Founded in 2004 by David Montalba, Montalba Architects is a multi-disciplinary firm with studios in Santa Monica, CA and Lausanne, Switzerland producing select architecture and urban design-related projects. The studio’s work ranges in scope and context, from rural landscapes in the Swiss Alps to the dense urban scapes of New York and Los Angeles. By embracing a humanistic approach that considers not only a client’s needs and site considerations, but also the cultural and economic environment, solutions are realized that are contextual, yet conceptual and visionary in their intent, effect and appeal. Each project emphasizes experiences by creating environments that are both socially responsive and aesthetically progressive.
The studio approach to design goes beyond architecture to encompass all elements of making, bringing a more complete cohesion to each project. We work with artists, builders and clients collectively to find new design expressions to solve problems. Rather than apply aesthetics, solutions are conceived to solve pragmatic requirements, constructability and context. We approach design in terms of the big ideas that shape the project and begin to magnify the scope from there.
We hold fast to the idea that architecture is the realm where art, philosophy, and vision collide with the demands of reality. We strive to make a more explicit connection between function and place, using architecture as a framework that enhances both the experience and the qualities of the site. Our projects treat material and light as equal partners, using the visual language of modernism and a philosophy that values craft and collaboration just as much as aesthetics and poetry.
Our work is responsive to both the fundamentals of site, place, program, and client, and the process of experiential-driven refinement, an ongoing dialogue between the essentials of shelter and warmth and the potential offered by technology and materiality. The studio creates spaces and architecture that go well beyond pragmatic function to shape new spatial opportunities, taking materials and structural components to craft spaces infused with light and a sense of flow that seems to integrate.