SOUTH BAY DIGS | Digital Edition Online

P R O F I L E | G R A N T K I R K P AT R I C K A RADICAL ACT The one-story offices of KAA Design sit along a busy commercial stretch of Washington Boulevard in Venice, just east of PCH. Fronted in slate-hued brick, these are unobtrusive, hardworking digs for a firm whose works span continents. Success comes from a principle held since its founding, and it guides everything the nearly 40-person firm touches. "We firmly believe that good architecture, good design, raises the human spirit." Duan Tran, the architect and KAA managing partner, is essential to executing on this premise. "He allows me to do what I do best," Kirkpatrick says, freeing him to focus on what matters: working with clients, visualization, conceptual design. It's an ideal setup, as more and more, people want what KAA builds: connection to the earth, homes that calm through attention to proportion, material, and intention. But you cannot manufacture this with formula. The craft cannot be outsourced. Some of their finest works appear in Residing with Nature: The Houses of KAA Design (2024), co-authored by Kirkpatrick and Tran. But Kirkpatrick notes: "That stuff in the book is terrific, but the stuff under construction right now is even better. The stuff on the boards that isn't under construction yet—that's better than that. And I can say that honestly, because in our business, you're constantly honing your craft." In an age of machines—where efficiency is the goal and optimization is the highest calling—a radical act is still this: insisting that humans touch every detail. That beauty matters. That we would, quite literally, cease to exist without it. That is the craft in the machine. And it is essential. in the 1920s, the Case Study House movement of the 1950s with Julius Shulman documenting glamorous residences seemingly suspended in air. Kirkpatrick is emotionally tethered to this legacy and dedicated to carrying it forward—particularly in a world that increasingly tilts in favor of expediency. Yet Kirkpatrick's own beauty switch —the internal mechanism that makes us yearn for the stuff—had, at one point, been off for years. In his TED talk "The Beauty Switch," he describes the slow fade: responsibility, maturity, media, technology all dimming this essential light. His practice was thriving. Clients were happy. Projects won awards and magazine features. But something was missing. Even as he designed a striking home atop a hill overlooking an entire city, something felt hollow. It was good. It wasn't great. The house and the landscape weren't speaking to each other. Then came a trip with his young son to Fallingwater in Pennsylvania—a fountainhead for architects everywhere. The moment they rounded the driveway and Frank Lloyd Wright's masterpiece came into view, Kirkpatrick stopped. In that instant, something shifted. Wright's genius was unmistakable: the house didn't sit on the landscape, it emerged from it. Boulders pierced the floors. Balconies extended over water as if the building itself was part of the cascade. Structure and nature were merged. When Kirkpatrick returned to the office, he understood the error of his hill project. "We were not connecting this house with nature," he realized. They started over. The house became the hill. The hill became the house. The twinkling lights of the city below completed the scene. Bells rang, and they experienced the high-five jubilation that happens when craft connects with intention. T O P L E F T, B A R B U D A R E S I D E N C E , I M A G E B Y: S H I M A H A R A V I S U A L | T O P R I G H T, C O S TA R I C A R E S I D E N C E , I M A G E B Y: S H I M A H A R A V I S U A L | B O T T O M L E F T: W A S H I N G T O N D . C . R E S I D E N C E , I M A G E B Y: S H I M A H A R A V I S U A L | B O T T O M R I G H T: T O W E R G R O V E R E S I D E N C E , L O S A N G E L E S , I M A G E B Y: J O E F L E T C H E R A R C H I T E C T U R E + D E S I G N 60 DIGS.NET | 12.12.25

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