Q+A: Architect Bruce Bolander

Bruce Bolander designed the Chicago offices of the Whitehouse film editing company we featured in June. I was really impressed with his work and eager to share more of it with you. Here Bolander talks about the impact of place on design and his roots as a furniture maker.

Above: Bolander’s office is 100 feet across a driveway from his home in Malibu.

While studying architecture you also learned to build furniture. How do those skills impact the buildings you design today? I still design some furniture and every once in a while even build something.  I think that designing and building furniture gave me a better sense of both material and assemblage, details of how different pieces (small in the case of furniture and larger with architecture) unite.

Above: The Mosquito table  and Hoist stool designed and fabricated by Bolander.

For the Whitehouse Chicago office I designed the edit desks, the reception desk and also a table that we ended up using both in the lunchroom/café as well as in the conference rooms and other meeting areas.

It is a simple plywood table that is built with just a couple of sheets of plywood and simple tools.  It is made of a top and two base pieces that all just key together.  To illustrate the table to the client I built a rough prototype myself in a few hours.

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Ideas: The Whitehouse

Not that Whitehouse. This Whitehouse is a film editing company that started life in London – in a little white house. 20 years on they now have offices all over the world, including the Chicago office, featured here, which was designed by Los Angeles architect Bruce Bolander.

Above: The Whitehouse’s updated Chicago office. Photo by Mike Schwartz. Below: The company’s partners – Rick Lawley, Matthew Wood and David Brixton. Photo: Jen Shelley

Whitehouse partners and editors David Brixton, Rick Lawley and Matthew Wood were deeply involved in the creative decision-making of the project. ”Often what’s missing on a commercial project is the client point-of-view. Rick Lawley took the time to fly out to Chicago with me several times,” says Bolander.  “We’d spend the car ride out discussing the project, and then I’d have the time on the flight to draw what we had talked about, Four undisturbed hours without the phone or computer to work side-by-side with the client is a rare creative luxury in this day and age.”

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