So basically the name of my firm, when I opened it five years ago after working for corporate
America wanting to buy a house in Los Angeles and not being able to afford one, I worked
for corporate America for three years and said at the end of it I'm going to earn $70,000
to put a down payment on a house in Los Angeles.
Then I fell in love and now I'm in Atlanta and I rent my house in Los Angeles.
But so the name of my firm is Ally Projects and what it is is a multi-disciplinary firm
like everyone says and I deal with practice, exhibition, and curation, and research.
So this is the first project I did in Los Angeles, it was a renovation of house which
is really common and the back of it was really the renovation part and it was bringing almost
like a shotgun house from the front door all the way back and extending the master bedroom
and bringing inside and outside sort of relationship.
The owner owned a lot of sliding plantation doors so that was kind of a given.
This is part of the kitchen area and it basically was, we wrapped a lot of areas where there
was transitions from one room to the next with really good materials and infilled with
cheaper materials.
So the idea with Ally Projects is like a metal, it's a mixture of two things that makes
it stronger.
So the idea is you always bring in two things.
This is a renovation project that's on the beach in Santa Monica and it's a 14 foot
wide house.
It's the last single wall construction house.
So most houses are double construction meaning there's framing and a wall on each side.
This is single frame construction and so as a result I had to keep the front as is and
the back I could do whatever I wanted with.
The owner was going through a divorce so I had to populate it with many men.
And the idea was that of course you want a better view of the ocean and so you create
a double sort of layered outdoor space.
This is another renovation space of the evil corporate man I used to work for.
The client called me up afterwards and said will you come in and renovate this auditorium
area in Houston in a building I worked in.
And so this is an auditorium area and I wanted to do a really three dimensional sort of space
on the ceiling and they said oh it's been veed out.
And the contractor misinterpreted the drawings and it came out way more three dimensional
than I ever intended it.
So basically it is a sound buffer but it includes lighting and speakers and a three dimensional
kind of experience also.
This is a project for an industrial designer that I'm working with who bought a plot of
land near the Hollywood sign and it's in a very wealthy area that's about not building
anymore.
And so basically the top part diagram is a house that he wanted.
The orange is basically the topography and I had to sort of merge the two.
The neighborhood basically has a list of 50 points you have to get towards.
So you get like 20 points for stucco minus 50 for flat roof.
And then in the end you have to equal 42.
So basically going through the whole thing we've gone through the house 20 times.
This is what we're calling the conforming house.
It conforms to what the client wants but it also conforms to what the building department
says they want in the neighborhood.
Although aesthetically it's not like what they want at all.
But it's gotten approved and now it's in the building department.
So the idea is that the topography goes over this modernist box house.
This is a house in Chastain Park.
I've become now like the hillside woman so I'm doing ground up houses on hillsides.
And this is the last available site on Chastain.
And it's on a pretty steep slope.
And the owner is retired and he's owned the land for 20 years.
I'm about the fifth architect.
The last one died.
And so basically you've got to be patient with this man but hopefully that one will be built.
As far as exhibition in Los Angeles while I was there I worked with about eight other
people and started the Museum of Design in Los Angeles.
And the owner of the Bradbury building which is the famous building where Blade Runner
was filmed gave us a space.
And so while I've been here I'm trying to sort of do that sort of thing as well.
And so this is really a project that my firm became a part of building this wall for an
exhibition displaying our work.
And that model shelf was for that one job in Hollywood of the model that I built.
We did on a CNC router.
The idea is always to have a part of making and craft involved in what we do.
So we developed this wall to house a model.
The idea was to use absolutely every bit of the four by eight plywood, not have anything
recycled, you not have anything that you could throw away and every single piece had numbered
and it was assembled to create this wall within the space and bring you in.
It was in a sort of an eight by ten foot little space inside, sort of in the back corner.
So it needed something to sort of bring you through and in to look at the work.
Part of the research part is not so much as a critic I think of myself but more as a social
moderator.
I like to find work.
I've been the overseas editor of this magazine called Monument from Australia for about the
last 15 years but I'm the LA overseas editor because Elana is not cool for some reason
internationally.
And one of the jobs I was supposed to interview Renzo Piano for the High Museum and it was
really hard getting him to put in the corner when the New York Times is there and all these
other people.
So I got to interview Ellsworth Kelly instead, which I found really interesting.
And then I also interviewed Klaus Oldenburg.
And then I turned 40 a little while ago and of course you go through the midlife crisis
and you're like oh my god I'm bi-coastal, what am I supposed to be doing with my life?
So I took up surfing.
And parking is really difficult when I'm visiting LA so I have to bring my dog, my boyfriend
or my husband now, which is not that person actually.
You need to also not find parking so then the bicycle.
