I JUST BOUGHT A REALLY UGLY BUILDING BECAUSE OF ITS LOCATION AND PRICE. WHAT CAN BE DONE TO MAKE IT LOOK GOOD WITHOUT BREAKING THE BANK?

There are a lot of good solutions to make an ugly Las Vegas building presentable and possibly beautifully designed. Clients have recently used our architectural design services to “re-skin” a commercial stucco building. This simply means that the existing architectural façade of the old office building was covered over with some rigid insulation material (which helps insulation values also) and covered in new architectural stucco details. We also designed the placement of other architectural finish materials such as standing seam metal. Sometimes we use the insulation to hide the ugly decorations of the old building façade and other times we decorate a blank façade by adding “pop-outs” to give it some quality visual texture.

 

Another architectural design option is often used if the old building is planned to be expanded. Sometimes it is possible to simply build a new building addition in front of the old building and hide the ugly old building entirely. If you already planned to add on to the building then there should be little cost difference between building in front as opposed to on another side.

 

Another option is to build something else in front of the building. In the animation that we show a design by SSA architecture that places a curvilinear wall in front of an old building. This design was chosen because the building itself was not suitable for extensive exterior modifications. Therefore the architects designed a decorative exterior in front of it. Ken Small also planned to upgrade the exterior behind the curved wall.

 

In the Las Vegas vicinity architects who want to make major design changes to the exterior of a building are required to submit to government processes that are called “Design Review(s)”. The examples used in this explanation will tend to require that process. Typically the government reviewers are very supportive of improvements. But buyers should understand that anything other than an obvious improvement could delay the process and require public notices an hearings.