Interview with Architect Michael Maltzan, pt. 1

Michael Maltzan

In the decade since founding Michael Maltzan Architecture in Los Angeles, Michael Maltzan has developed a practice that engages the increasingly complex reality of urbanization and information-driven culture. Through projects such as the Mark Taper Forum/Inner-City Arts, Harvard-Westlake School’s Feldman-Horn Center for the Arts, MoMA QNS, Kidspace Children’s Museum, and UCLA Hammer Museum’s Billy Wilder Theater, Maltzan charts a new trajectory for modernism and the public realm.

Having worked with Michael on the MoMA QNS project, we decided to get in touch and see what he’s been up to.

Base: Why is it interesting to be an architect in LA?
Michael Maltzan: If you are interested in issues of the contemporary city, then Los Angeles is a good place to be working from—it’s a very complex organism in a constant state of evolution. For me it is a kind of lens through which you can see the futures of many different cities.

B: From an urban-planning perspective, how do you see LA developing in the future?
MM: The city has reached the far limits of its ability to sprawl, and densification has become a new reality throughout the city. In a sense, the city is being “overwritten.” It’s not clear what ultimately that will look like, as it’s such a new invention here. The degree of change is intense and taking place quite rapidly.

B: Do you have a favorite building?
MM: San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane in Rome by Borromini.

B: Do you have a preference between residential, commercial or institutional work?
MM: Not inherently; it’s more that they all provide differing contexts to examine a set of issues or ideas that I am engaged with. Those ideas transcend one type of program, although they are clearly made specific in their development because of the requirements of those programs.

B: Is it a requirement that architects wear black suits?
MM: I think they are loosening up on the requirements recently.

B: Regarding your practice, is it difficult to find young architects with your way of thinking?
MM: I am looking for people with their own way of thinking, but who also share with me some level of sensibility. I am more interested in working with people who have an understanding of what I’m trying to do, deeply enough that their disagreements can be productive and relative. That shared sensibility makes the process of the work more fluid than a specific skill or design ability.

B: What are you currently building in China?
MM: A pavilion that is a part of the Jinhua Architecture Park produced by Ai Wei Wei. Our building is a bookstore/café. It must be one of the smallest projects being built in China by a foreign architect! [This project was completed in 2007.]

B: How has the process there been different than in the United States?
MM: I don’t think the process is necessarily that much different. The problems when they exist are from miscommunications or differences in the methods of local construction techniques; we have those same issues almost anywhere we build. The process has not been any more or less interesting than anywhere else; being in China, however, is a different thing altogether.

B: Is it true that you are working a lot with concrete in that project? Is this a new material for you in the way you’re using it, and are there other materials you’d like to work more with?
MM: Unfortunately we’re not working in concrete. When I was asked to do the project, I was excited because I always wanted to build in concrete, and I thought, “great, everything in China is built in concrete!” So we designed the schematic design all in concrete, working with the Structural Engineer Guy Nordenson. Then because the site is next to a river and has poor soil, the Chinese engineers felt the building would be too heavy in concrete, so we were asked to make it out of steel. My dream was thwarted! I’m still looking to make a building out of concrete!

B: What is your process in starting to develop the concept for a project?
MM: I wish I could say it was more structured but its not. It always starts from something—maybe an impression from the site or site video, or a piece of art, or something the client said, often very abstract and fleeting—that grows slowly in my mind and in discussions with people in the office into some form of concept or way to approach the project. All at once, it seems we begin working on the form, inside and out, and from there it’s a race forward.

B: What type of house do you live in?
MM: A very small California bungalow built in 1922. We’ve been trying to do an addition for a few years but all the office work keeps getting in the way.

Stay tuned for part 2 of this interview.