By a Los Angeles architect tracing the intersection of design, dining, and culture across three European capitals.

LOS ANGELES: The Point of Departure

Before the first flight even boards, Los Angeles teaches me openness—light, line, and horizon. The city lives in contrast: mid-century purity in the hills, experimental glass houses in Laurel Canyon, and new hospitality spaces exploring how architecture can hold emotion.

From my studio near Silver Lake, I look out over a skyline that never truly finishes itself. It’s a city in dialogue with its own future. Every shadow and every pool of light becomes a lesson in atmosphere.

I leave Los Angeles with sharpened curiosity: How do other cities choreograph space, flavor, and feeling? My path is deliberate—Copenhagen, Milan, and Paris—a triangle of design capitals, each translating aesthetics into everyday life.

COPENHAGEN: Poetic Restraint

Copenhagen hums with quiet purpose. It builds not to impress but to endure.

At Høst on Nørre Farimagsgade, dinner feels architectural. Rough timber, brick, and candlelight frame plates that resemble miniature landscapes. The design doesn’t compete—it completes. Food and space merge into one philosophy: beauty through simplicity.

Later, I visit Frama Studio Store in a former pharmacy on Fredericiagade. Oak, stone, and brass create a language of calm. The restraint feels deliberate, tactile, human. It’s the same purity I chase in my own work back in Los Angeles.

As the evening falls, I wander Kødbyen, the old meatpacking district reborn as Copenhagen’s creative pulse. White-tiled warehouses glow under soft neon, filled with galleries and late cafés. The city proves that minimalism can still vibrate with life.

MILAN: Precision and Personality

If Copenhagen is poetry, Milan is structure. Design here is instinct—refined, technical, and alive.

Dinner at Vesta in Brera feels like a dialogue between cuisine and architecture. Bronze, terrazzo, and shadow shape the room while each dish arrives with clarity and rhythm.

A few blocks away, Spazio Maiocchi captures Milan’s genius for reinvention. Once industrial, now a cultural engine, it merges concrete rawness with contemporary art. The conversation between eras feels effortless, almost musical.

I walk through Porta Venezia at dusk. Liberty façades shimmer beside glass storefronts, cafés spill onto the sidewalks, and the air hums with design made casual. Milan never forces beauty—it measures it.

PARIS: Line, Light, Legacy

Paris doesn’t performit composes. Every cornice, every reflection on limestone, carries intention.

At Le Flandrin near Avenue Foch, architect Joseph Dirand transforms the brasserie into a quiet ode to geometry. Brass, marble, and softened edges draw the eye without demanding attention. It’s the essence of Parisian design: restraint in service of grace.

Later, I cross to Galerie Patrick Seguin, a sanctuary of modern icons—Prouvé, Le Corbusier, Perriand. Their modular visions rest here like preserved ideals. Paris turns history into dialogue.

I end in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, sipping espresso at Café de Flore, where light and conversation share the same rhythm. The city feels choreographed yet unhurried—a harmony between proportion and pleasure.

Drawing the Journey

Back in Los Angeles, I unpack more than sketches. I carry textures: the coarse plaster of Copenhagen, the brass glow of Milan, the limestone calm of Paris.

For an architect, travel isn’t escape. It’s recognition. To see how design breathes in different contexts is to remember why we build at all.

From the open light of Los Angeles to the quiet precision of Copenhagen, the intellect of Milan, and the poise of Paris, this journey becomes its own blueprint a study in elegance, restraint, and how design shapes the way we live.