Archinect - News

SCI-Arc founder Ray Kappe's final residential design hits the market for $4.2M in Los Angeles

2023-11-29T18:24:00-05:00

Late SCI-Arc founding director Ray Kappe’s final residential design has hit the market in Venice Beach, California, for a listed price of $4.2 million.

The 2,482-square-foot home has three bedrooms and was originally built in 1947. Kappe began the commission in 2019 (the same year he passed away), designing for the owner a two-story addition that added a garage and small recreation room to the property at 938 Amoroso Place. The renovation was completed earlier this year at an undisclosed cost. Tracey Becker of COMPASS is the listing’s agent.

Image courtesy Realtor.com

“When he came to look at the property, he was impressed with the concept of the tree fern garden and how to incorporate the house within that context,” the anonymous seller told Realtor.com. “Ray was also interested in designing a home that went beyond the normal postage-stamp-sized lot home, by continuing his signature style of getting lost in a space — where everywhere you looked, an importan...

Brooks + Scarpa reveals Westside LA transitional housing project inspired by Irving Gill

2022-10-24T14:38:00-04:00

Brooks + Scarpa has released images of their recently-completed Rose Apartments complex, a community housing initiative for formerly homeless teenage youths transitioning into adulthood in Venice, Los Angeles.

The 20,900-square-foot, four-story design includes some 35 units of highly affordable residences for young adults who are at risk for homelessness after being separated from the state-administered system at the age of 18.

Image courtesy Brooks + Scarpa

Located nearby Venice Beach's central retail strip, the scheme takes its cues from Irving Gill’s neighboring Horatio West Court apartments and other examples of courtyard housing that predominated the city in the years prior to the Second World War.

Image courtesy Brooks + Scarpa

Per the architects: “The courtyard is only one aspect of a successful design. By including affordable housing for transitional aged youths, it allowed the non-developer to take advantage of California State Assembly Bill AB7...

20 featured architecture and design jobs on LA's Westside

2022-07-15T11:45:00-04:00

If you are looking for new architectural career opportunities in the greater Los Angeles area and would like to be near Southern California's magnificent beaches, check out our latest weekly picks of featured positions from Archinect Jobs. This highlight includes a selection of exciting openings in the coastal neighborhoods of Venice, Santa Monica, Hermosa Beach, and El Segundo as well as LA's bustling 405-adjacent hubs of Culver City, Inglewood, and West Los Angeles.

Need to look up specific job titles from the architectural profession? Simply consult Archinect's Guide to Job Titles series. To improve your portfolio, resume, interviewing skills, and increase your overall chances of getting that next job, follow our Archinect Tips series.

Eric Owen Moss Architects seeks a Designer and an Architect/Job Captain in Culver City
"Eric Owen Moss Architects is seeking talented architects/designers for its international architecture practice based in Culver City, CA. The position requires a...

Affordable housing complex by Eric Owen Moss Architects gets approval in Venice

2021-06-02T17:09:00-04:00

A proposal to build dozens of affordable apartments near Venice Beach has been approved, following a vote taken by the Los Angeles City Planning Commission.

Image: Eric Owen Moss Architects

After a long and contentious public hearing on May 27, the Commission voted to approve the construction of the Reese Davidson Community. The $75 million project is a collaboration between the Venice Community Housing Corp. and the Hollywood Community Housing Corp. It would rise from the site of two current parking lots that flank Venice’s Grand Canal and would consist of a low-rise complex containing 140 apartments, approximately 7,400 square feet of commercial space, and a 360-car parking garage for both residents and visitors. The Reese Davidson Community will house formerly homeless and low-income individuals, as well as some work and live spaces for low-income artists and support staff for tenants. A coffee shop on the ground floor and a 3,000-square-foot performance space and community room w...

Los Angeles and Honolulu are the toughest cities to build in

2017-07-27T17:15:00-04:00

Last week, The Wall Street Journal reported on the housing shortage in Venice Beach. As one of Los Angeles' hottest neighborhoods—in large part due to the influx of tech companies that have made it their home and lent it the new nickname, Silicon Beach—it might come as a surprise to learn that the zip code has not added a single new housing unit in 15 years. In fact, Venice Beach had roughly 700 fewer housing units in 2015 than it did in 2000 and despite adding 4,000 new jobs, lost 3,800 residents.

According to Issi Romem, a chief economist at BuildZoom who conducted the analysis of data for the publication, the lack of new housing accommodations is a result of overly strict building and zoning restrictions as well as stiff community opposition that has caused the precinct to become the "Toughest Zip Code in America to Build In." When we expand from zip code to city limit, Romem's data found that Los Angeles, in general, sits right behind Honolulu to take second place in terms of t...

Venice Beach's ongoing grapple with the tech titan invasion

2015-08-11T21:20:00-04:00

Slapped in the face is exactly how many Venetians are feeling by the tidal wave of new money. And the local tech boom, prompting 'Silicon Beach' references around town, is just one source of it

Eclectic Revisited: Preserving Venice's Architectural Context

2013-05-14T18:35:00-04:00

In Venice, Sandmeier wanted to tell the story of a whole neighborhood, not just emphasize the architectural merits of any one structure, and in doing so build a history of architects and artists working together. "Buildings are important for different reasons. Sometimes it's the architecture, sometimes it is the history, and sometimes it is the context," she explains. "Venice is a place with such rich cultural context that underlies the whole community, there is a lot to talk about."

Mimi Zeiger reports from the self-guided tour "Venice Eclectic: Modern Architecture from the '70s and '80s", part of "Curating the City Modern Architecture in L.A.," the Conservancy's ongoing contribution to Pacific Standard Time: Modern Architecture in Los Angeles.

Artist Doug Aitken's Venice Beach Home

2012-04-03T20:13:00-04:00

The house is the world’s first temple to “Acid Modernism,” the aesthetic the California-born Aitken conceived for himself and Gemma Ponsa, his companion of the last six years. “The goal was to create a warm, organic modernism that’s also perceptual and hallucinatory,” he said of the design. “We thought that would be a wonderful environment to live in.”