Lifestyle
A Monument to Chocolate Is Wrapped in Layers of Mexican History
This article is part of our Design special section on retrofits.
In Mexico City’s urban core, history runs deep. Beneath the 19th-century buildings erected after Mexico’s independence and the Baroque structures that remain from the Spanish colonial city lie the ruins of the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan.
Preserving historical structures in the city center is dauntingly complicated said Javier Sánchez, whose architectural firm JSa recently retrofitted a 17th-century house steps from the Zócalo, the main square. What spurred him to take on the project? Chocolate.
“Cacao offers this connection between past and present,” said Agustín Otegui, whose family was involved in commissioning JSa in 2013 to turn the three-story building into the city’s Museum of Cacao & Chocolate. (The institution is part of a network in the Americas and Europe that are devoted to the history of chocolate.) Speaking in a video interview, he added, “You have this bean that was used by the Maya and Aztecs, and now it’s a daily delicacy. It’s a link to the past that keeps going.”
Having designed an extension of the Spanish Cultural Center a few doors from the museum, JSa was familiar with the complexities of working in the historic core. In that project, which was completed in 2012, the ruins of a pre-Hispanic school for the nobility were uncovered on the site. Now, the architects, extrapolating from Spanish maps of Tenochtitlan, had reason to believe that they would encounter another such ancient structure.
Supporting this hypothesis was the 17th-century building’s slant, Aisha Ballesteros, the JSa partner who led the museum’s design, said in a video interview. Many buildings in Mexico City are sinking because of the gradual settling of the underground lake bed; the angle in this particular case suggested that there was something below ground propping it up.
That something turned out to be what the Mexican government describes as one of the country’s most important archaeological finds: a section of a tzompantli, or wooden rack
displaying more than 650 human skulls belonging to people who were believed to have been
sacrificed in the 15th-century reign of the Aztec kings Itzcoatl, Ahuízotl, and Moctezuma
Ilhuicamina. Other tzompantlis have been discovered, but this one — the Huei, or great, Tzompantli — is the biggest and best preserved.
What followed was an 11-year effort to excavate and stabilize the Huei Tzompantli below ground while working on the colonial building above. What’s more, the architects designed a five-story museum addition — one of just a handful of contemporary structures built in the historic quarter in the last two decades — to fill the empty space behind the 17th-century building.
“We were facing three important histories,” Ballesteros said. “Ours, the pre-Hispanic and the colonial one. It was important for us to remember that we are only a small part of this 500-year timeline.”
The design centered on a plan to safely showcase the ancient skull rack and let the colonial building shine, with the contemporary building conceived as a quiet presence where additional museum programs could be housed.
After stabilizing the colonial building — Ballesteros said it was like placing footings underneath the legs of a table that is wobbling — builders sank 100-foot-deep pilings to establish a solid foundation for the new structure. This contemporary building was clad in local, sand-colored travertine, a nod to the volcanic stone composing much of the historic center’s architecture and a quiet presence among the more venerable showplaces.
The two museum structures come close, but never touch. “We separated the new building so that you could see the historic walls, but also because of seismic requirements,” Ballesteros said. In many places, the contemporary addition’s right angles draw attention to the colonial building’s tilt. “It becomes a play between old and new, crooked and straight.”
Between them is a courtyard that allows anyone to pick up a beverage from the cacaotería — a chocolate and coffee shop at the museum’s street level — and catch a glimpse of the chefs making chocolate in the nearby prep kitchen. An open-air corridor illuminated by hand-hammered copper light fixtures leads to a courtyard with shade trees and seating. Eventually, visitors will be able to view the ancient skull rack through a window next to the ticket office.
Those with tickets can visit the exhibitions that start on the second level, tracing the history of cocoa from its Mayan roots to the chocolate we consume today. The circulation path moves from within the building to outdoor terraces, allowing visitors to take in the architecture from different perspectives.
There, as in the rest of the museum, can be seen the layered architectural fabric making up the city’s past and present.
“The project showcases Mexico’s richness of heritage without making our contemporary heritage any less important,” Sánchez said. “It is possible to recuperate our history, but also make our city be alive at the same time.”
After a devastating windstorm destroyed more than 1,200 Pasadena trees in 2011, architect Chris Peck spent the next six years gathering fallen trees, milling the trunks into slabs, and storing and drying them in his garage and his friends’ garages while he figured out how to use the wood.
At first, he was happy to keep the fallen trees from being cut into stumps, turned into mulch or sent to landfills, even if that meant just selling the wood as lumber.
In this series, we highlight independent makers and artists, from glassblowers to fiber artists, who are creating original products in and around Los Angeles.
At the time, Peck was serving on Pasadena’s urban forestry commission, and, as he puts it, there were “trees everywhere,” including a 30-inch oak on San Rafael Avenue that he would later turn into his family’s dining room table.
“Working as an architect and engineer in Los Angeles, I’ve often seen trees taken down and wondered why that wood was not utilized as lumber,” Peck says. “The idea of utilizing the urban forest for lumber started as a business idea in relation to the Urban Ecology Project, a business dedicated to utilizing urban resources.”
When he collaborated with woodworker Ladislav Czernek to design a dining table from the 100-year-old white oak on San Rafael, the project inspired Peck to do more than just sell lumber. Peck decided to focus on designing and making handcrafted furniture that could last another hundred years.
Architect Chris Peck stands among the wooden slabs that will soon become furniture he describes as “a mix of early American rustic and Midcentury Modern” at Keita Design studio in Lincoln Heights.
After letting the lumber dry for several years, Peck started Keita Design in 2017, a sustainable furniture company that uses hardwoods from Pasadena, South Pasadena and Altadena, along with Aleppo pines from Bel-Air and Sherman Oaks, to create unique pieces inspired by the wood.
What began as a business idea after the windstorm became something more personal for Peck: creating art and giving new life to fallen trees.
“The beauty and uniqueness of that first dining table really confirmed this new direction for us,” he says. “Working with raw wood inspired us to try designs that are different and that respond to the material itself.”
In the beginning, Peck says it was easy to find trees and hire a mobile sawmill to cut them into planks. “We were full of energy,” he says. “We drove around, hired millers, rented trucks and moved lumber to different storage spots until we ran out of space. My wife put up with wood in the garage, driveway, backyard and even the living room, with only a meltdown or two.”
In 2023, after designing an Aleppo pine conference table for Wesleyan University’s engineering department, a coastal live oak dining table for his neighbor and a 13-foot oak table shaped like Michigan for a client, Peck brought together a small team of young woodworkers. The group includes his niece, artist Hannah Peck, 27; woodworker and designer Jessie Blackman, 27; Ethan Casselbery, 28, who has experience in sculpture fabrication and metalwork joinery; and Jordan Kennedy, 36.
Hannah Peck, left, Chris Peck, Ethan Casselbery and Jessie Blackman of Keita Design.
The Hercules bench set, composed of five seats made from the same slab of eucalyptus, $12,000.
Their first project together was a series of nesting tables made from a coast live oak that had fallen on Grand Avenue in South Pasadena. “We chose two pieces of wood, and it turned out they almost nested,” Blackman says. “Hannah was the mastermind who figured out four nesting possibilities.”
“We used tracing paper and pieced it together,” Hannah says.
Their pieces stand out for their simplicity, such as a pair of nesting coffee tables made from a single oak branch. “They were sisters,” Hannah says about the twin tables. “They were next to each other in the tree, so we decided to flip one over to mirror the other.” (Prices for Keita pieces start around $5,000 and can go up to $33,000 for a custom dining room table.)
A nesting coffee table, which was made from a coast live oak that fell on Grand Avenue in South Pasadena, is $4,845.
Keita Design started with a mindset similar to Angel City Lumber, which sells processed wood from local trees and recently started a nonprofit that recovers fire-damaged trees from Altadena and returns them to the community as usable lumber.
“We want to save trees that have to come down, especially after natural disasters,” Hannah says. “But we also care about the design and working with those trees, even using pieces that are warped instead of throwing them away.”
Their pieces include an undulating bench set made from a eucalyptus tree that fell near Johnson Lake in Pasadena, the Luna dining table made from re-sawn oak slabs for a butterfly effect and a five-legged coffee table crafted from the branch of a rescued fallen oak in South Pasadena. You can see these pieces at My Zero Waste Store in Pasadena.
Hannah Peck, left, Jessie Blackman, Ethan Casselbery and Chris Peck work on their latest project: a patchwork table made from leftover wood from previous furniture projects.
All of these pieces have dramatic warps, waves, marbling and imperfections that make them unique and add to their beauty and history. Some of the coastal live oak slabs even have bugholes and signs of powderpost beetles. “That’s part of the reason why we use epoxy,” Chris says.
Adds Jordan, “One of my first tasks here was going through and filling all the bug holes.”
Because some of the slabs are so wavy, Blackman had to get creative when shaping the wood. “I had to put the table upside down and use a chisel and grinder to remove as much material as I could. It took us three tries to get the table right.” She also uses a floating router jib for most of their joinery since the machine can’t rest on the wood’s uneven surface.
A console crafted from a curved slab of fallen eucalyptus showcases its natural checks, knots and eye-catching wood grain.
When they designed a table using a plank with a natural gap, they left the gap in the center, which helped them get the right width and refine its shape. Their tables evolve, Blackman says, as they “consider the profile and the joinery so we can highlight the wood grain and keep live-edge features. We let the wood guide us.”
“I think of their furniture as useful art,” client Diane Rhodes Bergman said in an email about her dining room table, which was made from a large live oak that fell in Pasadena during the 2011 windstorm. “It’s functional, practical, durable, but the beauty of the wood and design is what makes you pause and appreciate it. The tree was hundreds of years old — what did it witness? What did it survive? Who rested in its shade? The design captures the majesty and beauty of its origin. Their furniture goes beyond beautiful and unique; it is designed with a deep respect of the wood and the tree from which it came.”
The Rhombus nesting tables, made from a fallen oak, $4,845.
They often keep the underside of each slab as it is instead of flattening the bottoms.
“A lot of the furniture we make looks alive,” says Jordan. “We keep the bottoms of the tables true to what the tree looked like before.”
“We spend so much time and thought on the legs and the finishing, and no one ever sees them,” Hannah says.
“Our tables are perfect for children and dogs, or anyone else crawling around on the floor,” Blackman says, laughing.
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2
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1. Hannah Peck works on a large slab set up on a planer/jointer. 2. Architect Chris Peck draws plans for a door. 3. Jessie Blackman works on a log on a planer/jointer.
During a recent visit, their Lincoln Heights studio at Big Art Labs was filled with towering slabs of pine, oak and eucalyptus, including the last three tons of wood they picked up from a Sun Valley concrete and rebar company.
Gathered around a large work table, the group talked about their latest project: using offcuts and scrap material from larger tables to make a set of patchwork design tables.
“Chris is the most eco-conscious person I’ve ever met,” Blackman says. “He’ll see offcuts in bins and ask, ‘Why is this in the trash? This is going in a table.’ We have a lot of hardwood scraps from our larger tables, and we’re going to use all these cool little pieces.”
Although the young crew at Keita didn’t have much experience in fine furniture-making when they started the shop, Hannah says the Big Art Labs community where they work has supported them throughout their journey.
Chris Peck inspects a slab of wood at Keita Design in Lincoln Heights.
“There was definitely a learning curve,” says Hannah, who works full-time in the shop with Blackman. “But the Big Art community is full of makers and woodworkers, and everyone was kind and helpful when we were starting out. Jon Meador taught us some rules of thumb for grain movement, and another shopmate has a CNC [Computer Numerical Control] machine that’s been helpful to us. Now, we’re more experienced, more organized and have more people in the shop.”
These days, the group is making furniture for a show at electric vehicle brand Rivian’s space in Venice on April 19 and at Gallery 945 in Chinatown from May 1 to 31. They’re also working on a new line of pine tables with metal bases, which they hope will help them increase production since these are less time-consuming to make.
As they use up the rest of their hardwoods, they plan to keep working with fallen trees, whether through Angel City Lumber or other sources.
Although Blackman says that balancing “labor and sustainable values” can be challenging, they are committed to preserving the life of L.A.’s magnificent urban tree canopy.
“It would be much easier and faster to make a solid wood table, but we really care about the trees,” Blackman says. “We want to use every piece. We don’t want anything to go in the trash. And in the end, we end up with this gorgeous stuff.”
At the start of “Mile End Kicks,” a film set in the Montreal indie music scene of 2011, a music critic in her early 20s, played by Barbie Ferreira, has arrived at her Craigslist apartment share fresh from Toronto. She’s promptly invited to a loft party by her Quebecois D.J. roommate. “Dress hot,” she’s told.
The camera scans the critic, Grace Pine, as she walks into the night. Brown lace-up brogues. Black socks over sheer black tights. A short burgundy corduroy skirt. A navy sweater with a white collar peeking out. A denim boyfriend jacket to finish the look. Hot? Depends on whom you ask.
“It’s a punchline to a joke in the script,” Courtney Mitchell, the film’s costume designer, said in an interview. “But there’s a genuine understanding to some audience members where that is what we felt sexy in, in a kind of nerdcore way.”
Montreal as an indie sleaze epicenter
“Mile End Kicks,” written and directed by Chandler Levack, is the semi-autobiographical story of a music writer who moves to the Mile End neighborhood of Montreal in the summer of 2011, a time when rents were cheap enough that artists could afford to live blocks from the venues where they played.
Ostensibly, she’s there to write a book about Alanis Morissette’s album “Jagged Little Pill.” But other items on her to-do list, such as “have actual sex,” take precedence, leading her to loft parties, poetry readings and a love triangle with members of the fictional band Bone Patrol.
The era, called “indie sleaze” in retrospect (but referred to as “hipster” by those who were there), with its messy, gritty-glam looks, is captured extensively in the film. “I never felt as free a dresser as I did when I lived in Montreal,” Levack said in an interview.
Head-to-toe in American Apparel
The clothing brand most closely associated with indie sleaze is American Apparel. Think deep V-neck tees, ’70s-inspired separates and ads featuring young women splayed in suggestive poses. “I was always digging something lamé out of my butt crack,” Levack said, not without a twinge of nostalgia.
To recreate the vibe, Mitchell collected more than 200 garments and accessories from the brand, including high-waisted jean shorts, shiny disco shorts, hoodies, bodysuits, rompers, bandeaus, oversized tees, jelly shoes and belts. She was adamant that the items date from 2011 or earlier to reflect that they had been in the wardrobe rotation for some years. She found them on a mix of resale sites including Facebook Marketplace, Poshmark and Craigslist, as well as at one Montreal dry cleaner that happened to have a trove of American Apparel dead stock.
And there was a personal history, too: Mitchell had worked at American Apparel stores while in high school and in college, and Ferreira modeled for the brand in 2012, when she was 16. They shared a deep familiarity with the clothes. “That really brings out an emotion, when you return to a beloved silhouette,” Mitchell said.
Homage to the ironic graphic tee
An ironic T-shirt coupled with a cardigan became a totem of indie style, thanks to icons like Kurt Cobain, who served as inspiration for Bone Patrol’s lead singer, Chevy (Stanley Simons). At his day job selling shoes at Mile End Kicks (a real store), he wears a plaid mohair cardigan over a pocket T-shirt emblazoned with “Time to Be Happy” in off-kilter print. “The slogan was Chevy’s tongue-in-cheek nod to his retail job,” Mitchell wrote in an email. “As if he is wearing a salesman costume while dying inside because he is ‘a real artist.’”
Two of the shirts worn by Grace belonged to Levack: a Spin magazine shirt she got as a summer intern at the publication, and a Sonic Youth baseball tee from a 2007 show at McCarren Pool, then an abandoned public swimming hole in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn. But the runaway star is merch from a vacuum store, La Maison de l’Aspirateur, in Mile End — a black shirt with a hoovering elephant logo worn by Archie (Devon Bostick), the lead guitarist. “It’s become an iconic shirt for the film,” Levack said. “I’m going to screenings and people in the audience are wearing the shirts.”
Hidden gems found in vintage piles
In the Mile End of 2011, vintage clothing was a fact of life for reasons of style and necessity, and it became core to the hipster aesthetic. “These aren’t characters that are buying clothes; they’re, like, finding them in the street and rummaging through the giant clothing pile at Eva B,” Levack said, referring to a Montreal vintage institution.
One of Chevy’s most lurid onstage looks is a shimmering shot silk women’s trench — worn over a pair of American Apparel briefs, of course — courtesy of Renaissance, a chain of thrift stores in Quebec. “Everyone at those shows, whether or not you were onstage or not, you felt like you were onstage,” Levack said. “People would dress up to be noticed and to outdo each other. But it was so creative because nobody had any money.”
Pete Yorn moved to Los Angeles almost exactly 30 years ago.
“I remember it was May 16, 1996 — maybe three weeks after I graduated from Syracuse,” says the singer and songwriter known for his smart, tender folk-rock stylings. “Which means I’ve lived here longer than anywhere else. But when people ask where I’m from, I still say I’m from New Jersey.” He laughs. “I guess I identify very strongly with my upbringing.”
In Sunday Funday, L.A. people give us a play-by-play of their ideal Sunday around town. Find ideas and inspiration on where to go, what to eat and how to enjoy life on the weekends.
Jersey pride notwithstanding, Yorn’s 2001 debut album, “Musicforthemorningafter,” is suffused with his experiences as a young transplant moving and shaking in a busy L.A. social scene he compares now to Doug Liman’s classic “Swingers” movie — “at least if you take away the swing dancing,” he says. “But the driving around and the going to parties — it was all the same stuff.” (Yorn’s older brothers, Kevin and Rick, are both prominent players in the entertainment business.)
The singer, who’s 51, is on the road this year performing “Musicforthemorningafter” in its entirety to mark the LP’s 25th anniversary; he’s also playing songs from throughout the rest of his career, including a 2009 duo record he made with his friend Scarlett Johansson. On July 24, he’ll release his 12th studio album, “All the Beauty.” Here, he breaks down his routine for a Sunday in his adopted hometown with his wife, jewelry designer Beth Kaltman, and their 10-year-old daughter.
7 a.m. Rise and dine
I’m like a 6:45 or 7 wake up just because I’m used to driving my daughter to school every day. I like to eat right away, and I eat the same two things every day: either yogurt with frozen berries, or there’s this overnight oats called Mush. The blueberry Mush — I can’t get enough of it. That’s what I eat before my shows too. I’ll go to a venue and the people are like, “What would you like for dinner? We have this beautiful menu,” and I’m like, “I’ll just have the Mush.”
10 a.m. Horsing around
Sunday is usually a day for something with my daughter. She’s taken a love to horseback riding — she’s much braver than I am — so I’ll drive her out to this barn near Bell Canyon, which my wife told me is actually in Ventura County. I said, “No way — Ventura County is way up there.” And sure enough, there’s this southern tip of Ventura that’s like 25 minutes from my house up the 101. Anyway, I’ll go and I’ll watch her ride the horse. I’ll be honest — I’m very nervous every time. But my wife grew up horseback riding, and my daughter, she just loves it. She can be very fickle, but this is one thing that’s stuck.
Now, I should say: If it’s NFL season, I can’t skip football. I’m a huge Raiders fan — it’s terrible. So if there’s an important game, I’ll have my Sunday Ticket on my phone and peek at what’s going on. But that’s fine — it’s understood.
12 p.m. Retail therapy
After the horse, we might go this place in Van Nuys called Iceland. It’s ironic because my wife, her dream trip is to go to Iceland the country, and the closest we’re getting to that right now is an ice-skating rink. Or I love going to the Fashion Square mall [in Sherman Oaks] — I don’t know if it’s a remnant of growing up in New Jersey or it just gives me the nostalgic feeling of being with my parents at the mall. I don’t even have to buy anything. I mean, I might end up getting roped into buying something — not a Labubu because that’s over but some sort of kawaii animal stuffy. I just like that the mall still exists in a time when it’s so easy for everyone to buy everything on their phone. My daughter was like, “Whoa, you can go in and touch things?”
3 p.m. Guilty pleasure
Here’s a naughty one: There’s a little bakery right off Ventura Boulevard called Schazti’s, and they have this chocolate banana pudding that is ridiculous. It comes in a paper cup.
6 p.m. Time to dine
If it’s Football Night in America, my wife and daughter would order Japanese or Chinese or Thai. They’d probably order that every day if they had their way — they’re obsessed. Sometimes I’ll just eat a bowl of cereal and call it a night. If there’s no game, a cool place to go that’s been there forever is the Smoke House in Burbank. I’d always seen it but had never been until a few months ago. Just a classic, old-school place — steak is great.
10 p.m. Slow for show
I’m early to bed because I know I’m gonna be up early to drive my daughter to school, which is my favorite thing when I’m home. I don’t want to miss it. I’m very conscious of how fast she’s growing up, and I know me — I’ll be sad when it’s over. We might watch a show or a movie but I’ll feel my eyes getting heavy after like 10 minutes. It takes me quite a few nights to get through an episode.
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