KADRE Mini Campus

After acquiring a run-down residential property in LA’s Eagle Rock neighborhood, Kadre’s team treated it as an architect’s playground, transforming the old home into a studio, workshop, outdoor materials laboratory and gardens. Simultaneously, the team embarked on adding a modern structure to the property, effectively transforming it into a mini campus.

The new two-story structure features lofty ceilings, a wealth of north-facing natural light, and a 13-foot-tall shade armature to be used for future experiments. Carefully placed openings block out the foreground noise and focus the views on northeast LA hills and landscape, while the main space connects to the garden through a custom glass movable wall. A playful procession of painted shapes wind through the interior and spill into the courtyard blurring the line between indoors and out.

The outdoors is shaped with a Bougainvillea planted wall, murals, expansive new fire-resilient deck which resolves many levels of the existing garden, and the overhead trellis. This intervention transforms a part of the garden into an outdoor room.

Playfully painted graphics that begin at the sidewalk draw you into the garden.  Green and black pieces of ‘confetti’ play with the concept of positive and negative space, creating a striking composition along the ground and exterior walls of the existing building.

Kadre’s ethos which embraces solving difficult design challenges, especially when economy is paramount, is represented throughout this project through bold vision, clever use of building codes and significant added economic and aesthetic value.