This past July the Echo Park Historical Society hosted a meeting at which several architects spoke about current or recently completed projects in the neighborhood. The meeting was held in the gutted industrial space of an old building on Glendale Boulevard. The building soon will be turned into condos, and while everyone is always so appalled to hear that their favorite old bank or church or whatever is about to go condo (myself included) I applaud the trend toward adaptive reuse.

So we sat inside the great gutted barrel of a building and heard about the future of built Echo Park. If you didn’t get there in time to nab a chair you got your clothes significantly dirty leaning against the wall or sitting on the floor. One of the presenters was Louis Montoya of Montoya-Turin designers. I had long admired a project I saw evolving on Echo Park Avenue in which they turned what looked like a tear-down shack into a sleek shiny new toy of a structure, which is barely visible from the street now that the front garden trees have grown in. It’s a new spot of green space and vitality just about half a dozen door south of the chrome fence I described last week in Chicken Corner. In any case, I was struck by a couple of comments Montoya made, the first being that he and his partner (in work and life) Laurent Turin were designing homes that did not have a front door: true indoor-out-of-doors spaces that were planned with great sensitivity to the specific conditions of their sites. The second comment was the most sustainable structure is one that already exists. The kinds of things everyone knows and no one thinks about.

I emailed Louis and Laurent some further questions about designing spaces in Echo Park and in general. They speak with one voice. Their responses follow in a Chicken Corner Micro-Interview.

Q: In the Echo Park Historical Society meeting, Louis said that his ideal is to live outside. Can you elaborate on that?

A: We are working on a project for a house in Echo Park where the enclosed portion is about 400 square feet. We are able to accomplish this by seeing both interior and exterior spaces as the house itself. To us this goes beyond the modernist interest of opening up the house to the exterior, and seeks to merge interior and exterior as a sequence of living spaces. In lieu of building larger homes, we encourage clients to consider the benefits (and cost savings) of their available outdoor space. Because of very favorable climate conditions, such as temperatures, breezes, shade from trees, it is very easy to live outdoor:; Dining, reading, playing, gardening, resting are all activities that invite you outside. Our projects always attempt to create strong connections to the outside. We try to make use of outside "rooms" as part of a broader concept of "house".

Q: You are very tuned in to environmental conditions in Echo Park. Can you describe these? In what ways are Echo Park conditions different than, say, Silver Lake’s or Glassell Park’s? Or that of other nearby communities?

A: While Echo Park shares many attributes with nearby communities it is the combination of these attributes that contribute toward making it a good place to live. These include situational and environmental factors such as its central location - making it easier to be a pedestrian or to take public transport, its geography of hills and ravines, its ocean influence in the form of mild temperatures and breezes, its sunnyness, and its mature vegetation including some native plants such as Toyons, California Black Walnut, Sycamores, etc.

Q: How did you approach learning what were the specific conditions of Echo Park? Did you use any unconventional methods?

A: Directly and indirectly. We explore Echo Park directly through living here, walking, hiking up and down stairs hills and Indirectly through reading, and through visits to local nurseries and gardens such as the Theodore Payne foundation. On several occasions we have brought students here to walk, talk, and explore contemporary issues as manifested in our neighborhood.

Q: Do you consider yourselves environmentalists?

If you mean someone who cares about our environment and about the relationship of human culture and the natural world, then yes. We feel that everyone needs to be aware of, respectful of, and careful with, our entire natural environment. This includes but goes beyond the realm of architecture and into a much larger social, cultural, and political realm.

Q: Have you considered using green roofs?

A: We are working on three Echo Park projects at the moment that strongly deal with the roof in relationship to environmental concerns. One uses a curtain of solar panels expressively as a canopy and as vertical shading while collecting solar energy. Another relies on mature trees for cooling and shade, while a third project calls for a tree canopy to serve as the major roof for the house. To date we have not worked on projects with sod or other living materials on the roof.

Q: At the EPHS meeting, Louis said that the most sustainable structure is one that is already built. (!) Would you say that sustainability is one of your foremost guiding principles in design?

A: Yes. We are very interested in sustainable architecture. This to us is different than just sustainable buildings. It isn't only about putting solar panels on a roof or about building smaller. Our goal is for sustainability to be an intrinsic component of making; That it is a participant in the design and use of anything and everything. Along with considerations about space, material, form, human needs and tendencies, and culture, issues of sustainability help us find design expression and help make for better, more intelligent, and more responsible environments for living.

Q: Can you describe the project that you did on Echo Park Avenue? Did you design the landscape as well as the renovation of the cottage?

A: When we bought the property in 2000 it was sold as "land value only." We think this means tear-down. Two additional buildings used to occupy the front of the property but had been torn down, for lack of repair, in the 1970's. The house which sits at the back of the lot is 608 square feet. The lot itself is around 5600 Square feet. Originally built in 1923 the house had gone through some remodel trauma and was in a state of disrepair. Typical of its age, it was chopped-up into small separate rooms with little air flow and light. Constructed of true 2" x 4" redwood studs, the structure was doing okay except where insensitive plumbing, etc. had destroyed its integrity. Our goal was simple (and our budget was very tight): Link the house to its site, open-up the flow between spaces, make better use of natural light and air, and visually extend the sightlines inside the house.

The house is now composed of one larger space that is subdivided into a sequence of sub-spaces where one visually borrows from the others allowing a double or triple use of the same space. One long storage system runs the length of one wall housing books, clothes, laundry, stuff. A sliding 8'x8' panel can be used to cover the clothes but can slide along the entire length to serve other functions. There are 5 exterior sliding glass panels which when open turn the house almost into a covered porch letting in that afternoon Echo Park breeze. The sliders also facilitate the connection to the outside where a series of decks, gravel patios, and gardens, encourage you to spend the day outside. Being right on Echo Park Avenue we wanted some privacy but wanted to avoid fences and walls. Instead we planted a series of native and non-native drought-tolerant plants and trees that could be enjoyed from the street as well as from the house. At the front, a gravel area allows for parking while letting any water that falls to percolate into the ground.