John Bielenberg: Studios of 2 minds, 2 coasts

Talk about your studios — plural. You have two: one in Maine at your home and one in California. Where in California?

A town called Half Moon Bay, about 20 miles south of San Francisco on the coast, at a surf spot called Maverick’s. I have two partners at C2, Erik Cox and Greg Galle, and they live in Half Moon Bay, which is part of the reason we located there. It allowed us to buy property and build exactly the kind of studio we wanted.

Where is your studio in Maine?

It’s a barn, attached to an old house built in the 1860s in Belfast, Maine. In Maine they have attached barns, so we took the top of the barn and made it into a big open studio separate from the house. You have to go outside to get there — it gives me a little bit of separation. It’s just for me, though, no employees.

Two different seaside environments, making you literally bicoastal, right?

It wasn’t by design, really. It’s interesting that it’s almost the same distance to the water on either coast, but radically different. One is just me in an old converted barn, and the other is with employees and partners and a brand-new, modern building. California versus the East Coast: sort of two ends of the spectrum.

Why two locations?

It was a long process with my wife and family to get out of the rat race. Loved San Francisco, but wanted a smaller town, a simpler life. Originally moved to Boulder, Colo. Loved Boulder, but realized it was big and growing. Eventually we hit the coast of Maine. It was a personal decision, no business rationale.

You’re interested in many things. It’s hard even to describe your range of activities. Is it a challenge to work your schedule?

I feel at times like a juggler with 10 balls in the air, trying not to let any of them drop. The irony is if you asked me before I moved to Maine what I wanted to do, I would have said personal art projects and having a supportive life. And what happened is almost the opposite: I’ve been much more involved in entrepreneurial ventures and the growth of C2 and Project M and PieLab. I’m a partner in a blanket company called Swan’s Island Blankets.

Your space in California is a brand-new building. What drove the design?

At C2 we do workshops with clients. When we thought about getting a new building, a key component was space to run them. Building from scratch allowed us to design it specifically for this. Erik Cox was the lead partner on the studio build-out and designed much of our furniture and the individual work “cubes.”

We based it on prefab metal buildings. Our architect, Nilus De Matran, is married to Jennifer Morla, a friend of ours. It’s much more a workshop than an office or studio. It has concrete floors, exposed plywood, exposed light fixtures. There’s no attempt to have a finish to it, although the end product has an aesthetic: a functional, purposeful aesthetic. What I like is it’s a space in the act of becoming.

There’s a lot of flexibility in how we set up the space. We have big tables on wheels that roll around, we have plywood easels you can move to set up, big white things to write on. We can configure the space very easily for breakout groups. There’s a mezzanine, a library, a big outdoor area where we can set up tables if the weather’s nice.

Were there environmental objectives?

The coast of California has a fairly moderate climate. It doesn’t get real cold or real hot, so we didn’t have a lot of heating and cooling issues. The translucent plastic that covers the building allows for a lot of solar gain during the day. We can control that with shades that lower as required. We don’t have to use lights during the day — diffused, ambient light comes through the plastic. As far as we know, so much of it has never been used on a building like this.

I have a little apartment set up. The wall where I stay is translucent plastic. I really like how that ambient light in the morning just gradually increases. You have the sense that you’re outside, but you’re inside.