Democratizing Development with Drew Lang

42m · Brave New Real Estate · 03 Nov 20:29

[9:20] On vernacular design: 

“… For us, the clear place to go was the local vernacular, the farm buildings, the barns, the sheds. … It was a matter of taking that and detailing around it, inserting all that glass to create a sense of modernity and openness to nature and differentiation from the historic buildings.”

[23:18] On branding: 

“When marketing takes on storytelling, in a genuine sense, when the people telling the stories are involved in and genuinely interested in the story that they’re a part of, and they’re inviting other people to come on the journey with them, that’s when it can work really well. ” 

[26:10] On Lang’s nontraditional development model:

“I think when some profit is given up, that’s when the anti-development comes in. It’s maybe in a sense sacrilege to give up profit if you’re a real estate developer, except is it? We don’t think it is. We think that over time,  it’s something that’s going to pay a lot of dividends, including financial dividends. There are of course environmental considerations, social considerations, considerations of aesthetics that affect one’s well being, one’s everyday experience. These are the things that we value in addition to valuing profit.”

[29:00] On COVID and urban living: 

“ … I think cities are here to stay. I just think there’s going to be more of a place for rural living and connectivity with nature, and I think it’s really exciting because it means that people are going to be living a lot better, and they’re also going to be experiencing it with some interesting architecture, and it’s going to translate into lots of interesting opportunities for people in the profession coming together with the demand that’s out there in the marketplace.”

[38:50] On advice for other nontraditional developers: 

“All you really have to have is the will. The desire and the will, and a lot of that is a willingness to stumble and to fail and to face rejection. There’s a lot of rejection that I had to face before reaching this success. Even when I was well into the process I was still stumbling and running into walls: there’s no way around it. I think it’s really exciting that there are non-developers taking on real estate development work, I think that the built environment and the consumer public is going to be very well served as a result.” 

Learn more about Lang Architecture, Hudson Woods and Brick & Wonder.

The episode Democratizing Development with Drew Lang from the podcast Brave New Real Estate has a duration of 42:34. It was first published 03 Nov 20:29. The cover art and the content belong to their respective owners.