Increasingly there is awareness in the public that "design matters". Urban design concerns itself with the design of the public realm and the idea of "place making". While modern architecture has produced many successful buildings, modernist concepts of urban spaces and their relationship to cities in general ("urban renewal") has produced many failures. Current trends point to a renaissance of cities and with it the concept of urbanity as a place of density, mixed use and a certain level of messiness. While the excitement of urbanity cannot be entirely generated by design, bad design can easily destroy it. ArchPlan has experience in careful intervention and revitalization strategies of small towns and big cities.
ArchPlan is named programmatically as a connection between Architecture and Planning. The firm has focused its expertise and competency in the fields of urban infill, rehabilitation, revitalization, adaptive reuse, brownfield reclamation and transit. ArchPlan projects dot the Baltimore cityscape, especially in areas of needed reinvestment and redevelopment.
ArchPlan cultivates the connections between various disciplines such as urban design, planning, architecture and engineering and has completed projects for all kinds of uses; the firm is based on the premise that architecture cannot really transform cities without urban design, and conversely, that planning cannot succeed without a keen understanding of buildings and a three dimensional grasp of spaces that make up our built environment. In many cases ArchPlan has collaborated with larger engineering or out-of-town architectural partner firms to advance larger projects.
