We don’t have money for fancy materials, but abundant light and air, which can make a huge difference in your living environment, are free,” says Joan Ling, executive director of the Community Corporation of Santa Monica (CCSM).

The City of Temecula commissioned LPA to design a new library for its expanding community to create “a place to learn; a place to explore; a place to discover old traditions and new opportunities.”

The simple 6,400-square-foot Orange Memorial Park Recreation Building is an airy, light-filled multi-purpose room for cultural, recreational, celebratory, and educational activities.

The original Clovis Memorial District conference center, which had been incrementally added to over the years, housed a number of meeting rooms, but lacked a central entry, or gathering space.

In the fight against McMansions, Venice, California, firm Touraine Richmond Architects’ One Window House serves as a demonstration project.

“This project was a study in urban bachelor-pad living,” says architect Cass Calder Smith of a two-story San Francisco house he built for a single 30-something. 

The relocated master suite of this existing Japanese-style home was updated with a warm spa-like quality and adjacent master bath, deliberately left open to the bedroom.