Hot-market cities grappling with a dearth of housing, like those along the coast of California, are increasingly looking at accessory dwelling units (ADUs)—commonly known as "granny flats—to help abate the statewide shortage. In 2016, California passed three laws aimed at facilitating in-law unit production; following the legalizations, the city of Los Angeles received 1,980 applications for secondary units in 2017 alone.
The County has also launched a number of adjacent initiatives with the goal of making sure that some of these new homes are affordable. One of such pilot programs comes through the LA County Board of Supervisors' Homeless Initiative and sets out to catalyze the community of architects, designers, planners and creative strategists to re-imagine the potential of ADUs as a housing typology that can work in conjunction with other strategies to help alleviate the County's housing pressure.
Working with the Art Commission Civic Art Program, the first phase of Part of the Solution: Yes to ADU was a design competition, the winners of which were announced over the weekend. Open to architects, engineers, designers, artists and/ or students, the only restriction was that at least one key member reside, work, study or teach in LA County.
The first place entry for the competition came from Lilliana Castro, Allen Guillen, and Cheuk Nam Yu—two SCI-Arc grads and a CalPoly Pomona alum that now work for architecture and design firms across the city. Their winning concept called for turning single-family zones into borderless communities by eliminating fences and/or walls in order to create more open neighborhoods so that new units can integrate into the existing city grid. The ADUs themselves would be pre-fabricated to save on costs and designed using a modular system, with elements such as green wall panels, solars roofs, and interchangeable art walls.
Second place was a tie with one of the entries coming from USC student Esther Ho and the other, from principal of the LA-based firm Anonymous Architects, Simon Storey. Also relying on a prefabricated, modular system, Esther Ho—who is currently taking a studio focused on prototypical micro-dwellings in Tokyo—designed the Barcode House. Proposing a strategy for programmatic flexibility, the houses are comprised of elements that can easily be adapted to different live-work scenarios, whether it be for a small business or a small dorm for students.
Storey, whose firm deals with designing buildings for complex Los Angeles lots, also presented a system that can be accommodated to meet each individual's own unique needs. Starting with a basic building block made from 100% recycled plastic packaging, users can then accessorize with a number of features like bird houses; solar balloons and water tanks; gardens ranging from wall planters to raised planters; and other design elements.
The remaining awards for Honorable Mention went to Joanna Grant and Jimenez Lai of Bureau Spectacular and to Wes Jones. Bureau Spectacular envisioned ADUs, beyond housing people, performing distinct infrastructural roles—like a laundromat or community garden—that would support the entire neighborhood. Jones', on the other hand, was surprisingly the only proposal to introduce shipping containers, and the only one to specifically name homelessness. His approach was for the design to maintain an "architectural neutrality" in order to blend into a variety of neighborhood settings and to combat NIMBY reactions.
The main aim of the competition was to assemble a tangible index of possibilities that can help policy makers, architects and home owners implement ADUs in their communities. The five awarded proposals all put forth innovate ways to not only house more people, but also, re-envision neighborhoods that have been self-quarantined through fences and single-family zoning. Through this competition, we see ADUs not only capable of providing much needed housing in a city struggling to keep up, but also, of putting forth a new vision for our communities and neighborhoods: one in which we've decided to welcome newcomers and get to know one's neighbor.
To learn about YES to ADU events information can be found on at this link.
8 Comments
The Los Angeles County Arts Commission Civic Art Program team deserves a big applaud for this competition and bringing the countywide housing and homelessness issue forward and generating highly creative ideas for solutions.
ADU's have a huge potential of solving LA's two big problems.
Looks like a wonderful idea. Hopefully they can clear the regulatory underbrush and allow these buildings to multiply. I can imagine a much finer grain of urbanism resulting, but it does beg the question why they don't also up-zone many of the low rise areas in LA.
The ADU competition was very successful. While not addressing the competition itself as Mackenzie noted, the first place entry does offer a really intriguing vision for a new type of urbanism. More importantly, Lai's entry also offers a new vision of domestic-infrastructural zoning that could radically alter neighborhoods as communities.
It is a bit disappointing that homelessness wasn't mentioned in any of the winning entries (save Jones') as this was half the premise of the competition. Judging from the winning entries, the competition organization should have framed the competition around new ADU urbanisms, as it seems this is what they were looking for, not homeless housing solutions as stated in the brief and call.
Pairing ADU and Homelessness is a trigger for NIMBY'ism. I can see why it was left out by most competition entries. Everybody should know that large percentage of the population in Los Angeles are only a few paychecks away from homelessness.
1. With the coming of more people to the "neighborhood" Will there be additions to the existent infrastructure system for : open space, parks, streets, sewer systems, public safety services, schools, medical care and recreation?
2. Who will be responsible for water, sewer and power services?
^ Excellent questions
they make it nice and colorful but why would some mid-career homeowner want some young kids moving into their back yard? it would drive all the people who are paying taxes out of the neighborhood/ city
With the cost of living continuously going up, being able to have additional rental income could be very helpful. Also, added security with other people around and on the street.
As for the increase in infrastructure required to handle the new people, it's not as if they are building 15 story condo buildings. Most houses used to have a much larger number of people with multi-kid families. These one or two additional people per lot wouldn't stress the existing parks etc.
The trend is people moving into the city, looking for a place they can walk to and feel a sense of community, not people fleeing simply because some kids moved in and opened up a coffee shop and bar.
Would it be better to simply up-zone the area?
Block this user
Are you sure you want to block this user and hide all related comments throughout the site?
Archinect
This is your first comment on Archinect. Your comment will be visible once approved.