Raising the Bar: KoningEizenberg’s Julie Eizenberg on Building on Values, Setting an Example, and Embracing Change
By Julia Gamolina
Julie Eizenberg, FAIA, FRAIA, has given visibility to the design value and potential of community projects and people-oriented practice. Her empathetic perspective underpins how Koning Eizenberg transforms mundane programs into places of ease and generosity. Along with founding partner Hank Koning, she has been awarded the AIA LA Gold Medal, the Australian Institute of Architects Gold Medal, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters Architecture Award.
In 2020, Julie was honored as a Design Leader in Architectural Record’s Women in Architecture Awards. Julie teaches and lectures around the world and has shared the practice’s interests in influential monographs including “Architecture isn’t just for special occasions” (2006) which highlights the value of social engagement as a rich reserve for design and “Urban Hallucinations” (2017) which examines how the idyll of local shapes neighborhoods. In her interview with Julia Gamolina, Julie talks about how not fitting in is an asset, and creating a firm through living your core values, advising those just starting their careers to run with the qualities that make them unique.
Tell me about your foundational years - what did you do a lot growing up? Where did your family live?
I grew up in Melbourne, Australia in a tight knit Jewish community. Like me, most of the children in my circle were first generation Australians whose parents had fled Europe when they were children to avoid persecution in Europe before and during World War Two. I am a middle child — there are four of us — and grew up comfortably, but always conscious of myself as an outsider within my community as well as in the community at large. That situation became a creative jumping off point when I moved to the States, as I found myself an outsider in yet another context and started a practice. I was a cautious kid, rebellious teenager, good student, and fast on my feet. I was also argumentative - a skill I learned at home.
MuseumLab. Completed 2019. Over View by FreelandBuck Design. Photography by Eric Staudenmaier.
Temple Israel of Hollywood. Completed in 2016. Photography by Eric Staudenmaier.
What did you learn about yourself in studying architecture?
Architecture, like many of my life decisions, was not particularly well thought through — I was not very confident. I am one of those people who suffer from imposter syndrome and am still waiting to be found out. At the time pursuing art, which I loved, seemed like a big risk. I was seventeen and architecture offered a safe haven where art and other disciplines combined and no real decision had to be made — as a professor I spoke to at the time relayed “it is a good all round education.” I had no idea what an architect really did or what I wanted to do with the knowledge I would get. I did know I wanted to go to University and architecture looked like a sensible choice to me at seventeen and just as importantly to my parents. Neither they, nor I, realized that architecture would change the way I saw the world and the kind of freedom I would want to pursue.
My sheltered homelife did not reconcile well with the political context — we are talking early 70s here — a new world of design ideas and people with points of view I had never encountered before. From an all girl’s school to nearly all boys architecture school provided another abrupt change of context, but that one flew right by me. Maybe it was because we had many women professors teaching in the Architecture program - surprisingly for the time. It never really occurred to me that there was a gender issue. Women were a novelty, for sure, but I was not sure why that would get in the way. What did I learn about myself in those five years? I was stronger than I thought, I had a lot to learn, and I would never be interested in fitting in.
“Speed and volume will not get us to sustainable affordable housing without also addressing health, well-being, and community which is where we are focusing our attention.”
How did you get your start in the field?
I worked in several offices in Melbourne, while studying and about a year after completing the program headed to the US to go to graduate school at UCLA. That decision was also made on the fly - made because I wanted to travel overseas. There was a world recession and school rather than work seemed like the more promising way to make that happen. Why LA? I got in. Full disclosure, I did not travel or study alone: I had met, and fallen for, a fellow architecture student — Hank Koning — back in first year and we have been together ever since. We moved in together, did our thesis together, and married the day before we left for the States.
Tell me how your firm came about. How has it evolved, and how have you evolved with it?
Our firm came about out of necessity — both Hank and I did not yet have work permits, but we were allowed to work for ourselves, so we started a firm. We were both twenty-seven. Luckily Hank could build so we pursued design-build work — converting garages into studios and the like. We also got a leg up from family who helped us get into small scale development. Finally we went back to the not-for-profit organizations we had met through graduate school studios and planning classes and volunteered. Some of those contacts and projects matured into paying projects. Thus began our interest in neighborhood projects — including affordable housing and community buildings — typologies marginalized at the time by the architectural profession and academia. Co-incidentally progressive not-for-profits and cities, like Santa Monica, were eager to see what architecture could bring to the development of affordable housing and rethinking of public places.
As the firm grew Hank and I raised a family in plain sight: it was clear to us that we needed to extend the same flexibility to staff as we enjoyed ourselves and we did. These days there are four principals — including Nathan Bishop and Brian Lane — leading design and a great and capable team who share our interest in social equity and sustainability. Collectively, we have been able to broaden our impact and take on increasingly larger and complex projects where we continue to explore how to strengthen neighborhood and improve daily quality of life for all.
Pico Branch Library. Completed 2014. Photography by Eric Staudenmaier.
Where are you in your career today? What is on your mind most at the moment?
We are a practice with a forty-year history designing many projects that promote social equity and address climate change. We know we are raising the bar, and at the same time the escalating urgency demands more action. I watch the newsfeed — some days I am optimistic and others not so much.
We, like many of our colleagues in Los Angeles, have stepped up our efforts to reduce carbon emissions, improve health and wellness, and are vocal advocates for regulatory reform to accelerate needed housing production. For housing it is easy to see speed of production and cost as the drivers but with a longer institutional memory than most I worry about repeating the mistakes of the 60’s. The Projects were the result of that narrow mindset. Speed and volume will not get us to sustainable affordable housing without also addressing health, well-being, and community which is where we are focusing our attention.
How we will work together is, not surprisingly, also on my mind. We are trying to get our collective heads around how our kind of post COVID architecture firm will operate. Values remain the same, but how we take advantage of the evolving concept of work and workplace is still a work in progress.
“Being an outsider is a creative position. Run with it.”
Looking back at it all, what have been the biggest challenges?
The biggest challenge is persevering.
What are you excited about right now?
I am preoccupied with a few projects we are wrapping up — one at the University of Melbourne in Australia, the Student Pavilion — that offers a neighborhood hangout for commuting students to study, dine, and socialize. And 500 Broadway, a 250 unit market-rate mixed-use housing development that has been a long time coming. It demonstrates the effectiveness of what we have been calling sticky space thinking — a philosophy that focuses on forging strong connections between home and neighborhood. And an upcoming project will be truly transformative: at Vermont Santa Monica in East Hollywood, we will be wrapping stores, landscape, and 180 units of affordable housing around a barren metro station plaza to create a community hub.
Flor 401 Lofts Supportive Housing. Completed in 2020. Photography by Eric Staudenmaier.
Geffen Academy at UCLA. Completed 2018. Photography by Eric Staudenmaier
Who are you admiring right now and why?
I have never really looked for role models as much as I have looked for inspiration from what I see and hear and read.
What is the impact you’d like to have on the world? What is your core mission? And, what does success in that look like to you?
I am not one for grand purposes. Years ago, when my son was ten or so, he wished for a world where things didn’t spill. It expressed so beautifully — though not sure what he intended — how nice it would be if life was easier to negotiate for all.
How to do that? For an architect like me it's carefully and one project at a time: based on the knowledge of the resources used to create them and the belief that the places we craft have the power to welcome, engage, connect and contribute to the quality of life of the people that use them I can’t see another way.
Finally, what advice do you have for those starting their career?
Being an outsider is a creative position. Run with it.