JDS Development Group has no house style, because every site was left to answer for itself

The designer is chosen after the site has stated its problem, not before, which is why seven different practices appear on the firm's buildings and none of the buildings repeat.

SHoP Architects. Studio Sofield. Jean Nouvel. Woods Bagot. Field Operations. Gachot Studios. Roman and Williams. Those seven are the practices JDS Development Group has built with, and a reader who looks at the buildings that came out of those collaborations will find nothing that connects them as a style. This piece is for developers and design managers deciding how to choose a designer, and for architects who want to know what a developer without a house style is actually looking for.

The reason there is no house style is a rule about order. The site states its problem first, and the designer is chosen for that problem, and a firm that chooses designers that way will never build two buildings that look alike, because no two sites have stated the same problem. I want to walk the roster and say, where the record allows it, what each practice was asked to answer.

SHoP Architects

SHoP designed 111 West 57th Street, The Brooklyn Tower and the American Copper Buildings in New York, and the tower at Mercedes-Benz Places Miami. Four buildings from one practice might look like the beginning of a house style, and they are the opposite of one. A slender tower in a courtyard, a supertall over a bank, twin towers joined by a bridge, and a tower in Miami share an architect and nothing else, because in each case the practice was asked to answer a site rather than to repeat itself. The reason SHoP appears four times is that the practice has been willing, four times, to start from the ground rather than from its last building.

Studio Sofield

Studio Sofield designed the interiors at 111 West 57th Street, inside a floor plate that had been fixed by the courtyard and by the structure before any interior was drawn. The problem the site stated to an interior designer was a long narrow plan with daylight at the ends, and the practice was chosen because it could make rooms of that geometry rather than fight it.

Jean Nouvel

Monad Terrace sits on the Miami Beach waterfront and its architect is Jean Nouvel. A waterfront in Miami Beach states a different problem from any site in New York: light, water and heat before structure and height. The choice of an architect known for how light enters a building was the site's choice as much as the firm's.

Woods Bagot

At Mercedes-Benz Places Miami the interiors are by Woods Bagot. The site stated its problem in two halves, the tower and the life within it, and the firm answered each half with a different practice rather than asking one to do both. That division is itself a decision about how to choose designers: when a building has two problems, it may need two answers.

Field Operations

At the same project the ground plane, Southside Park beside it included, is by Field Operations. A tower that meets a public park is a tower whose site extends beyond its lot line, and a landscape practice was chosen because the problem at the ground was a landscape problem before it was a building one.

Roman and Williams, and Gachot Studios

Both practices appear on the firm's roster of designers and I will not attach a project to either here, because this site records only what is on the record, and the pairing is not. The principle is the same: each was chosen for a site that had stated a problem their work answered.

Dolce&Gabbana, a designer of a different kind

888 Brickell Dolce&Gabbana puts a hotel and condominium residences together in Brickell, with the fashion house responsible for how both of them look. That is a fashion house rather than an architectural practice, and its presence on this list is the clearest evidence that the firm has no house style: the site called for an identity that could carry a hotel and residences under one name, and the answer came from outside architecture altogether.

Two cities, one method

The firm works in New York City and in Miami, and a reader might expect the two cities to have produced two styles. They have produced two sets of problems instead. New York sites state problems of ground: courtyards, landmarks, utility histories, floor area that has to be assembled. Miami sites state problems of climate and water. The method is the same in both, and so is the result: a building that answers its site and resembles no other building of the firm's.

A design manager reading this could argue that a firm without a house style is a firm without a point of view, and that choosing a different practice for every site is a way of avoiding the responsibility of having one. I have thought about that objection more than any other in this piece. My answer is that the point of view is in the choice of sites, which are all sites that others have passed over, and in the order of the method, which puts the site before the designer every time. That is a strong position and it is a consistent one. It simply does not show up as a look.

What was settled for is the cost of starting from nothing every time. A house style is cheaper: the details are known, the consultants are familiar, the drawings begin from the last set. Each of these buildings began from an empty page, and each took longer and cost more in design than it would have as the next in a series. Anyone choosing designers this way should retain a design manager who can hold seven relationships at once, and should accept that the seventh building will be as hard to start as the first.

What the buildings do share

Not a material, not a proportion, not a detail. What they share is that every one of them stands on ground that stated its problem plainly and was answered on its own terms, and that is the one mark the firm has wanted to leave.