The Design of Real Estate : A Framework for Value Creation

Design and real estate are inherently intertwined, but this linkage is not easy to dissect or analyze without encountering the obvious danger of oversimplification. Design is often closely associated with an emphasis on form and aesthetics, while real estate has a focus on implementation and process. The interaction between these two fields inevitably creates new perspectives and methods, and sometimes, possible hybrids that bring valuable additions to the existing repertoire of design and development vocabularies, prompting new ways of thinking as we construct a workable, even innovative, urbanism for the future. Despite the differences in focus, real estate and design share certain intrinsic commonalities. Both contribute powerfully to building physical environments that reflect vision and imagination. Both offer a unique array of knowledge, operational skills, and intelligence that must be synthesized to produce a suitable outcome or product, whether a set of drawings or a fully finished building (Wang, 2015: 16).As the built environment is increasingly becoming a medium that shoulders and reflects issues in wider social and cultural spheres, it is time to deepen the understanding of value creation in real estate by exploring its relationship with design from multifaceted angles and to expand value creation through its engagements with a larger scale of urban environments and a longer time frame beyond the mere time span of completion of a development or project investment. This chapter analyzes value-adding strategies through selected case studies and dissects conceptual overlaps and differentiation between design and real estate. By examining divergent perspectives in evaluating design and value creation, this chapter elucidates the underlying principles of value creation and offers the design of real estate as an effective framework for capturing and operationalizing the complex relationship between design and value creation in real estate