Edge Design Associates provides architectural, planning, and interior design services for commercial and institutional clients, collaborating with other professionals as necessary to serve our clients needs.
Photography by: Ike Lea
Some of our awesome clients
Dr. Jacqui Spicer, EdD, President and CEO, Baker College System May 2023
The interior architecture, specifically the classrooms and public areas, have been re-imagined into spaces that cultivate well-being, inclusivity and encourage informal social interaction, and accommodate positive student/faculty interaction. The overall sense of openness in the building allows for discovery and connection, imbuing students and faculty with a sense of vitality and empowerment. This openness creates safe spaces that allow students to express and explore their passions and support diverse expression of ideas and learning.
The results are dynamic spaces where students and faculty interact with a diverse range of others, practicing empathy, openness and listening. Spaces where students and faculty can retreat to calm down, reset and refocus. Spaces that allow students to learn and express purposefulness, value, and significance. Spaces where all students and educators feel like they have something to contribute and can make a difference.
The sense of openness makes the process of learning visible to self and others, to show the effort and failures along the way, celebrating the art of learning and teaching. These spaces also accommodate student/faculty interactions that are more comfortable and less intimidating than visiting in the office setting. Faculty spaces have been similarly re-imagined in order to foster interaction and allow faculty to decompress, socialize, relax, and prepare for class. Baker College of Royal Oak is a place where students are empowered to learn, discover, interact, and realize their potential.
SERVICE APPROACH
Our service approach is the sum of the following:
Leadership by a Principal
The leadership of every project is by a Principal of the firm who remains active and involved throughout the project. This assures the client of the benefit of the Principal’s years of experience and of the personal responsibility of an owner of the firm.
Programming
It is axiomatic that no problem can be properly solved until it has been thoroughly defined. To define the problem requires that the architect listen carefully to what the client says, and also to what the client means. Good questions elicit good answers, and good communication leads to good projects.
Teamwork
At an early stage of a new project, the firm identifies a team of its professionals with complementary strengths that will remain together to the greatest extent possible throughout the project. This approach, as opposed to a division of labor by departments or phases, insures accurate execution of design intent and thus of the Client’s expectations. The team includes representatives of the consultants in addition to the architects and involves the Client in a meaningful way.
Respect for Context
No project exists in a vacuum. Its context usually includes the surrounding built environment, the natural environment, the community culture and the political environment. Understanding all of these, and how to deal constructively with each, is essential to establishing a solid conceptual foundation for a project.
Responsibility to Society
An architect’s primary responsibility is to his client, but there is a related responsibility to the community within which any project is built. A project that is well conceived, well designed and well-built of honest materials will clearly enhance an image of a quality community. Halfway measures and ersatz materials will send a very different message. Non-verbal communication can be very powerful, and what we build says a great deal about our values. These messages are not always consciously decoded, but they are received and felt at some level.
Sustainability
Increasingly our values include a respect for the state of our planet and a concern that what we build is done in a sustainable manner. Each succeeding project is an opportunity for an architect to increase his knowledge of the issues of importance to the environment and to increase his skills in dealing constructively with them.
