We helped throw/took part in Saturday's de LaB Design-n-Dim Sum ride from Highland Park's Flying Pigeon bike shop to Chinatown, with design "lab" stops along the way. One of the stops was Ali Jeevanjee and Poonam Sharma's Chung King Courtyard live/work space, recently featured in the LA Times' Home section. Jeevanjee and Sharma, the founders of LOC Architects, combined two 600-square foot apartments (cost: $600,000 plus $200,000 in construction, an expense offset by leasing the ground floor gallery), creating a courtyard in the center, an area which acts as their dining room and focal point for entertaining guests. Most of the furnishings and fixtures are either Ikea or custom-designed. The couple also used off-the-shelf items like glass arcadia doors, but rather than hinge them in the corner, the architects created a center pivot to open the doors from the living room to the courtyard. They also raised the ceiling two feet, installed an open-air gate at the street entrance to create a cross-breeze through the clerestory windows, and used every day materials like plywood for the floor and ceilings. Jeevanjee has designed several projects in LA, including Venice's Electric Avenue Lofts, while Sharma, a SCI-Arc alum, previously worked for 5+Design, a design studio that specialized in large scale mixed-use projects.
· June de LaB > Design-n-Dim Sum Ride [Official Site]
· Courtyard home in L.A.'s Chinatown [LA Times]
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