Japanese elements combine with industrial proportions at this Venice property, designed in the 1980s by beloved architect, filmmaker and designer David Ming-Li Lowe as an experimental live/work compound for creatives.

The compound is a glowing lightbox, located three blocks from Venice Beach and comprising two mirrored, three-storey buildings set around a secluded courtyard. Ming-Li Lowe cleverly used translucent Kalwall building panels to guarantee privacy from outside that recall Japanese shoji screens and drenching interiors in soft milky light.

Business and workshop spaces face the street while living areas are behind. The Los Angeles property has recently undergone a refurbishment, upgrading its middle-level kitchen and bathrooms. The bedrooms occupy the towers’ top floors and are connected by a hardwood deck suspended above the courtyard below.

Interiors celebrate the materiality of the space and the heritage of Californian modernism with steel beams and cross-bracing on show throughout the interiors and hardwood floors.

The Venice artist compound is asking for $4.45m – The Value of Architecture has the listing.

This raw (and rare) brick-vaulted Lisbon warehouse will spark your imagination