In 2018, the City of Los Angeles made available some of their 1,700 city-owned parcels to affordable housing developers. Many of these sites are difficult. Some lie along heavy traffic corridors or next to freeways, others are made up of composite parcels that have been left untouched for decades. In this collaboration with non-profit developer Holos Communities, the architects have produced a 35,000 square foot, 54-unit housing project on a challenging triangular site close to one of the world’s busiest freeway interchanges.
The units are arranged as a series of sixteen staggered boxes, each assembled from three 20-foot-long by 8-foot-wide modular containers, made with recyclable steel and welded together to form a single 480-square-foot unit. The boxes are stacked into towers that are connected by a series of walkways to create a single unified building.
Behind the towers is a sequence of pocket parks that form a communal outdoor space within the building. The landscaping here is site-specific, with trees, shrubs and vines chosen for their ability to clean the air and offer a respite from a sea of concrete. Rooftop farms and edible gardens will supply fresh produce for weekly farmers’ markets. It is hoped that the project will become part of a larger network of urban farms, bringing affordable produce to what many consider a “food desert.” A mile east of Isla is Stanford Avalon Community Garden, a nine acre urban farm located under power lines that was founded after a group of residents fought city officials for the right to keep their urban farms. Isla aspires to add to their legacy by forming part of a living lung winding its way through the city and humanising a sometimes hostile and ugly urban environment.