West Edge Architects, Peter M. Mitsakos & Associates

09/15/2022

Please click to this feature about our Hermosa Beach project in e-architect.

"Beyond its location, our clients were drawn to the detached row house in Hermosa Beach principally because of the vaulted ceiling running almost the full length of the second floor."

West Edge Architects' clients were drawn to the house in Hermosa Beach for their remodel project principally because of the vaulted ceiling

08/22/2020

We have a new address!
128 Sierra Street Suite C
El Segundo, California 90245
The phone is the same: 310.821.2399

03/19/2020

This house is about time. The time it takes you to move through it, to discover the view, to feel the different spaces from cozy to soaring and to find yet another view of the ocean, or the marina, or the mountains behind Malibu. In this house, time is measured by the materials used to make it. By the discipline and logic used to place them, how they weather and change over time, how they create a sequence of experiences, and how they engage ones memory as the spaces are experienced, to tell the story of this house, this place and these people.

Time is also present in the way the sequence of construction is expressed in the final disposition and materiality of elements, from the retaining walls to the steel framing to the enclosing walls and finally, the fine finished cabinets. The way the steel outriggers, with electrical power threaded through them, carry the wood that shades the windows; and the wood plugs that cover the screws that hold the wood to the steel. It is about the skills of the craftsmen who built it and the time it took to apply that skill.

It is about the passage of time that started to be recorded even before the construction was finished, in the weathering of the cedar planks from tan to silver grey. So even when it is lived in, it won't be finished. The curved wall that leads you into the house will still be working on its final look. So it's about the future. But it is also about the past. It is about the house that used to be there and the familiar feel the raised floor portion of the first floor still has, and the partially revealed steel posts and beams that the client’s father used to hold up the second floor when he added it. Time makes everyone who worked on this house and who lives in it, or has lived in it, important. That's what this house is about. And when we say the house is ready to live in, we can say, it's about time, but it's also about the everybody who has been a part of this process.

The view was there before we arrived, and it will be there long after we are gone. The house is a vehicle by which one can interact with the view in a way that is different than it would have been or was before us. The path you take into and through the house takes the view away, and then represents it in various forms at different times. It does this in sequence, but not strictly so. There is not an entirely prescribed order in which you must experience the house or the different views we have reframed.

While remaining programmatically similar to the original ocean-view house, this project will transform it completely.

12/03/2017

We enjoyed attending the ribbon-cutting ceremony at Los Angeles Jewish Home this morning for Café Rendezvous, the cyber café, and for the patio trellis. Here are a few snapshots.

11/11/2017

Current Project: Cyber Café, Los Angeles Jewish Home

On the campus of the Los Angeles Jewish Home, West Edge Architects designed a lounge space equipped with computers for the residents’ use. The cyber café, Café Rendezvous, is open to the main walkway through the building, across from a patio courtyard, for which we also designed a shade trellis and seating. In addition to the Café Rendezvous space, the project includes a service counter which offers coffee drinks and snacks, located on the far side of the main dining room entrance. Photos to come...

11/10/2017

We are proud of our work with The United Food and Commercial Workers, Local 770 in Huntington Park, which represents grocery store workers, meat packers and other food processing workers. This space is a satellite administrative and service center for union members.

There are three separate functional components: office and meeting space for union administrative staff; private offices for affiliated organizations that provide legal and health counseling to union members; and a large, multipurpose space to be used for seminars, large group meetings, rallies and other events. The office components were arranged along the west and north walls, with a lobby/reception area in the corner between them.

07/01/2016

Construction continues at the United Food and Commercial Workers local 770 Workers Center in Huntington Park.
The facility will allow union members to access services provided by the Union close to where many of them live and work.

06/15/2016

Construction is underway at the United Food and Commercial Workers local 770 Workers Center in Huntington Park.

The facility will allow union members to access services provided by the Union close to where many of them live and work.

Demolition of the interior walls is complete as is the removal of the paint from the interior side of the brick walls and the bowstring trusses. The location of the new partition walls and the areas of the concrete slab to be removed have been chalked onto the floor. Most of the metal studs will be standing by the end of the week. Water blasting of the exterior brick surfaces should be finished by the middle of the week.

06/23/2014

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New carbon pollution standards are a start, but the U.S. needs to do more on climate change. - Short, direct, and lively, The Architect's Newspaper is the essential read in the field.