Los Angeles Housing | Michael Maltzan Architecture

Published
by
Maxime
on 23-12-2007
in Los Angeles Housing
. 3 Comments

Here are two vi­deos in re­la­tionship with our re­search on the Image, Iden­tity and In­te­gra­tion in the Los An­ge­les hou­sing de­ve­lop­ment. The Rain­bow Apart­ments is a sig­ni­fi­cant pro­ject, de­sig­ned by Michael Mal­tzan Archi­tec­ture, for the ho­me­less com­mu­nity in Los An­ge­les. Ac­cor­ding to the Ins­ti­tute for the Study of Ho­me­less­ness, an es­ti­ma­ted 254,000 men, wo­men and chil­dren ex­pe­rience ho­me­less­ness in Los An­ge­les County.

This buil­ding goes well be­yond the kind of pro­ject that would be de­ve­lo­ped for this kind of com­mu­nity — the ho­me­less. With this pro­ject Michael Mal­tzan breaks the tra­di­tio­nal pa­ra­digm of what af­for­da­ble hou­ses are and chan­ges its dy­na­mic. “The Rain­bow apart­ments set up a new mo­del not only for a buil­ding, but for an en­tire com­bi­na­tion of so­cial en­ter­pri­ses, and not only pro­du­ces a new pa­ra­digms just for Los An­ge­les, but the pos­si­bi­lity of crea­ting a new na­tio­nal mo­del,” says Mal­tzan. Be­si­des, the pro­ject ad­dres­ses how to coun­te­ract the in­su­la­rity and her­me­tic na­ture of the inha­bi­tants’ daily li­ves and con­cerns over sa­fety and se­cu­rity, in­tro­du­cing open­ness, so­cial spa­ces, and ena­bling a rein­te­gra­tion of their li­ves into pu­blic life as a whole. Arran­ged in a par­tially open U-shaped con­fi­gu­ra­tion, five floors of re­si­den­tial units cradle a cen­tral court­yard on top of a socle of par­king and ad­mi­nis­tra­tive func­tions on the ground floor. A chain of pu­blic spa­ces and ex­te­rior gathe­ring areas are car­ved out or ex­tru­ded from the mass to erode the building’s ap­pa­rent so­li­dity, crea­ting var­ying depths of con­nec­tion and views bet­ween the in­ter­nal life of the court­yard and the world outside.

3 Responses to “Los Angeles Housing | Michael Maltzan Architecture”

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  1. 1 christoph plattner
    07-01-2008 at 23:57

    I am happy to see how the re­si­dents took over. I vi­si­ted the buil­ding right af­ter com­ple­tion and still empty; even at such a point you still can’t know what it’s gonna be like once it’s oc­cu­pied (you can only ima­gine). So it looks like it’s wor­king, es­pe­cially the out­door spa­ces (a sub­ject worth to be loo­ked at in re­gards to hou­sing in LA!). What you can’t see in the film is the tre­men­dous amount of work, ef­forts, dis­cus­sions, com­mit­ment, time, pa­tience, ne­go­tia­tions etc. to make it pos­si­ble. Un­for­tu­na­tely most archi­tects can’t or don’t want to af­ford to do a pro­ject like that. De­sign ex­ce­llence is one part, the other one al­most more im­por­tant is how you strug­gle with very li­mi­ted pos­si­bi­li­ties gi­ven the low bud­get and com­pa­red e.g. to most pri­vate re­si­den­ces. I think that’s one of the main rea­son why this pro­ject stays as an outs­tan­ding exam­ple for so­cial hou­sing. In the end, like in this mo­vie, every­body is very happy about the fi­nal buil­ding, con­gra­tu­la­tions and com­pli­ments all around. But it is so hard to ac­com­plish, it ta­kes so much of sta­ying po­wer, ne­go­tia­ting skills, per­sua­si­ve­ness, time…and no­body pays for it. Res­pect for every archi­tect who is able to built na­vi­ga­ting de­sign in­tents in a rea­so­na­ble way th­rough all un­con­tro­lla­ble fac­tors cons­tantly jeo­par­di­zing them. Res­pect which can’t be va­lued high enough. Look around you and you know.

  2. 2 Andrew Chell
    16-01-2009 at 8:58

    If you’re in­te­res­ted in uni­que stu­dent ac­com­mo­da­tion in Lough­bo­rough, please do check out my web­site http://www.andrewchell.com/

  3. 3 alinur
    28-04-2009 at 2:22

    Los An­ge­les Hou­sing archi­tec­ture is an exc­lu­sive. This is the la­test archi­tec­ture design.

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