10 emerging Californian practices rethink architecture in the Golden State

We highlight ten emerging Californian practices that are redrawing the borders of traditional architecture with their unique creative explorations. From Los Angeles to San Francisco, and with work spanning from building design to landscape and product; these are the studios that dream of a better future for their sunny State - and beyond.

Meet 10 innovative emerging Californian practices

MILLIØNS

‘We find it impossible to imagine architecture apart from a kind of expansive, ongoing project of observation and investigation, as a way of continually understanding the world around us,’ say Zeina Koreitem and John May, founders of Milliøns, a small LA studio with an outsized vision for architecture. For them, architecture has the potential to have ‘stimulating effects on people and publics to be better versions of themselves, and to live differently.’ In short, design is a kind of impetus to live up to something bigger. What that is, exactly, keeps evolving.

Koreitem and May first started working together in 2012 and formalised their collaboration into a business a few years later. For them, design stretches across a wide range of activities: they write, create furniture, curate exhibitions, practise architecture and teach. Koreitem is design faculty at the Southern California Institute of Architecture and May is an associate professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Like many architects of their generation, juggling each of these projects is an all-consuming enterprise where the borders between different disciplines, design and research, work and life are purposefully blurry.

Shin Shin Architecture

A female- and minority-owned architecture studio founded in Santa Monica by principal Melissa Shin in 2019, Shin Shin comprises a small team of just three. The LA- and Detroit-based practice’s work ranges from ADUs (Accessory Dwelling Units) and single-family homes to multi-family residences and mixed-use spaces, as this is an architecture studio that focuses much of its energy and passion on exploring issues surrounding themes of housing.

Not that the Shin Shin team doesn’t enjoy a new challenge. ‘The practice is defined by playfulness, sensitivity and curiosity, but is reinforced by meaningful collaborations with clients and communities. We embrace the eccentricities and conversations that every project brings and celebrate them through a narrative-based approach to architecture – every project has a story,’ Shin says.

Terremoto

Having recently enthusiastically described its approach to a recent project as ‘hippie-dippy gooey goodness’, it’s comes as no surprise to learn that landscape architecture design studio Terremoto, which has offices in LA and San Francisco, digs a countercultural vibe. After all, it did restore the landscape of the Sea Ranch Lodge, the famously hippie modernist coastal outpost masterplanned by landscape architect Lawrence Halprin.

Terremoto’s gardens and landscapes are places where people, pollinators, native plants, and even art share the love. In the 7th Avenue Garden, designed in collaboration with artist David Horvitz, a vacant plot was transformed into a small park with a jumble of milkweed, plumeria and wildflowers, some chunky benches and a deck, while rubble from the demolished LACMA buildings was shaped into found-object sculptures.

Jerome Byron

‘I’m a spatial designer – trained and licensed as an architect, but now approaching design largely through interior design and furniture,’ says Jerome Byron. ‘I’ve been independent since 2017, beginning with some fun LA retail spots and furniture design and experimentation. In the last few years, I’ve been focusing so much more on my furniture practice, even as I continue to jump on board with more traditionally architectural commissions. I don’t take on employees, but I collaborate with other designers and fabricators as projects require.’

Byron, a native Angeleno, recently moved with his family to Berlin, while continuing to travel between Europe, LA and New York to juggle different projects and commitments. His separate interior design studio, called BC and co-founded in 2020 with interior designer Lindsey Chan in LA, produces a range of interior and furniture projects, both residential and commercial. Meanwhile, on the architecture front, he has been collaborating with landscape architecture firm Studio Zewde in New York on a new, long-term project for a public space and commemoration monument in the Liberian capital Monrovia. Still in the spatial realm, the Monon Guesthouse (2021), in his hometown, was a breakthrough for Byron, showcasing his wit and creativity in a cabin that is sure to put a smile on your face.

The Open Workshop

Neeraj Bhatia would like to change what it means for architecture to be radical. When the San Francisco-based architect and urban designer entered architecture school, the epitome of radical was deconstructivism. This meant wild drawings and rare but daring constructions in a pre-digital age. Early in his career, he was drawn to this definition, and even did a stint at the famously avant-garde firm Coop Himmelblau, but the pursuit of ‘form for form’s sake’ wasn’t satisfying. Simply looking radical wasn’t enough. For architecture to truly be radical, it needed to have an effect on people and policy.

For Bhatia, broadening his interest from aesthetics to urbanism was profound. He started to recognise how architecture was interconnected to political processes and histories of systemic power. ‘When you see something, you can’t unsee it,’ he says. ‘You see how architecture touches a community, how it impacts climate. Once that criteria is there, ignoring it is a conscious choice.’

Designing Justice + Designing Spaces

Headed up by architect Deanna van Buren, Designing Justice + Designing Spaces (DJDS) is a pretty unique proposition in its field: an architecture and real estate development firm aiming to use its skills and industry as a tool to end mass incarceration.

Founded in Oakland in 2016, the practice is a proudly Black woman-led one, striving for the radical imagining of spaces for care in the context of the criminal legal system. ‘We envision these spaces nationally as spaces for youth, education, re-entry housing, behavioural health, and more. Our real estate development arm supports non-profits and municipalities to think through how to finance their projects. We are also setting ourselves apart by managing real estate that we own as a firm; for example, land in Detroit where we plan to build a social justice campus in the coming years,’ says van Buren. The firm currently has some 20 employees, including permaculture designers, real estate developers, researchers, communications specialists and public health experts.

Office of: Office

Born out of a restructuring of the non-profit LA Más, Office Of: Office was formally founded in 2021 by four partners, Alejandra Guerrero, Chaz Kern, Hector Rodriguez and Elizabeth Timme, and now spans both for profit and non-profit urban planning and architecture work. While working nationally, the studio has a distinct focus on supporting the LA region ‘with public realm improvement projects, storefront remodels and affordable housing projects,’ as its team of six brings together expertise in planning, policy, advocacy, architecture and design.

Through ‘playfulness and curiosity,’ the team tackles the serious issues of our times, such as the quality and affordability of housing, following a ‘deeply collaborative’ approach. ‘Because of this, we’ve become known for doing projects that there is no precedent for. The benefit of our curiosity is that we are engaged and our programmes and work respond to what community members are asking for, while negotiating with the bureaucracy of getting things done. In the last few years, we’ve been able to achieve pretty great outcomes,’ the team say.

Riff Studio

Riff Studio first came to our attention through its participation in the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale, where it featured in curator Lesley Lokko’s ‘Guests from the Future’ section on emerging practitioners with its piece ‘A Window (Detail) from the Future (Case Study House)’. ‘It holds a special significance for our young, exploratory practice,’ say co-founders Rekha AugusteNelson and Farnoosh Rafaie (a third member, Isabel Strauss, stepped away in August 2023).

Founded in 2017, the bicoastal design practice grew out of a ‘support system between the founders while studying at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. While we maintained different interests, our goals remained the same: to practise architecture and design with a consciousness and a collaborative nature’. Addressing the design process as just that, ‘a process – of riffing’, the young studio embraces challenges, actively avoiding the need to be ‘precious’ or ‘pure’. Their work is all the more exciting for it – both fun and unexpected.

Figure

Collaboration sits at the heart of San Francisco studio Figure. Co-founders James Leng and Jennifer Ly say, ‘We have been as large as five people, and as small as just the two of us. However, more than half of the projects we do are collaborations with other designers, so it feels like our team is big even though our organisation is quite small.’ The pair, who established Figure in 2018, take a humble approach to their profession. ‘The events that have redefined the world around us – Covid, BLM, the climate crisis – have forced us and our peers to confront the limitations of the architectural medium, and as a consequence, also re-evaluate the value of architecture.

‘For us, this has meant operating without a manifesto, and letting the contingencies of each project unfold into the appropriate intervention. We try to build lightly and practise softly. Our family backgrounds as US immigrants from Asia also means that we understand making the most of limited resources. We realise that architecture is not equally accessible to all, so we strive towards good design with an economy of means.’

OWIU

An abbreviation for ‘only way is up’, OWIU was founded by Joel Wong and Amanda Gunawan in 2018. Since its inception, the boutique firm (which started with its two founders as its only employees and now has a staff of 15) puts craftsmanship and wellbeing at the core of its approach, encompassing a construction arm within their business to celebrate the process of making as a central element in design and architecture.

This focus on quality, texture and meaning extends to the type of work the pair choses to embark on. ‘We like projects that are on sites with rich history. In the same way, we love clients whose brands and identities have strong narratives and convictions behind them. Having a rich narrative fuels the design,’ say Wong and Gunawan. A key example of this is one of their ongoing projects, the renovation of a Ray Kappedesigned home. ‘When we started this project, we really wanted to study the existing DNA of this house and learn about how Kappe designed it,’ they say. ‘Why he chose to make certain design decisions and the intention behind the existing structure. We then worked to add our footprint in, with the intention to improve its current state and make it still relevant for present times.’