BLACKBIRDS

Los Angeles, CA
Photography: Laure Joliet and Iwan Baan

Eighteen homes cluster on an .82 acre site in the hills of Los Angeles’ Echo Park, presenting a high-quality design strategy for addressing the need to densify urban housing.  The two- and three-bedroom houses are all under 1,920 square feet and are organized around a "living street": a central landscaped courtyard that can shift in use diurnally and seasonally, from parking to basic recreation to organized community functions, while providing a locus for neighbor interactions between public and semi-private spaces. The placement of the houses amid the hilly site contours invokes the early 20th century craftsman cabins of the area, and deploys a strategy of “stealth density”, combining several houses into a single house-shaped volume which reinforces the small-village context. Featured in Dezeen, the Los Angeles Times, and on KCET.