Location: Hollywood, Los Angeles 
Type: Condo 
Design Team: Katy Barkan, Laura Grombone, Jingbo Huang
Date: 2025

Small Architectures is an approach to an interior fit-out of a 1200sf apartment in Hollywood. Working with the fixed parameters of the base-building­—structural columns, plumbing lines, HVAC locations—the design aims to produce a series of objects to inhabit and give specificity to the spaces within. Working with elemental fragments—a wall, a column, a surface­—the objects are articulated as discrete and separate from the generic container of the apartment and building. They are neither artifact nor furniture nor architecture, and instead are situated in an indeterminate, in between scale. 

The play of scale and scaleless-ness is carried out in varied material expressions throughout the project. In the kitchen the oversized, sculptural counter and overhead hood, is made of a marble with unusually large clasts of stone. The material scale renders the proportions of the object hard to read. In the living room an L-shaped element frames a built-in sofa on one side and an art wall on the other. Concealed within it are 2 large pocket doors to enclose a guest room. The unit is clad in Douglas Fir, stained a pale pinkish grey lending it a vague materiality between wall and millwork.  Along the length of the apartment, a large balcony straddles the living room and bedrooms. This exterior terracotta tile drifts into the interior as a carpet, connecting each space to the other through a subtle incursion. 

In all the design aims to animate the space through a series of interventions rather than through a single move. This multiplication of objects allows for an evolving set of occupations and relationships between the relatively temporary and permanent elements of life and living.