Better Design for Better Housing
The construction of overblown apartment buildings on undersized lots is one of the major complaints I receive here from residents and groups concerned with the general deterioration of their neighborhoods, and Los Angeles.
They note with proper outrage that the unfriendly scale and strained styles of the buildings, along with their sidewalk-level garages and parking areas, severely damage the frail residential quality of the surrounding streets.
The interiors also tend not to be attractive. Typically, the garages are Stygian dungeons, the building entrances inhospitable and the long, double-loaded corridors institutional, the result of which is that most apartments have limited views and no cross ventilation. The total is, in a word, schlock.
To see these insensitive, elephantine designs shoe-horned into a block of single-family houses or courtyard complexes is to understand why neighborhoods are so opposed to any multifamily housing proposal, no matter how well-intentioned or packaged a rare few might be.
The architects, developers and politicians involved should understand that the continued production of this schlock makes it just that much more difficult for quality housing to be built; for once taken advantage of and abused, community groups naturally tend to be wary.
This is a shame, for as reams of studies have told us, and the overcrowding of existing units and the homelessness has demonstrated, there is, at present, in the Los Angeles region a desperate need for housing, particularly affordable housing.
And having learned from the planning mistakes of the past, we know this housing must not be developed as mega-projects, but rather carefully woven into the fabric of established neighborhoods on so-called in-fill sites, convenient to work, schools and shopping.
Also, by gently increasing density, the city in this manner can ease the development pressure on our environmentally sensitive outer suburbs, reduce home-to-job commutes and make mass transit a more feasible alternative; and thus begin to untangle our traffic mess.
But first is the critical element of encouraging multifamily in-fill housing that is sensitively designed, modestly scaled and detailed and generally user and neighborhood friendly.
Offering such a hope, I feel, is the winning proposal for a 40-unit housing demonstration project at the northwest corner of Franklin and La Brea avenues in Hollywood. It is sponsored by the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA) and the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), and courageously supported by Councilman Michael Woo despite local opposition prompted, in part, by an insensitive presentation.
As I commented in a previous column, the design by architect Adele Naude Santos of Philadelphia presents a welcome departure from the raw monolithic housing projects mooning the streets of Hollywood and Los Angeles, and deserves to be built.
The project design was described in the proposal as a “deliberately romantic, small-scaled and inhabitable setting,” with the character of a small town featuring a series of courtyards and play areas linked by ramped walkways, arches and a garden path.
There is a hint in the drawings of some engaging pedestrian spaces, the type that, with the right balance of resident involvement and management concern, can generate a sense of place and community so needed in our increasingly anonymous and alienating residential developments.
Good planning and design may not be able to solve social problems, but they can create a setting in which they can be addressed and possibly eased.
The housing itself will include a variety of unit types, grouped into 10 structures not unlike private homes in a clustered, pedestrian-oriented subdivision, with each unit having an individual entry, its own outdoor space and cross ventilation. Parking will be tucked under each structure to limit its visibility, while providing easy access to the units above. The focus of the project will not be on the parking, but on the open spaces.
There is the promise in the Santos design of demonstrating that affordable housing also can be attractive housing; indeed, that it can serve as a model for other in-fill projects, be they publicly or privately funded. It now remains to be seen whether the CRA can demonstrate the needed flexibility and resolve to make the project a reality.
Also attempting to deal with the issue of how multifamily housing can be better designed to serve the resident and enhance the surrounding community is the City of Pasadena. It initiated a study last year to explore “an entirely new kind of zoning ordinance” that would permit high-intensity development in a way that would be in keeping with the city’s heritage.
Aiding the effort was the San Francisco-based architectural firm of Daniel Solomon, which has designed some imaginative multifamily projects, and the Center for Environmental Structure, headed by planning theorist Christopher Alexander. It was Alexander who in his last book, “A New Theory of Urban Design” (Oxford University Press), declared the single overriding rule of that theory is that “every increment of construction must be made in such a way as to heal the city.”
The resulting draft report is, happily, unlike any other zoning document I have ever read, focusing on the element the authors feel distinguishes Pasadena, and that should be the prime consideration of any building standards. That element is the garden in the various forms of landscaped courtyards, generous lawns, lush plantings, street trees, flower beds and gardens themselves.
The draft report goes on to comment that this garden character of Pasadena has been harmed in recent years, in large part, by the planning and development process being concerned more with accommodating the automobile than with maintaining the residential integrity of neighborhoods. The result is that parking and asphalt has been allowed to dominate the streetscapes, leaving “no coherent open space which people can use and enjoy.”
To remedy the situation, the draft proposes a set of ordinances in which the garden “plays a role as important as building volume and parking layout in shaping development.”
