“Living on the Park” is inspired by the site’s location around the perimeter of the Orange County Great Park in Irvine. The design physically connects the district with the surrounding larger open space systems: Agua Chinon along the western edge and Wildlife Corridor along the eastern edge. Within the district, linear, interconnected open space systems in Rise and Solis provide diverse park amenities that pull residents through the neighborhood while removing them from vehicular traffic. The overall outcome is a more unified and healthy landscape that is walkable, human scale and promotes community engagement. The guiding principles are:
Living on the Park: Across this community, more homes are designed to live forward, putting eyes on the park and supporting the value placed on parks and open space for human health. Porches, patios and upper decks face the public realm to foster social engagement and create activity directly on diverse neighborhood streets rich in character and variety.
Creative Parks: A mixture of active and passive amenities programmed for the parks include sanctuary spaces for yoga and meditation, expression gardens, creative sculptural play walls, and nature and view-oriented overlooks and outdoor classrooms. The community building, located at the center of the community, has expansive outdoor decks overlooking multi-sized pools.
Housing Diversity: The diversity of housing types introduced throughout the neighborhoods attracts various segments of homebuyers looking for different living options based on their life stage and needs. This diversity breaks the traditional mold of a homogeneous subdivision and enables a neighborhood to be and live multigenerational.
Overall Well-being: The concept is reinforced by the community’s continuity and walkability. Parks and destination nodes, small and large, are located based on a three-minute walk system. Park designs take inspiration from geology, hydrology and native vegetation, drawing from color theory to create rich, mindful and emotional experiences.
District 5, which is located southwest of Irvine Boulevard and southeast of Cadence Park, is organized into two phases: Rise, which is built, and Solis, which is under construction. The district includes a mix of residential neighborhoods, offering a variety of lifestyles, price points and catering to a diverse group of buyer profiles; a K-8 school, several neighborhood parks and a comprehensive trail network.
The District 5 (RISE) master plan at Great Park Neighborhoods is the result of a collaborative process in which DAHLIN and our co-collaborators Brightview and Gensler functioned as an in-house design team onsite at the FivePoint office in ongoing, weekly full-day design sessions.
