New Small Lot Housing Development in L.A. Asks: 'How Dense Can You Go?'

An enterprising developer and experimental architect are pushing the boundaries between L.A.'s suburban style of single-family housing and its need for dense infill development on a site in the city's Echo Park neighborhood.

October 10, 2012, 11am PDT | Jonathan Nettler | @nettsj

Carren Jao examines developer LocalConstruct and architect Barbara Bestor's plans to "turn a one-acre hillside parcel in Echo Park into a prime example of smart growth." Dubbed "Blackbirds," the scheme to build 18 small-lot homes around "an internal living street designed after the Dutch Woonerf concept, where pedestrians and cyclists have priority," is seen by LocalConstruct co-founder Casey Lynch as, "a needed step in the evolution of LA typologies."

"I am curious as to why larger scale housing projects so often have a lower level of finish and stultifying repetitiveness given their prices," commented Bestor. "We are attempting to add quality and individuality to each of these units as well as a structure engendering community and neighborliness in the way they are grouped together."

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Stealth Density

Published on Tuesday, October 9, 2012 in The Architect's Newspaper