Villa Valencia was recently featured in Technology Designer article titled “Providing Natural Wellness Technology Solutions For Elevated Living Environments”. Touching upon our Wellness Technology Solutions in collaboration with HEDsouth & Delos.
From the Technology Designer article:
VILLA VALENCIA IS THE VERY FIRST U.S. residential condominium development to debut and provide natural wellness technology solutions for elevated living environments in every unit, developed by Rishi Kapoor of Location Ventures and designed by Hamed Rodriguez of Hamed Rodriguez Architects. Wellness technology is being provided by Jan Vitrofsky of HEDsouth that includes Lutron/Ketra lighting and the pioneering Delos DARWIN system consisting of clean air and purified water methodologies among other health-related attributes.
Located in Coral Gables, the building’s 39 estate-sized residences range from three to six bedrooms and offer from 2,616 to 6,263 square feet, with finishes selected to bring contemporary style and timeless craftsmanship together with technology into perfect harmony.
I recently had a conversation with the visionaries behind this incredible project. Here are some of their insights.
GEORGE: Tell us a little about Location Ventures.
RISHI: We are a Coral Gables-based real estate development and investment company. We have four divisions that focus on high-end single-family, luxury, wellness condominiums, and multi-family rentals. And then we have a co-live, co-work, and wellness company by the name of Urbin, that provides approachable pricing for people to live and work inside of core sub-markets. Our three pillars are nature, wellness, and technology. So I think it’s a great conversation that we’re having where we really look at pushing the envelope and being a thought-leader on the technology side and how we integrate that into our real estate.
When we started the company six years ago we were always trying to find ways of how to bring more wellness into the home environment or office environment. And we just happened to be very lucky on timing where that was a space that we were already exploring. We met the guys at Delos, maybe now it’s been four years ago, and started planning them into our projects. And obviously, the pandemic has put a really big spotlight on the wellness space. And I’m proud to say that I think we were really early to the category.
GEORGE: I understand you actually planned the building in a certain location so you could create a park adjacent to it?
RISHI: Again, we love nature as one of our three pillars and the city of Coral Gables worked with us by saying, “Look, what we want are amazing outdoor green spaces. And we want world-class art as a part of that.”
And that led to the inception of shifting the project a little bit to the west on our site, on the eastern edge, donating a public park with a one-of-a-kind outdoor sculpture. It’s going to be a really nice destination for the neighborhood.
GEORGE: Hamed, when did you get involved in Villa Valencia?
HAMED: We were retained to add amenity areas for wellbeing, an elevated health club, and a space for experimenting with gourmet foods that are healthy. So we have what they call the Cucina, which is right by the pool deck level on the fifth floor. And then he’s got a hammam [a Turkish-style spa] in there as well for men and women for physical relaxation. We wanted to use natural materials as much as possible. We didn’t want things that would off-gas or be regionally inappropriate. There are some things that you can’t avoid, but for in- stance, concrete is a manmade material that’s very prevalent in South Florida and therefore, doesn’t travel far.
We’re using Coral stone and some Oolithic limestone in certain areas. Also known as Oolite, this stone is harvested from South Florida. The Landscape pallet is using much native vegetation. The building has to abide by certain green standard which is specific to local code requirements. All of this is layered into the wellness aspect and overall experience.
GEORGE: Jan, you were instrumental in bringing the Delos platform to the attention of technology designers, correct?
JAN: Yes, several years ago I was brought in to be the industry consultant for Delos for the system integration channel, and I’ve sort of been the evangelist for getting the word out that this is a subcategory for system integration companies — that it’s the hottest thing out there.
Read more from the Technology Designer article HERE
