Building designed by world-renowned architectural firm Johnston Marklee & Associates, in partnership with Lamar Johnson Collaborative Includes 401 spacious apartment units, substantial ground-floor retail space, and superior amenities
Ray and VeLa today announced the groundbreaking of Ray Phoenix, a design-forward multifamily residential building featuring one of the region’s most comprehensive amenity packages, spacious studio, one and two-bedroom apartment units with floor-to-ceiling windows offering mountain and skyline views, a ground-level exhibition venue and retail, and a site-specific mural in the resident lobby by renowned American multimedia artist Alex Israel. Designed by world-renowned architectural firm Johnston Marklee & Associates, in partnership with Lamar Johnson Collaborative, the building will be located in the Roosevelt Row Arts District, with an aim to enhance the community by making art, architecture, and design highly accessible to its residents.
Co-developed by Ray and VeLa, the 26-story, high-rise building will encompass approximately 523,000 square feet, including 401 residential rental units— 193 studios, 116 one-bedrooms (including den and duplex options), and 92 two-bedrooms (including duplex and penthouse options)—a large fitness center, yoga studio, outdoor resort-style pool, communal kitchen and fireplace lounge, sunken lounge with theater experience, dog wash stations, indoor and outdoor gardens, workspaces and more. Additionally, Ray Phoenix will offer more than 4,500 square feet of ground-level retail. Located at 777 N Central Ave just two blocks from E Roosevelt Street, residents will be in walking distance to all that downtown Phoenix has to offer, including top ranked schools, restaurants, shopping and more.
“We feel strongly that it is possible to raise the bar on the urban residential experience while also offering a diversity of price points to a diversity of renters,” said Nick Benjamin, Principal of VeLa. “We couldn’t be more excited to be partnering with Ray to execute that vision and to bring this exceptional building and its world class design, amenities and art program to the rapidly growing downtown Phoenix market. We believe the best is yet to come for downtown Phoenix and are proud to be joining the community.”
“Ray Phoenix marks a harmonious blend of modern aesthetics and functionality that reflect the vibrance and beauty of the city of Phoenix,” said Suzanne Demisch, Creative Director at Ray. “We’re delighted to introduce another design-forward Ray building that embraces art and culture in daily living experiences and are especially honored to partner with celebrated artist Alex Israel on a distinctive artist-intervention.”
Johnston Marklee & Associates, in partnership with Lamar Johnson Collaborative, conceptualized the building’s primitive form, clear structure, and textured green palette to be animated by the changing light and shadow of the desert skies that marks the landscape of the west. The building establishes an engaging street presence through its retail storefront, an inviting addition to the downtown Phoenix streetscape. Grace Fuller Marroquín of Grace Fuller Design conceived the landscape concept for Ray Phoenix, focusing on lush but sustainable landscape design, with an emphasis on the use of native species and blending of the exterior landscape approach with the interior amenity design. The building interior was designed by Ray’s in-house design team in collaboration with Parts & Labor.
“In Phoenix, the desert climate of extreme sun and dry landscape inspired our design,” said Sharon Johnston, Partner, Johnston Marklee & Associates. “The greens of the building vary in hue and intensity and reflect the ephemerality of plant life in this arid climate. The gridded façade weaves together a mix of textures from reflective tinted glass to matte powder coated metal and colored concrete, while changing sunlight and shadow animate variations in structural depth and material. We designed the building’s podium to be porous and accessible: at the street level; storefront awnings open to commercial spaces and an art gallery—inviting the public to engage with the building at a more intimate scale while open trellises provide shade for gardens and pools on the 5th floor amenity level. To frame a generous civic identity, we focused on the façade, street level arcade, and shared public spaces: areas where the residential communities will come together and connect to the surrounding city.”
Alex Israel’s mural is inspired by the Phoenix landscape, where each element is originally captured in a photograph, isolated from its background, and recombined with other elements to form a life-size mural composition. The painted plants and objects unfold as if along a sidewalk or on the side of a road, highlighting the car window vantage from which many observe the world.
The groundbreaking at Ray Phoenix, which closely follows the successful opening of Ray Philly and the topping out of Ray Harlem in New York, represents the continuing expansion of Ray’s vision to bring a shared experience of art, architecture, and design across the country.
About Ray
Ray is a residential development company that is focused on developing space that makes art and culture accessible through daily experiences. Ray’s design approach is aesthetically dynamic, historically informed, and influenced by cultural precedents and practicality with an in-house interior design team which has deep experience in multi-family and hospitality design and processes. Founder Dasha Zhukova Niarchos was inspired to apply her work within cultural institutions and public art spaces into a new category of the built environment. Dasha established the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in 2008, seeking to create a space devoted to the discovery and exploration of global art and culture. Her experience at the museum, particularly observing how people interacted with both the art and architecture, was the catalyst for launching Ray. www.rayisaplace.com
About VeLa
VeLa Development Partners (VeLa) is a national real estate development company founded and led by experienced developers Nick Benjamin and Taylor Gray in partnership with Post Road Group. VeLa is committed to bringing attainable luxury to the hubs of fast-growing urban markets throughout the United States. VeLa’s current portfolio represents more than 3.5 million square feet and more than $1B in development bringing design-forward and lifestyle driven rental buildings to cities in the Southeast, Sunbelt and Mountain West. More information can be found at veladev.com.
About Johnston Marklee
Johnston Marklee is a WBE-certified, woman and BIPOC-led firm. Since its establishment in 1998 in Los Angeles, Johnston Marklee has been recognized nationally and internationally with over 40 major awards and numerous publications. Projects undertaken by Johnston Marklee are diverse in scale and type, spanning fourteen countries throughout North and South America, Europe, and Asia with a focus on buildings for arts and culture. As an Architectural Digest Top 100 architecture firm, Johnston Marklee worked in close coordination with the Ray team and LJC, as well as Grace Fuller Design. Ray Phoenix will be their first multifamily project in the Phoenix market. www.johnstonmarklee.com
About Lamar Johnson Collaborative
Lamar Johnson Collaborative (LJC) is a full-service, integrated architecture and design firm. LJC is committed to elevating the art and science of architecture and improving design delivery through collaboration. As an integrated design practice, the firm offers architecture, interior design, urban planning, landscape architecture, sustainability, and quality assurance services through offices in Chicago, Denver, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Phoenix, and St Louis. As a subsidiary of Clayco, a national design-build construction firm, LJC utilizes a full-service approach to inform design delivery, going beyond traditional quality assurance by ensuring benefits of the design-build delivery method in projects regardless of actual delivery method. Founded in 1999, LJC combines collective experiences to promote an inclusive culture, recognizing the true value of diversity and the synergy that it brings. For more information, visit www.theljc.com.
About Grace Fuller Design
Founded by Grace Fuller Marroquín in 2019 Grace Fuller Design is a New York-based landscape design firm rooted in the belief that nature is the greatest teacher. Through whimsical, romantic design, we seek to unite the domestic world with the wild. We create meaningful outdoor spaces that capture the movement and textures found in nature and serve as extensions of the home. In all our projects, we bring a spirit of creativity, artistry, and collaboration. Sustainability is also a pillar of our practice: A deep love of and respect for the earth guides everything we do.