PRINCE CONCEPTS

SUMMARY

Prince Concepts is a real estate development company based in Core City, Detroit.

We develop, own and manage our projects. We restrain where we build, and focus on larger development projects within and across specific neighborhoods; on the other hand, we diversify what we build and create places to live, socialize, work and congregate. Consistent, dedicated, and focused work within a specific area is what brings us and our surroundings real value.

Creating inspired space is the objective of our work; making it accessible is our aspiration, and the real work of our work. We aim to offer our tenants, our neighborhood, and cities public and private spaces of note. Our belief is that living in and around architecture - both natural and man made - offers humans immense benefits.

We have created celebrated restaurants.

We imagine and build award winning residential projects.

We revive previously abandoned buildings.

We plant trees, creating and beautifying public spaces.

The consistent thread throughout our work - an emphasis on the quality of space - indoor and outdoor, public and private. For us, it isn’t a matter of how much we build, but is more about how inspired what we build actually is.

Our objective - elevate the spaces where life plays out.

STORY

The vast majority of this development has taken place, and will continue to be, in Core City. We believe that consistent, dedicated, and focused work within a specific area is how the unique character and value within the Detroit neighborhoods comes to life.

Creating inspired space is the objective of our work, making such space accessible is our aspiration and the real work of our work. We aim to offer our tenants, our neighborhood, and Detroit public and private spaces of note. Our belief is that living in and around architecture - both natural and man made - offers humans immense benefits. You can learn more about our completed projects in the WORK section of this website. Prince Concepts is directed by Philip Kafka.

Philip Kafka is President of Prince Concepts. Prior to moving to Detroit, Kafka spent six years building, Prince Media Co, a billboard business in New York City. After developing and marketing sign locations across Manhattan, Brooklyn, San Francisco and Los Angeles Kafka sold Prince Media Co to LAMAR, the largest billboard company in the country. Kafka began purchasing real estate in Detroit in late 2012, and finally sold his company in New York in August of 2015. Since then, Kafka has been developing Core City. Kafka’s first ground-up development project, True North, was named 2017’s Multi-Family development of the year by Architects Newspaper, was a winner of a Progressive Architecture award, and was one of six finalists for the prestigious Mies Crown Hall America’s prize; it was one of just two finalists from the USA, the other being the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History Washington D.C.

Kafka also serves on the board of MoCAD in Detroit, and has frequently been a guest critic and lecturer in the architecture departments at the: Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, Fay Jones School at the University of Arkansas, Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem, University of Michigan, and Wayne State University.

IDEA

The product of real estate development is space.

That’s what we create, space.

The places we create, consume, and congregate are inspired by space. Our work focuses on experimenting and elevating space, so that the life happening within such space is elevated, too.

We are real estate developers not investors; please don’t confuse the two. Our goal: create value, don’t buy it. With work, we communicate our beliefs. When what we believe is interesting, we create value. The more we work, the more efficiently we are able to express what we believe.

Principles guide our work:

1. Be a developer, not an investor. Over invest in the quality of the product, not the quality of the location. A great project can make a place. A great place cannot make a great project. Invest in the quality of our projects, instead of over paying for a premium location. Great work can elevate a place, we refuse to rely on the quality of a place to elevate our work. Location is a bonus.
2. We make space. Space is the product of development. We are in the business of making space. Indoor and outdoor. The objective of our work is to create spaces people want to be. Always focus on the quality of the space we create, first and foremost.
3. Don't focus on scaling, focus on mastery. The energy from a project comes from the experimentation within it. With each completed project we get closer to establishing a better understanding of what we do. We must use this understanding as a foundation to keep exploring new ideas and concepts. Don't just repeat what we already know, use knowledge as a foundation for new exploration, such exploration is the path to mastery.
4. Begin with Architecture. To be a developer and not believe in Architecture is like being a priest who doesn’t believe in God.
5. Build what's needed, not more. We develop just the right amount of private space to help subsidize a maximal amount of public space. As humans, we are the diplomats between nature and culture. We must negotiate their peaceful coexistence.
6. Employ intuition, before technology. Lets listen to and work with nature before we resort to solving problems technology creates, with more technology.
7. Create value. Either offer what already exists for a lower cost, or by offer something new and inspired for a comparable, or slightly higher cost. The best work does both.
8. Great work emerges, it doesn’t descend. Let the existing environment inspire the project, and only then can the project inspire the existing environment.
9. Use what you're given. Space, light, landscape - the best parts of a project already exist - akways work to use what you've been given.
10. Make a place, and make it relevant. A place is somewhere you want to be. A relevant place is somewhere a lot of people want to be. Architecture doesn’t make a place, but it can make a place relevant. Landscape and space make the place.
11. Create work for the people who pay us rent, and for those who don't. Great work honors indoor and outdoor space. Public and private space.
12. Culture vs. Nature - honor and cultivate both. Mediate their relationship so they dance, not fight.

Whereas traditional real estate practices focus on the quality of the location and then develop a high quantity of leasable units to capture such quality, we take the opposite approach, and focus on the quality of the product of our work - space.

RESULTS

The team is comprised of: Philip Kafka 1

AWARDS

Award Name, Type, Date 1

Award Name / Link , Type, Date 2

COVERAGE