Though over 1,700 parcels owned by the city of Los Angeles were designated for affordable housing development in 2018, the vast majority of them remain empty to this day and without any plans in the foreseeable future. This may be due to the fact that many of these sites are “leftover spaces”—irregular geometries tucked in the margins of already-developed neighborhoods. Local firm Lorcan O’Herlihy (LOHA) is one of the first, however, to boldly make use of one of these compromising sites with their newest project, Isla De Los Angeles Supportive Housing and Annenberg Paseo, a 54-unit housing project on a triangular lot near a freeway interchange in South Los Angeles. Renderings of the project recall both the staggered apartments of Moshe Safdie’s Habitat 67 and the spatial porosity of Steven Holl’s Simmons Hall dormitory at MIT. Rather than appear as a single, monolithic building on its narrow parcel, the project is broken down into housing units placed within modular boxes then arranged into informal towers. The units would be assembled by welding together three 20-foot-by-8-foot shipping containers, each of which would provide roughly 480 square feet of living space in an open plan featuring a kitchen, bathroom, and a living room that doubles as a bedroom. The units can be assembled offsite by half of the construction team while the other half prepares the grounds on-site, cutting the construction time from four years to two. They will be arranged along the perimeter of the site to make room for several green spaces in its center, which LOHA anticipates will serve as a “green lung,” helping to filter air pollution from the nearby freeway. “Our aim,” stated LOHA in a press release, “was to create something that was compartmental but solid, strong enough to withstand the demands of the project’s location but porous enough to engage the residents on a human scale with outdoor activities and places to work and socialize.” Following MLK1101 in 2017, Isla De Los Angeles Supportive Housing and Annenberg Paseo is the second project LOHA has designed in collaboration with nonprofit developer Clifford Beers Housing in South Los Angeles.

In the quiet Los Angeles neighborhood of Hancock Park, local firm Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects (LOHA) have revealed initial plans for an 11-story, 34,000-square-foot apartment building to be developed by Metros Capital near the corner of Rossmore Avenue and Clinton Street. In order to fit 14 units on the tight, irregularly-shaped 7,000-square-foot lot, the architects had to come up with a top-heavy design scheme that would not draw excessive attention to itself within its low-slung context, which consists of several preserved, Art Deco-style apartment buildings designed in the 1930s and ‘40s. The result is a design with a series of incrementally shifting floor plates that play a few visual tricks from the street. “Passing by the tower becomes an elusive spectacle,” wrote LOHA in a statement, “seemingly narrower at the bottom if you’re facing one way and skinnier at the top if you’re facing the other.” Additionally, the building’s ground floor is set far back from the street to avoid interrupting the pedestrian-friendly character of the neighborhood, while the communal spaces are entirely located on the rooftop. The shifting section of the building was prompted by “the elongated S-curve of Rossmore Avenue, as well as the marque-like facades of nearby multi-story apartment buildings.” LOHA hopes that the building will exemplify a preferable alternative to the more common apartment building typology found in Los Angeles, of “massive floor plates that maximize the ground plane and create a sort of squat density, where buildings are tightly glued to the sidewalk." The project is scheduled to break ground early next year and be completed sometime in 2021.

The Detroit office of Lorcan O'Herlihy Architects (LOHA) has unveiled its initial phase of a small-budget, big-ambition renovation of one of the city's most remarkable cultural institutions: the MBAD African Bead Museum, an independent exhibition space devoted to African material culture and art. The museum comprises three townhouses and a 6,000-square-foot backyard sculpture garden that together stretch across almost a whole city block. Founder, owner, artist, and self-styled visual storyteller Olayami Dabls uses rocks, mirrors, wood, and iron to create sculptures that are parables for the development of African and African-American history and culture. According to its website, Dabls created the museum to help visitors better understand the struggles of the Civil Rights Movement through his sculptures and his collection of African objects. The African Bead Gallery, a museum store, is as intriguing as the sculptures: trays of beads are the forest floor to strung beads and artifacts from the collection that cover the walls and overhead displays. Outside, the facade is covered in Dabls's colorful glass-and-mirror mosaic murals. As beautiful as it is, the museum's physical space is in serious disrepair. One of the townhouse's roof has collapsed, and the exterior walls are precarious. Over time and if funding permits, LOHA will reinforce the structure internally and build galleries, a new entrance, and a landscape within the new envelope. The initial $100,000 renovation zeroed in on augmenting the museum's exhibition space and performing urgent repairs. LOHA turned a run-down storage room into a 600-square-foot gallery and community events space that will allow for more exhibitions from the museum's collection, plus work from artists in Detroit and beyond. Beyond the new gallery, improvements include new heating and electrical systems, new windows, and a public restroom. "For the first time in 17 years, we will have a space where we can engage the community through storytelling programs and make the museum available to the people who need a gathering space," Dabls said in a press release. "This adds a whole new dimension to our plans for the future." A celebration of the renovated gallery is planned for June 22. This round of renovations was funded by crowdsourced donations via a campaign in partnership with Allied Media Projects. Subsequent renovations are contingent on more fundraising. The museum is already looking to add a main entrance, a central gallery, new admin facilities, and a fund for visiting artist residencies.

Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects (LOHA) completed work earlier this year on a spate of renovations and alterations to LAXART gallery in Los Angeles, a project the firm initially designed back in 2015. The gallery originally opened under the stewardship of founding curator Lauri Firstenberg 13 years ago in a Culver City space designed by architect Peter Zellner. It was intended to serve as an alternative gallery that provided a platform for emerging L.A.-based artists. LAXART came under the leadership of the curator Hamza Walker in 2016, shortly after its move to the LOHA-designed spaces. Now solidly established, the gallery has been opened up by LOHA in order to accommodate larger exhibitions and public events. Lorcan O’Herlihy, founding principal at LOHA, explained: “The interiors have changed from an organization of small galleries for several concurrent solo shows to a reoriented space that is organized around a single central gallery.” LAXART is currently showing Remote Castration, a group exhibition curated by Catherine Taft that focuses on the #MeToo and Time’s Up movements as related to feminist thought in contemporary art. LAXART 7000 Santa Monica Boulevard West Hollywood, California 323-871-4140

As Los Angeles gears up to tackle its homelessness crisis, L.A.-based Lorcan O’ Herlihy Architects (LOHA) is busy at work on a collection of novel, forthcoming affordable housing projects that aim to build upon the firm’s many previous experiments in dense urban housing.  A recently-unveiled plan for the Isla de Los Angeles project with non-profit housing developer Clifford Beers Housing is perhaps the most daring of the new projects. The development will bring 54 studio apartments to a paved triangular site in the city’s Harbor Gateway community in a stepped and articulated structure made up of stacked and repurposed shipping containers.  The rapid-rehousing development is being designed to house a series of shared spaces as well as parking along the ground level. The five-story project will be located beside the intersection of the 110  and 105 freeways and its site organization reflects this troublesome locale—the edges of the site will be populated by planted areas to block out freeway pollution while the building itself is laid out to face away from the highways in order to take advantage of the natural sunlight and breezes. Much of the complex is topped by shade panels as well.  Amenity spaces for the project will include: edible gardens, space for a farmer’s market, a small lab, and areas dedicated to cottage-scaled food production, health and fitness activities, and job training services.  Units in the 18,000-square-foot structure will be earmarked for residents who make less than or equal to 40 percent of the Area Median Income (AMI). The project is to be built on excess city-owned land using funding from Proposition HHH, a recent initiative aimed at building 10,000 supportive housing units in Los Angeles over the next decade. The firm is also pushing forward on a proposal announced late last year that would add 78 units of affordable housing, various community spaces, as well as arts and educational programming to a city-owned site located in the Westlake neighborhood west of Downtown Los Angeles. The project will sit adjacent to the historic Westlake Theatre and is expected to reinvigorate the institution while ensuring its revival is suited to benefit existing neighborhood residents. Renderings for the seven-story project depict three linear and interconnected apartment blocks spanning over a central courtyard. The canted apartment slabs sit on a perimeter base that is open on one side to face the street and heroically span the courtyard above these otherwise porous ground floor areas in a way similiar to an approach pursued by Michael Maltzan Architecture’s One Santa Fe complex. Cesar Chavez Foundation is the lead developer for the project, with Meta Housing Corporation as a co-developer. The Youth Policy Institute will act as a service provider for the project in partnership with the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development.  A timeline has not been released for either of these developments.  LOHA is further along, however, on the MLK1101 supportive housing complex, a 26-unit development geared toward military veterans who have formerly experienced homelessness that is currently under construction. The four-story L-shaped apartment complex wraps a single-story storefront space that is topped with a rooftop terrace and community room. The storefront is being developed as a retail opportunity for the project and is flanked by a broad stair that leads to the terrace level, where picnic tables, plants, and benches will populate the 4,000-square-foot gathering space. Renderings for the 34,000-square-foot project depict a white perforated metal panel-clad structure with a pedimented retail space wrapped with storefront windows. Work on the project is well underway and is expected to be complete later this year.

These developments join LOHA’s growing slate of innovative residential projects in Los Angeles, including several market-rate developments along Pico Boulevard, a 30-unit apartment complex in West Hollywood, and a quintuplet of small-lot houses at the foot of the Hollywood Hills. 

The American Institute of Architects, California Council (AIACC) has awarded a pair of Los Angeles-based architecture firms its two most prestigious honors of the year. Late last month, the council gave Johnson Fain its Firm Award, highlighting the practice’s 28-year track record of delivering thoughtful and diverse project types while also praising the company’s enriched office culture as reasons for bestowing the honor. In a press release praising Johnson Fain’s employee amenities—which include watercolor classes and in-studio yoga sessions—an unnamed AIACC juror remarked, “How they blur lines between personal and business is inspirational. They seem to be cornering a niche on the work/life balance for their employees and it shows in their innovative work.” Johnson Fain is currently at work on a variety of high-profile projects across Southern California, including a 42-story tower in Downtown Los Angeles, a renovation of Philip Johnson’s Crystal Cathedral in Orange County, and a 355-unit mid-rise apartment complex in L.A.’s historic center. AIACC also awarded Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects (LOHA) its Distinguished Practice award, praising the firm’s “passion for the constantly changing urban landscape, and the complexities which go into designing in such [areas].” The organization specifically praised LOHA principal and founder Lorcan O’Herlihy for promoting a “much-needed conversation about the relationship of design to landscape.” A juror praised the firm’s “high level of design [and] solid commitment to education, urbanism, community and environment,” adding, “I always learn from [LOHA’s] work.” LOHA currently has its hands in a variety of market-rate and supportive housing projects in Los Angeles and recently opened a new satellite office in Detroit, where the firm is working on a 210,000-square-foot mixed use development and the new African Bead Museum, among other projects.

Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects (LOHA) has broken ground on MLK1101 Supportive Housing, a 26-unit affordable housing complex in South Los Angeles. The 19,000-square-foot project—built for nonprofit housing developer Clifford Beers Housing—will bring supportive housing for formerly homeless veterans as well as chronically homeless and low-income households to a neighborhood experiencing widespread developmental pressure.  The project site is located in an area surrounding the University of Southern California campus and Exposition Park, adjacent to the recently-extended Expo Line and close to the currently-under-construction Crenshaw Line. The four-story project is made up entirely of affordable units and is planned around a central courtyard that is lifted above the street level and located atop a covered parking structure. The elevated plaza is accessed from a broad stairway that touches down at the street, between the L-shaped apartment building and a small, two-story storefront structure. Designs for the staircase incorporate amphitheater seating that looks out over Martin Luther King Boulevard. The storefront is located at street level to engage with the sidewalk further and is capped by a faceted green roof that on the second floor, contains a community room. The adjacent apartments are organized around an L-shaped, single-loaded corridor that looks down onto the courtyard below. That walkway steps out at each of the top two floors, creating habitable, shaded areas underneath. The corridor, outdoor but cloaked in shade, is designed to create a cool, intermediary zone between the building exterior and the inside of the units, thereby facilitating passive ventilation. To further this effect, the building’s facades are clad in reflective metal panels made from 100 percent recycled materials. In plan, the units are contained within slightly-canted perimeter walls that kink inwardly along the long exposure of the building’s longest arm. The shorter arm of the L is efficiently laid out as a carved block of joined apartments. The designers included variable hallway geometries to add visual and spatial interest to a structure that otherwise features stacked floors of identical plans containing efficiency, one- and three-bedroom units. The project is due to finish construction in mid-2018. LINK Landscape Architecture served as landscape architect on the project.

The Architect’s Newspaper (AN)’s inaugural 2013 Best of Design Awards featured six categories. Since then, it’s grown to 26 exciting categories. As in years past, jury members (Erik Verboon, Claire Weisz, Karen Stonely, Christopher Leong, Adrianne Weremchuk, and AN’s Matt Shaw) were picked for their expertise and high regard in the design community. They based their judgments on evidence of innovation, creative use of new technology, sustainability, strength of presentation, and, most importantly, great design. We want to thank everyone for their continued support and eagerness to submit their work to the Best of Design Awards. We are already looking forward to growing next year’s coverage for you. 2016 Best of Design Award for Unbuilt > On the Boards: The Menokin Project Architect: Machado Silvetti Location: Warsaw, VA

Central to a comprehensive master plan for a 500-acre historic Virginian tobacco plantation, the Menokin Project seeks to offer a new way to present and celebrate the complex history of the region through its designs to preserve the 1769 house.  Built by a signer of the Declaration of Independence and designated a National Historic Landmark, the ruins of the house are stabilized and preserved using glass to highlight the history’s wear and tear. By delicately marrying old with new, the project seeks to reinterpret the house, while allowing researchers, archaeologists, and visitors to gain a unique understanding of the irreplaceable portions of the site, its ancillary buildings, and the landscape.

Glass Engineer Eckersley O’Callaghan

Preservation Technologist John Fidler Preservation Technology Historical Architect Encore Sustainable Design Roof IGU Manufacturer Okalux 

Wood Floor Manufacture Carlisle Wide Plank Floors

Honorable Mention, Unbuilt > On the Boards: Cincinnati Country Day: Early Childhood

Architect: michael mcinturf ARCHITECTS Location: Cincinnati, OH

Nestled within the landscape, the design seeks to reinforce the connection to nature that has been a core value of the distinctive program, weaving the classrooms together with a ribbon wall to create a playful interaction between interior and exterior.

Honorable Mention, Unbuilt > On the Boards: Canyon Drive

Architect: Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects Location: Los Angeles, CA

These five-unit homes examine the Los Angeles small-lot subdivision typology by making the most of its efficient footprint while creating unique homes filled with light and air.

Construction on Los Angeles–based Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects’ (LOHA) 95,000-square-foot San Joaquin Housing projects at University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) is nearing completion.

The firm is designing two of four housing clusters on the 15-acre North Campus, one of the areas where the 20,000-student university is concentrating construction efforts as it aims to increase its student population by up to 5,000 new students over the next nine years. The San Joaquin Housing area is to contain housing for 1,000 of those new residents.

LOHA’s schemes are manifested as a pair of two- to three-story clustered apartment blocks joined by external circulation and communal spaces. The structures themselves are organized in shifting geometries, with rhomboid volumes projecting over, into, and from an activated courtyard. Walkways are made up of articulated armatures that attach to the buildings’ facades and project into the courtyard. The courtyard’s exterior-facing walls feature punched openings and are marked by white siding, while dark surfaces line the courtyard’s interior. Though the overall project aims for a certain kind of scalar contextuality, this organizational scheme is decidedly daring: Social hubs, such as reading rooms, dining areas, and other gathering spots are distributed along these pedestrian routes, with some of these volumes elevated one or two stories above grade. Construction photographs show a staccato filigree of painted steel supports framing out the walkways between plywood- and Tyvek-wrapped buildings.

The San Joaquin Housing complex, abutting the northern edge of the adjacent, unincorporated community of Isla Vista west of UCSB, is being developed as part of a multi-architect housing expansion for the university master planned by Skidmore, Owings and Merrill (SOM). LOHA’s two adjacent complexes will be joined by two low-rise apartment blocks from L.A.’s Kevin Daly Architects (KDA) and two housing towers by SOM. Philadelphia-based architects Kieran Timberlake will also be designing a dining facility in the complex. 

New construction is the result of the campus’s 2010 “Long Range Development Plan” (LRDP), set in motion to plan for the campus’s growth in its ecologically sensitive, largely suburban coastal community. The university’s growth rate dictated in that document, one percent per annum, is designed to mirror that of the neighboring city of Santa Barbara. Perhaps California’s state and local agencies should take note of this latest housing construction: It seems someone has finally figured out how to build housing to meet the community’s needs in a timely fashion without offending the neighbors too much.

After announcing two Detroit-based projects in the last month—Olayami Dabls’s MBAD African Bead Museum and four corner buildings in the Brush Park revitalization district—Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects (LOHA) is bringing a bit of the Sunset Strip to Detroit Rock City. But is the 26-year-old L.A. firm setting its sights on even greener pastures and considering a Midwest outpost? Sources indicate that LOHA recently signed a lease in the historic Chrysler House in downtown Detroit. So get ready, Rock City, things are about to get a little sandy.

Los Angeles-based studio, Lorcan O'Herlihy Architects (LOHA) are designing a major complex in Brush Park, Detroit for Brush Park Development Company. (Billionaire Dan Gilbert's Bedrock Real Estate Services are the driving force behind Brush Park). Totaling 210,00 square foot, the scheme comprises four lots where a combination of residential and mixed-use buildings will be constructed. The development also includes Boston-based Merge Architects, Chicago-based Studio Dwell, and Detroit-based Hamilton Anderson Associates. The city, which was the focal point of the U.S. pavilion at this year's Venice Biennale, has been the subject of urban regeneration plans within many circles of the architecture and development industry. Located just outside of Downtown, Brush Park would see four developments of 134 unit multifamily housing units total and ground floor retail erected on the site. In May this year, AN reported on how Detroit planning authorities had originally called for 500 mix-income units (40 units per acre) that would  respect the history of the area and “the rich African-American heritage in the city.” According to LOHA, their scheme is part of the "city’s largest residential project in decades." Their four buildings will sit on four block corners in the neighborhood offering housing, retail, dining, and various community amenities. The scheme forms part of a wider development that will encompass town homes, duplexes, carriage homes, and further apartments along with public transport connections. LOHA's scheme aims to compliment Brush Park's low-rise and historical suburban scene while increasing density within the area. This is achieved through staggered massing that tightens the proximity of dwellings but on a scale that doesn't overtly dominate the site. Buildings will also be clad in local materials such as brick, metal, and wood while each will retain a sense of individuality. Aside from addressing urban problems, communal and ecological issues are also on LOHA's agenda. Public gardens (a tradition in Detroit) will be placed on rooftops looking onto the streetscape and also double-up as places for rainwater collection and bioswales. As for the plots themselves, the Southwest building's envelope will make use of cedar—treated for texture and warmth—and floor-to-ceiling windows that would create an open environment for the retail base. The Northwest building will use charcoal-gray bricks in a stepped formation. On the opposite side, to the Northeast building would be the most visually striking structure. Clad in red metal, the building would add "warmth and color to the otherwise more neutral material backdrop of Brush Park," LOHA explained. The final building in the Southeast corner at the intersection of Brush Street and Alfred Street uses a modulating brick pattern in conjunction with wooden decking to "key into significant folds, formal moves, and unique spaces."

Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects (LOHA) has released renderings for their proposed renovations and expansions to the studio and museum created by celebrated Detroit-based artist Olayami Dabls. The proposal aims to revamp and modernize the mostly ad-hoc MBAD African Bead Museum where Dabls’s signature African bead art is installed. Dabls’s evocative work is installed throughout a mostly vacant block and on the surfaces of several of that block’s remaining homes and shops. The artist uses a palette of what he considers to be universally-understood materials—iron, rocks, wood, and mirrors—to create visually complex sculptures that pay homage to African material culture by exploring the themes of family, ancestry, and community. The installations are the by-product of Dabls’s nearly 50-year-long career during which he has appropriated the vacant and derelict land on this site to host his monumental works. Dabls’s studio is located in what once was a row of townhouses and is now one of the few remaining structures on the block. LOHA’s proposal takes the currently-collapsing roof off of the corner storefront building adjacent to Dabls’s studio and converts that currently-unoccupied structure into a sculpture courtyard and enclosed gallery with new blank surfaces for the artist to work upon. The museum’s entrance will be located between the two structures, adjacent to a new entry garden. The current studio’s collections will be removed and catalogued. The structure will be converted in phases into a bead store, museum administration, and a studio and residence for visiting artists. The remainder of the site is to be re-organized to include walking trails and open space highlighting Dabls’s 18 siteworks. Dabls’s major installations, Iron Teaching Rocks How To Rust and N’Kisi Iron House, will be surrounded by new tree plantings as well as other sculptures. The artist’s African Language Wall, a 50-foot by 20-foot installation located along the wall of a neighboring building, features richly ornamented calligraphy, with words from Africa’s many written languages written across the brick expanse, and is to be the centerpiece of the campus. Dabls’s work, including a selection from his collection of African beads, is currently being exhibited at Henry Taylor’s in Los Angeles, by appointment. Renovations to the museum are being paid for in part by a $100,000 grant from the Knight Foundation and from the proceeds generated by Dabls’s exhibition in Los Angeles.