporating design elements which are simple yet composed effectively.

We have also sought to be inspired by the site. We see a design solution that is inspired by the site and adjacent uses including the American Dream and the sports complex. We will challenge the sustenance of commonplace boxy skyscrapers. Our ambition is to provide each guest a unique experience of the buildings.

The concept of the design would also seek to play with transparent and solid surfaces. The interior should meld together with the outside space. A refined external design will complement the arrangement of the lobby, roof gardens, pools and other spaces so that there is a unity with seamless transition.

Future Hospitality Development at American Dream

Luxury Hospitality Design Theory

We are living in an experience economy. Experiences engage customers in creating memorable events connect them emotionally to a hotel property. All of the major luxury brands are placing experiences at the core of their marketing strategy. In hotels experiences are essential. We imagine that at least one of the hotels on the property will be a luxury class hotel. While corporate hotels can be pedestrian they don’t need to be boring in design. A luxury hotel, however, needs to be striking and eventful. It needs to create an experience just as American Dream provides a unique and unparalleled experience. We believe that an understanding of luxury hotels is an important part of or design team’s talent.

Through our work in the hospitality industry worldwide, we discovered that the holistic hospitality experience goes beyond simply creating a building with top quality materials. We developed a framework that can help our clients design a luxury experience that allow hotels to offer a differentiated customer experience and strengthen its appeal.

Experience Design and Luxury Experience

Experiences occur when customers interact with one or more elements of the hotel and, as a result, extract sensations, emotions, or cognitions that will connect them to the property in a personal, memorable way. Specific aspects of the hotel context, such as atmosphere or human elements, influence customer experience. However, customer experience is holistic. A hotel design should orchestrate an integrated series of “clues” that will, collectively, determine how customers experience the brand or the specific hotel property.

To design a luxury experience, it is important to first define what makes a luxury hotel. We advocate that owning “legitimacy in luxury” is a necessary, though not sufficient, condition for a specific boutique property or brand to be or earn luxury status. Legitimacy in luxury includes an exceptional production process (often based on craftsmanship, uniqueness, and exclusivity), a product of the highest quality (often design-based, instigating consumers’ emotions and self-expressive motivations), and a tradition or history associated with the specific property or hotel brand. Design combined with a luxury experience provides the symbolic value and emotional connection that luxury brands need to keep the “dream component” or aspiration alive.

What is luxury experience? Conventional wisdom suggests that luxury experience is achieved by offering the highest quality. We believe this is not enough to achieve real excellence in luxury design and experience. The luxury industry is idiosyncratic. Luxury is more than the material offering. Luxury is a differentiated offering that delivers symbolic and experiential value besides functionality. In luxury, passion and dreaming are as important as functionality. We learned through our hospitality design experience how to achieve excellence and create luxury experiences.

Beyond standard values, beliefs

Luxury brands should advocate beliefs to their customers. Unlike mass brands, boutique hotels or luxury hotel brands should not strive to please everyone, but should attract those customers whose beliefs are similar to theirs. Beliefs can be seen as the hotel’s philosophy and are expressed in the architectural and interior design of the property.

Beyond a plan

Luxury hotels must pay special attention to the way they manage the experience of the property. All this starts with great design. We strive to design hospitality spaces that create multifunctional, controlled spaces to create hospitality experiences and communicate brand beliefs through not only the routine hotel experience but also through events, exhibitions, and collaborations.

Beyond a category, a way of life

The final element of the framework suggests that luxury hotels should move beyond the mental limits of a product category and offer a “way of life”. At some point, well designed condo hotels sever their association with the product category in which they are rooted and push the hotel to the ultimate level of intangibility. In other words, they sell a pure aesthetic principle and offer guests a certain unique experience and way of life.

 

Respectfully Submitted,
 

Conrad J Roncati, RA

Chief Executive Officer

 

Architectura, Inc.

Suite LL100

One Executive Drive

Fort Lee, New Jersey USA

201-346-1400