LOC Architects is an LA-based architecture firm started by Ali Jeevanjee and Poonam Sharma. The duo just completed an 18,000 sf headquarters for Seattle based True Brands, using light and warmth to transform an industrial warehouse into their thriving new creative workplace.
In this installment of Small Studio Snapshots Ali and Poonam discuss warehouse conversions, keeping a diverse portfolio, and creating a strong design partnership.
How many people work for LOC Architects?
We are currently 4 and are in the process of adding another full time position. At the core of our practice is a belief in a non-hierarchical approach. Each team member is given freedom within the firm to contribute in a meaningful way to each project.
How'd the two of you meet and decide to start working together? And what motivated you to start your own practice?
We met through the field of architecture at large, having attended different schools, in different cities, Ali had just graduated from Cornell and I was still a graduate student at SCI-Arc. We became good friends, and remained so for many years before embarking on our partnership (both personal and professional), and over the course of that time learned that we see eye to eye both in terms of our aesthetics but also in terms of our overall values which would guide how we think about our place in the world as designers.
As we began to better to articulate for ourselves this idea of who we are as designers and what the design approach would be that comes from there, we found that, despite how much we had learned from various wonderful mentors over the years, we needed to have our own practice to truly express this.
This intuition has been affirmed by the response of many of our clients to not just the work we have done for them but even more so the process, and this affirmation has led to a series of rewarding long-term repeat client relationships the provide the foundation for us to build a practice on.
How would you characterize the firm's design approach?
Small firm, big projects; small firm, diverse project types.
We believe that architecture is about people and not about forms
We approach each project as a unique set of problems in a unique setting. This allows us to not push a formal agenda whereby all of our projects start to look the same. We come from a position of collaboration and a project evolves through listening to our client and interrogating their specific needs, relentlessly testing out specific approaches to the project at hand and arriving at a novel solution. We believe that architecture is about people and not about forms, and this aspiration to create meaningful experiences for people informs our approach. We hope that these experiences can transforms us into people who are more connected to our natural environment, our urban environment, our work, our rest, and, most of all, to other people.
The firm just completed the conversion of an industrial warehouse into offices in Seattle for the company True Brands. Please tell us a bit about the project.
This was the first creative office project for LOC, an 18,000 sf headquarters for a staff of 150 people. The versatility of our process and the universality of our design approach allows us take on new project types at scale.
This client, whio we have been working with for several years, obtained this 12,000 sf warehouse with the intention of moving his staff there from what had been a cramped and labyrinthian set of offices several blocks away. This warehouse presented the opportunity to create a large, collaborative open space that could accommodate the whole company, but it was a scold, olid concrete box partially submerged into the earth with no natural light or views
In our experience, people perform at their best and are most satisfied with their environment when daylight and views are provided. We accomplished through the replacement of existing loading doors with glass garage doors and the introduction of two very large glass skylights.
The skylights provide the focal points in a narrative that was created through the introduction of wood mezzanine, bridge, and circulation. While the wood serves as a warm contrast to the hard concrete, the circulation creates a narrative by revealing the workplace dramatically to visitors while simultaneously creating connections and unprogrammed spaces to encourage collaboration and the exchange of ideas.
Warehouse conversions have become quite common as many industrial zones in cities across the U.S. find a new life in the post-industrial era. What type of constraints and opportunities do these types of projects offer?
Warehouse conversions inevitably force you to respond to an existing physical reality in an existing urban condition in the form of constraints and opportunities. We find it exciting as designers to operate at the interstices of constraints and opportunities. We have been fortunate to complete a warehouse conversion into a creative office space, a warehouse conversion into a humanities classroom building for Crossroads School in Santa Monica, for whom we are currently designing another warehouse conversion, a 12,000 sf former airplane parts warehouse into disparate programmatic elements, such as: jazz classrooms, ceramics studio, darkroom, gym, physical education, and digital photography.
Due to the large footprint and volume of industrial buildings, the project becomes an urban exercise
Adapting warehouses for functions such as the creative office or school allows us to insert/retain certain elements of the existing building into the program of the new project where it would not have been possible in a new building. For example, warehouses have many incredible things by virtue of their use: volume, open plan, robust roof structured (e.g. bow truss) and large openings for loading and unloading of machinery or goods. These can be capitalized upon to create spaces that are large in volume and filled with natural light. Due to the large footprint and volume of industrial buildings, the project becomes an urban exercise, of placing program, creating relationships through different volumes, and carving out social spaces. We are very much interested in finding space within these margins for creating social space, space for students or workers to gather, to sit, to interact, and help create an identity for the building, the company, or the school.
You both had extensive prior experience with exhibition design—Ali working on The Art of the Motorcycle while at Gehry's offices and Poonam, working with the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. How do you fold that background into your work now?
Exhibition Design is is a very exciting thing for us as you are tasked with creating a narrative or experience through a series of objects for a very large number of people for a very short time. Within this short period of time you must make the relevance of the individual objects clear while creating an overarching narrative of either a period or an artist. Ultimately, as architects we are creating an experience of space and this extends to all of our projects, whether they are single family residences, schools, offices, apartment buildings, condos,
Hand in hand with the exhibition design, I would say that temporary installations, which we have been fortunate to be invited to build over the years for differing clients, such as a music festival or a developer, or an architecture museum, due to the lack of permanence allow us to operate on a much faster timeline in more fluid ways that then help to inform our practice of architecture.
What is the key to a successful design partnership?
Our lives in general are a partnership that, at its best, is fully collaborative and free from ego, and our design partnership is an extension of that. As such we equally partake in the practice, the rearing of children, and the pursuit of our personal goals. Equally important for a successful design practice, is a lack of ego as it applies to projects, process, and outcome. A partnership must at all times be collaborative. Each partner must be able, at all time, to put aside their position and listen to the other. Everyone has their own strengths which, when put together, can form the foundation of a practice. Recognizing that we are constantly learning, not only from each other, allows us to grow and forge ahead into new project types, new client types, and into a larger geographical area.
1 Comment
Beautiful projects!!
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