With expediency in mind, Los Angeles is looking to adopt a successful blueprint to solve the growing number of large homeless encampments that have been cropping up in the city since the beginning of the pandemic last spring.
Silverlake-based Lehrer Architects is expanding on its award-winning design for transitional housing thanks to another commission from the city’s Bureau of Engineering — now the firm's fourth collaboration.
Lehrer’s Chandler Tiny Homes Village in North Hollywood won an AIALA Design Award this year with a village that became a beta design for the agency. Its polychromatic format has been repeated in a new development called Whitsett West.
Los Angeles is facing rising numbers of homelessness in a year that saw citywide efforts to rehouse a record number of people. The city currently is looking to build no less than 255,000 units of affordable housing by the year 2029 and may look to bridge the service gap provided to residents experiencing homelessness through better temporary accommodations like the tiny homes and NAC Architecture’s 232-bed facility that was completed on Vignes Street in an abbreviated construction period of less than five months.
Stretched out in a narrow site that is in some places only a scant 20 feet wide, Whitsett West will house up to 150 residents inside 77 units at a previously disused plot of land along the 170 Freeway 15 miles north of Downtown Los Angeles. The houses feature an ADA-compliant 8’ x 8’ layout inside of a sound barrier-protected plan that incorporates private storage, community spaces, sewage and water systems to define the oddly-shaped but cohesive community.
The studio says its desire is to create a greater sense of dignity throughout the community by providing housing that is both personal and brightly colored.
“A profound joy of these projects is the necessity for — and intensity of — their visual presence,” founder Michael Lehrer said in a statement. “Every tool in our visual palette was employed starting with perspective, procession, and color. If beauty breeds honor and respect, there are no more deserving groups than our sisters and brothers on the streets.”
Lehrer, who founded the firm with the belief that there are no “throwaway spaces,” has managed in a short time to take several derelict parcels and convert them into living spaces for 1,047 members of the city’s most vulnerable community.
Whitsett West represents the architect’s fourth project for the city in just over seven months, totaling a number of 500 beds with another eight planned that house a total of 1,061 people, according to the Bureau architect and program manager Marina Quiñónez.
7 Comments
I have an idea, let’s get a bunch of Home Depot storage sheds and paint them pink, because obviously people will love pink storage sheds. I mean, who wouldn’t right?
That's a pretty glib dismissal of a genuine attempt to address a serious problem.
I’ll give it cred for its attempt to solve a genuine problem. I just don’t understand why its using temporary 8x8 units painted all trendy. Wouldn’t it make more sense to encourage a longer term community? Having transient populations in and out without any social stake or community responsibility will result in same problems that exist on the streets.
I mean 200 sf homes, some trees, some feeling of ownership and responsibility to upkeep. This project pretends that the root cause of homelessness is not having a house. It’s not that simple.
It’s more important imo to have social relationships (family) and some mutualism of responsibility and accountability to those relationships. Any village that fails to create long term community will fail.
x-, one step at a time. the number of tents under the bridges on the decline in L.A. As far as the colors, they do get a lot of positive public awareness on the problem while propagating a temporary shelter.
The problem, of course, is the same problem that plagues every architectural attempt at addressing homelessness: This is the most an architectural solution can offer. Anything more is beyond the realm of architecture.
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