RoTo Sketches: CDLT

Michael Rotondi has practiced and taught architecture locally and internationally for over forty years, always operating from his base in Los Angeles. Digitizing these sketchbooks is a process that stretches back to the late 70s and early 80s, through the early days of SCI-Arc (Arch. '75, Director 1987-1997) and seminal projects from Morphosis (1975-1991) and RoTo Architects (1991-present) up to more recent times. The online archive, to be updated and added to periodically, includes selections of scans from the collection, descriptive texts, and audio recordings discussing the books and their contents.

CEDAR LODGE TERRACE

The Cedar Lodge Terrace house, or CDLT, is an experimental remodel done in the Silverlake neighborhood of Los Angeles. From sketches the house went immediately into construction, shortening the length of time between idea and execution, and transforming each step as part of the overall design process.

60 slides (click to expand)

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  First CDLT sketch

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AUDIO CLIPS

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/915b73_cc3d2f826b1a4b8688b68d6ae7d0567f/1080p/mp4/file.mp4

"This house was remodeled out of interest [in] an experimental process that I was inspired to use after returning from a pilgrimage to see Carlo Scarpa's work in Northern Italy...certain ideas became the impetus for the next idea, so the project itself became a full-scale model, and was used as away to develop ideas."

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/915b73_9b3c93c1e8874b3da245a6d9767f323e/1080p/mp4/file.mp4

"Anything I think about, I always wonder: what is the architectural equivalent of that? It could be a rather abstract idea or an idea that starts to move into some kind of conceptual relationship, that might be embodied in certain words, and then I would begin to visualize that."

PHOTO GALLERY

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