Main Street, Santa Monica has always been a place where the city shows up as itself: walkable, eclectic, a little worn in the right ways. This project is about building that belongs here. It just needed someone to believe that.

BS was brought in to help the new owner do two things at once: reclaim the building's Art Deco bones, and make something of them that works for the way people live and work today. The scalloped parapet, the curved corner, the proportions of the original facade - these weren't problems to solve around. They were the whole point. We restored what the building had been arguing for all along, and set it in bronze and dark stucco so it reads with the quiet confidence that good architecture earns over time.

The program stacks neatly: ground floor retail that activates the sidewalk and brings commerce back to a stretch of Main Street that has been waiting for it, and above, a private office for the owner- airy, considered, with an outdoor deck that catches the light and the neighborhood in equal measure. A drive aisle threads through, and the whole entry sequence, from the canopied approach to the pivot door to the courtyard beyond rewards arrival.

This is what it looks like when a building gets a second act it deserves.