In the deep recesses of the word adventure, three different but semi-related meanings trace to its origins in Latin and Old French.
One is the sense of arrival, for its combined parts say, literally, “come to,” or reach. A second early literal definition was something “about to happen,” an event that sets off a certain amount of excitement in its anticipation. Thirdly, by the 13th century, or so, the word had taken on reference to something entirely new, “a wonder, a miracle; accounts of marvelous things.”
These three threads of meaning are the driving forces of strategic intention for a project whose focus is the current wave and future tidal waves of 55+ home seekers. They a) have arrived, b) expect in every way that the next chapter of their lives is about to happen, and c) choose to live in ways that continue to make memories rather than simply recall them.
Fittingly, that project is called the Taylor Morrison NEXTadventure Home, and it will get its unveiling in the Orlando-area community of Esplanade at Highland Ranch in Clermont, Fla., in exactly 75 days. In its bones, it’s a home whose take-home value to home builders will be a series of new ideas about comfort, ease-of-use and maintenance, practical features and functions. In its soul, design, and software–how the home lives–home builder, architect, and engineer visitors will get a clinic on how to take all those practical, functional details and infuse them with a healthy twist of excitement.
Taylor Morrison’s strategic inroads into establishing and expanding its 55+ community development as a core dimension of its customer segmentation offerings take cues from the central company cultural focus: its customers. Up and down the chain of executive and management command and right out to the job sites, the Taylor Morrison team practices what others preach about listening, talking to, and acting on what its customers say and mean. Through aggressive social network engagement, focus group research, surveys, and, most importantly, by harvesting real-time data points of everyday interactions with customers, prospects, buyers of competitive products, etc., the Taylor Morrison mode is in the build, measure, learn cycle of operationalizing its 55+ plan.
NEXTadventure is a Taylor Morrison experiment in how to learn to program–design, engineering, community development, pricing–to a 55+ buyer of today and tomorrow. The “golden mean” the company seems to seek with respect to the 77 million strong Baby Boom generation of current or imminent 55+ers and beyond seems to be in the “attainable aspirational” market position, within the budgetary means of many people who have enjoyed good careers, but with some pulse-quickening points of delight, both inside the box and in the community programming portfolio.
NEXTadventure is a real-time litmus test of Taylor Morrison’s ongoing customer-centric design charrette, where, for example, vocal participants’ call for “more better storage” led to the development of a “Florida basement” option, a flex-space up a small staircase from the garage parking area, as well as many clever storage options in the main living areas.
BUILDER art director Tina Tabibi and NEXTadventure show home photographer Kip Dawkins
We’re down this week on site at Esplanade for our photo shoot for BUILDER’s January 2017 cover and special report on Taylor Morrison’s NEXTadventure. Our photo crew, directed by BUILDER art director Tina Tabibi, included Kip Dawkins and his wife and partner Marcie Blough.
The photo crew followed immediately on the heels of partner interior designer Lita Dirks, senior designer Amy Miller and the Lita Dirks team, who parachuted in last week with a truck-load of livability, panache, warmth, and easy-going contemporary charm. It was their turn for a frenzy of set-up activity after the builder team, under Taylor Morrison project supervisor Stephen Atwood, builder Mike Corcoran, and our go-to vp of purchasing and sourcing Carol Thompson, raced to the finish line over the past couple of weeks to complete Housing Design Matters principal Deryl Patterson’s vision for a NEXTadventure home that promises arrival, what’s coming next, and wonderful, miraculous accounts of marvelous things.
