Following last week’s visit to New York City-based Marvel, we are moving our Meet Your Next Employer series to Los Angeles this week, where we meet Ehrlich Yanai Rhee Chaney (EYRC) Architects.
Since its founding in 1979, the firm has grown from its LA residential roots to encompass institutional, creative workplaces, and civic works projects in addition to high-end residential. Last month, for example, we reported on EYRC's repurposing of a former LA Times print facility into flexible office spaces, while the firm's major LA Arts District tower also came a step closer to fruition earlier in November.
Over on Archinect Jobs, the firm is currently hiring for several positions across their California offices. For candidates interested in applying for a position, or anybody interested in learning more about life at an architecture studio, we spoke with the EYRC team for a behind-the-scenes look at the firm.
How did EYRC get started?
A man with a dream – Steven Ehrlich founded the firm in 1979 after six years living and working in Africa, with a considerable amount of his time being with the Peace Corp. Ehrlich found an early interest in public and civic spaces, working with the Moroccan government as the first Peace Corps architect in Marrakech, and later designed a university theatre in Zaria, Nigeria.
Once the foundations of his residential practice were in place, Ehrlich quickly set out to expand to more community-centric projects in LA. Partners Patricia Rhee, Takashi Yanai, and Mathew Chaney all joined the firm in the early 2000s with a wide array of expertise and passions, and with those combined, the firm officially became Ehrlich Yanai Rhee Chaney (EYRC) Architects in 2015.
Our portfolio today is indicative of our beginnings - from high-end residential homes to academic buildings, to creative offices and publicly-celebrated spaces – all with a touch of home and belonging. We continue to be involved in building our communities through great design.
How big is your team?
Our home base in Culver City and our second studio in San Francisco sit at around 45 people currently, but we are rapidly expanding to meet the needs of our most recent projects. Most of our personnel is here in Culver City, but our varying levels of expertise are not concentrated in one place or another. We’re creative, flexible, and nimble across the entirety of the west coast.
Describe the area of Culver City your office is located in.
Our LA office is in Culver City – close to Sony Productions, Downtown Culver City, The Platform, and Hayden tract. Our San Francisco office, founded in 2017, is in the Dogpatch next to excellent boba and a bouldering gym.
What is your favorite thing about working in Culver City?
Culver City feels like a smaller city within a large metropolis. We love that our office is about 15 minutes to so many of LA’s neighborhood gems – Venice and Koreatown, to name a few.
What is one book (architectural or non-architectural) that you would recommend to our audience?
We’re a bit biased, but we highly recommend Outside–In: New California Modernism, a monograph of our high-end single-family residential work led by Steven Ehrlich and Takashi Yanai. To add, we’re also fans of In Praise of Shadows and Radical Candor.
If you held a movie night for the firm, what movie would you show and why?
Blade Runner – a dystopian look at our city that famously helped catapult Wright’s neo-Mayan Ennis House to Hollywood icon status.
If you organized an office trip to one U.S. building, which would it be and why?
The Kaufmann House in Palm Springs – Richard Neutra. The modernist DNA established by the California-based masters has had an undeniable influence on our work.
Is your office one open-plan space, or subdivided?
Our mothership in Culver City is a repurposed 1917 dance hall, which has been very conducive to flex/lounge spaces and was recently reconfigured into an open-plan office. The shop is in the old garage and is where we make our physical models in addition to various personal projects designed by the staff.
What does your office ‘sound’ like? Do you listen to music or radio at work, can you hear the city life outside, or is it a place of quiet work?
If our office Sonos’ album history is any indication:
(But if that’s not to your taste, we also have excellent Jabra Headphones for everyone!)
Where is the most popular lunch spot in or around the office?
We’re a big group of foodies so it’s hard to narrow the list down, but we love all things local - Destroyer and Loqui are among our favorites. Baja California Tacos down the street is a go-to on $2 Taco Wednesdays, and when lunch is brought in (which is weekly), Metro Café is both a local and EYRC employee staple.
What is the most popular design tool in the office?
We continue to straddle the line between analog and digital tools, but our favorites are trace paper and Enscape, respectively. We’d also include any of the tools we have in our Shop, which includes a 3D printer and anything else you would need to create a pretty spectacular model. We’ve even had employees create their own projects on the 3D printer, some of which include a lampshade and a children’s toy.
Tell us about a project you are proud of, whether completed or in progress.
We are especially proud of our Leimert Park Community Fridge project, which was initiated by a few young practitioners of EYRC and members of the Design Justice Committee (DJC). It started with an internal design competition, working closely with the Leimert Park Community Fridge organizers to create a versatile and adaptable storage structure for an already thriving community resource. Using the fabrication tools in our office shop, staff built the modular structure for quick and easy installation on site. The small but mighty project has won awards at the local, state, and national levels.
What position(s) are you currently hiring for?
What project(s) are the new team members likely to be working on?
Our office has a lot of great projects coming up with various programs. Of note are two student housing projects totaling over 4,500 beds at UC San Diego; numerous high-end single-family homes throughout the state of California and beyond; a historic renovation turned cross-disciplinary quantum physics lab at Chapman University, life science labs and many adaptive reuse projects that transform underutilized, sometimes abandoned spaces into thriving environments.
In three words, how would you sum up EYRC’s ethos?
Curiosity, Communication, Community.
Also check out our conversation with EYRC's Steven Ehrlich and Takashi Yanai from the Archinect Sessions podcast, recorded in 2015
Meet Your Next Employer is one of a number of ongoing weekly series showcasing the opportunities available on our industry-leading job board. Our Job Highlights series looks at intriguing and topical employment opportunities currently available on Archinect Jobs, while our weekly roundups curate job opportunities by location, career level, and job description.
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