Designing spaces where stories unfold

Paul Chan runs an LA architecture and design studio that treats every project as a set: a real place where life unfolds and stories get told. The work spans private homes and hospitality, from residences in Silver Lake and Los Feliz to restaurants and retail like 5 PAS and Elorea LA. The thread across all of it is detail. Paul wants his attention on the design, not on the admin that surrounds it.

Paul has been doing this a long time, and his problem with spreadsheets was specific: nothing carried. As he puts it, "there is no institutional knowledge, it doesn't carry from one project to another." Every new project started from a blank grid.

The structure he had figured out last time, the way he liked to organize finishes or lighting or furniture, had to be rebuilt by hand each time. That meant duplicated effort, inconsistent formats between projects, and hours spent keeping information lined up instead of designing.

Schedules are the tool Paul reaches for most. "It's about organizing information in a pre-thought-out way that Programa has already done for us," he says. "That's the heavy lifting. I'm just entering the information." The structure is already there, so the tool gets out of the way: "you're really just thinking about the design, and entering the information is second nature at this point."

Two things changed how the studio runs:

First, knowledge carries forward. Paul takes a format that worked on one project and moves it straight into the next, so there's consistency from one job to the next instead of a blank start every time.

Second, clients sign off in one place. Paul sends a link and the client reviews each item: approve, or "we don't like that, can we change that?" Approvals and change requests live in the same thread, so the feedback that used to scatter across email now sits against the actual item it's about.

For Paul, success is holding the thread from the first idea all the way through construction: "having a vision in the beginning and being able to carry it through the design and construction phase, having a steady handle on that, is the key."

His schedules on a single project run deep, hundreds of line items across furniture, lighting, finishes, plumbing, electronics and hardware, and they stay organized from concept to install. In his words, Programa is "proof" that the vision held.