Michael Maltzan

A lecture by Michael Maltzan

Response by Hilary Sample, Columbia GSAPP

Architect Michael Maltzan presents the renowned work of his Los Angeles-based firm, a portfolio that includes cultural, private, and socially engaged projects in California and beyond. In 2002, Maltzan designed a temporary home of the Museum of Modern Art in Long Island City, Queens, as the 53rd Street museum underwent renovation. His work for Skid Row Housing Trust in Los Angeles includes Inner City Arts, a home for an after-school program with design features set at the eye-level of a small child, was featured in the MoMA exhibition Small Scale, Big Change: New Architectures of Social Engagement. And New Carver Apartments, permanent housing for formerly homeless elderly and disabled residents, as well as medical and supportive services, was highlighted by Nicolai Ouroussoff for “strik[ing] a tricky balance between two fundamental and often conflicting needs of the chronically homeless, for a sense of being protected, on the one hand, and regular human contact on the other.” Elsewhere, Maltzan has designed the ingenious and flying-saucer Pittman-Dowell residence in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains, a circular structure around an courtyard that eschews interior doors and shares a plot of land with a historic structure by Richard Neutra. GSAPP faculty member Hilary Sample offers a response.