No. 10 - Design Direction with Alexandra Cadiz (Part 1)
Part 1: On building what you THOUGHT you wanted
Could you imagine knowing exactly what your life path was going to be, working maniacally towards it, building it, achieving it, and then, right at the height of it, realizing that it’s not at all what you wanted?! HOLY SHIT! Could you imagine having the courage to shut it all down at its peak and starting from scratch? I introduce to you, Alexandra Cadiz.
To say I’m in awe of her is a huge understatement. Prior to this interview, we’d never actually spoken to each other; I started following her years ago, when I saw that she designed this Spanish-style quadplex (Casa Pera) that was for sale near my LA apt. I was OBSESSED with it- I’ve always wanted to do a designer flip on a property, so it seriously intrigued me. She was, at the time and even still, one of the few Asian-American women I’d seen running her own design studio.
Alexandra’s life has been a wild ride: she starts as a laser-focused architecture student primed to take over her family’s legacy firm. But soon thereafter, she’d start her own interior design studio, at the age of 25, that would experience growth so rapid that she almost broke, suddenly having to reevaluate everything about her life. Through a tough, full-stop break and a ton of self-reflection, she has found a new path for herself as the creator of her own podcast, a singer/songwriter, and the co-owner of Ceramicah (if you’re a designer, you’ve probably proposed their lamps at some point). She’s a double gemini, so it all makes sense! She is just so honest and has clearly taken the time to reflect and learn who she is today.
I’m splitting this interview up into two issues because there’s just so much I want to share about her story. Here, in part one, we’re setting the scene by learning about her start in architecture and interior design, the opportunities she’s captured during the rapid growth of Studio Cadiz, and the start of her period of transition out of design.
Let’s get into it! ✨
Note 01: This interview was transcribed from a conversation I had with Alexandra and has been condensed for clarity.
Note 02: This issue is a little long (lots of photos/graphics), so some of you may need to click “expand” at the end if you’re reading this on email.
Where did you go to school and how did your design career start?
I actually grew up overseas; I was born in Singapore and I lived in Australia, the Philippines, Dubai, and even Seattle when I was really young. I knew as soon as high school that I wanted to be an architect because of my dad and his dad; it was a generational thing. My grandfather was an architect in the Philippines in the 70’s and 80’s, he had his own company. But during the dictatorship, they fled and moved to the states, to Michigan. He had to shut down his company, and my dad went to architecture school and started his own company, kind of continuing that legacy; it was never a question for me that I’d do the same.
I always thought that I would get my degree and work for a little bit in the states and then go to the Philippines, where the headquarters of my dad’s company was, and work there, kinda work my way up to eventually take over his company. That was the plan, you know?
So going to the University of Washington was the first step for that- I loved UW, they had a great architecture program and I had family there and my parents came every summer anyway to visit my grandparents, so it just made sense. I went in my freshman year and took all the pre-req classes and I actually applied to the school of architecture a year early and got in; I was very, very determined. It was everything that I thought that I wanted; I was very wrapped into the program, I loved all the classes, I loved all the studios. Basically, during that time there weren't any signs or red flags of, oh, maybe I don't want to do this. The more I learned about it the more I really loved it. I felt like I was finding my own love for it outside of what I had learned from my dad; I grew up going to his office and going to meetings with him and just seeing the world through his design lens. So now that I was in school, I was forming my own lens and that was really exciting to me.
I know you started Studio Cadiz at a young age, but where did you cut your teeth in design?
So I graduated from UW and I started working at a big, corporate architecture firm that did a lot of similar projects to my dad’s company; I wanted to get my feet wet before I went to work for him. But when I had been there for about two years, I had this reckoning that maybe doing big, lifestyle shopping centers and corporate buildings and high-rise office buildings wasn't really my calling in design. It felt like it was so much of what my dad did that I needed to break away and figure out what my own path as a designer was. So that's when I decided to leave Seattle and move to LA. I just found that LA had much more of a creative community and it wasn’t as corporate as Seattle felt to me, at the time.
When I moved down to LA, I (started doing more) interior design. I had all the architecture under my belt (I wasn’t licensed or anything, but I knew about designing the exterior of a building), so I worked for a really small company here that focused more on interiors (with a little bit of architecture). We did small projects like restaurants, a small boutique hotel, renovating old historical buildings. So that's where I really got to cut my teeth on the details, like how something gets built, and how you affect the interior of a space. And because it was such a small company, I got to have my hand in a lot of things and work with clients and contractors directly.
When and how was Studio Cadiz born? Walk me through how you got that off the ground.
Two years was always my max (at any place), it’s when I’d hit the wall and I just couldn’t do it anymore. Whether I worked for my dad or not, I always knew I (eventually) wanted to be on my own; I wanted to have my own company, it's very much who I am. But when I hit two years (at this company), I didn’t know right away that I wanted to start Studio Cadiz; I was 25, I thought I needed more time, more experience. But the truth of it was, the end of that job was so tumultuous, with the relationships (with my bosses), that I felt like I couldn't go back to work for someone else. I was kind of traumatized with what I went through there. It was (great) in the beginning, but then it really got messy: I was always the type of person who tried to do my work to the best of my ability and be what everyone needed from me, and I think I had kind of trained them to depend on me too much; when I quit, everything went to shit and it was really affirming to me that I needed to be on my own.
I thought of (starting Studio Cadiz) more as freelancing than starting a studio; luckily I had met a guy (through Micah, my then boyfriend, now husband) who was just starting to become a real estate developer. Micah told this guy about me, and he was like, my girlfriend does design; maybe if you’re planning on doing a project, she could pitch something to you to be the designer (for it). He was brand, brand new in the (real estate) development world, he didn't really know about contractors or designers or how anything worked, so I ended up touring a few properties with him. He asked me to see a property with him before I even gave him a proposal or anything! So I was trying to plant the seeds of that relationship, and eventually, when I quit my job, he had bought a property in Venice that they were going to tear down and rebuild a brand new house, and I was the first one who got to give him a proposal for a design.
But because I was 25 and I had just left a toxic job where I didn’t get paid that much, I charged very little, especially for full architecture, full interior design, being super hands-on. It was my first time doing it, so I really didn’t know (what to do); I charged him $10,000 for the entire thing that (ended up) taking almost 2 years. I basically paid to do the project. But you know, I feel like everyone has that story where you don’t know your value. Sometimes when you're just starting out, getting those first opportunities kinda just comes…not flukey, but even though you're confident (in your skills) you don't really know your financial value yet. For me, I walked in there giving him a pitch, I had a whole deck and proposal prepared, a contract (that I literally found online with part of a contract my Dad sent me once), and the rest of it I just made up.
I think that's what people forget a lot when they’re starting their own thing- you just make it up. Nobody is telling you how much you should charge or what needs to be in your contract. You just need to figure it out and put the puzzle pieces together. The first time you do it is not going to be perfect, you just go into the experience (understanding) that and learning from it. So every single time something would happen in a project after that (first one), I’d add to my contract, add another clause, raise my prices, etc. After that Venice project (which got me so many other projects), I raised my price every time because I was building my confidence. (The developer) referred me to another client and those were my two first projects, literally from there it was all word of mouth or referrals.
And were you by yourself, did you have a team?
Just by myself, it was really intense. I think I’ve always been a hard worker because I've never known any other way to operate. I just grind- in architecture school, I was the one who was there the latest. The thing about design is: you have to put in the hours. It's not just work smarter not harder, it takes time. You’re not going to find the perfect chair for the living room or the perfect fabric to upholster something in one hour, it might take days, it might take weeks. It all is very time consuming, especially since I was doing all the construction drawings, I was doing all the spec-ing of materials, tile, plumbing fixtures, and then for the Venice project I did all the staging. People who start big and successful companies always say, if I knew what it was going to be like back then I don't know if I would've done it. I think my naivety helped me, I knew I was in over my head and I just kept going because I thought I had to. I thought I needed to be a designer in order to be accepted and liked by everyone, especially my parents.
From what I can see, from the outside looking in, you're starting to climb pretty quickly. I know that, at some point, there was a breaking point. But before we get to that, I wanted to talk about how I found you: through your Casa Pera project. I went to the open house because I remember thinking, these are not typical real estate photos that I'm seeing on Zillow. It really got my attention. Tell me about that venture and any lessons you learned from that.
That was a very significant project for me because it was the first time that Micah had bought a property! We met (at UW) and he always worked in architecture, but he was always really intrigued with the real estate developers that came and presented to them. He was like, these are the guys making the decisions and I want to be doing that. So this was his first foray into it; he put his own money into it, he and (the Venice developer) split it, and they hired me to do the design. Well, actually, the design was very much a collab between Micah and I, which was…interesting. At that point (in my career), I kinda had a whole process down: I started with concept, went into schematic, then design development, then construction drawings and all of that, and I ran the show with my other clients. Especially if they weren't designers or developers, if they were just homeowners, they kinda handed off the reins. This was different because Micah had a design background AND he was the owner of the building AND it was his own money. At the time we weren't married, so it wasn’t ours; I was acting just as a designer because I didn't own any stake in it.
When you walk into Casa Pera, it’s kind of Spanish; there were a lot of niches that we carved into the walls and we wanted it to be a very warm but muted palette. We wanted to bring this (poorly maintained) Spanish building back to life, make it feel modern and livable but still have charm and character. We were really inspired by the house that we live in; we live in this historical Spanish building that was designed in the 20s (it has a ton of arches). So we would literally just sit at home and look around and think, what if we did something like that, what if we created this little nook that you could put a desk or a credenza in. We really thought about how someone could live in the space and how to create moments. That was always what I liked to do in design: if you're standing in one area, what are you looking at? If you walk in the door, what are you going to see?
So that process was both of us getting to put our design hats on, all the while really considering budget and time and permits and all the regulations. There were so many things that we were both learning because it was our first time going to the city and getting all this stuff done; in my other projects, the contractor did all that. I would give them my drawings and they would figure it all out. But for this project, we didn't have a GC (Micah was essentially the GC, also the developer we were working with was incredibly cheap, he definitely had taste and really appreciated good design, but they were just trying to do it as cheaply as possible). It wasn't smart and I don't recommend it (this way) at all, but that's just what we did because we were naive.
In the end, I’m really proud that it didn’t look cheap. We invested in certain things, like the tile in the bathroom, plaster in the showers and stuff. And at the time, Micah was getting into ceramics, so he made a bunch of stuff to stage, and he made all the triangle tiles for the front steps too.
We named it Casa Pera because we call each other pear (it's an inside joke); it was definitely a labor of love and we really put ourselves and our relationship and our taste into that as much as we could.
Would you ever do a project like that again?
We did actually! We did another project right after that’s just up the street. But the thing about Casa Pera was, we gutted the entire building and we re-did the floor plans of every unit because they had previously been small, open studios and we wanted them to be 1 bedrooms. So we were trying to figure out how to make them feel spacious and open, but also have an actual bedroom, and we added decks as well, because we thought outdoor spaces would help make it feel less cramped. For the next project, the building was already pretty good- the floor plans and the layouts were great, and it was also a Spanish building so it already had a lot of character. It hadn't been renovated badly, it was just very old.
It wasn’t as much of a shit-show as Casa Pera (the design turned out beautiful, the shit-show part was just logistics, time, money, Micah and I butting heads on a lot of stuff). This one was easier because it was just cosmetic updates, BUT it was going on during the pandemic. Everything got really iffy, and especially since Ceramicah started to take off, we decided we wouldn't do it again. The only way I would do it again is if we did it for ourselves, if we renovated a duplex or a house and lived in it. Even then, I still need a little bit of time. The design part is amazing, especially the concepting, but the actual building of it, dealing with contractors, dealing with all the logistics, the timing and everything and so much money being on the line, that's the part that's super stressful and that makes you want to tear your hair out.
For these interviews, I talk to a lot of folks who made the switch into design and you’re someone who actually left interior design, do you remember what it felt like to be in that period of transition?
Oh yea, I feel like I'm always in a period of transition these days, that’s just my norm! Can I say something to people who are switching into design? I had such tunnel vision with what I thought I had to do (because of my Dad); the thing I wish I knew: there are so many different ways you can be in the design industry. One of my friends moved from music publishing into design, but she's in sales, so she works for a really cool, high-end home store and she makes a lot more money than (if she was) a junior designer at a design company.
Sometimes I'm afraid that my story will scare people away from the industry; I can paint it in a bad light because of what I’ve been through. But it was my personal journey. My takeaway was that, throughout my whole 20’s, I was still learning who I was and when I finally figured that out, I realized that the design industry was not for me. But I think the opposite happens for a lot of people! Like, wow, I really love thinking about making space come together, materials for this and that and putting it all together. I realized that I was doing all these things and putting so much pressure on myself to be really good, keep growing, get higher profile clients and more expensive projects and, at the end of the day, I was still picking fabric, running around the PDC (Pacific Design Center), and I just didn't care (about it)!
I'm about ideas and I like talking about feelings and concepts and how people exist in the world; I like making people feel something. And what I was doing for more than 8 hours every day with design drained me because it wasn't how my brain is designed to function. There were three big (realizations for me as I phased out Studio Cadiz).
Next week, we’ll dive deep into those three major realizations Alexandra had as she made the tough decision to shut down Studio Cadiz and the struggles she went through to find what was next (and right) for her. We talk about all the uncertainty that comes with taking the leap, spending your savings, and learning to trust your gut all while navigating it all at the start of the pandemic. I really resonated with Alexandra’s story. It’s really hard to admit when what you wanted for so long is not actually what you want when you finally have it. - JOLYN