Archetype Inc.

Answer to the Review from client Lata Bansal.

This particular client entered into a contract for architectural Cast Estate Stone without HOA approval. No one forced her to sign the contract which stated that the deposit was Non-refundable. At the signing, Ms. Bansal demanded that casting and other

preparations be made while she toured Europe. After returning from vacation, she met with the her landscape architect and the HOA only to find that the project was rejected for not conforming to HOA guidelines, guidelines that were not presented to Archetype prior to the HOA meeting.


The deposit from Lata Bansal went towards moving to a larger facility, prepping molds, and material purchases. She took several months to decide that her order of columns, moldings and fountain designs were not favorable, and, even after the molds were prepared for those purchases, she demanded her deposit be returned. The contract clearly states that deposits are non refundable.

Archetype was not commissioned to design the project. Archetype was not responsible for permitting. Archetype was commissioned by the client with recommendations from her landscape architect. Final architectural drawings were not presented to the client until the night of the HOA meeting at which time the drawings and designs were rejected for lack of conforming to the Tuscan Architectural Style of their choosing, a fact that both Ms. Bansal and the Landscape Architect were not privy to. The products chosen at the signing of the contract were mostly of a Balinesian style. The client is of East Indian descent, and naturally found those to be of her liking. The products ordered in the contract were fully described. Full size castings of capitals, moldings in the final color, and photos of fountains were submitted for viewing prior to the signing of the contract. Problems with the HOA were not discovered until months after the contract signing.

What is TRUE: Archetype has closed its current facility. We have donated most of our repertoire of molds and art to a charitable organization for no money. Archetype has not filed for bankruptcy. And, finally, at the age of 67, Dale Mallie has found it almost impossible to provide designs and products to an uniformed public with a lack of personal accountability.

This review is SLANDER. The client got cold feet after the HOA rejection, which Archetype had nothing to do with, but, after the evolution of the design preferences being stated by the HOA, Archetype spent hundreds of hours re-presenting the designs to the client and to the HOA. The client rejected designs ordered in the contract for childish reasons, like wasps will build their nests on the moldings above her front entrance. Once she made up her mind that she wanted her money returned, there wasn't any revised consideration that met with her approval.

Yes, it is true that we have closed our current facility, due to the fact that this half baked project caused Archetype to increase its overhead to produce the project and exhausted the entire deposit prepping the forms and redesigning the entire project from scratch.

May this be a lesson to all designers concerned with clients and Homeowners Associations. The majority of HOA's are run by individuals, many with no formal training, that have the power to belittle decades of experience and hundreds of hours of planning. In the case of Lata Bansal, I actually feel there was a distinct racial profiling with her architectural preferences. At one time during the meetings with the HOA, I actually heard the person in charge calling an Andalusian Styled Capital "Tuscan".

There was no precedent for the Tuscan Style Demand from the HOA. Our designs included two magnificent stone Corinthian Capitals to be used at the front entrance.

Those were rejected because other residences had Corinthians throughout the community. There was no comparison between the Corinthians Archetype was providing and the versions elsewhere. Link to the Corinthian to be used at the Bansal Resinece: http://www.houzz.com/photos/3403808/0501-French-Limestone-Seamless-Stone-Corinthian-Capitals-other-metro

heylata, your review demonstrates your lack of understanding of your rights as a client and you have made an enemy of Archetype by lashing out at the wrong party. The outcome of your involvement with your own project is your own doing. You should have had counsel demand that HOA accept your designs instead of Discriminating against a perfectly presentable plan and the landscape architect's contribution. The lack of your working knowledge only led to a bigger mess than the HOA's disapproval in the first place.

South Florida has lost a very precious resource upon the dismantling of Archetype's repertoire of molds. However, Dale Mallie is an undisputed designer of great integrity and still has the ability to create products in any architectural style.

The four images are a small portion of the re-design for the client due to the ineptitude of the landscape architect.

Dale Mallie/ Archetype Inc/ 954 646 3931