Left to right: Axel Schmitzberger, Chris Lowe

Domaen is a versatile, multi-disciplinary, and comprehensive service company based in Los Angeles. Two partners, Chris Lowe and Axel Schmitzberger, are the driving engines of the firm. I had met with Axel at one of their construction sites and had the following conversation.

Orhan Ayyuce- What kind of practice is Domaen Inc.?

Axel Schmitzberger- Domaen is on one side quite a pragmatic entity. We are design-builders, taking advantage of the long-standing symbiotic relationship between architecture and construction. This appears to be in line with emerging trends at multiple scales. So we want to think that this is for the better than the worse.

Yet on the other side we like view ourselves somewhat outside of the ordinary. As design practice, we reject the vernacular design-build aesthetic, as we are not interested in sacrificing architecture for building with complacency.

OA- What are the characteristics of 'your' design-build work?

AS- Ultimately, as a team with very diverse backgrounds and skill sets, our architecture is a result of such, yet always seeking a critical position. Conceptually we consistently talk about mass and the expression or dissolution of it. For us, a spatial negotiation is ultimately a negotiation of solid and hollow masses, whether they operate in planar elevational or sectional fashion.

As design practice, we reject the vernacular design-build aesthetic, as we are not interested in sacrificing architecture for building with complacency.

Conceptually we build most our projects around mass and datum, as we continue to explore and admire the tension of mass versus gravity and mass figure versus ground that artists like Michael Heizer create. The levitated mass is for us one of the most dynamic conditions in architecture as it negotiates a space in between the ground and the volume. We first explored the ground-mass relationship consciously in the project MUK (MU77) with my former partner Arshia Mahmoodi of Arshia Architects.

There are also graphic tensions that we like to exhibit in our work, where we purposefully align or misalign the volume with the graphically expressed datums (see ARB), or we slightly tilt mass out of its orthography to either accentuate a perspectival reading or perceptually alter the reading of the volume from different point of views.

Material contrasts act as graphic contrasts, they are not just graphic in terms of positive-negative reading but also texturally, soft versus hard, warm vs cold.

Graphics and lighting build for us effective material layers, we particularly like the interplay of graphics, light and glass. These dematerializations through reflections or false readings of space give depth to a material that otherwise is entirely transparent.

OA- In our pre-interview conversation, you mentioned built portion to built vision, can you expand on it?

AS- Built work seeks typically a different dialectic than envisioned work; when measuring quantity over quality, it is easy to assume that the logistics of putting a building together supersede any critical position towards the intellectual input. Yet operationally, these things should oscillate. This way, the built vision needs to be enabled for constant alterations. That might sound messy in architectural or process-oriented terms but necessary to synchronize a built portion and building vision.

There is a beauty in the availability of means and the absence of single directions, an immense field for experiments. 

OA- Can you talk about the transition from academic work to practicing building architecture?

AS- Academia is absolutely vital to the formative aspect and the development of techniques. I recognize that academia frequently seeks different values in architecture than simple real life demands. So, equally frequent, the built environment operates under and comprises different criteria and constraints. The exposure to both allows us to look at both worlds and get the full spectrum. This is where most of our experiments originate from. It is also a source that constantly renews itself and offers multiple aspects of exploration. It gives us exposure to the work of other practices and to various generations of work.

So ultimately, academia is for us an alchemical field, a source for transformation of matter.

OA- Can you talk about doing architecture in Los Angeles?

AS- Both, Chris Lowe and I, are originally not from Los Angeles, so we both look at the current landscape with very different eyes. When we review the built environment however, we both see an absence of courage, skill and interest in qualities. There is a lot of emphasis on superficial values, mostly driven by speculation and a consumer mindset, Architecture itself has not yet entered the conversation as a stakeholder; moreover it has been sidelined by a fast-paced developer mentality.

But at the same time, we like to take this as an opportunity, quite in an old-fashioned California spirit. And rather than falter, we like to take on regulatory challenges, steep hillsides, and complicated site conditions.

OA- Do you have any projects or ideas that deviate from high-end type of residential work that basically talks to financially well-off clients with Hollywood lifestyles? How your architecture makes a way for more sustainable and widely used methodologies that benefit the less privileged chunks of the city? Is this even a concern?

AS- Wealth of clients is simply circumstantial. Dana Cuff notes that the association of homeownership as part of the American Dream has been mostly a marketing strategy. So wealth quickly becomes a relative term we talk about building a private residence. Privileged environments are also very much a staple of the Los Angeles architecture. Thinking of the work of Richard Neutra, John Lautner, and more recent, Morphosis, Patrick Tighe, Michael Maltzan, Johnston Marklee, and many more, it becomes very quickly clear that this is very much part of a rich (in both ways) history of this city.

We don’t politicize or polemicize the financial standing of our clients; it is circumstantial.

In reflection of the socially aware and caring global context of our upbringing, we seek opportunities to introduce other aspects into our architecture that may not be foregrounded in our formal language but are very much part of negotiating an architecture of meaning and temporal durability. In this sense, all our buildings consider the environmental impacts and offer some form of active or passive mediation. We don’t politicize or polemicize the financial standing of our clients; it is circumstantial. We are primarily interested in the spatial and architectural expression and opportunities. Most of our commercial work could be understood as low-budget while a lot of our residential work is considered high-end, yet all of them work around related architectural leitmotivs.

OA- Since most of your residential projects are spec houses, how do you visualize the clients? In addition to market research, do you also put in some private moments and narratives?

AS- We build narratives for the residences that we do not know the client for. This way, we imagine a fictional person or group of people occupying the space and interacting with views, spaces, and the design. We are playing curators and exhibit our architecture.

OA- How do you and Chris collaborate?

AS- Chris - who originally founded domaen – and I are very direct in our interaction. While we both come from different backgrounds, we also both enjoy learning from each other the most. Both of us share a vision about the way we see architecture and building, yet we educate each other about different necessities, academia, construction, economy, and vision. This way, we both communicate with each other always from a new perspective, akin to Aldous Huxley’s Doors of Perception – which is the ultimate test for project proposals.

OA- What are you working on now?

AS- We are all over the map! Aside of some exhibition preparation and collaborations, we are actually working as General Contractors for a few of our colleagues; simultaneously we are developing schematic design for 200 residences in China, and have a few residential and commercial projects in the Los Angeles area.