ABSTRACT
“Design Well Timed” illustrates how good market timing can support design innovation. Four-flats, like the case example (1927), were often built to look like large Spanish-style single-family homes and typically stacked units two-up, two-down in a single volume with private entries on the ground level for each unit. The Mackey Apartments (1939), designed by architect Rudolph Schindler for owner/occupant Pearl Mackey, clearly builds on the type, but its Modern architecture obscures its four-flat configuration. However, since the by-right case example was built near the peak of the market cycle before the Great Depression, and The Mackey Apartment’s construction coincided with the real estate market’s initial recovery from that downturn, the rents generated by the two projects when they were first brought to market were approximately the same. But Mrs. Mackey had to spend much less on land and construction than the four-flat built in 1927. Sealing the deal was a convertible studio apartment that could be rented independently of the owner’s unit. In this case, awareness of the market cycle and the use of known development types all worked to hedge the risks associated with design innovation.
