I recently visited Undisclosable at their office in the Arts District of Los Angeles, where I had the pleasure of meeting the practice's witty and charming founders, Bryan Flaig and Alejandra Lillo. We discussed current projects they are working on, fostering a jovial workplace and the practice's unusual, and often comedic, name!
How many people work for you guys?
There are six full-time, two part-time.
Why were you guys originally motivated to start your own practice?
Bryan: I think we’ve got slightly different views on this. One, it was sort of the time. We were still suffering from the recession and it seemed like the most logical thing to do. We had spent years building up a network and it was either do it right then or—
Alejandra: Humor aside, we might not be fit working for any other company at this point. We’d had a significant amount of independence for over a decade. While there is certainly a lot we could contribute other practices, we had defined interests, had grown accustomed to our freedom, and the economy at the time was such that it seemed like a risk worth taking.
Bryan: It sounds sort of illogical in a way that the best time to start up is when you are in a recession.
Alejandra: It seemed to level the playing field in a certain way, like a tabula rasa. The approach to projects as a result of the economic downturn seemed to generate internal shifts for ourselves and others at that time as related to size, efficacy, acquisition strategies and design approach. In general, it was a good time to muscle ourselves into the field as undisclosable.
What would you say is the personality of your practice?
Alejandra: We have a wonderfully talented team. We spend a lot of time with our colleagues so it is truly important that temperaments align. In that regard, we do hire a lot based on personality. There are not a lot of big egos in the office; we strictly avoid that. Our practice inculcates the sharing of knowledge, so as much as we can, we focus on training staff to be versatile and encourage our team to do the same with one another. We feel this approach engenders the best kind of collaborations - egos just tend not to play quite as nicely.
Bryan: There is a fair amount of versatility. For us, all of our projects are quite different from each other. We can’t have anyone on staff that is just about a small grouping of things. It makes more sense to have a wide net as far as interests and capabilities are concerned. For the projects we are working on, we try to take on as much scope as we can. If we can do the architecture and the interiors, including bespoke furniture, identity packages, and so forth, it is helpful to have a variety of viewpoints and different skillsets.
Alejandra: In difference to the substantially larger offices we’ve worked at, our teams are not project specific. We typically have one person who is point on any given project, while the rest of the office operates like a hovercraft roving from one design exercise to the next.
What are some current projects you guys are working on?
Alejandra: There is lot of fun stuff on the boards. We recently completed a restaurant in Denver, Broken Rice. That’s a fast casual product intended to have a nationwide roll out. The restoration of Monrovia’s Train Depot in Station Square Park is scheduled for completion in September.
Bryan: The current building was built in 1926. The town grew up around this location. It is a diminutive building, somewhat, and it looked like a set for a horror show when we first saw it. Monrovia had been wanting to rebuild for decades and finally, everything fell into place.
Alejandra: It is a historic renovation of a really interesting building once belonging to the Santa Fe Railway with a contemporary canopy addition. It has been photographed extensively over the years and you can go back in Hollywood memorabilia and see it in old Hayley Mill’s films like “The Trouble with Angels.” Our goal is to have it recognized in the National Register of Historic Places, so we have been pursuing the appropriate registration processes together the Monrovia heritage subcommittee.
Bryan: Another project we have in construction is Skrillex’s recording studio in Chinatown. It’s totally different technically, typologically and from a site constraints perspective. A fair amount of the geometry within was derived from waveforms extracted from his music. The acoustics are on point and collaborating closely with Sonny (Skrillex), who is an incredible creative, has really led to a design truly greater than the sum of its parts.
There is also a ground up project in Hollywood that is a small commercial building. The goal is to make it levitate and there are some pretty awesome other aspects to it. We are collaborating with an extraordinarily talented individual, who we have worked under the radar with for several years.
Alejandra: Another project, whose client is undisclosable at this time, is the oldest members club in Southern California, which offers a very different and enriching experience in terms of counterpoints, client base, brand value, aesthetics and taste culture.
Bryan: One thing that is common in all our current active projects is that everybody is such a pleasure to work with.
Alejandra: That is part of our office ethos, actually. We have decided we will only work with good people. All of our current clients are absolutely wonderful.
How did you guys come up with the name Undisclosable?
Byran: Well, I had split off to work on some furniture designs for a good friend, while Ali was winding down the previous firm we worked for. I was working alone at home without good sound and I slowly started going a little crazy. I went to the store to pick up some speakers and decided to open a business account. The rep asked the name of the business. There were three different sets of projects going on, so I responded that it depended upon which project I was working on. He asked what I was working on currently, which was the furniture. I responded with, ‘Oh, that’s undisclosable.’, as in I cannot tell you. He remarked, ‘Good name.’ I called Alejandra a few minutes later to let her know I thought I had the name for the new firm.
Then we ruminated about it more and thought what does that mean to us and how does it apply to architecture and it took a life of its own. It has actually become a very pertinent term for us, with a variety of applications.
Alejandra: While this may sound obvious, more often than not, what is most critical for the project is the prioritization of the client’s end goal. Whatever language that may be or brand focus, the expression of that has to be the most important. If our approach, participation or the way in which we talk about it overshadows the client, then we are actually doing a disservice. At the time when we originated, again in the post financial meltdown, the starchitect model seemed indulgent. We asked ourselves, does our visibility need to be that critical? Don’t get me wrong, our participation and collaboration is critical, but not necessarily as the public persona at the apex of the project narrative.
Bryan: Why would we need to put our stamp overtly on every project we participate in? We saw this is as hubris where ego gets in the way of actually learning and producing good work. It’s also limiting. During the meltdown, if you were a one trick pony, just roll the dice, good luck, you probably aren’t going to make it too long.
What are some hurdles you guys have come across?
Alejandra: Well, starting a practice is certainly a financially challenging life choice for two people sharing one household (laughter). Volatility, for most small practices, is something very demanding to navigate effectively. We have tempered it with personal investments and by building a financial model through adjacent income sources that fluctuate less. From a typological point of view, one might consider the variety of project types to be a hurdle, though I personally view it as an incredible opportunity. We rarely get to reuse a detail but on the flipside, every single project is different, it’s impossible to get bored and we learn so much through each set of experiences.
Bryan: That is also why the versatility of our staff is super important. We don’t like to hire people on a project by project basis. We want Warren Buffet-style, get them in and hold onto them. Managing volatility is very critical if you want to hold on to somebody. Scheduling everything and making sure we kick off certain things at the right rate is really important.
Alejandra: We did have to relearn how to coordinate and organize teams and that goes back to the hovercraft model. It has taken a lot of retooling to be more agile and have everyone be a jack of all trades jumping from one project, with a very specific set of problems, to the next.
We are executing a deliberately slow growth model. Previously I’d grown a firm from six to fifty in a very short time frame which was difficult, arguably unsustainable, and not one I’m interested in repeating. While I feel very grateful for past experiences and opportunities afforded to me, those lessons certainly temper how we engage in this practice. The ideal size of the firm we are interested in having is somewhere between 12 and 20. After that, there tends to be an anonymity that prevails which I am not too fond of.
Bryan: It gets cliquey. Especially around the 50ish area, cliques develop and form around the studios within the office. It is not as familial.
Alejandra: There’s really not a lot that you can’t do with a team of 12.
What are the benefits of having your own practice?
Bryan: To an extent you get to pick your own battles. For me, it’s been really good to gain appreciation for what every person does that goes into making a firm work.
Alejandra: You have to have an entrepreneurial spirit to do it and deal with the potential risks attached to it. Ultimately, the part that provides me with the most satisfaction is the ability to select the people we want to collaborate with.The projects we can create from these great collaborative dynamics are rewarding from a heartfelt place and at the end of the day, that is what we are after in terms of the architectural experience.
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