TDA Services
INTRODUCTION
Thomas Dolan Architecture has been designing and building live/work spaces, projects and neighborhoods since the mid 1980's. Arguably America's premier design experts in the field, TDA and The Live/work Institute have taken the lead in coining (and trademarking) a common set of terms to define live/work, thereby enabling professionals and the public alike to understand how to parse live/work types, or zero commute housing by:
1) Degree of proximity between living and working portions of the unit (live-with, live-near and live-nearby)
2) Degree of dominance of the work activity over the residential component (work/live, live/work and home occupation)
Additionally, TDA has explored and built projects over the years that address issues such as: walk-in trade and employees, the unique importance of building opportunities for interaction into live/work communities, and the role that live/work units and FlexHouses can play in pedestrian oriented, compact eighteen-hour-a-day neighborhoods.
Note: items in Italics are trademarks of Thomas Dolan Architecture.
EXPERIENCE
Over the past 22 years TDA has designed and built scores of live/work projects, resulting in hundreds of finished units. Some have been new construction, including the first ever built in the United States. Some are renovations of existing buildings: some of these are truly historic, others were simply in need of transformation into new kinds of space. TDA has also worked with a significant number of quasi-legal live/work projects, working with the owners and occupants to render them safe, legal and financially legitimate. In the process of this work. Tom Dolan has seen just about every live/work configuration imaginable, and in so doing has become an authority on the creation, coordination and enforcement of live/work planning and building codes. Many jurisdictions, for example, have vague language referring to live/work in their General Plans, Comprehensive Plans or other planning policy instruments. However, when it comes to a real understanding of how to regulate, code and encourage live/work from the land use level down to the details of the building code, most jurisdictions need help. TDA has worked with many cities and towns to create well-coordinated live/work codes. Often it works well for the developer of a significant project to actually hire TDA to perform that task for the local government, and local officials typically welcome such a move.
Thomas Dolan Architecture has also worked with many developers and arts groups as their development consultant, performing detailed feasibility studies that includeproformas, market analyses, buildings' physical needs assessments, and of course full architectural services. Thomas Dolan has served as a developer himself on several small projects, gainng invaluable experience in the process.
Thomas Dolan has spoken, written and consulted throughout North America on live/work design and development, codes, the role of live/work in neighborhood revitalization, retention of artists in the face of changing neighborhood demographics, and many other issues.
ACHIEVEMENTS
- Designed the first purpose-built live/work community in North America, South Prescott Village.
- Created the first web site devoted to advancing understanding of live/work issues, found at http://www.live-work.com
- Converted the largest officially Landmarked Building in Oakland, California Cotton Mills, into 74 work/live units, a project recognized as an outstanding contribution by the Oakland Heritage Alliance. The project was built with the aid of historic tax credits.
- Appeared in numerous publications including The New York Times, San Francisco Business Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Oakland Tribune, etc.
- Created Live/work in Plain English, an online guide to the live/work building code and development process in Oakland, California, found at http://www.live-work.com/plainenglish/
- Authored Work/Live in Vancouver, an integrated treatment of planning and building code initiatives, performed as consultant to Central Area Planning in Vancouver.
- Contributed to Conversion Frontiers: Military Bases and other Opportunities for Artists.
- Received numerous awards for live/work and mixed use projects, including an Orchid award for South Prescott Village from the American Institute of Architects; a Gold Nugget award from the Pacific Coast Builders' Conference for Temescal Place, the best Workforce Housing project of 2005; and the 2007 International Making Cities Livable Award for Livermore Village.
SERVICES OFFERED
TDA is a full service architectural firm, licensed in California, with more experience designing and overseeing the construction of live/work projects than any other firm in the world. We collaborate with local architects in the US and abroad, and are available for remote consultations, onsite visits and continuing relationships resulting in feasibility studies, built projects, and all that occurs in between.
TDA works with developers and government agencies to make sense of conflicting, unclear, or simply absent live/work planning and building codes. These services include analysis of policy documents and drafting language to implement a coherent, coordinated set of regulations to encourage live/work; workshops and trainings for governmental agency staff to familiarize them with live/work and its many forms and how to apply the regulations that TDA may have written. Sometimes the impetus for code analysis and suggested updates may come from a developer, or an arts group or non-profit; TDA has worked with all of the above.
TDA works with owners and occupants of live/work buildings whose legal status may be less than clear or above-board. Such buildings, while they often provide affordable quarters, are often difficult to finance and exist in a state of limbo that can be destroyed by one disgruntled tenant "dropping a dime" on the landlord. We've seen it, and we have helped numerous buildings through the process of legalization, including code analysis, design solutions, negotiations with the jurisdiction, and phasing the code upgrade work in a way that creates least disruption for sitting tenants.
As New Urbanists, TDA has worked with teams of urban designers, planners, transportation consultants, economists, developers, government officials and local stakeholders to craft downtowns, town centers, and other compact pedestrian oriented places in line with the Charter of the New Urbanism, found at http://www.cnu.org/charter
WEBSITE
CONTACT
Thomas Dolan,
Principal
Thomas Dolan Architecture
5253 College Avenue
Oakland, CA 94618
tel. (510) 839 7200
fax (510) 839 7219
REFERENCES / QUOTES
http://www.live-work.com/about_tda/press/
http://www.live-work.com/lwi/community/interview.shtml
PERSONAL MESSAGE
Having devoted the great majority of my professional life to live/work, including much pioneering and introduction of life/work balance into peoples' lives, I look forward to working with the application of our basic principles of live/work to projects in other parts of the world. Viewed in a larger time frame, commuting to centralized workplaces is a very short-lived phenomenon. For some, technology has made commuting obsolete. What is still needed--perhaps more than ever--are face-to-face live/work communities where daily informal interactions are the norm. The Great Fall of 2008-2009 has likely made the MacMansion obsolete, as well as the 75 mile commute. Live/work is a logical and appealing alternate that will be an important element of the built environment as we emerge into a new era. Living near one works, if not where one works will be a true expression of the convenient truth.