Photo Credit: Jennie Warren / jenniewarren.com

Darin Johnstone is a Los Angeles based architect and teacher. He is the founder of his eponymous practice, Darin Johnstone Architects, and a faculty member at SCI-Arc. For this week's Small Studio Snapshots, we talk with Johnstone about moving to LA on a whim to start his studio, his architectural motivations, and how he blends teaching and practice. 

How many people are in your practice?

Right now there are 8 people in the practice. We often have interns in the summer and will be at 10 or 11 people during those times.

Why were you originally motivated to start your own practice?

My main motivation was quite simple—I wanted to be responsible for my own future. I was one of those strange people who always knew what they wanted to do. So, I always imagined having my own practice and from early on in my undergraduate studies I knew I wanted to teach as well. Fast forward, I was three years out of graduate school, living and working in San Francisco and a very close friend of mine, Scott Parker who was in LA asked me to come and partner with him. He was teaching at Cal Poly Pomona (my undergraduate alma matter) and he thought I might be able to get a gig there. So, at the ripe old age of 31, I quit my job, moved back to LA with my wife, started a practice and started teaching. In retrospect I think I was way too young and inexperienced to start my own practice, but I wouldn’t change a thing. 

What were the first 2 years like?

The first two years were amazing, fun, exhilarating…We were naïve and fearless, and it was great. At one point we got shortlisted to renovate the Hermitage in St Petersburg. We did not win but we went head to head with OMA. I was 32 years old. 

In my mind the life of the office has been full of fits and starts. It started 1999 with Scott Parker. It started again in 2003 when I went out on my own. It started again in 2014 when we won the commission to renovate a building to house the Fine Art and Illustration Departments for Art Center College of Design and I began collaborating with Sandra Hutchings. 

What hurdles have you come across?

2008 – 2012 was an economic disaster and it was devastating to my practice. At the same time, it gave me the opportunity to really dig into teaching and explore my interests in the discipline. It also allowed me more time with my family which was amazing. I suppose it was a hurdle in the true sense. You figure out a way over it and the obstacle becomes an opportunity.

How does academia make its way into your work?

In every way possible. Teaching at a place like SCI Arc is amazing because it is constantly inspiring. The administration, faculty and students are all producing work that tests the boundaries of the discipline. It feeds your imagination and it absolutely feeds the practice. 

How do you balance theory and production in your office?

I am not sure. I guess it comes in part through teaching and practicing and letting those two endeavors feed one another. Ideally a project is driven by an overarching concept or aesthetic agenda that is carried through from inception to built completion. That can be a very rocky road but we try really hard and we are constantly evaluating how we are doing and adjusting things along the way.

How do you find yourself splitting time between your various pursuits in the field?

I would give different answers for different periods of time in my life. The short answer is I practice, and I teach. The time split between the two endeavors varies depending on the context or the demands of one versus the other. On a good day it feels like all one thing.

What is the Thesis of your office, your work and how has it changed?

I am not sure we have a ‘thesis of the office.’ In many ways we try to construct a thesis for each project on its own terms. Certainly, there is a core set of beliefs that have been pretty constant over the years. I would characterize those in the following way;

DJA Motto: Walk softly and don’t carry a big shtick. 

DJA Incomplete Manifesto:

Architecture is the ferocious pursuit of presence to actualize absence.

We put objects into the world to achieve some kind of resonance. We may be searching for timeless qualities of strength, utility and beauty or contemporary qualities of strangeness, ambiguity or the uncanny. We put things into the world iteratively, ad infinitum to test these resonances. It is a tireless pursuit and all the while the thing we are looking for is the very absence of things. Space. This lovely paradox is what drives all the work.

Architecture is an overarching discipline.

Architecture is a way of thinking and operating in the world. Architects throughout history have designed teapots, automobiles, cities and everything in between. This inherent opportunity, coupled with a certain amount of restlessness, has always emboldened us to accept all types of design challenges at all scales. 

Architecture is new every time.

Collaboration, invention, form, engagement generally describe a kind of trajectory we strive to produce afresh each time we are given the opportunity to design something. We do not come to any problem with a pre-set agenda. We believe every design problem contains the capacity to engender discovery. As a way of combating pre-determination, we attempt to engage each project on its own terms mining it for potential partnerships, techniques, systems and modes of operation. Despite the tyrannical forces of economy and fashion we continually strive to maintain a non-specialist experimental approach.

Is scaling up a goal or would you like to maintain the size of your practice?

For me 10 has always been the magic number. Now that the practice is hovering around 10 people it is a bit harder to answer the question. As the number, size and complexity of projects increases it is possible my answer would change. Subtext: We would grow the practice for the right project.

What is 5/10/15 years down the road?

At this moment the practice is really hovering around an image I envisioned for it 20 years ago. The question then becomes ‘What’s next?’ We have been doing a lot of renovation work at all scales and we really need to start winning larger scale ground up projects. In 15 years I would really like to have a portfolio of ground up work that I am proud of and be able to keep asking ‘What’s next?’

What project would you most like to be remembered for?

At this moment I would say the IVRV house which is the result of a collaboration between SCI Arc and Habitat for Humanity. The project is the culmination of an 18-month teaching endeavor that was inextricably linked to practice. It was probably the first time in my career when teaching and practicing felt like a single endeavor. Beyond that I am simply proud of the result. With the students we really tried to challenge the status quo of sustainable / affordable housing in both form and content. We strove to answer a typical residential program in an atypical way. Bolstered by Habitat’s mission that ‘every man woman and child should have a decent, safe and affordable place to live,’ we strived to go beyond decency to achieve something delightful, inspiring, and wondrous.

What are the benefits of having your own practice? And staying small?

The responsibilities sometimes seem endless but at the same time the benefits are countless. I love the work and I love the feeling that my collaborators in the office are an extension of my family. For me that feeling of being aware and involved in every aspect of the practice and collaborating with a group I count as family is linked directly to the size and potential success of the practice.