Doug Austin

The approach to making good use of space has been applied to AVRP's housing projects as well. Smart Corner, for example, while not immune to the housing market downturn, is better poised to handle the shift with its various-sized units and link to downtown public transportation. Austin said he and his colleagues also applied his firm's broader approach to design problem solving by looking at maximizing the internal rates of return on the project and seeing what hard and soft costs the market can support.
"A lot of architects are hung up on the aesthetics of a building," Austin said. "And those are things that are on our minds at all times, too. However, we add the extra dimension of investigating the financial side of design as well."