Radical Remaking: Somos' Kira Teshima Conlon and Christopher Torres on Long-Term Visions, Civic Joy, and Promoting Innovation
Kira and Christopher by Wyatt Conlon.
By Julia Gamolina
Kira Teshima Conlon is a Co-Founder and Partner at Somos Law Group LLP. She represents public- and private-sector clients in real estate development through all phases of due diligence, acquisition, design, planning, permitting, and environmental compliance. In 2023, Kira was recognized with the Best Under 40 Award by the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association, which is awarded to members who achieved prominence in their fields and demonstrated strong commitment to AAPI civic or community affairs.
Christopher Torres is an award-winning landscape architect and urban designer creating public spaces that merge extraordinary experiences, everyday culture, and resilient systems. Christopher is a Partner at Somos where he leads the Civic Studio, a collaborative workshop for the future of cities. He also leads Agency Artifact, his studio focused on Landscape Architectural works, and serves as a Planning Commissioner for the City of Los Angeles.
In their conversation with Julia Gamolina, Kira and Christopher talk about their varied experiences and networks of collaborators in remaking urban fabric, advising those just starting their careers to say yes and believe in yourself.
Kira, you studied International Studies and then went on to law school. Chris, you studied Urban Studies before pursuing a Masters of Landscape Architecture. What were you each hoping to do in the world, and what did you learn about yourselves and your respective fields during your student years?
KTC: Growing up in Hawai’i, a diverse and close-knit community, as a youngster I was drawn to the beautiful natural environment, often hiking O’ahu’s lush mountains and surfing the South Shore. I was the beneficiary of an amazing high school education at Punahou School in Honolulu that fostered my young global mindset and encouraged me to look outward to innovate and broaden my horizons, always with the spirit of giving back and honoring community.
As I grew older and would return home from college during summer vacations and holidays, many of the global issues I was studying were amplified on the island, like climate change, sea level rise, access to sustainable alternative energy sources, and affordable housing. This perspective was foundational to my student years, and I eventually entered law school hoping to find an area of law that could marry my passion for people, policy, and the environment. And that is when I discovered the world of real estate and began to understand that these three things were integrally related. The summer of my second year, I interned with the downtown office of Sheppard Mullin, where I would meet and work alongside my now partner and co-founder, Alfred Fraijo Jr. This was a pivotal moment in my career.
CT: I came to study urbanism and design through the lens of cultural anthropology, specifically studying under my mentor Dr. Karen Mary Davalos at LMU. Dr. Davalos was the first person who helped me see the connection between my first passion, underground music, and the built environment. I was fortunate to work at my college radio station, KXLU 88.9 FM Los Angeles, where we put on DIY punk and underground shows across the city, in traditional clubs, but also amid the urban fabric of Los Angeles: on the rooftops of abandoned buildings, in the LA River. What captivated me was seeing how an everyday space could be brought alive through music and art. The idea of urban interventions and activations took me on a wild journey of studying Situationist philosophy under the great Moji Baratloo at Columbia.
What I was hoping to do as a student was find a way to connect the dots and understand how cities are made. I knew the potential for my work to create a positive impact was directly tied to a broader understanding of the forces that create the built environment. The biggest gift my mentors gave me was an expansive way of thinking that is beyond the immediate constraints of time or physical location. When you fully understand the breadth of an urban design challenge you gain the ability to see the built environment as malleable and its potential to be radically remade.
Superbloom Master Plan. Courtesy of Somos.
Sepulveda Basin Vision Plan. Courtesy of Somos.
Then, Kira, you were with Sheppard Mullin for over eleven years before SOMOS, and Chris, you worked at various firms before starting your own. What did you learn through these experiences before bringing your expertise to SOMOS?
KTC: My experience navigating the path to partnership taught me the importance of developing technical expertise and capacity as a skilled lawyer while developing and maintaining personal relationships with internal and external clients based on shared values and goals. In other words, it is not enough to be an excellent lawyer. Nor is it enough to have good client service. I often use this lesson with my team to emphasize that while relationships matter, we are also expected to deliver value and results as thought partners to our clients. That requires technical know-how and deep understanding of the legal issues, as well as the unique business considerations of our clients.
The other lesson that propelled me to Somos was advice I received early on in my career, which was to create a business plan that is authentic to me — a business plan that is not a chore, but rather a strategic plan that plays well with my personal passions, values, and individual strengths. For me, that has been and continues to be building people-to-people relationships in the Japanese American and Asian American Pacific Islander communities through my volunteer work. This mission-driven work and the importance of leading an authentic life have grounded me in my legal career.
CT: My experience working for small, midsize, and corporate design firms, as well as in the public sector, helped me understand the ecosystem of collaborators that need to come together to create the built environment. At the core of this collaboration needs to be a big idea, a north star, to guide a project through the maze of political, financial, and cultural hurdles. I believe my experience in working in multi-disciplinary practices, rather a singly-focused landscape architectural firm, showed me how to be an expert collaborator. I learned that the project exists not to serve us but, rather, in the service of ideas.
Also, each experience gave me different insights into how organizational structures can promote or stifle innovation. I firmly believe the value we hold as design professionals is directly linked to new ideas and ways of seeing the world. The challenges we face — ranging from the climate emergency to widespread homelessness and a generational housing crisis — need bold, cross-disciplinary thinking.
“Identify, mentor, and invest in the next generation of visionaries and practitioners to ensure they reflect the rich diversity of the city in which we live. Equity in architecture and equity in the built environment is only possible when people from all walks of life can bring their experiences to bear to bridge the gaps and solve for issues that went unseen by others.”
Tell me how SOMOS came about — when, why, and what both of your roles are with it.
KTC: In January 2023, over a margherita pizza and portobello fries at Bottega Louie, my longtime mentor Alfred Fraijo approached me with the idea of forming a multidisciplinary platform, including a law group, that recognizes that the greatest challenges of our generation require diverse expertise from individuals with diverse backgrounds and lived experiences. Alfred had the name “Somos” in mind – which translates to “we are” in Spanish – and explained its meaning and import to the vision he had for this new company — we are designers, we are urbanists, we are organizers, we are lawyers, we are planners, we are Somos.
I’m a co-founder and partner of Somos Law Group LLP, which is the law firm that complements the advisory consulting services provided by Somos Group LLC. I oversee and manage a team of over ten lawyers, law clerks, and paraprofessionals based in our Downtown Los Angeles office.
CT: Similar to Kira my introduction to Somos also came through Alfred and a series of conversations about the potential to create an organization with the global reach and vision to rebuild cities. After working with Alfred and Kira for over a decade as a designer on projects throughout LA, I’ve joined the practice as a Partner leading our Civic Studio, a collaborative workshop for the future of cities. Somos is one part of the ecosystem of ideas I have been building for the past three years that includes Agency Artifact, the landscape architecture and urban design studio I lead, and my role serving on the City Planning Commission for the City of Los Angeles, where I get direct insight into the real challenges facing communities across the city.
Talk to me about working in the built world in Los Angeles! What is unique to getting things built in this city that's unlike anywhere else?
CT: What is unique about Los Angeles is that the city does not have a single experience, it is a place of multiples, of layers and iterations, all coexisting and colliding at once — it’s fantastic! Christopher Hawthorne, the former Chief Design Officer of Los Angeles, talks about us entering the third LA — a more connected city tackling the need for housing at scale, open space equity, and non-vehicular mobility.
While we have communities and policies ready to re-think the built environment, we also have a city dominated by cars and single-family homes that are the direct legacy of exclusionary zoning and redlining. The project of re-thinking the experience of living in Los Angeles requires a posture of hope and vison, and also a radical pragmatism to have a deep understanding of the political and culture structures that reinforce a city, often incongruent with the direction we are moving towards.
KTC: As a land use attorney building in Los Angeles, the confluence of federal, state, and local laws and policies can be excruciatingly complex. As a result, I have found that if you can navigate the regulatory maze that is City of LA and get a project built, you can do it anywhere.
Fairflex Specific Plan. Courtesy of Somos.
James Rojas and Christopher.
What have been the biggest challenges for each of you in your careers thus far?
CT: The biggest challenge of my career, thus far, has been patience — or rather the lack of it. At Somos we are in the business of building cities and cities are built slowly. Time can kill the momentum of a project and without momentum, projects die or slowly fade away. A big part of our work is creating the long-term vision but also finding the quick wins for our clients along the way. This might take the form of community engagement campaigns, working on the brand and storytelling of a project, or even lobbying to change the policies that could more quickly tackle some of the most complex urban challenges we face today.
KTC: As an Asian woman lawyer, and now co-founder and partner, in a white, male-dominated industry, particularly in commercial real estate, it has been challenging to be the only one that looks like me in meeting rooms. Particularly in my early years, I would have to clarify that I was the lawyer representing the project and not the paralegal or intern. While I have grown accustomed to this and on the surface have managed to press ahead, I remain concerned and am increasingly motivated to invest in mentoring the next generation of AAPI women lawyers and encourage more young folks to explore a career in commercial real estate.
What are you thinking most about as we enter 2024?
CT: What I am thinking most about is the concept of civic celebrations and civic joy, with particular focus on the 2026 World Cup and 2028 Paralympic and Olympic games coming to Los Angeles. We are working with a wide cross-section of CBO’s, non-profits, and public sector leaders to consider what the legacy of these major events can be for LA and how the infrastructure created to support these efforts can bring forth positive change to the City.
KTC: Now that Somos has stabilized and is turning one year old, I am looking at 2024 as a year of growth for our practice. That doesn’t happen magically. It requires making strategic decisions and choices and galvanizing our staff to produce necessary results.
“Much of the built environment was created to support power structures that were inherently inequitable. Now imagine a city built on a foundation of equity. What would that look like? How would it function? What kind of organizations and firms would need to be created to do this work? This is the story of Somos and what we hope will become the future of our industry.”
Who are you admiring right now?
EJ Hill, an incredible artist we are fortunate to be working with on projects throughout the country. EJ’s work teaches us how to soften a world that seems ever ridged and hardened.
Claude Cormier, the late Canadian landscape architect who brought so much joy to the world through his work. We recently visited many of his public projects in Toronto and my heart was full — Sugar Beach and Berczy Park are masterpiece spaces.
Primestor. Placemaking is a holistic art they have mastered, and it begins years before construction, carries on through co-design with the community, and lives on through their thoughtful programming of each project. Firms such as Primestor are quite literally remaking Los Angeles.
Little Tokyo Service Center, a community development corporation based in Little Tokyo. They just celebrated a historic groundbreaking for the Go For Broke Plaza and First Street North Residences, one of the City of LA’s largest 100% affordable housing developments.
Finally, we’re admiring Theaster Gates for his visionary artworks and projects that draw on principles of urban planning, equity, storytelling, and preservation.
What do you do, and encourage your peers to do, to advance equity in architecture?
CT: Much of the built environment was created to support power structures that were inherently inequitable. Now imagine a city built on a foundation of equity. What would that look like? How would it function? What kind of organizations and firms would need to be created to do this work? This is the story of Somos and what we hope will become the future of our industry.
KTC: Identify, mentor, and invest in the next generation of visionaries and practitioners to ensure they reflect the rich diversity of the city in which we live. Equity in architecture and equity in the built environment is only possible when people from all walks of life can bring their experiences to bear to bridge the gaps and solve for issues that went unseen by others.
Finally, what advice do you have for those just starting their careers?
CT: Be fearless and say, “Yes.” I distinctly remember a moment early in my career when I was asked to join the board of a fantastic non-profit called the LA Forum for Architecture and Urban Design. I remember being intimidated by the expectation of being a board member for a legacy organization. That one decision to say “yes” and jump into a new experience has led to a robust network of friends and collaborators that will stay with me for life. Every time I say “yes,” I find my world expanding.
KTC: Believe in yourself – don’t limit your vision of yourself based on the barriers you face today or in the past. Broaden your horizons and find good mentors who inspire you to reach those goals.