One of Livano’s consulting architects, Louis Nequette, has a deep love for beauty and believes in the power of design to bring people together.
Louis Nequette’s approach to architecture is multi-dimensional, in every sense. It is always about form and function, but it is also about relationships and how design can connect the people who are using and seeing it every day. Everything about Louis, from his work to the way he sees the world, is steeped in his innate creativity and his pragmatism.
This combination allows him to create designs that are both beautiful and accessible. When designing, he seems to ask: how can we elevate the basics so that we are elevated ourselves? We see this question played out in the projects he chooses to take on and the ways in which he reimagines what has always been done. His work with Livano is a clear example of this. Here,
he discusses his process, his background, and his perspective on what good design can do.
Tell me a bit about your background, anything you were interested in as a child that foreshadowed your life now.
I was always artistic as a kid. It was my talent and passion. My mom is artistic as well and she encouraged me. I embraced it at a very young age. I’ve learned to become more of an extrovert, but my happy place, even in high school, was being introverted. In high school, you’re trying to make friends and “be popular,” and I actually found that my art — doing stuff for pep rallies, doing stuff for the school — helped bring me out of my shell. It became my identity. I also found the art classes I was in to be not challenging enough. My dad then came into play. He’d always wanted to be an architect and encouraged me to look into it. I shadowed a few people in the industry and thought it looked interesting, and I dove headfirst into first year of architecture school at Auburn. It was a perfect fit for me. I took to it like a duck in water and five years later graduated and then jumped feet first into the industry. It feels like it was yesterday; it’s been so fulfilling and so busy and so wonderful with opportunity. I consider myself to be one of those lucky people who found what they were meant to do, and it’s a blessing.
What medium did you enjoy most as a child?
I wish I had some of my middle school spiral bound notebooks because there’s probably more doodling than note taking. I was drawing and painting and cartooning — a little bit of anything and everything.
Do you still draw your designs by hand?
For the most part, everything I do is originated by hand. But then I quickly involve
other team members to explore it in other ways or take it and run with it from the hand drawing. That’s how I see the world and how I think. I can do a three-dimensional sketch faster than they can do a computer model, so I’ll race them any time.
Where did you grow up?
I grew up in Birmingham, Ala. I went to Auburn and came back to Birmingham because at the time we were coming out of a recession, and I felt fortunate to have a job. I always wanted to live somewhere else in the country, but so much opportunity and traction just kept us here. But we do work all over the place. So I get to travel all the time.
Tell me about a few of your projects, ones that stand out.
I got my start at a commercial firm, but I quickly realized that traditional commercial architecture firms are incredibly business-first. I learned how to work with complex teams, how to put complex buildings together. I learned so much about how to be an architect, but what was missing was a passion for design.
I then went to a place where I thought the design was more of a value, only to find out it was mostly happening by one person in that company, so he and I started a company together. Our values were design-driven. We got involved in some high-end, custom residential work which led us down to the panhandle of Florida at the time when a few of some of the most well-known traditional neighborhoods were just coming out of the ground and blossoming. These places had design guidelines and were requiring that these homes be thoughtful and well done. We learned how special those projects felt when they were surrounded by other thoughtful designs instead of just across the street from something you never wanted to turn the camera to. I did not come from a background of community planning or master planning or placemaking, but through doing those projects for about 10 years, I became passionate about the holistic nature of community design and placemaking, how the whole could be so much greater than the sum of the parts if it is thoughtful. Over time, I could see that what was missing was the ability to affect more people. It was great to do that work, but it was really only affecting the 1%, so to speak.
I was then asked by a Birmingham developer to get involved in a student housing neighborhood. I was able to really express myself in master planning. There were freedoms that you don’t get in conventional master planning of single-family neighborhoods because we didn’t have to plat individual properties. We got to arrange the houses any way we wanted, to create great walkable experiences. Think of a resort or something like that. And then we got to put students in it, which is just like one big research and development project. We found out what they liked and didn’t like about that experience. We were able to give great design to a much broader audience. Nothing was more fulfilling than to hear from people who said, “I never thought moving into a neighborhood would change my life, but it did. Because we know our neighbors. We get out and walk with our strollers and our babies and meet people.”
Over time, the market demanded what we were passionate about. There became this intersection of opportunity to create thriving, walkable, mixed-use town centers for multifamily developers. Now people want to be in a place where they can start out of school as renters and grow into a townhouse. They can buy their first house, buy a second house, raise a family. Once the kids go to school, they can downgrade to a smaller house or an active adult rental. They never have to leave the community they’ve invested their whole lives in, because it’s where their people are. That’s what everyone wants.
I believe good design has the ability to positively impact a person’s psyche and worldview. How do you think the design of a neighborhood affects the people that live there?
It inspires people when they don’t realize it. It affects their lives. When you live in a house or apartment or even go visit a coffee shop and the sunlight is right and the quality of the space, the scale and proportion, is right, you want to hang out there. You want to stay. You get inspired in ways you might not be able to measure. We completely believe in it. We also feel like when it’s beautiful, and has an element of historical influence to it, people want to protect it.
Tell me a bit more about your process.
The process we take on a given project is somewhat universal. It’s always a combination. First, what does the site specifically offer? What are its unique conditions — views, terrain, trees versus fields, walkability? Secondly, what is the context of the area? What would make people feel like this fit into their community? Third, what are the specific requirements of the client or the owner?
From a personal perspective, what does the room look like, feel like, when you are putting pen to paper?
What is great about Livano is that they curate a vision book that they provide to us for every project. We’re used to having to go pioneer that ourselves. They put real time and effort into saying, here’s what we think the character should or could be. Here’s what the local influences are. That is tremendously inspiring and beneficial to the process. I always have that in front of me. I really start digging deep into the topography and understanding the land itself. Spend some time understanding the appropriate building types that we are going to work with. That allows you to start with some levels of predictability and then wrap creativity throughout it.
I read something about community-building on your website: “Architecture is nothing but an opportunity to bring people together. It can segregate or create community. I don’t think people realize how much it has an effect on political life.” I was fascinated by that. Can you say a bit more about that and other goals you have in these types of projects?
What I mean when I reference political life is that we tend to choose to live around people who are like-minded. Some of it is understandable because those are people who think like you do and like to do what you do, so there is going to be a lot of fun things to do that way. Some is fear-based; I’m afraid of what I don’t know. What we’ve found is when we do these thriving mixed-use communities that have a range of product types — for sale, for rent, different scales and densities — it starts to attract multiple generations. This brings people together and when it’s walkable and there’s some place to go, they find themselves in conversation with someone that they’ve never met before, that they would not choose to walk up and talk to otherwise.
They build a relationship. They create empathy and begin to understand someone in a way they otherwise wouldn’t have. At the heart of it, it’s what we desire most — relationships. We’re creating places for them to live that are going to create intersections in ways that maybe they don’t see coming. That’s how community is built. That’s how it’s always been built. We’re not doing anything new.
