Winners of this year’s AIA Los Angeles Residential Architecture Awards have been announced in an expanded field that has nearly doubled in size since its inception six years ago.

Those selected were chosen by an international jury of academics and architects from the US, the UK, and Italy.

The awards have been expanded in recent years to incorporate different societal issues such as climate change and the housing crisis. This year’s recipients represented the best designs across eleven different building areas covering projects that ranged from affordable housing to adaptive reuse. 

The city’s aesthetic and 20th-century lineage shined through as influences that London-based juror Peter Culley felt engendered an architecture that is “new and quite refined.” 

“There’s a light-heartedness in some of the projects,” he said, “that, I think, is a bit of an LA thing—through the various genres. We’ve seen architects who understand how they’re operating, take it to a new level, reference back—whether it’s to modernism, or even, tongue-in-cheek nods to Spanish revival.”

Among the winners, GGA and DNA were cited for their commitment to the privacy and personal dignity of residents in the Temporary Housing category. Kevin Daly was honored for its second iteration of the Palms House residence in Venice while Escher GuneWardena was cited for their blend of local and middle eastern styles in Glendale’s House of Seven Screens.

Assemblage+ was cited for their “interesting investigation into top-heavy monolithicity” in Studio City and New York-based firm GLUCK+ was awarded for its California House, which transformed a lot previously thought to be unbuildable into an impressive sculptural form that combines wood-faced boxes and a glass pavilion under a parasol-like roof to create a perfect balance of sunlight and shade on Mulholland Drive.

Other citations included Bestor Architecture, RIOS, SPF:architects, Tighe Architecture, Studio Benson, OFFICEUNTITLED, and Lorcan O’Herlihy.

The Climate Positive Award was given to LUNO for their salt-box influenced island home in Maine.