1/14/2021 Los Angeles launches design challenge seeking new models of affordable, low-rise housing

https://www.archpaper.com/2020/11/los-angeles-launches-design-challenge-affordable-low-rise-housing/ 1/5

Return of the L.A. Low-Rise

Los Angeles launches design challengeseeking new models of affordable, low-risehousingBy Matt Hickman • November 19, 2020 • Architecture, News, West

A historic bungalow court, an early model of low-rise multi-family housing in Southern California, at 1544 North Serrano Avenuein Hollywood. (downtowngal/Wikimedia Commons/CC BY-SA 3.0)

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The office of Los Angeles Mayor (and possible cabinet member ofthe incoming Biden administration) Eric Garcetti and ChristopherHawthorne, Chief Design Officer for the City of Los Angeles, havelaunched a $100,000 design challenge that invites architects andlandscape architects to imagine progressive, appealing models oflow-rise, multi-family housing in America’s second-most populouscity. With a focus on affordability, sustainability, and “confrontinghistorical patterns of racial and environmental injustice in

Los Angeles launches design challenge seeking new models of affordable, low-rise housing

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1/14/2021 Los Angeles launches design challenge seeking new models of affordable, low-rise housing

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housing policy in Southern California,” the free-to-enter Low Rise:

Housing Ideas for Los Angeles challenge is supported by the LosAngeles Department of Water and Power, the James IrvineFoundation, and Citi.

Proposals must be submitted by February 21 and can be enteredinto one of the following (mostly self-explanatory) categories:Fourplex, Subdivision, Corners, and (Re)Distribution, the last ofwhich encourages participants to choose an iconic L.A. home (a lathe Hollyhock House) from a provided list and divide it into fourhousing units. In addition to a $10,000 top prize awarded withineach category, second and third prize awards—$3,500 and $1,500,respectively—will also be bestowed within each. All and all, 12cash prizes are up for grabs (honorable mentions are also apossibility) and entrants can submit different proposals to morethan one category. The winners will be featured in a publication tobe released later in 2021.

As detailed in an overview of the challenge, organizers are loath torefer to Low Rise as a design competition “at least in thetraditional sense” as it boasts qualities that set it apart from“earlier efforts to engage architects in sketching out designproposals for new models of low-rise housing.” Most notably, LowRise was initiated as part of a larger research undertakingspearheaded by the Mayor’s Office of Budget and Innovation,supported by the James Irvine Foundation in collaboration withUrban Institute and other partners, that explores “new paths tohomeownership and new models of affordability in low-riseneighborhoods across Los Angeles.” The challenge is informed bythe research project and, once the former wraps up, it willinuence the latter.

What also differentiates Low Rise from standard designcompetitions is that the “typical formula” is reversed. In lieu ofarchitects coming to communities with solidied ideas as to“what housing should look like,” community members, via

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Los Angeles launches design challenge seeking new models of affordable, low-rise housing

1/14/2021 Los Angeles launches design challenge seeking new models of affordable, low-rise housing

https://www.archpaper.com/2020/11/los-angeles-launches-design-challenge-affordable-low-rise-housing/ 3/5

listening sessions, have already had the rst say in how they thinknew models of low-rise housing should take form. (This input isprovided as a key resource in the challenge brief.)

“The result is that communities are explaining to the participatingarchitects what they’d like to see in their neighborhoods and asking fortheir help in turning those ideas into a series of design proposals. We arenot collecting architectural ideas and then workshopping them with thepublic. Instead, we began by workshopping with community and housing-advocacy leaders a set of questions and hypotheses about how they andtheir neighbors would like to see their communities grow. Now, with thoseworkshops complete, we are presenting the results to the design challengeparticipants.”

As the overview notes: “… the designs that emerge from our effortwill represent a step—an important one, we hope, but a singlestep nonetheless—in the direction of a more inclusive and wide-ranging discussion in Los Angeles” about housing issues such aredlining and exclusionary lending. The results will also play acrucial role in a larger process that reimagines “what it means tolive the good life in Southern California—and to understand theways in which the good life, to be good for everyone, must also besustainable and equitable.”

According to challenge organizers, low-rise districts currentlymake up three-quarters of residentially zoned land in L.A. while400,000 residential lots, regardless of zoning, are comprised ofsingle-family homes. Exacerbated by COVID-19-relatedslowdowns, construction of all multifamily apartment projects inaffordable housing-strapped L.A. is on track to hit a ve-year lowby the end of 2020.

The challenge also details the particular appeal of low-rise multi-family housing (three-to-four units per lot or six-to-eight unitsspread across adjacent lots, all limited to one or two stories) in thecoronavirus era. While then-innovative examples of this typology—L.A.’s historic wealth of (Pasadena-borne) bungalow courts andgarden apartments, included—ourished in the city between thelate-19th-century and World War II and were largely geared towardthe working-class residents, they eventually fell out of favor assingle-family-centric sprawl set in.

“Low-rise multifamily housing offers a way to add units at asignicant volume while also providing immediate access togardens and other shared outdoor spaces, where socializing is lessdangerous than interiors when it comes to COVID-19,” reads theoverview. “It gives residents places to quarantine—in second,third, or fourth units separate from a main house, for example—without leaving the household or neighborhood altogether.”

There’s plenty more to pore over at the Low Rise website includingparticulars about registration, resources, and further background

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Los Angeles launches design challenge seeking new models of affordable, low-rise housing

1/14/2021 Los Angeles launches design challenge seeking new models of affordable, low-rise housing

https://www.archpaper.com/2020/11/los-angeles-launches-design-challenge-affordable-low-rise-housing/ 4/5

as to how the challenge and its complementary research initiativeaim to strengthen communities and usher in a new era ofresilient, attainable, and low-slung housing in L.A.

Affordable Housing Christopher Hawthorne Los Angeles

multi-family housing

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Los Angeles launches design challenge seeking new models of affordable, low-rise housing

1/14/2021 Los Angeles launches design challenge seeking new models of affordable, low-rise housing

https://www.archpaper.com/2020/11/los-angeles-launches-design-challenge-affordable-low-rise-housing/ 5/5

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Los Angeles launches design challenge seeking new models of affordable, low-rise housing