Asked by friends Danny and Becca to design and fabricate special countertops as part of their comprehensive house renovation, I decided to play with the traditional Italian technique of Terrazzo. Perched on the side of a steep hill in Echo Park, the house is solely accessible via a long footpath, one of Los Angeles’ infamous Secret Stairs. The unique nature of the site required careful project management, akin to working on a remote cabin.

Lemoyne Terrazzo is my first foray into cast-in-place countertops. The open plan living room and kitchen centers around a massive island and parallel countertop. With the client’s aesthetic directions in mind, I experimented with a variety of aggregates and mixtures, featuring river rock foraged from the Big Tujunga Creek, a tributary of the Los Angeles River.

The foraged rocks were carefully selected based on pattern, visual interest and the limits of how much rock I could carry. After transporting to the studio, they were sliced into slabs, revealing striking patterns typical of igneous granodiorite and metamorphic gneiss. The slabs were carefully oriented and placed on site, combined with a varied combination of aggregates such as black sand, recycled glass, tumbled marble and crushed basalt.

This project would not have been possible without the coordination, assistance and hard labor of a number of people. The majority of the materials were transported from the street to the site by contractors Highground LA, who also assisted with site prep, casting and cleaning. Nick Rodrigues helped with the casting and finishing, and Danny helped tremedously with prep, grinding and moral support. Becca helped arrange the statement stones, and the design of the counters aligned with the excellent interior and architectural design of Project Room.