For architects Rick Poulos and Tammy McKerrow, home and work life are woven together in more ways than one. The couple has been collaborating at the tightly-knit Jerde Partnership architectural firm for over a decade now, applying the vision of Jon Jerde to projects abroad, within the United States, and right here in the Palisades, where they’ve lived for 10 years. ‘We’re constantly evaluating how a place performs or where to live based on the work we do,’ says Poulos, a Los Angeles native who earned his bachelor of architecture degree from USC in 1975. Professionally licensed in 25 states, Poulos joined Jerde in 1992, and now serves as executive vice president. McKerrow, who joined Jerde in 1986 as a junior designer, says the Palisades is the perfect community for them because ‘there are different enclaves with unique characteristics but it’s all one place, with one of the biggest boulevards [in L.A.] running through it.’ Poulos and McKerrow purchased their home in the El Medio area in 1993. In choosing a place to live, they evaluated various areas in Los Angeles based on the Jerde philosophy. ‘The work of Jerde is community-oriented,’ explains McKerrow, the firm’s only female vice president and senior project designer. ‘It’s about creating experiential places where people would enjoy spending time.’ Originally from Ohio, McKerrow earned her bachelor of architecture degree from the University of Cincinnati in 1985 and worked at Skidmore, Owings, Merrill in San Francisco prior to joining Jerde. McKerrow and Poulos met in 1981, when she was interning at Los Angeles-based Gin Wong Associates, where Poulos was designing corporate headquarters and commercial high-rise complexes. ‘There’s been a constant braiding of our relationship through our profession,’ says Poulos, who suggested that McKerrow interview at Jerde and move to Los Angeles. Influenced by ‘spacial inspiration’ more than an individual architect, McKerrow was drawn to Jerde’s philosophy about public, urban spaces as well as his ‘co-creative,’ or creative and collaborative design approach. ‘Jon brings together the creative group,’ says Poulos, who works closely with the firm founder, pursuing business and design opportunities. ‘It’s quite a family here at Jerde, with all the idiosyncrasies. You have to buy into the philosophy to be here.’ Jon Jerde founded the Jerde Partnership in 1977 based on his vision of creating unique places ‘where interesting things happen and people gather to experience a sense of community.’ The firm first introduced the revolutionary idea of ‘placemaking’ when it revitalized an abandoned six-block site in downtown San Diego, now known as Horton Plaza. This project redefined urban retail projects and the traditional notion of ‘shopping center’ by proving that it could draw people for more than just shopping. Horton Plaza attracted 25 million visitors its first year, revitalizing downtown San Diego. Often criticized for designing ‘commercial’ places, Jerde prides itself in creating ‘great places that have lasting social and economic value”from retail and entertainment to rejuvenating cities. By merging public life, shops, parks, restaurants, entertainment, housing and nature into one place, Jerde-designed projects emphasize the beauty of ‘organized chaos,’ especially in cities like Los Angeles. From the firm’s one design office on the Venice boardwalk have emerged the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, Bellagio resort and Fremont Street Experience in Las Vegas, Universal CityWalk in Los Angeles, Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota, Canal City Hakata in Japan, Beursplein in Rotterdam and The Gateway in Salt Lake City. ‘People are starving for these public, urban spaces,’ says McKerrow, who has designed many urban revitalization projects, including the recently opened West Hollywood Gateway at the intersection of Santa Monica Boulevard and La Brea Avenue on the eastern edge of West Hollywood. ‘The idea [for West Hollywood Gateway] was to give public space back to the people and to create something modest and city-like.’ Designed as a new community center, the project includes courtyards, wide, pedestrian-oriented sidewalks and landscaping, as well as an urban solution for tenants Target and Best Buy. Vividly colored building materials, awnings and tent canopies help give an urban composition and pedestrian scale to the large retailers’ boxy structures. A larger project that Poulos and McKerrow worked on together was Universal CityWalk, designed in the early 1990s as a 1,500-ft.-long promenade containing shops, restaurants, night clubs, bars, theaters, offices and classrooms, to link Universal Studios Hollywood’s existing attractions. The award-winning project’s eclectic and layered architecture reflects small-scale, anonymous Los Angeles buildings, or ‘a little L.A. street,’ according to McKerrow. The Jerde team used terrazzo (mosaic flooring or paving) and natural light for the open-air city, whose building roofs are angled to create a dome shape. However, rather than establish strict design criteria for CityWalk’s tenants, Jerde encouraged open and original storefront design, signage and lighting. ‘Our projects take on their own life with the user,’ says Poulos, who worked on the business side of the CityWalk project. Internationally, Poulos and McKerrow worked together on a master plan for Punta Cancun in Mexico, and presented it to the Mexican government three years ago. The plan, which included cleaning the lagoon, creating a pedestrian boardwalk in place of a busy, car traffic street, and ‘giving it some character,’ was adopted and the city is currently being developed. ‘A local [Mexican] architect would never have had the audacity to suggest they change their whole road system,’ says Poulos, whose ‘built-in understanding of the [architecture] industry’ comes from the childhood years he spent on construction sites with his father, who was a contractor. Mexico was also familiar to them since they had worked there in the early 1990s to create a master plan for the proposed Santa Fe Town Center on the western edge of Mexico City, which was never developed due to the devaluing of the peso in 1994. The plan involved turning a rock quarry into ‘a unique, handcrafted town,’ according to Poulos and McKerrow, who worked on the project with Jon Jerde and sculptor Robert Graham, among others. ‘Jerde people often feel the history of a place and will of the people [in that place],’ says Poulos, who is currently working with McKerrow on a plan for Warsaw’s city center. ‘When I went there, I could feel that unusual things had happened there,’ he says. McKerrow adds that, for all of their projects, it’s important ‘we’re doing something the people are going to like, what they would want.’ She studied comparative cultures at the American Institute of Foreign Study in 1981 and advanced art at the Pratt Institute in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 1988. Domestically, Poulos and McKerrow have dozens of ideas about what works and doesn’t work in Los Angeles. According to Poulos, the Downtown area ‘was much better at the [previous] turn of the century than at this last one,’ though he thinks that if Grand Avenue is redeveloped right, ‘it has opportunity.’ The problem they both see is that the high-rises going up there in the effort to create a more residential downtown are not the future. ‘Middle to lower scale is what works in L.A.,’ says McKerrow, who sites Santa Monica as a good example of a residential and commercial downtown. ‘A more European-style city should be the focus.’ Perhaps some of their biggest ideas could help create a better Palisades, where they previously worked on designs for the outdoor yard and playground at Palisades Presbyterian Nursery School. Poulos serves on the board of the Palisades Pony Baseball Association and coaches son Anthony’s baseball team. Anthony, 8, attends Marquez Elementary, and Nicholas, 11, will be entering sixth grade at Paul Revere. McKerrow says that their ideas for the community revolve around preserving open space and blending landscape and architecture, making the Palisades ‘Southern California’s version of Carmel.’ Fortunately, ‘each neighborhood has a natural, unique environment, so we should just strengthen landscape identity and weave it into the village and neighborhoods.’ The problem areas they see in the Palisades include slide areas along PCH, which could be made safer and more natural-looking, and the dangerous and crowded bike path. One of their ideas for improvement involves raising the area of land at the northeast corner of PCH and Temescal and making it a recreational park with a view, just below the Bluffs area.
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