Casa Rusca

Casa Rusca  /  Work

Work

Selected places and companies designed to endure—commercially, culturally, and operationally.

Much of the work was developed with Jon Blanchard through BLVD Hospitality, which I joined as a partner in 2013 and led as managing partner until 2024. The rest applies the same operating discipline across human performance, infrastructure, food, and independent brands.

The Superform flagship facility at dusk, exterior lit, with the Superform sign on the stone facade.
Superform — flagship facility Interim image · new photography in progress
Site
superform.health ↗
Years
2024 — present
Place
Los Angeles, California
Role
Founder & Chief Executive Officer
Category
AI, health & performance
Current

Superform

Superform is building an operating system for human performance: a digital platform and flagship facility powered by a proprietary intelligence engine that brings together laboratory diagnostics, wearable data, physical assessments, and daily behavior.

Much of the work so far is intentionally invisible: assembling a technical, scientific, medical, and performance team; designing a compliant data architecture; and building the discipline required for a health company to distinguish clearly between what is measured, what is inferred, and what remains uncertain.

The Georgian Hotel at dusk: an eight-storey turquoise Art Deco facade on Ocean Avenue, the neon sign lit above striped awnings and the entrance steps.
The Georgian — Ocean Avenue, Santa Monica Photograph by Douglas Friedman
Site
thegeorgian.com ↗
Place
Ocean Avenue, Santa Monica
Role
Partner & owner · Managing Partner, BLVD Hospitality
Built
1933 · Art Deco, eight storeys
Reopened
April 2023
Recognition
One MICHELIN Key · T+L 100 Best New Hotels · LABJ Hotel Deal of the Year
Owner · Michelin Key

The Georgian Hotel

A 1933 Art Deco landmark and an unmistakable turquoise presence on Ocean Avenue. Jon Blanchard and I envisioned the restoration together and led it from concept through opening, in partnership with ESI Ventures and with interiors by Fettle. The Georgian reopened in April 2023 and now holds one Michelin Key. We continue to own it with a small group of partners and investors.

The restoration was grounded in archival research conducted with the Santa Monica Conservancy. The objective was not to create a period set. It was to return a living hotel to the city—one that carried its history forward while operating confidently in the present.

The rooftop pool at Soho Warehouse with the Downtown Los Angeles skyline behind it.
Rooftop, Soho Warehouse — Arts District
Site
sohohouse.com ↗
Place
1000 S. Santa Fe Avenue, Arts District
Role
Managing Partner, BLVD Hospitality
Built
1916 warehouse · opened October 2019
Category
Adaptive reuse · Members' club & hotel
Recognition
LABJ Gold Medal CRE Award · SoCal Development Forum Citation Award
Hospitality

Soho Warehouse

A 1916 plumbing-supply warehouse transformed into Soho House’s Los Angeles members’ club: seven stories, 48 bedrooms, a two-story gym, and a rooftop pool overlooking the city.

The project helped demonstrate that the Arts District could support a global hospitality and membership brand. The central design challenge was preserving the industrial character of the building through the conversion rather than decorating over it.

The Hoxton hotel building in Downtown Los Angeles.
The Hoxton — Downtown Los Angeles
Site
thehoxton.com ↗
Place
Downtown Los Angeles
Role
Managing Partner, BLVD Hospitality
Category
Hospitality development
Recognition
#1 Los Angeles Hotel on TripAdvisor, 2020
Hospitality

The Hoxton, Downtown LA

The Hoxton’s first Los Angeles hotel, bringing a European hospitality brand to a historic Downtown building on a block many underwriters still viewed cautiously. The project was delivered, opened, and stabilized as part of Broadway’s continuing revival.

The citizenM hotel at 4th and Spring: eleven storeys of stacked modular guest rooms.
citizenM — 4th & Spring
Site
citizenm.com ↗
Place
4th & Spring, Downtown Los Angeles
Role
Managing Partner, BLVD Hospitality
Opened
2021 · 315 rooms, eleven storeys
Category
Modular construction · Hotel
Firsts
LA's first modular high-rise; first on the West Coast
Recognition
ALIS Development of the Year, Select/Limited Service
First of its kind

citizenM Downtown LA

Los Angeles’ first modular high-rise—and the first on the West Coast. A two-level concrete base supports nine stories of steel-framed guest-room modules manufactured off-site and assembled by crane at 4th and Spring.

The crane was not the difficult part. Los Angeles had never permitted the method at that height in a severe seismic zone. The real work was engineering, documenting, financing, and arguing a new construction system into existence with a city, lender, and operator that each had valid reasons to be cautious.

NeueHouse Venice at dusk: a two-storey brick corner building with planted roofline and lit ground-floor windows.
NeueHouse Venice Photograph by Yoshihiro Makino
Site
neuehouse.com ↗
Place
Market Street, Venice, California
Role
Managing Partner, BLVD Hospitality
Category
Adaptive reuse · Workspace & culture
Workspace & culture

NeueHouse Venice

A 1922 brick building on Market Street, plus an annexed warehouse, turned into NeueHouse’s Venice house — roughly 23,000 square feet of workspace, lounges, meeting rooms, broadcast studios and a restaurant.

The street had a life before us: Tony Bill ran a production facility out of the building in the seventies, and Market Street held studios for Michael Heizer, Robert Irwin and Larry Bell, and Larry Gagosian’s first Los Angeles gallery. Interiors by DesignAgency with Loescher Meachem Architects. The brief was to add to that history rather than paper over it.

The Supermassive wordmark, white on black.
Supermassive Corp
Years
2017 — 2020
Place
New York & Los Angeles
Role
Co-founder & Real Estate Partner
Category
Facility development
Infrastructure

Supermassive Corp

The real estate platform behind a digital-asset infrastructure company. I identified, structured, and delivered the physical facilities on which the platform depended—an emerging asset class with few underwriting precedents, limited lender appetite, and power and cooling requirements that eliminated most existing building stock.

The category was new. The underlying problem was familiar: the building was only one component. The capital, infrastructure, approvals, and operating model around it determined whether the venture could work.

The Chicas Tacos neon sign in Downtown Los Angeles at dusk, with the skyline behind it.
Chicas Tacos — Downtown Los Angeles
Site
chicastacos.com ↗
Place
Downtown Los Angeles
Role
Managing Partner, BLVD Hospitality
Category
Restaurant concept · leased locations
Food & beverage

Chicas Tacos

BLVD Hospitality’s in-house food and beverage concept, built in leased spaces rather than inside properties we controlled. It was where I learned restaurant operations from the inside: labor, margins, permitting, compliance, and the particular demands California places on food and beverage businesses. That experience permanently changed how I think about designing hotels.

A crown cactus planted in a hand-thrown vessel, surrounded by other desert-plant bowls and a brass magnifier in a wooden case.
Pax Obscura
Place
Los Angeles
Role
Founder
Category
Desert plant lifestyle brand
Independent

Pax Obscura

An independent desert-plant lifestyle brand built entirely for pleasure. It grew from the same instinct behind my interest in historic buildings and antiquities: a preference for objects and places that gain character rather than lose it over time.

Note

A note on attribution

The hospitality and real estate projects above were developed with Jon Blanchard through BLVD Hospitality, which Jon founded and I joined as a partner in 2013, except where otherwise noted.

The full history  →

Kevin Lynch argued that people understand a city through a mental image of its paths, edges, districts, nodes, and landmarks. Every building either clarifies that image or weakens it.

Kevin Lynch · The Image of the City · 1960

Contact

Working on something like this?

nico@casarusca.com

Development, hospitality, a recapitalization, or a company that needs to become financeable without losing what made it interesting. Send the specifics and I will tell you quickly whether I am useful.