Magazine
Just like with the living, space is at a premium for people housed in cemeteries in urban areas. One solution for cemeteries with limited site area is building up, as is being done at Hollywood Forever with its Gower Court Mausoleum. Michael B. Lehrer, founder and principal of Lehrer...
The Center is a combination Central Kitchen, Instructional Farm, and Education Center that supports daily food production for every student in the Oakland Unified School District in West Oakland, California. The design of The Center by Palo Alto's CAW Architects features shaded outdoor spaces,...
Atwater Canyon is an adaptive reuse project situated along a commercial corridor in the Atwater Village neighborhood of Los Angeles. Formation Association designed it so the facade retains some of its kitschy character, while the interior is bisected by a canyon-like passageway. The architects...
The Interactive Learning Pavilion opened at the University of California, Santa Barbara earlier this year as the campus's first new building dedicated to classroom space in more than fifty years. Partner Stephen Van Dyck and the team of architects at LMN Architects answered a few questions...
Rotterdam's MVRDV is one of four architecture firms in the “collaborative design cohort” designing different parts of Mission Rock, a new neighborhood in San...
One of the many impacts of the shift from print to digital media this century has been the closure of printing plants. The Los Angeles Times closed its large Costa Mesa facility in 2010, but instead of tearing it down and starting anew, developer SteelWave and Ehrlich Yanai Rhee Chaney...
This small office building at 1729 Abbot Kinney Boulevard in Venice, California — just a five-minute drive to Venice Beach — stands out thanks to its fluted-brick facade punctuated by a dark horizontal window along the sidewalk. Architect Mark Bittoni answered a few questions about...
Subsequently leased to a famous tech company, The Brick + The Machine was designed as a speculative office development in Downtown Culver City. The name of the project reflects the palette of its three- and four-story halves, which arose from zoning constraints, among other considerations....
Walker Hall is the adaptive reuse of a nearly century-old building on the campus of the University of California, Davis, transforming it from a home for agricultural engineering to a student center, “a hub of university life.” The architects at Leddy Maytum Stacy answered a few questions about...
A historic Craftsman home, a former grocery story, and a half-dozen repurposed shipping containers combine to create a destination for beer drinkers in Anaheim, California. Outdoor spaces are also part of the mix in Studio One Eleven's design for Moderntimes and Leisuretown. The architects...
This ADU, or "Accessory Dwelling Unit," is the second such project featured as a US Building of the Week in 2022, evidence of the growing popularity of the typology and the increasing number of jurisdictions making them legal means of adding density to residential neighborhoods. The architects...
A faceted facade and lush green wall make this extension to an electrical substation a good neighbor in San Francisco's Tenderloin neighborhood. The architects at TEF Design answered a few questions about the project.
Although San Diego recently surpassed San Francisco as the least affordable metro housing market in the United States, the City by the Bay has long been notorious for the expense of buying or renting a home. In turn, the Edwin M. Lee Apartments, providing housing for formerly homeless veterans...
Situated on a ten-mile stretch of rocky Northern California coastline, The Sea Ranch is a famous residential development laid out by Lawrence Halprin in the 1960s and featuring distinctive timber-frame structures designed by Charles Moore, Joseph Esherick, and others. Klopf Architecture has...
People can be excused for mistaking this house in Manhattan Beach, California, as a building at Sea Ranch: the homeowners were inspired by the the famous residential community along the Pacific coast in Sonoma County. In turn, the architects at Blue Truck Studio remodeled the client's existing...
Located in an industrial area in West Oakland, 1901 Poplar is the interior transformation of a warehouse into a start-up innovation hub aimed at creating tech opportunities for underserved communities. Custom furniture and partitions that are easy to move and reconfigure give the large space...
The Algin Sutton Pool opened to the public last month in Los Angeles's underserved Vermont Vista neighborhood. The design by Lehrer Architects LA reimagines the existing Palladian building through the addition of dynamic forms and colorful surfaces. The architects answered some questions about...
The highlight of Form4 Architecture's modernization of an office complex in the San Francisco Bay Area is a sculptural installation made from weathering steel, aptly called Corten Ribbon. The architects answered a few questions about the project.
Inspired by fishing shacks found in Scandinavian coastal villages, architect Malcolm Davis renovated an old, dilapidated residence into a contemporary beach house with a home studio. The architect answered a few questions about the house located in Pacifica, south of San Francisco.
The first Avenues: The World School opened in 2012 inside a former industrial building next to the High Line in New York City, setting a precedent of adaptive reuse for the international system of schools. The first piece of the Avenues Silicon Valley Campus transforms part of an old office...
Two artists with a house and guest house hired The LADG to add two buildings with studio space for ceramics, sculpture, painting, and photography. The additions in concrete, wood, and metal are striking, but it's the outdoor space between the buildings that is the heart of the project. The...
Three functions intertwine in this adaptive reuse of an old industrial building in San Francisco's South of Market (SOMA) area, placing an art gallery and artist studio on the ground floor, and a residence upstairs. Dumican Mosey Architects answered a few questions about the project.
This house on Hillside Avenue in Los Angeles is so large it comes with a 12-car garage on its lowest level. Designed by Cape Town's SAOTA, the house was inspired by a nearby mid-century modern icon that makes it all about the views, not the cars. SAOTA sent us some images and text on the...
Inspired by the Ford Piquette Avenue Plant in Detroit, Iovine and Young Hall is a 21st-century "learning factory" with flexible instruction spaces, maker spaces, and other learning spaces for the Iovine and Young Academy at USC. Frederick Fisher and Partners answered a few questions about the...
The remote Flowers Vineyard & Winery has produced popular Pinot Noir and Chardonnay wines for nearly 30 years on California's rugged Sonoma Coast. The opening of the House of Flowers last year just a few miles from downtown Healdsburg has made their wines more accessible. Walker Warner...
LR2 Residence sits on a hillside in Pasadena, California, a city northeast of Los Angeles. Montalba Architects exploited the location by lifting the living spaces to the top of three floors to take advantage of panoramic views. The architects answered a few questions about the house.
Los Angeles's MUTUO recently completed Wonderland, three side-by-side single-family houses on a steep lot in the Hollywood Hills. With an informal design sense reminiscent of R.M. Schindler's iconic "Greek hillside"
Spain's Selgascano has designed each of the half-dozen co-working locations for Second Home. Their latest, in the heart of Hollywood, is the most striking, with a smattering of elliptical "bungalows" intermingling with plants and an old building. Selgascano sent us some text and images on...
Wine enthusiasts visiting Quintessa Winery for a private tasting will walk along wooded paths to a small pavilion with beautiful views of the winery's expansive vineyards. Walker Warner Architects answered a few questions about the trio of tasting rooms they designed for Quintessa Winery.
Three staggered concrete volumes follow the gentle slope of a property in Sonoma, California, their roofs lifting up to views of the sky and a canyon. The guesthouse, designed by Mork Ulnes Architects, is also a sturdy house that was put through a test last year. Casper Mork Ulnes explained by...
Although Ashes & Diamonds is a young winery, having opened in Napa, California, in 2017, the design of its tasting room and production facility harkens back to the state's mid-century modern architecture. Bestor Architecture answered a few questions about their standout design.
Wineries are often a setting for high-profile architecture, enough that numerous books are devoted to them. This equipment barn for Saxum Vineyards in California's San Luis Obispo County shows that architectural attention can also be given to the industrial structures that lie beyond the...
In the aptly named Stack House, four floors of boxes are stacked atop each other to follow the steep slope of a hill. Angled boxes express the different rooms and form a number of terraces. FreelandBuck answered a few questions about the project.
Although it opened to the public in 2016, The Barn was again in the news around Sacramento, California, late last year when the indoor restaurant occupying the structure's "Pods" finally opened. Now home to a pizza restaurant with food trucks and a 400-seat beer garden, The Barn is a...
One-story-tall cedar wood walls may seem like the opposite of "good neighbor," but their use in Craig Steely Architecture's intriguingly named Roofless House are born from its neighbors: the blank walls of houses in Atherton, a suburb in California's Silicon Valley. Craig Steely...
Although "good bones" is an overused phrase (enough that it's the name of a reality TV show), it's a fitting argument for renovating a building rather than tearing down and starting anew. The Hollyridge House, in the shadow of the Hollywood Sign, is just such a residential...