CRA Chinatown Community Redevelopment Agency, Los Angeles, 2011

The Community Development Agency of the City of Los Angeles provided matching grants to building owners in historic Chinatown to upgrade and remodel their streetfront facades. Many of the buildings had been remodeled multiple times over the years and had numerous overlapping and confusing design patterns and materials. Kaplan Chen Kaplan provided designs for a group of three stores to both update the store’s appearance while integrating the new look into the traditional building patterns of the commercial district. We used a varied color scheme to differentiate the three stores and added decorative neon trim, projecting blade signs and store lights to highlight the design elements found throughout Chinatown.