Little Tokyo Lofts Downtown Los Angeles

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'SCribs - View included with student-designed downtown pad

Little Tokyo Lofts offer architecture student Jon Kleinhample room to express himself.

Susannah Howland
Posted: 11/7/05

Feeling cramped by the tight spaces of 'SC dorms, Jon Kleinhample, a third year architecture student, needed an apartment with enough space to flex his creative muscle. He found it downtown at the Little Tokyo Lofts tucked away in the Toy District, better known as Skid Row.

Part of a growing trend of renovated, historic industrial buildings, the Little Tokyo Lofts are housed in the art deco Westinghouse Electricity Building. A far cry from the days when it provided power for Los Angeles, the building now has amenities suited for the Los Angeles lifestyle - not only does Kleinhample enjoy a sparkling pool and hot tub, each apartment comes with its own washer and dryer. Imagine a life when clean clothes came without the aid of laundry cards or quarters. That's luxury.

Open the door to Kleinhample's fifth floor loft and it seems as though you have stepped into the pages of a design magazine. A fitting feel, since Rem Koolhaas, Tadao Ando and design magazines such as Icon, inspire Kleinhample.

"I've always been interested in fixing up my room and stuff when I was living with my parents. And it's become a real passion now," Kleinhample said.

His loft provides an enviable space to design. The 725-square-foot apartment, with its 12-foot ceilings, has a wall of steel-casement windows overlooking downtown. Each morning, views of the Walt Disney Concert Hall, the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels and the Caltrans "death star" building greet Kleinhample. On clear days during the winter he can even see the snow-topped San Gabriel Mountains. Add this backdrop to Kleinhample's sense of style and it's an architectural match made in heaven.

The apartment's theme is balance. Bookshelves crammed with intensely large and serious-looking architecture books are countered by a life-size figurine of Camilla, Gonzo the Muppet's favorite hen. A red spatula sits in a jar across from a glass bowl of fortune cookies with red labels. And the view of smoggy Los Angeles is juxtaposed against a mural-sized poster of a dark, damp evergreen forest.

Kleinhample got the idea to buy the 8.5-foot by 12.5-foot poster, aptly enough, from an MTV Cribs episode. Maroon 5 lead singer Adam Levine had a wall covered with forest posters, too.

In front of the poster is one of Kleinhample's many homemade pieces of furniture, a wooden beam sitting on top of two cinder blocks. The organic quality of the shelf blends so perfectly with the posters, essentially bringing the forest into the room. One would swear it came from the pages of a Pottery Barn catalog. Yet, it cost Kleinhample nothing; he salvaged the wood when the firm he worked at this summer, redid their interior and ripped out the old structural support beams.

Another "Kleinhample original" is his desk. It started off as a table for a set model. Kleinhample "beefed it up" by adding some more 2-by-4's and casters so he could wheel it around. The top is a door he bought at Home Depot, and a sheet of smooth, frosted plastic finishes it and provides a good work surface, not to mention an Ikea-esque look for a fraction of the price.

By building his own furniture, Kleinhample can make pieces "functional for me … and it's a lot cheaper to do it, too. I just got all this wood from the studio for free."

Kleinhample also takes advantage of bargain buys. He made one table by putting "as-is" wood he bought at Ikea on top of sawhorses. "Each one of those pieces of wood is, like, a dollar." - A price fit for a college budget.

The requisite refrigerator peek proves Kleinhample, unlike most celebs on MTV Cribs, subsists on more than just Cristal. He had a pack of Sierra Nevada's Celebration Ale and two bottles of St. Peter's English Ale, a beer from Whole Foods Market he and a friend decided to try when looking for a special brew.

To be a true "crib," there must be electronics. Kleinhample does not disappoint. He built his own computer, which is loud but fast, and has a 23-inch Macintosh monitor. One corner of his room is dedicated to entertainment, complete with a record player so that the one-time jazz studies student can enjoy John Coltrane in style.

Most of Kleinhample's "rides" are of the two-wheel variety. He has two 21-speed Cannodales: one mountain bike and one road bike. The road bike is for racing with the USC Cycling team and he commutes to school on his single-gear 2005 chrome Bianchi Pista. It takes him 20 to 30 minutes to ride to campus, but Kleinhample says he could not afford both a parking pass and the loft.

Kleinhample does have one four-wheel ride. Admitting he bought his 2003 yellow Nissan XTERRA because he fell into the outdoorsy user group; it's big enough to fit all of his architecture materials and bikes.

It took Kleinhample a little more than a month to get his pad up to standards and he'll have to do it again in May - the Little Tokyo Lofts are being sold as condos and Kleinhample has to move. But, for the time being, he's enjoying the view … and the hot tub.

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