Building Connection.

RADAR, Inc. produces designs that nourish creativity and build community.

We have completed cultural, commercial, retail and residential projects in California, Mexico and Florida.

We work closely with professionals in other fields such as urban planning, landscape architecture, graphic design and fine art. This wide range of influence informs the uniqueness and spirit of our final designs.

DESIGN PHILOSOPHY

RADAR Inc. is a full-service architecture office based in the Chinatown neighborhood northeast of downtown Los Angeles. Over 18 years the office has amassed a wealth of experience in a range of project types – commercial, institutional, civic, and single and multi-family residential. The team, led by Rachel Allen, AIA, is comprised of a group of strong thinkers and good listeners who believe in the power of design to transform and empower the creative lives of our clients.

The office has long been on the forefront of new community-oriented growth in LA. We have helped our clients realize the potential of places such as Grand Central Market and Mariachi Plaza. We are proud that our team reflects the diversity of the city, and we not only elevate the design at these crucial urban sites but serve their neighborhoods first.

Clients have come to realize that they are not getting a “product” when they enlist RADAR. In a regurgitated, image-heavy environment, our office eschews these methods of problem solving and instead employs new ways of considering tradition and modernity.

We believe we can challenge the norms of urbanism and architecture in radical ways by recognizing certain fundamentals of design alongside the most pressing matters in our city.

We are optimistic about the expanded role of the architect in the far-from-static world of real estate. In this way, we redefine former conventions of project type: all use is adaptive reuse; all workplaces are ‘creative’; and even a single-family home has multi-family and live-work aspects. There is no project without its users and misusers; there is no inherent value to the formal object itself. We are driven by our enthusiasm for the mutual transformation that occurs between an architectural project and a community.

Rachel Allen grew up in San Francisco and studied at Princeton University. She worked for five years with Gehry Partners, ultimately as an Assistant Project Designer. She was the 2002-2003 recipient of the Mercedes T. Bass Rome Prize in architecture, a yearlong fellowship at the American Academy in Rome. She served on the Board of Directors of the Los Angeles Forum for Architecture and Urban Design from 1996-2001, and the Board of the Outpost for Contemporary Art from 2008-2011. She has taught architecture for Cal Poly Pomona, the Mountain School of Art, the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc), UCLA, UC Riverside, USC, and Woodbury University.