When public art is incorporated into a design space, how does it interact with its surrounding architecture and landscapes? For Lulu Loquidis and Daniel Luis Martinez, the importance of bridging the gap between public space, community-driven design, and the built environment is essential. The duo are co-principals of the multi-disciplinary design studio LAA Office based in Columbus, Indiana.
After living and working in New York City for several years, their move to the Midwest helped foster an eye-opening opportunity for creating positive design interventions. They explain: "Some of the biggest issues that need to be addressed relate to social, economic, and cultural inequities that privilege certain groups over others. Specifically, in our work, we're hoping to find ways of making art and design accessible to folks that can't normally afford it or who see themselves removed from the processes that shape the built environment around them."
To learn more about LAA Office's path to starting a firm, their design process, and the inspiration they pull from the Midwest, I connected with Lulu and Daniel for our latest Studio Snapshot feature. As seasoned designers in architecture and landscape architecture, they create meaningful projects outside, as they call it, "popular cities." They also provide helpful advice for students and emerging professionals looking to explore the realms of landscape, art, and architecture.
Can you briefly share your architecture journey and how you met?
We both met at the University of Florida where Daniel was studying architecture and Lulu was studying landscape architecture. In their curriculum, no matter what discipline you’ve declared as a major, everyone takes the same Design 1 course. We were simply lucky to land in the same section, and that’s how we met. After graduating, we moved to New York City together where we lived and worked for seven years. It was an intense but extremely fulfilling experience that exposed us to great art, architecture, and public spaces. We had several amazing role models as well. Lulu worked as a landscape architect at Hargreaves Associates and AECOM’s Landscape and Urban Design Studio, while Daniel worked largely on cultural and public projects at Allied Works Architecture and later Weiss/Manfredi.
The name establishes the boundaries of our inter-disciplinary focus on landscape, art, and architecture. However, we pronounce it “Law Office,” which emerged from a funny story.
Your studio’s name LAA Office (Landscape, Art, Architecture Office) is a clever and “on the nose” take describing your collective specialties of landscape, art, and architecture. What prompted you to start your own practice?
While living in New York City, we began testing out what it would be like to have our own practice by going after competitions. We had some successes and plenty of failures, too. In hindsight, we realize how crazy our schedule and lives were at that time, but it taught us that we had the necessary drive to be on our own one day. In 2018, we moved to Columbus, Indiana where Indiana University opened a graduate school of architecture. Daniel accepted a position as a tenure-track professor at the new program. We saw this simultaneously as an opportunity to expand our own creative practice. That’s when LAA Office was born. The name establishes the boundaries of our inter-disciplinary focus on landscape, art, and architecture. However, we pronounce it “Law Office,” which emerged from a funny story. When we began working out of our apartment located on Washington Street in downtown Columbus, most of the offices around us belonged to lawyers, since it was walking distance to the courthouse. The pronunciation of our studio name became a tongue-in-cheek way of fitting into that context.
What are the benefits of having your own practice? Is scaling up a goal?
We enjoy the independence and tenacity needed to have our own practice. It’s impossible not to engage in all aspects of the process, so you must learn and adapt quickly. As a duo with a small team of interns, there are certainly limits to the scale and scope of projects that we can take on, but we do see a path for growth in the long run. Most importantly, we’d like to continue questioning the relationship between public art and public space. Our recent 6th Street Arts Alley project, for instance, investigates how public art can take on a greater role in shaping public space (rather than simply being placed within it). That’s a theme that we hope will evolve and grow along with our practice.
Moving to the Midwest and working in the context of a small, American city was an eye-opener for us [...] We find that each one has its own variation of urbanism and culture that can often become fragmented by a lack of financial investment or design thinking.
Much of your office’s work focuses on small, often forgotten, or overlooked spaces within a city. What inspired you both to focus on activating these spaces using your individual expertise?
Moving to the Midwest and working in the context of a small, American city was an eye-opener for us. While New York City is amazing in many ways, it doesn’t reflect most of the country’s urban landscape. Indiana is a state with nearly 600 different cities and towns. Only one, Indianapolis, is characterized by the density and scale one would expect in the built environment of a metropolitan area, but what about the hundreds of other towns that exist? We find that each one has its own variation of urbanism and culture that can often become fragmented by a lack of financial investment or design thinking.
Columbus, Indiana, where we are now based, is an atypical case study in this sense. Through the success of the diesel engine company Cummins and a commitment on behalf of key stakeholders in the community, the city has realized over 70 works of art, architecture, and landscape by some of the top artists and designers beginning in the 1950s and continuing through today. The story of this town has been a catalyst for us to think more broadly about how art and design can impact often overlooked sites. In cases where raising money is a challenge, we use public art as a way of repairing urban fabric. This approach is evident in our 6th Street project, as well as Heritage Park in nearby Salem, Indiana.
What challenges have you faced this past year? How have your design perspectives and approaches changed or evolved because of it?
Many of our challenges surely have been shared by people across the world: decreased social interaction with friends and family, rising costs and decreased availability of materials, and the psychological and physical effects of an ongoing pandemic. This has reinforced our interest in working with community partners to improve and uplift the public realm. For cities and towns that still depend mostly on cars to get around, one positive impact of recent lockdowns was an increase in pedestrian activity. The humble walk became a greater part of daily life for people that no longer engaged in a daily commute to and from work. We would like that trend to stick around, so our projects often deploy artworks in streets and alleyways as a way of reclaiming their public nature. We have a project coming up in 2022 in Ann Arbor called “Urban-Fetti,” which is meant to simply provide a moment of joy where an alleyway meets a commercial street. We’ve designed custom aluminum fixtures in bright, fluorescent colors that will be installed on an existing wall, and colorful decals will be used to create an environment where the installation spills onto the pavement.
Do you have a favorite project? Completed or in progress.
The 6th Street Arts Alley represents a very personal project for us and our wonderful collaborators at the Columbus Area Arts Council. It’s located in our own neighborhood, so we were doubly vested in the success and life of the project. Earlier we mentioned the idea that public art can be used as a method for repairing urban fabric and, at 6th Street, we saw the potential to create a patchwork on the ground that would link together businesses and art organizations on the street. The 10,000-sft ground mural purposely ignores many of the boundaries typically meant to facilitate the movement of cars: it invades the alleyways at times and crosses over into a former parking space in front of the Art Council’s offices to create a new plaza. We also invited a friend, Indianapolis-based muralist Nick Abstract, to carry the energy and color of the groundwork onto the façade of the historic Odd Fellows building.
The whole thing is meant to reconceptualize the street as a great outdoor room and to blur the boundaries between public art and public space. Even the custom, modular furniture that we designed for the project is meant to dot the street with sculptural forms. We recently celebrated opening night with a party that was attended by over 300 members of the community, and it was a great example of how we see the space being used in the future. In effect, the project encourages people to see this small piece of the city as a gallery and event space.
Lulu, as a landscape architect, what school advice would you give to a young designer or students interested in pursuing a career in landscape architecture and public space? Any book recommendations?
Visit as many built projects as you can while you’re studying. The physical world is such a great classroom, and I can’t stress enough how important it is to be in touch with how design actually materializes. Keep a working sketchbook where you can store ideas, and also take your own photos of projects that you admire, so that over time, you can amass an index of references that will help you grow as a professional.
As far as books, we have been digging deeper into the public works of Roberto Burle Marx and recently purchased the accompanying book (Roberto Burle Marx: Brazilian Modernist) to the fantastic exhibition put on by the Jewish Museum in New York a few years ago. He absolutely epitomized the essence of an art-integrated design practice.
Daniel, as an architectural designer and educator, what advice would you give a young designer or students interested in public art and public space? Any book recommendations?
Study art and architecture at the same time. Gyorgy Kepes, the great multi-disciplinarian who founded the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at MIT, once elegantly summarized the relationship between art and design. I’m paraphrasing, but his general idea was that design addresses a horizon extending outwards, bridging between ideas and the physical world, while art explores a horizon extending inwards. It’s more about how you search for and discover your own voice. In fact, the J. Irwin Miller Architecture Program at IU, where I teach, requires students to take a fine art studio parallel to every architectural design studio throughout the three-year curriculum. It puts students in touch with the making of things across a variety of mediums and approaches.
As far as books, I recently discovered a collection of essays edited by Francesco Stocchi about the work of Sol LeWitt called, Between the Lines. It contains many reproductions of LeWitt’s diagrams for his famous wall drawings. The idea to create artworks as simple instructions to be interpreted and implemented by others with minimal means is so beautiful. We’ve been curious about how that can serve as a model in our own work.
Outreach, education, and community engagement are all vehicles for addressing some of these issues, but it also requires clever thinking and resourcefulness regarding the high cost of materials and construction.
How do you see the future of architecture changing? How do you hope it changes?
Some of the biggest issues that need to be addressed relate to social, economic, and cultural inequities that privilege certain groups over others. Specifically, in our work, we’re hoping to find ways of making art and design accessible to folks that can’t normally afford it or who see themselves removed from the processes that shape the built environment around them. Outreach, education, and community engagement are all vehicles for addressing some of these issues, but it also requires clever thinking and resourcefulness regarding the high cost of materials and construction. In this sense, we’re quite influenced by the tenets of Tactical Urbanism and are interested in building on and expanding that philosophy within our practice. We believe that small-scale, bottom-up projects will have a greater influence on how cities grow in the future.
If you could describe your work/practice in three words, what would they be?
Landscape, Art, and Architecture!
Katherine is an LA-based writer and editor. She was Archinect's former Editorial Manager and Advertising Manager from 2018 – January 2024. During her time at Archinect, she's conducted and written 100+ interviews and specialty features with architects, designers, academics, and industry ...
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Nice work. The midwest can use all they can get.
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