Creative Office Turns to Adaptive Re-Use

Lise Bornstein and John Arnold with the partners and founders of KFA

LOS ANGELES—Creative office is the next frontier in design, according to Lise Bornstein, a recently named partner at KFA. Borenstein and her colleague partner John Arnold oversee the firm’s adaptive reuse practice, which transforms historic properties into modern icons that are fully functional in today’s world. While it is most common in multifamily, adaptive re-use projects are becoming more and more common as Los Angeles undergoes a real estate renaissance.

“We are always searching for new markets to employ our expertise. Creative office is one vast new frontier,” Bornstein tells GlobeSt.com. “Developers want that x-factor that attracts millennials and high-value tech and media employers. So we establish amenity-rich spaces for live, work and play within a non-corporate environment, often in historic buildings such as Hollywood’s 1923 Taft building.”