Michael Maltzan Architecture (MMA) is an architecture and urban design practice committed to the creation of progressive, transformative experiences that chart new trajectories for architecture, urbanism, and the public realm. Over the past two decades, this work has been recognized with numerous accolades, including five Progressive Architecture Awards, over eighteen citations from the American Institute of Architects, the Rudy Bruner Foundation’s Gold Medal for Urban Excellence, and as a finalist for the Smithsonian/Cooper-Hewitt Museum’s National Design Award.
Led by Michael Maltzan, FAIA, the practice is dedicated to the design and construction of projects for the arts and education which engage their context and community through a concentrated exploration of movement and perception. The Los Angeles-based practice engages the increasingly complex reality of our information-driven culture, crafting intimate, individual experiences woven into the broader urban context of the city at large. Through a shared belief in the role architecture can play in the contemporary city, this work has created new connections and catalyzed change across a range of scales, programs, and contexts from MoMA Queens in New York to Skid Row in Los Angeles.
Each design emerges from its specific context—the city, geography, program, history, and technology, equally—and the 30-person practice’s intensely creative, collaborative studio culture. These designs likewise engage their environment through the firm’s ongoing collaboration across disciplines to integrate sustainability and form, producing unprecedented detail and beauty.
The practice’s work has been featured in a number of publications including Architecture, Architectural Digest, Architectural Record, Architektur.Aktuell, Artforum, A+U, Domus, Blueprint, GA, Lotus, The Plan, Phaidon Press’ 10x10, Newsweek, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Wallpaper Magazine, as well as the monograph Alternate Ground. This work has also been exhibited in the Museum of Modern Art’s The Un-Private House, at the MAK Vienna and Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, in the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum’s Extreme Textiles, and at the Venice Biennale, as well in the upcoming Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum’s Triennial, and the Canadian Centre for Architecture’s Other Space Odysseys. The practice was featured in monographic exhibitions at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and at the Carnegie Museum’s Heinz Architectural Center.