SHELTER. Rethinking how we live in Los Angeles

Now, Los Angeles is a drastically different city than the days when architects like Frank Lloyd Wright used it as a residential playground. These days, building projects are driven by density and inclusivity as architects are forced to respond to the population, economy, congestion and environment.

This inaugural exhibition at the A+D Museum's new home asked six Los Angeles design firms to meet these challenges by proposing creative new housing models for a changing city.

The exhibit focuses on these teams' single and multi-family proposals along the Wilshire Corridor and the Los Angeles River, along with a selection of inventive new residences taking form throughout the city.

UN \ FOLDING WILSHIRE by wHY. Image courtesy of wHY.

The exhibition also highlights residential projects in LA that are completed or are now in progress. The featured designers include anonymous, Kevin Daly Architects, Michael Maltzan Architecture, Bestor Architecture, OMA, Koning Eizenberg, Free Land Buck, Johnston Marklee, R&A Design, Warren Techentin Architects and Murmur.

For more than a century Los Angeles has been the epicenter of innovative residential architecture in the United States, if not the world. Countless pioneers, from Frank Lloyd Wright to Frank Gehry, have taken advantage of the city’s diverse landscapes, openness to new ideas, culture of making, ideal climate, and steady influx of new residents to create homes that have defied imagination and convention, fostering both a new lifestyle and a different image of what architecture could be.

But Los Angeles has become — both by necessity and demand—a very different place in recent years, shifting its emphasis from single-family homes and the private realm to a culture of density and inclusivity. At the same time it faces new challenges, like population saturation, stratospheric costs, crushing congestion, and unprecedented environmental crises, which can no longer be met by existing residential typologies.

Shelter encourages six Los Angeles design practices to meet these challenges, proposing creative new housing models for a changing Los Angeles. The teams include Bureau Spectacular, LA Más, Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects, MAD Architects, PAR, and wHY.

Their single and multi-family proposals are located along two of the city’s most fertile new development zones: the Wilshire Corridor, where a new subway extension will reach miles to the west; and the Los Angeles River, where a more than billion-dollar restoration is catalyzing a surge of new building.

This work is complemented by a selection of inventive new residences taking form throughout the city.

Los Angeles is no longer the city it once was, and it needs fresh solutions to adapt to these groundbreaking shifts. Shelter endeavors to instigate a critical dialogue about housing, and ultimately, set the stage for much-needed change.