OAKLAND, CA-Locally based TCA Architects, a full service architecture firm focused on the development of progressive multifamily and mixed-use urban residential designs, marked its 20-year milestone as a architecture studio with a reception and gallery installation entitled, “20 Images Representing 20 Years.” The gallery was unveiled at 1111 Broadway in Oakland City Center, the home of TCA's Northern California studio.
The firm is using this significant milestone to reflect on its 20 years of trend-setting architecture practice and its role in the cultural transition to high-density housing solutions as it relates to the studio's future in this contemporary era of urban planning.
“TCA Architects takes great pride in the role that thoughtfully designed multifamily housing can have in manifesting a positive, transformational effect on a community and its quality of life,” says Thomas P. Cox, Chief Executive and founding principal of TCA. “Our studio has committed itself to the evolution of urbanism, sustainability and progressive design. As we reflect on the past two decades in celebration with an eye to the future, we are excited to share a moment of retrospective on the journey here.”
It is an established core principle of TCA's studio culture to share best practices and theory through regular Salon-style sessions across current projects. This process, led by principals and involving the entire design and construction management teams, evolved into the idea of an exhibit of the studio's signature projects as a key focus of the 20 year anniversary celebration. According to Cox, “our studio directors selected projects shaped by the trends we know set the tone or are driving contemporary multifamily and mixed-use design forward, especially as it relates to the changing focus on urban planning in California and the West Coast, as well as across the nation and around the globe.”
TCA, which opened its dedicated Bay Area studio in January of this year with Cox as its managing principal, has been active in the Northern California region for more than a decade. The decision to open TCA's third studio reflected a desire for the firm to have an active local presence to serve current and future client needs. It also reflected a desire to immerse the studio in the culture of one of the state's most progressive regions in terms of mass transit and high density housing best practices.
“California's love affair with single driver transportation and community sprawl is over,” says Aram Chahbazian, TCA's president and a managing principal who has been with the firm since it officially launched in 1993, and for ten years prior as an associate of Thomas Cox. “This has set into motion a shift in urban planning that speaks to the heart of our studio culture and specialty. We can speak from the authority of experience as we work to serve our clients developing the next generation of urban and suburban housing, here in California, throughout the West, and, in the case of our projects in Asia and elsewhere, the world.”
Currently, the studio is designing or managing construction for projects totaling more than 2,400 multifamily residences in communities throughout the East Bay, Peninsula, Marin and San Jose. The selection of an Oakland City Center address as the home of TCA in Northern California also reflects a belief that architecture and visionary urban planning will play a role in defining the city's future livability and culture.
This vision, and a perspective on the nuances of urban and suburban transitions to a high-density housing culture focused on extensive public transit access throughout the Bay Area is what TCA's principals expect to guide the studio into the future.
The celebration of the two-decade milestone offered an opportunity to reflect on a retrospective of key projects with an eye to the future guided by tangible, real world examples of sustainable urbanism and community transformation manifested by the studio to date, says the firm.
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