At home in LA: Koning and Eizenberg create a Southern California style

Contrary to popular opinion, Los Angeles does have a style, in architecture as well as in other forms of culture, and few designers have come closer to defining its elements with more care and verve than Hank Koning and Julie Eizenberg. By mining the basic elements of the vernacular that has shaped homes, apartment buildings and commercial structures, these Australian-born architects have put together a kit of parts from which they have been able to create forms that give identity and clarity to the messy vitality of Southern California.

Most architects bridle at the designation of style, but Koning and Eizenberg understand the necessity of creating coherence in their work, in both visual and compositional terms. They base their work not on precedents that manipulate facade or plan treatments, however, but on aspects of the reality they inhabit: the appearance of everyday buildings (what, in the United States, passes for a vernacular), and the codes and regulations, standardized building materials and common