David Saik Studio Turns a 1940s Venice Sewing Factory into a Zero-Energy House for Emeco

Venice, Los Angeles, has spent years replacing its modest older buildings with new boxes, so the decision to keep a 1940s sewing shop at the edge of a residential street is a statement in itself. Furniture maker Emeco, led by owner Gregg Buchbinder and his daughter Jaye Buchbinder, the company's head of sustainability, asked David Saik Studio to retain, restore and rejuvenate the building rather than clear the lot. The result is Emeco House, roughly 3,500 square feet of exhibition space, workspace, event space and guest quarters, completed in 2022 and powered entirely by its own solar panels.

What interests us most is how closely the architecture tracks the client's product logic. Emeco built its reputation on chairs made from what other industries throw away, and its stated ethos is to start with what is left over and make something that lasts. Saik applies the same principle to a building. He adds very little, edits a great deal, and puts one gesture at the center: a large cactus growing up through a light well, visible from nearly every room. It is a small, legible and slightly cheeky idea, and it does more spatial work than its size suggests.

A Street Front That Opens and Closes

The pale peach plaster facade does not compete with the bungalows around it. A big framed window behind a mature tree lets passersby see someone reading inside, which makes the building legible as a place for people rather than a showroom. Next to it, a metal roll-up shutter does the most practical job on the street: closed, the house reads as a quiet block between concrete walls; raised, it reveals a concrete forecourt, a planted bed and a glazed steel-framed entrance.

That shutter is a leftover from the building's working past, and Saik keeps it working. The front can switch from private home to public venue in a few seconds, which is exactly what a building meant to host designers, architects and neighbors needs to do.

The Cactus as Organizing Device

The central light well is the project's spine. A tall cactus rises from a soil bed in the middle of the plan, and the corridors, benches and doors are arranged around it. In daylight it pulls sun deep into what was once a dim, introverted factory floor. Throughout the day it keeps the outdoors in view from almost anywhere inside.

The detailing around it stays restrained. A timber bench floats off a white wall under a single linear light, a steel-framed door sits beside it, and the cactus leans into the frame. Seen from outside through an opening cut into rough plaster, the well becomes a vitrine of succulents and gravel. Desert planting is the obvious choice for Los Angeles, but here it also signals low water use and low maintenance, so the building's climate thinking shows up in its landscape and not only in a meter.

A Ground Floor Built for Work and Display

The ground floor holds exhibition, work and event space. The gallery room keeps its exposed rafters and threads light strips between them, so the old roof structure becomes the lighting rig. A long timber table with stools runs beneath it, and a picture window frames the trees outside. The room is set up to serve as a meeting room, a dining hall or a product display without any change to its fabric.

Saik treats furniture as architecture throughout. Built-in benches at the front window and a long run of seating along the garden glazing mean the building itself provides much of the seating. For a chair company that might look like self-sabotage. We read it as confidence: the fixed benches frame the movable products instead of competing with them. A narrow side passage with a concrete stair and a plastered planter wall keeps the circulation outdoors and in the sun.

Upstairs Living Under Exposed Joists

The social floor upstairs, reached by an exterior staircase, is where the house feels most like a home. The timber ceiling joists are left exposed and give the room a steady rhythm overhead. Below them sit a green sofa, a pair of leather sling chairs and a long, low bookshelf against a white wall. The palette is plain, and the furniture supplies the color and texture.

That low shelf matters. Kept below eye level, it lets the walls read as continuous surfaces and keeps attention on the ceiling structure and the light. White timber cabinetry in the kitchen carries the same calm tone. Nothing here is precious, which suits a space meant to host guests and to age without fuss.

Guest Rooms and Honest Hardware

The sleeping areas for visiting guests sit along a corridor beneath the same wood beams. A galvanized steel window, a timber door frame and three wooden pegs on a white wall make up most of the decor. The pegs are a small detail with a clear message: this is a place for short stays, with storage that encourages you to bring less.

Galvanized steel, plain timber and white plaster share one quality: they look better with wear. That fits the brief's emphasis on durable craftsmanship and on a building that ages gracefully, and it echoes the industrial aluminum of Emeco's best-known chairs.

Terraces, Shade and the Back of the House

At the rear, a canvas shade sail stretches over a mesh-railed balcony, and a glazed ground-floor room sits below. The living room opens fully through a glass wall onto a timber deck, so in good weather the boundary between inside and outside almost disappears. The sail is a low-tech, replaceable way to control solar gain, and that kind of passive move is what makes a zero-energy target achievable on a small rooftop array.

The balcony is the project at its most modest: a white stool, a cactus bed and a cinder block wall catching low evening sun. Saik left the block unfinished, a reminder that this was always a utilitarian alley building. Leaving it alone was a design decision, and probably the right one.

Plans and Drawings

The drawings show how tight the plan really is. In the longitudinal sections, the pitched-roof studio at the street end, the chair display shelving, the central light well and the rear courtyard form a single sequence, with the cactus marking the midpoint. The cross sections through the light well make clear how a single vertical void serves both floors. The street and alley elevations show two different faces: a shingled canopy and tall gate on the public side, a garage door and bistro-table balcony on the service side.

Why This Project Matters

Emeco House argues that sustainability can begin with refusing to demolish. Keeping a 1940s factory shell, adding solar panels, cutting one light well and planting desert species is not glamorous, but it is credible. On a 3,500-square-foot scale, the arithmetic of retained material and on-site energy is easy to follow, and that clarity is useful for a profession still prone to green rhetoric.

It also shows how a brand building can avoid becoming a showroom. By making the space a working venue for neighbors and the design community, and by building furniture into the architecture, David Saik Studio and Emeco produced something closer to a clubhouse than a store. The cactus will keep growing, the galvanized steel will dull, and the plaster will weather. The building was designed with that in mind.

Emeco House by David Saik Studio, Venice, Los Angeles, United States. Area: 3,500 ft². Completed: 2022. Photography: Martin Tessler.

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