It started with a home inside an old automobile showroom
Marvimon began with its co-founders’ Chinatown home, an abandoned automobile showroom reimagined as an open-air loft with vintage finds and a private courtyard. It wasn’t planned as an event venue. Dinners, performances and weddings gradually gave the building a more public life.
SmogShoppe followed, then Millwick: two spaces shaped around gathering, each carrying the evidence of what came before. Old structures, salvaged materials, gardens and art became part of how people move through the spaces and make them their own.
Photography: Alexa Lena
From the early days
Every space brings a past
SmogShoppe · the original smog-check shop
SmogShoppe
A smog shop with another life ahead
The concrete-block shop on La Cienega was a working garage when Marvimon found it. The transformation kept its industrial character: overhead doors became awnings, the old parking-lot fence became shelving, and saved timber was remade into tables.
The smog sign stayed. Gardens grew around the building, and the former parking lot became an enclosed courtyard. Arriving still holds a small surprise: step through what looks like a building entrance and find yourself outside, in the garden.
Millwick grew from the wish to carry the original Marvimon spirit into a more flexible space. The Arts District warehouse had the family resemblance already: bow trusses, original brick and a yard ready for a different purpose. Its name came from the tract-map designation Mills and Wicks Extension.
The old cold-storage panels became restroom façades. Bricks removed to open the hall to the courtyard returned as planters and benches. Salvaged glass found new places above interior rooms, while the building’s weathered surfaces remained part of the setting.
Plants, objects, art, light and the marks left by a building's first life are part of the architecture. Marvimon's venues are polished enough to work, but never polished until the personality disappears.
The Marvimon instinct
Preserve Plant Surprise
Adaptive reuse is not a styling layer here. It is the starting point.
Keep the evidence
Original brick, concrete, timber, cinderblock and patina are allowed to tell you where the building has been.
Let the garden take over
Mature trees, vertical gardens, succulents and open-air rooms soften old industrial structures without hiding them.
Design for a plot twist
A hidden lounge, unusual wallpaper, a cinema screen or an unexpected alcove gives every event room for discovery.
Photography: Alexa Lena
