Starter home concepts seek to alleviate Los Angeles housing crisis

[Celerity]

https://www.dezeen.com/2025/06/02/small-lots-big-impact-los-angeles-housing-crisis-competition/





The Small Lots, Big Impacts competition in Los Angeles, which asked architects to develop starter house concepts for vacant lots across the city, has revealed its winners. Driven by the City of Los Angeles, University of California Los Angeles (UCLA's) research centre City Lab and advocacy LA4LA, the competition called on architects to design multi-family housing to ameliorate the "housing crisis" in the city, made worse by the multiple devastating fires earlier this year. It seeks to address what the organisers view as a lack of vision when it comes to solution-oriented development in Los Angeles. "The last time we had popular starter homes was after world war two, when affordable subdivisions were built all over Southern California," said City Lab director Dana Cuff. "The winning architects and designers are showing us what multifamily, attainable homeownership looks like on small lots in contemporary, post-fire Los Angeles."



The call for submissions struck a chord – more than 300 architecture teams submitted proposals for the lots, from professionals to students. Twenty-one winning designs were selected, with an additional 20 given citations and special recognitions. Two types of lots were selected as focus points, and these types decided the categories for the competition. Each category had two real-world lots as references to generate different site conditions. The first, Gentle Density, featured project types that utilised infill sites to create density, thereby mitigating the notorious urban sprawl of Los Angeles. Among these projects was Shared Steps by California architecture studios WORD and SSK. Taking an infill site, the team created a series of stepped buildings that appear as one residential facade to the street, but contain three three-storey buildings and three accessory dwelling units (ADUs).



The scheme is modular and could contain up to nine units, with outdoor space on the six rooftops and in the front of the lot. Also in the Gentle Density category was a scheme by Brooklyn-based studio Light and Air. Called 4X4X4, Light and Air's design features four three-level houses, with provisions for ADUs on the ground floor. Covered in precast-concrete panels, the structures has cutouts lined with floor-to-ceiling glass and terraces to achieve the outdoor-indoor lifestyle common to the city while providing the much-needed density. Other projects in the category sought to use existing infrastructure to maximise density. ABLA's Soft Infill proposed a multi-year process whereby a series of ADUs are added to a lot over time and connected.



The other category was Shared Future, with projects more akin to the standard apartment or condo buildings created for narrow sites on the city's boulevards. Among the winners here were some prominent, nationally recognised architecture studios such as Olson Kundig. Envisioned as a vertical neighbourhood, its design featured a scalable mass-timber structure clad with solar panels. Three primary structures were stitched together with amenity spaces, with units removable based on needs, to create outdoor spaces in the structure. Also in this category was a project called Living Together in the Plains of Id by New York studio Only If. Cited by the jury as "eminently buildable", the project features step backs on two sides to further reduce its impact on the streetscape while maximising space and providing terraces for residents.

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[ZDU]

1. Inspiring!