YARD & Company has 25 years of global experience interweaving urban design and development strategy with hyper-local get-it-done creativity.
We work with people to solve problems
Problems we help solve
We help organizations build amazing places. Our clients range from small volunteer-based grassroots efforts to multi-national developers and corporations. Projects range in size from targeted popup efforts to billion dollar redevelopments of entire city districts.Today's neighborhoods and districts, and the leaders that are charged with building them, are generally responding to one or more of these challenges through their building and development efforts:
How to navigate and prepare for change
- Create places their kids want to come back to or that they want to retire
- Retain existing talent and foster new ideas, companies, and innovations
- Restore/expand authenticity and vitality to lives and neighborhoods
- Unstick projects and places
Get to work after a plan is hatched
- Start implementation or make big visions real through doable steps
- Discover meaningful things that they can do to make neighborhoods better
- Attract and sustain investment amidst scant resources to subsidize it
- Attract developers/partners
- Resolve conflict between developers and the community
- Determine how to tell a better story
How to build capacity that supports extraordinary growth
- Structure community development organizations
- Set up roles, procedures, and operations for community and master developers
- Leverage events, programming, and engagement strategies for optimum impact to place
- Unleash new possibilities in fundraising and crowd support
- Review investment, infrastructure, design, and development proposals
Who we work with
YARD & Company builds great places for and with those who use them. We have an international network of subject matter experts and creatives that we bring aboard at the right time and place to ensure that individual services fit together seamlessly. Our model relies on integrating our energy and efforts directly into or as an extension of our client teams, working shoulder to shoulder with the following:
Real estate developers
Brokers
Nonprofits and community/neighborhood developers
Development authorities
Cities and towns
Institutions
Corporations
Other design and professional service firms
We realized early in our work that the activation of yard-like spaces with company is often the best way to test ideas and uncover the demand necessary to build extraordinary places. The smart use of these spaces shapes what gets built around them.
A few important things to remember about the YARD:
The Yard is Memorable
The YARD is big enough to matter and small enough to make a difference. It provides belonging and enclosure to create an outdoor room that is safe, comfortable, and even Instagrammable. Its size keeps it within our power to maintain and keep loved.
The Yard is Where Things Happen
The YARD is where we play and celebrate, factories build, people move, landscapes grow, and buildings cluster.
The Yard Brings People Together
The YARD is where public and private meet. It is where neighbors interact and solve problems together.
The Yard Grows and Changes
The YARD changes often with the people that place demands upon them. It can be a meticulously designed garden or messy place to be creative, test ideas, and build great things.
The Yard is a Measuring Stick
Give us an inch, we’ll take you a YARD. Ask for a mile, and we’ll fit it into a YARD to make the best use of every last bit of energy applied to it.
The Yard is Human Paced
It is amazing what can happen one step at a time. Keep walking. You'll surprise yourself with how far you go.