One of the weirder places I have lived is at The Edge here
in Norman. It proclaims its status as a luxury condo, or at least my section
did; I was under the impression that different buildings had been built at
different times and for different purposes. After the housing bubble burst and
the luxury condos weren’t selling, the unbuilt units were constructed more
cheaply to be sold as student housing. In any case, it was one of those
projects where the cut corners are painfully obvious against the well-finished parts – another cautionary tale
to heed in my own design work.
One of the strangest things I noticed about the apartments
was that while all of the buildings were steel-framed with concrete slab-on-deck, some
of the patios were framed in steel and some in wood. I took a walk once and
actually saw both of these construction methods on a single building, which was
jarring to say the least.
The landscaping was another sore point for me, in that it all looked very nice, except where certain areas butted up against each other. The center of the complex around the pool has serious drainage issues that will probably begin to affect the foundations in a few years, while outer areas are significantly more spaced out and has much better natural drainage systems in place.
The units themselves were very nice – well finished, if a
little oddly. Faux granite comes off even cheaper when the cabinets are
particle board, but the layouts were wonderfully functional. In a way they are
a kind of foil to my current home. Well-designed, but it always felt a little
unfinished.
No comments:
Post a Comment