Martin Ditto of Ditto Residential | OSLOadmo in Washington, D.C. | Learning Through Iteration
Courtesy of Ditto Residential
OSLOadmo with Martin Ditto
Our fourth guest of the American Building series is Martin Ditto. Martin is the founder and CEO of Ditto Residential, an award-winning development firm based in Washington, DC. We are talking about OSLOadmo, an 8-unit residential development in the Adams Morgan neighborhood of DC. It was completed just over a year ago and is the 3rd in his series of OSLO-branded co-living properties in urban infill locations. Martin is committed to developing new ways of living and is looking to branch into a larger residential platform that we will be talking about as well.
“Are we trying to build cities for what people think that they want? Or are we going to trust the architects and designers to actually read statistics and work with sociologists, economists, and psychologists to think about how mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual health can be affected by what we design, how we program it, and what we experience? ”
Courtesy of Ditto Residential
A Firm Built on a Vision
When Martin started his firm, Ditto Residential, he said he didn’t necessarily know what he wanted the company to be. Instead, he knew the vision he had for his life. He knew he wanted a platform, and he wanted the business to be scalable. This vision was “righter than he even knew” at the time, because bringing new ideas to projects of all scales across the country has proven to be the most satisfying part of his work. He also knew that the life changing experience he had by growing up in a modern plantation-style house and having the house influence his personal style was something he wanted his own work to do for others.
Courtesy of Ditto Residential
Courtesy of Ditto Residential
Seeing a Diamond in the Rough
Scale was certainly a factor when building the third coliving of the OSLO series in DC. Although the site was smaller than the project they were pursuing at the time, the opportunity to build in a historic neighborhood with an exceptional design was too alluring. Despite the site being an empty parking lot, Martin says the idea of what could be was already exciting. Jewel-box projects with interesting limitations can foster greater creativity and force the design team to empathize with the people who will occupy it.
Courtesy of Ditto Residential
Learning Through Iteration
Since co-living was a relatively new concept, the project relied on collaboration between internal and external team members. Over the series of three buildings, Martin’s team was able to learn a lot about how people actually want to live. It was a balancing act to find the right combination of amenities, unit size, programming, and personal amenities, while still considering the forces of supply and demand. This means that every OSLO building is unique as the team continues to iterate towards the perfect coliving environment. There are still values that the Ditto team believes in and wants to instill in their coliving projects, such as community. Those values help drive decisions as much as the needs of the residents.
Episode Timestamps
5:19 – You describe your mission in this way to create world-class residences with livable spaces that are so powerful that they can inspire and change the way people live their daily lives. Is that in sync with what you're describing about OSLO?
9:09 – Admo in the name OSLOAdmo refers to Adams Morgan. Why did you choose to build in that neighborhood?
10:53 – What have you learned from your previous two projects in the OSLO brand that helped color your strategy for OSLOAdmo in the entitlements process?
16:49 – How has the design process evolved over the course of the various OSLO properties?
21:31 – How does the co-living renting process work?
27:21 – How did you decide on pricing? And can you talk about some of the premiums that you charge for ancillary services?
31:41 – What would you summarize as the case for co-living?
36:55 – Do you think that the OSLO brand, or more broadly, thoughtful co-living, could have a place in settings other than urban locations, for example, in suburbs or beyond?
40:23 – Could you talk about what you are taking from the OSLO properties that you've built, and where you see that brand continuing under your development company?
43:47 – This evolution for OSLO, what is the timescale of it? What's the physical scale? And where do you see that going forward?
45:36 – How does the co-living lifestyle influence how you design things, how you market them, and how you perceive them?
48:11 – How do you make sense of what is happening in the Nashville scene, and how its development today implies a sense of brand because of the uniqueness of that place?
Connect with Martin Ditto:
Twitter
Instagram
Martin Ditto Facebook
Ditto Residential Facebook
OSLO DC Facebook
OSLO DC Instagram
About your host:
Atif Qadir is the Founder & CEO of Commonplace, a technology company making it easy for commercial real estate professionals to find and use the $100B of real estate incentives given out every year in the US.
His work has been covered by Technology Review, The Real Deal, Commercial Observer, and Propmodo. He’s also a frequent speaker on the future of buildings and cities on popular industry podcasts and at conferences, including this past year at the Commercial Observer National DEI Conference, Yale AREA Conference, Columbia Real Estate Symposium, Open Data Week NYC and Austin Design Week.
About Commonplace
Commonplace is a founding sponsor of American Building. It is a 100% minority-owned, real estate technology company founded in 2020 to make financing social impact development projects across the US easier. It is funded by venture capital investors Hometeam Ventures, Park West Asset Management, New York Ventures and Shadow Ventures.
About Michael Graves
The world-famous design firm Michael Graves is also a founding sponsor of American Building. Its namesake, the iconoclastic designer Michael Graves, FAIA was a fierce advocate for people-centric design. His work defines a generation of American architecture and includes the Portland Building, the Humana Building and the Denver Public Library. The 1st season of American Building was filmed live at The Warehouse, his historic home in Princeton, New Jersey:
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