Wick Architecture

10/22/2026

Gold Diggers started as a bar in East Hollywood, well before there were eleven rooms and a recording studio on the property. A closer look at the room where it all started, and how it fits into the campus around it.

10/19/2026

Vidiots started as a video store in Santa Monica back in 1985, and is now a nonprofit revival theater inside the historic Eagle Theatre in Eagle Rock, a building that hadn’t run as a cinema since the 1990s. Bringing it back meant gutting the interior almost entirely: changing the slope of the theater floor, doubling the size of the lobby, and rebuilding the retail space out front, where guests can still rent from a wall of VHS and DVDs. The 35mm screenings routinely sell out, drawing a crowd that comes as much for the nostalgia and creative community that only Vidiots can deliver

10/16/2026

Adaptive reuse and historic preservation often overlap, but they are not interchangeable.

Preservation protects the features that give a place its historic significance. Adaptive reuse gives an existing building a new purpose. When the two come together, the work becomes a careful negotiation between what should remain, what needs to change, and how a building can continue to serve its community.

That process requires more than an appreciation for old buildings. It requires a clear understanding of character-defining features, existing conditions, code requirements, structural constraints, and the possibilities hidden within what is already there.

We love these projects because they begin with discovery. Existing buildings bring history, constraints, surprises, and qualities that cannot be recreated from scratch. The work asks us to listen closely, solve carefully, and find new possibilities within what is already there. The goal is not to freeze a building in time. It is to help it evolve without losing what makes it worth keeping.

10/08/2026

10/06/2026

Lazy Eye is a production office in Frogtown, near the LA river, set inside an existing one story CMU block building. Sandblasting the exterior revealed an unexpected, variegated rust concrete block, and that discovery became the starting point for the entire material palette, from the exposed wood trusses to the book matched oak paneling to the steel, plaster and concrete throughout.

In partnership with Andrew Lindley

10/03/2026

Before it was an eleven room hotel and recording studio, Gold Diggers looked like this: the same East Hollywood building and the same sign, sitting mostly vacant for close to 20 years. Getting it ready for renovation meant a serious clean up first, clearing out squatters and years of neglect before any real construction could begin. We kept the bones and the name, and rebuilt everything else from there. Then and now

09/28/2026

A closer look at the material choices behind the La Brea offices of Vitality Institute, the company behind the VI Peel treatment used in dermatology offices and medspas nationwide: stone floors, colorful ceramic tile, and natural wood set against the original wood structure and concrete waffle slab structure we left exposed. Large steel doors and refurbished skylights carry that same boldness into even the smallest details, like this arched marble mirror.

09/23/2026

The recording studio at Gold Diggers sits inside a bow-and-truss warehouse behind the main building, full of character that just needed cleaning up. Rather than starting over, we leaned into what was already there, keeping the original bones and breathing new life into the space instead. Slayer left their logo spray painted on the wall from years of using it as a rehearsal space, and an early version of Guns N’ Roses is said to have practiced there too. Now run in partnership with Kingsize Soundlabs, the complex holds nearly 10 studios built around an API 2448 console and a wall of vintage analog gear: From Leon Bridges to Camila Cabello, many have recorded incredible albums here.(Andrew’s band is still waiting on their slot.)

09/21/2026

We call this one the Frank’s Camera Building, though the official address is 5717 Figueroa. It started as a Kress department store, the same national chain that once had a location on Hollywood Boulevard now home to Frederick’s of Hollywood, and later became Frank’s Camera, the shop most people in Highland Park still remember it by. That’s also where the oversized Frank sign on the roof came from, and we kept it. Bringing the building back meant a seismic retrofit, an elevator upgrade, and a storefront redesign that met the city’s historic preservation requirements without compromising how it functions today.

09/17/2026

Beginning as a bar in East Hollywood, Gold-Diggers grew into something bigger: an eleven room hotel and a working recording studio built inside a warehouse with decades of music history behind it. Over the next few weeks we’re walking the full campus on video, one space and story at a time, starting here with the big picture.