Killen was here
Patrick Killen helped define the modern architecture that emerged in the South Bay over the last quarter century. Now in the late stages of lymphoma, he has only gratitude, not regrets. Pat Killen in 2002. Photo Patrick Killen was a young architect with big ideas when he drove from his native Ohio to Southern California in 1980. He was already accustomed to going against the current. Killen was naturally left-handed but had been forced by Catholic nuns to write right-handed as a child, which worsened his dyslexia and made school an uphill battle. He was a working class kid who labored in steel mills and aluminum plants and helped organize a wildcat strike while still only in his late teens. He wasn’t daunted by challenges. Killen also had a natural propensity for making things and knew early that he wanted to be an architect. Despite the difficulty of school, he made it to Kent State, studied architecture, and headed west not long after graduation. For a young architect of a modern bent, Southern California was a feast. The combination of hyper-expressive culture and lack of weather made Los Angeles a playground for architectural inventiveness. But Killen distinctly remembers the…
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