Listen
Weeks 1–4
Site walks at different hours, a sun study before a single sketch, and long conversations about how you actually live or work.
Los Angeles, CA · Architecture & Research · Est. 2014
Built forthe hourof good light.
We're a small Los Angeles studio that designs houses, workplaces, and cultural rooms around the way the light actually moves through them.
Residential · Workplace · Arts & Culture · Research34.05° N — Golden hour 7:48 PM
Most buildings are drawn in plan. Ours begin in section — because the section is where the light lives.
We are a studio of eleven in a daylit room in Atwater Village. We design a few buildings a year, slowly, with the people who will live and work in them.
Every project starts with a sun study and ends with a walk through the finished rooms at golden hour. The part in between is the job.
— Mara Estes, Founding PrincipalWestlight Architecture & Research
Selected work
Eight rooms we'd happily live in.
Built work · 2021 — 2025
ResidentialA hillside house arranged as three stepped pavilions under one long roof.Cordillera HouseMount Washington · 2025
ResidentialTwo small houses on one lot, turned to share a single planted court.Doble CourtyardSilver Lake · 2024
WorkplaceA daylight workshop for a print studio — sawtooth roof, north glass.Halftone StudiosFrogtown · 2024
Arts & CultureA board-formed concrete room that borrows its ceiling light from the sky.Vellum GalleryCulver City · 2023
ResidentialA low courtyard house that disappears into its orchard at dusk.Loma Vista ResidenceOjai · 2023
Arts & CultureA small public reading room wrapped in a single curved concrete wall.Reading Room WestPasadena · 2022
ResidentialA warehouse floor reorganized by light wells instead of walls.Marfil LoftArts District · 2022
WorkplaceA coastal workplace planned around a shaded outdoor room.Tidemark OfficeEl Segundo · 2021
Cordillera House — a house that tells time
Case study · Mount Washington · 2025
GRADE +9FT · SW EXPOSURE · R1 HILLSIDEPractice
Four ways we put light to work.
01ResidentialHillside houses, courtyard houses, small lots made generous.02WorkplaceStudios and offices that run on daylight, not fluorescents.03Arts & CultureGalleries, reading rooms, and small civic rooms with big ceilings.04ResearchDaylight studies, housing prototypes, and the occasional manifesto.
Process
Slow where it matters, fast where it doesn't.
A typical residential project, from first site walk to keys. Commercial and cultural work follows the same four movements at its own tempo.
Sketch
Weeks 5–12
Three honest schemes — never one decoy. Cardboard models you can hold, plans you can read, budgets attached from day one.
Shape
Months 4–9
The chosen scheme is developed in section first — light, air, and structure agree before the finishes are even discussed.
Build
Months 10–22
We stay on site through completion. Weekly walks, full-size mockups of every important junction, no surprises at the end.
Material library
Eight materials, chosen for how they age.
We keep a deliberately short shelf. Everything on it gets better with sun, salt air, and twenty years of hands.
White stuccoSmooth steel-trowel · 20/30 sand
Board-formed concrete1×6 doug fir liner · sealed
White oakRift-sawn · hardwax oil
Poppy enamelNo. 27 · doors + steel
ZelligeHand-glazed 4×4 · bone
Blackened steelHot-rolled · waxed
Low-iron glassDual-glazed · 70% VLT
Decomposed granitePalomino · stabilized
Mara Estes, AIA — and the Atwater Village workroom
The studio
Eleven people. One long table.
Westlight was founded in 2014 on a simple bet: that a small studio, taking fewer projects and drawing them more carefully, would build better rooms than a big one moving fast. Twelve years and forty-eight buildings later, the bet is holding. Architects, a landscape designer, and one very good model-maker share a single table — and every project gets all of us.
V.1Three schemes, always. Never one idea defended to the death.
V.2Budgets are design tools, not bad news delivered late.
V.3The section leads. Plans follow light, not the other way around.
V.4We stay through the build. Drawings are promises; we keep them on site.
11People in the studio
48Built works since 2014
3Schemes, every project
100%Projects with a sun study
The people
One table. Every name on the door.
The person who sketches your project is the person who walks the site with you at golden hour. No handoffs — just the people whose work is on these walls.
Mara Estes, AIA
Founding Principal
Residential · Light
Founded the studio in 2014. Believes a house should tell time.
Daniel Okonkwo
Principal
Workplace
Draws the section before the plan, every single time.
Lucía Marín
Principal
Arts & Culture
Galleries and reading rooms — the ceiling is the show.
Theo Park
Associate Principal
Detailing · Construction
On site through completion. Owns the full-size mockups.
Priya Nair
Senior Architect
Residential · Workplace
Runs the sun studies that start every project.
Sam Whitlock
Principal, Research
Daylight · Housing
Keeps the tape measure and the manifestos.
Recognition
They designed the house around an hour of light we didn’t know we had. Every evening it shows up like a guest.
The studio they built us changed how the whole team works. Nobody fights over the window seats — every seat is one.
Westlight drew the gallery in section before plan. The ceiling is the whole show, and it cost less than our old lighting bill.
Journal
Notes from the field.
Research notes from the studio
May 2026ResearchThe 4 p.m. problem: cooling west rooms without curtainsNotes from a year of measuring three of our west-facing rooms — and the screens, fins, and trees that fixed them.Mar 2026StudioCordillera House photographed at every hourWe sent a photographer for one full day, 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. The house tells time better than we hoped.Jan 2026Field notesWhat we learned measuring 40-year-old courtyard housesA winter spent with a tape measure in the courtyards of mid-city — the dimensions that still work, and the ones that never did.
Start a project
Build for the light you already own.
Tell us about your site — even if it's just an address and a hunch. We take on eight to ten new projects a year, and every one starts with a conversation and a sun study. No fee for either.
studio@westlight.example(323) 555-01273117 Glendale Blvd, Atwater Village, Los AngelesStudio visits Thursdays, 3–6 PM