In the last year, we cer­tain­ly saw a lot of trep­i­da­tion on mov­ing for­ward with new projects, so that cre­at­ed a time to reflect about the future and since we were all work­ing remote­ly, we real­ized it’s still incred­i­bly impor­tant to be cre­ative with oth­er peo­ple in the same room. Cre­ative peo­ple are trig­gered by the most bizarre things, and unex­pect­ed things can hap­pen when you’re with some­one else work­ing on a prob­lem. Right now, we’re work­ing on a two-acre park that will be on the rooftop of the old post office in New York City.

We used the time dur­ing the pan­dem­ic to release our­selves from the past, and as a time to think of design in a com­plete­ly new way. It’s both excit­ing and depress­ing at the same time, because it made you ask your­self what was hold­ing you back to think like this before. It’s a fan­tas­tic door open­er. How much more agile can we be? Dig­i­tal map­ping and automa­tion are chang­ing the way we design things. In some ways, I’m impressed by indus­tri­al design­ers like Carl Mag­nus­son and Bri­an Gra­ham whose cre­ativ­i­ty works on a very high lev­el and how they’ve fig­ured out­how to design fur­ni­ture in a dif­fer­ent way.

Trav­el was a big dis­trac­tion, and I start­ed doing things that I enjoyed when I was younger like rid­ing bicy­cles and cus­tomiz­ing motor­cy­cles. Tak­ing small­er objects like a motor­bike and mess­ing with them and chang­ing them is very ful­fill­ing. It’s not just about beau­ty but my desire to cre­ate and make things also real­ly con­nect­ed to a func­tion­al aspect.

Tak­ing up golf has also tak­en me to a place where all of a sud­den I can expe­ri­ence nature in Los Ange­les, pri­mar­i­ly through pub­lic golf cours­es and dis­cov­er­ing parts of LA that I had nev­er knew exist­ed. Places like Grif­fith Park and Obser­va­to­ry and Greek, which is right near a dri­ving range, and near that, is Frank Lloyd Wright’s Ennis House — made famous in Blade Run­ner — which shows LA at its best.

Down­town LA is fun­da­men­tal­ly ugly and imper­fect, unlike places like San­ta Mon­i­ca or Bev­er­ly Hills where we do a lot of our work. LA has always been an open field which makes it inter­est­ing to me. I live in a loft and it’s a place where I have a lot of things that I col­lect like Miche­lin Man mem­o­ra­bil­ia. He’s the icon­ic graph­ic embod­i­ment of cul­ture – born out of the busi­ness of mak­ing tires. As a brand­ing iden­ti­ty, it’s one of the most suc­cess­ful in the world, and con­nect­ed to that came the Miche­lin trav­el guides. The weird­est thing I have is prob­a­bly a 12-foot talk inflat­able that was used for spe­cial occa­sions for Miche­lin. I also col­lect vin­tage Porsche rac­ing posters from the 50s and 60s, and have a col­lec­tion of archi­tect draw­ings from the likes of Michael Graves, Thom Mayne, Steven Holl, Pierre Koenig, and Tadao Ando, just to name a few.

The riv­er under­neath the Sixth Street Bridge — cap­tured in so many movies — is a beau­ti­ful and quin­tes­sen­tial­ly LA place. Dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, Manuel­la–the restau­rant at Hauser & Wirth with a great out­door space– became our office cafe­te­ria, and we’d eat there at least once or twice a week. And Zinc Café also has a beau­ti­ful out­door space with a great olive tree in this kind of nowhere land. Hen­nessey & Ingalls–locat­ed in a mixed-used devel­op­ment designed by Michael Maltzan – is one of the best archi­tec­ture and design book­stores in the coun­try. I also love Lit­tle Tokyo’s gro­cery stores and Kinoku­niya book­store with great sta­tionery and Japan­ese mag­a­zines and books. For art inspi­ra­tion, The Gef­fen Con­tem­po­rary at MOCA—an old ware­house trans­formed by Frank Gehry — also has some of the most cut­ting edge art.

In this order: Ride the Swan ped­al boats at Echo Park Lake, ride my motor­bike to the moun­tain­ous parts north of Pasade­na, vis­it more of the coast line of LA, and even some­thing as basic as rid­ing through Mul­hol­land Dri­ve — maybe with some­one like Keanu Reeves.