Who We Are
When it comes to the work of actually constructing a home, it’s common to find that most design/build firms are simply paper contractors who hire outside subcontractors. CarbonShack Design is different. Most of the tradespeople who work on our projects are long-time members of our staff. We have our very own foundation team of framers, finishers, masons, plasterers, cabinet makers, hardware specialists, and tile setters in-house. And where there are gaps in our labor pool, we fill in with long-time collaborators with whom we have developed deep trust and mutual respect.
Combining our roster of skilled artisans with a committed and highly talented staff of in-house architects and interior designers creates a synergy and opportunity for problem solving that gives us an added competitive edge over traditional architecture firms or contractors. We offer a one-stop shop, soup-to-nuts approach to customized home design and construction that provides our clients with top quality, dependable personalized service.
Our Team
Building a brand-new house or remodeling an existing one can only be successful through an engaged and synergistic process. Our in-house licensed architects and talented interior designers will guide you through every step, from feasibility studies through complete design and production documents, approval of entitlements, materials selection and interior furnishings. Our skilled team of experienced and knowledgeable fabricators and craftspeople work collaboratively with the designers and architects with close attention to detail.
Combining design and construction into one seamless team comes from a desire to not only meet and exceed our client’s expectations, but our own as well.
Stephen Pallrand
Stephen Pallrand's background in construction, architecture, architectural history, painting, and set design has aided him in pulling together the diverse group of artists, craftsmen, architects and designers who work on the CarbonShack projects. His father was a scientist/educator ... and his mother an educator and patron of the arts. This exposure to art, science and education led him to realize that building in an environmentally conscious manner is unimportant if you do not communicate the need and educate the consumer, for there are no green buildings, only green users. Our understanding of the environment is changing radically and so is the fate of the earth based on our actions as a civilization. Art and architecture have always played a critical role in representing the knowledge and culture of a period and Pallrand's use of the CarbonShack projects is to transform our shelters, our homes, into vehicles of change.
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Rachel Mayeri
Rachel Mayeri, an LA-based artist working at the intersection of art and science, is the lead designer for CarbonShack. Her videos, installations, and writing projects explore topics ranging from the history of special effects to the human animal. The multi-year project "Primate Cinema" investigates the boundary between human and non-human primates in a series of video experiments. This work has shown at Sundance ... , Berlinale, Ars Electronica, and dOCUMENTA (13). Recent commissions include the environmental art project "Critters Speak" about the Gulf of Mexico ecosystem seven years after Deepwater Horizon, with Brandon Ballengée, funded by National Academy of Sciences Keck Futures Institute; the animated opera "Ofeo Nel Canale Alimentare" about the digestive tract, supported by Imagine Science Films. As professor of media studies at Harvey Mudd College, she teaches courses such as Animal Media Studies, Art & Science, and Stories from the Anthropocene. Rachel's goal with the CarbonShack project is to make visible the invisible natural processes that are a part of our homes and communicate the critical interlinkage between ourselves and the natural environment.
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Derek Ryder
Derek Ryder is the lead architect at Home Front Build, a design-build firm in Los Angeles which specializes in the use of innovative green building techniques. Since graduating from architecture school, Derek has explored how to design and build in a way that minimizes our footprint on the environment. From the passive solar benefit of earth construction in the Southwest ... to the Platinum level LEED certified CarbonShack project, Derek has always pursued projects that reduce the carbon emissions associated with our built environment. After receiving a Bachelor of Arts from Wesleyan University, Derek Ryder graduated from the Yale School of Architecture with a Master of Architecture degree in 1999. Derek became a licensed architect in California in 2011, and a LEED Accredited Professional in 2007. With a long-standing commitment and passion for green building, Derek has been a member of the USGBC-LA Chapter since 2010, attending the GreenBuild Conferences in 2007 and 2012. Additionally, Derek has been active with the American Institute of Architecture's Los Angeles Chapter on their Committee on the Environment and the Urban Design Committee, participating in charrettes and organizing presentations.
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Charlie Markowitz
Charlie Markowitz is an Environmental Data Analyst working to increase awareness of the carbon cost of building construction. His recent focus has been on strategizing how to create efficient building design, collaborating with green tech startups to devise innovative construction strategies, and providing a suite of open source data tools to maximize ... smart building operations, grid edge technologies, and material efficiency. While the public's current paradigm is to look at the building sector as many inefficient structures that can be upgraded, Charlie's goal is to create a shift in which the public realizes the building sector is the node at which carbon neutral energy, sustainably supplied water, responsibly generated materials, and zero waste intersect in our increasingly renewable economy.
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Greg Roth
Greg Roth brings more than 20 years of experience in the worlds of architectural, graphic and interior design. After earning a Master of Architecture degree from the Southern California Institute of Architecture, Greg spent several years in commercial and hospitality architectural design before segueing to residential interiors. A co-founder and Director of Design for LA-based baked goods emporium, Modern Bite, Greg spent 6 years immersed in ... flour, sugar and custom-designed cakes and cookies, emblazoned with his unique brand of colorful, edible graphics. As Senior Interior Designer at CarbonShack, Greg focuses his talents, passions and energies on creating vibrant, inviting spaces for contemporary living that on every level possible seek to enhance our connections to the world around us.
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Alfonso Garcia
Alfonso Garcia grew up in small town Mexico where if you wanted a house, you built it yourself; there were no construction companies. Alfonso leaned construction as a boy helping the family build the original adobe structure and later "modern" additions in brick. He was taught to apply plaster by his ... grandfather using worn soles of old leather shoes for trowels. Building techniques were passed down generation-to-generation out of necessity but this link and exposure to historic processes has been critical in Alfonso's approach to green building. In his role as construction coordinator for Home Front Build and CarbonShack he has reintroduced straw plaster to the company's offerings not only because it is an historic technique, based in the adobe construction of his childhood, but because the use of agricultural waste acts as a carbon sequester and replaces industrial produced material. Alfonso approaches green construction through the lens of his heritage drawing on the strength that before industrialization many building techniques were low impact out of necessity.
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Emmanuel Reyes
Emmanuel Reyes is a finish carpenter who has worked at Home Front Build for decades. He learned the craft of carpentry from his father in Mexico before he moved to Los Angeles. Emmanuel believes a carpenter is someone who must have magic ... in his hands to be able to do the work. For Emmanuel the design is only an intent, a sketch on a piece of paper. It is the process where the product truly evolves; with each cut, each angle, decisions are made that are the real creative process to evolve a three-dimensional object, be it a cabinet front or a furniture piece.
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Our Backstory
There was a time when being green was a necessity, not a lifestyle choice. Before the age of mechanical heating and air conditioning, builders evolved various passive strategies for comfort, strategies that worked. That’s why at CarbonShack Design, we look to the past for our energy efficient designs, not just the future.
From the very beginnings of our firm’s foundation, restoring and remodeling an array of unique historic Los Angeles homes, we have continuously developed a deep and wide base of knowledge about the way homes are built and used. We are passionate about the vernacular architectural forms found in southern California: from Victorian to Contemporary, Craftsman and Spanish Colonial Revival to Traditional and Mid-Century modern. Preserving our architectural legacy is an important goal of the company. Not only have our staff served on historic committees, but we also keep an extensive yard of salvage materials for use in our remodel and construction projects.
Our approach has always been to honor the existing character of a house, while adapting it to the way we live today. But bringing a home into the 21st century requires more than simply honoring its past. Our designs combine the modern solar panel with the thicker stucco walls of the Spanish Revival Era, which repelled the heat of the sun and maintained the cooler, elegant interiors of the period, while reducing the need for mechanical cooling. We employ the generous sun shading eaves that were utilized in the Craftsman & Prairie period, the graceful towers of Arab and Moorish traditions designed to vent off heat as well as the cooling effects of Mediterranean central courtyards.
By combining these time-honored strategies with modern technologies, we can create wholly new and revolutionary ways to live in our built environments that draw on our pasts as well as our present, and set us up for the future.
Affiliations and Awards
Home is about community, as well as place. It is not just how we live in the spaces within, but how our home relates to the community outside. We are conscious of our responsibility to integrate our projects into the existing community. As such, we are proud to be affiliated with – and to have had our projects recognized by - a number of local and regional organizations whose work we honor and respect.