architecture is a
social
act LORCAN O’HERLIHY ARCHITECTS
architecture is a
social
act LORCAN O’HERLIHY ARCHITECTS
CONTENTS FOREWORD 4 INTRODUCTION 6 ENVISIONING THE STREET AT AN URBAN SCALE: 1992–1997 14 Main Street Projects Santa Monica 16 HOUSING OF ALL SHAPES AND SIZES: 2002–2011 30 Jai House 32 Habitat825 40 Formosa1140 50 Flynn Mews House 60 THE EVOLVING WORKPLACE: 2008–2011 70 Disney ImageMovers Digital Studio 72 Skid Row Housing Trust Management Offices 82 ENGAGING THE CITY: 2011–2015 90 Big Blue Bus Stops 92 WATERshed 100 Our Skid Row 108
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LORCAN O’HERLIHY ARCHITECTS [LOHA] Architecture Is a Social Act
HOUSING FOR ALL: 2013–2019 116 SL11024 118 UCSB San Joaquin Student Housing 128 UCSD Living and Learning 138 Mariposa1038 146 Sunset La Cienega 156 MLK1101 Supportive Housing 166 ON THE ROAD: 2015–2020 176 Brush Park 178 African Bead Museum 190 Milwaukee Junction Neighborhood Study and Baltimore Station 200 PUSHING THE BOUNDARIES: 2017–2021 210 Detroit Neighborhood Studies 212 Park City South 228 Isla Intersections 240 Rossmore 250 AFTERWORD 258 PROJECT INDEX 260 ABOUT LOHA 268 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 270 CREDITS 271 IMPRINT 272
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CONTENTS
FOREWORD by Lorcan O’Herlihy Looking back on the past 25 years of our practice, we are continually floored by how much the world has changed, and with it, the practice of architecture. When I started out in the 1990s, architecture was considered a luxury. Design was more about formal polemics – exploring materials and technology, and how you could push form – than it was about the people who were living in these buildings, or about the cities they occupied. Since then, the world, and our understanding of its delicate balance, have changed. As a result of these shifts, architects have had to take back up Modernism’s mission to make the world a better place and solve larger social ills. Today, architecture is no longer simply about designing a building as an isolated object, but instead about engaging with all the forces that are shaping our world – social, political, environmental. This has inspired a school of architects who are exploring a more humanistic approach to the built environment, and are engaging with the fate of cities, at a time when more and more people are flooding into them. Some of these newcomers really want to be there; some have been forced to migrate by enormous economic upheavals. This cosmic change is the fulcrum of our architectural practice. I like to think of architecture as a living, breathing organism that plays a significant role in how we interact with the world. I believe that architecture needs to be understood as a social act, as a tool with which we can connect to politics, economics, and aesthetics, and to ideas around smart growth. In this way, it can promote social equity, human interaction, and cultural evolution. To take one example, there is no denying that larger societal forces, in tandem with advances in technology and the rise of social media, have sped up the pace of life and paradoxically made us more isolated and far less social. And, although the year 2020 has shown that digital technology can be a lifeline in a “social distancing” reality, ultimately it will not keep us connected. Given this, and that cities are likely to continue to grow at an unprecedented pace, I believe it is more important than ever to design spaces that encourage and promote human interaction. The new challenge will be how we can design spaces to ensure our health and well-being and how we can renew our faith in our communal way of life. These emerging realities have imposed on architects the obligation to devise approaches and begin conversations that promote a renewed urban fabric. Our approach has become more bottom-up, more nuanced, and more considerate of the cultures and ecologies
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LORCAN O’HERLIHY ARCHITECTS [LOHA] Architecture Is a Social Act
already present, in order to avoid displacing people – as was done all too often in the past – and instead make neighborhoods inclusive across age, race, and socio-economic strata. This book follows from these concerns, and is our attempt to take stock and reflect upon the course of our work over the past two and a half decades. Specifically, we are interested in looking at the evolution of the cities and neighborhoods in which we are working, to see how they affected us and how we’ve affected them. Back in 1999, I released Lorcan O’Herlihy, a monograph that includes the four commercial projects on Main Street in Santa Monica with which this book begins. That period in the mid-1990s saw the start of a more social agenda for the practice, when we began to shift from designing houses in the hills to investigating how to break down the public-private divide that existed in Los Angeles, and encourage a more public-facing lifestyle in the city. Then in 2017 we summarized our ideas about urbanism today in the book Amplified Urbanism, with the goal of provoking conversations about how cities might become more dynamic, sustainable, and productive environments. We invited seven likeminded authors to contribute, each of whom offered interdisciplinary ideas and insights into the diverse dimensions of city life – from radical new forms of public performance art and unorthodox community gatherings to innovative infrastructure strategies related to the evolution of transportation networks and to sensitive urban flood plains. The book acted as a think piece, as well as an opportunity to position the practice within a larger discourse. This present book could be seen as a combination of those two publications. Architecture Is a Social Act presents 28 projects, showcasing them as portraits of the times in which they were created. But it is not merely a compilation of well-conceived designs. It also reflects our interest in how our work derives from, and speaks to, a site’s history and context, and how it is always informed by the people who live there. In our architectural practice, we always begin with the facts on the ground, working from the bottom up, not top down, and that approach is mirrored in this book. It is organized chronologically, starting in the 1990s and ending in 2020, and is broken up into seven sections, each representing a tipping point for our practice – periods during which our work was launched in new directions that brought new sets of challenges. From activating main streets, to designing housing of all shapes and sizes, to bringing hope to the homeless, to developing strategic plans for the future growth of cities such as Detroit and Raleigh, all of the work featured here is represented within a larger social framework. Because, in truth, architecture no longer has the luxury of parachuting in on the winds of big ideas. It’s the minute particulars of everyday life that make our work today at Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects meaningful and relevant. And also, we hope, transcendent.
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FOREWORD
INTRODUCTION by Frances Anderton Humans are social animals, as the Greek philosopher Aristotle observed, and for most of human civilization we have built environments that support this sociability. That is, until modern times. Changes in culture, technology, transportation, industry, reproductive medicine, urban planning, and far more have conspired over the last century to make us more fragmented and isolated than perhaps at any point in history. The proportion of people in the United States who live alone has grown from 5 percent in the 1920s to almost 30 percent now. Increasing numbers also work alone, and in recent surveys many Americans revealed that they feel they have only one or perhaps two real friends, despite the hundreds or thousands they may have online. So it falls to designers and builders to find ways to help mend the ruptures, make suburbs more urban, sidewalks more walkable, and workplaces more collaborative – in sum, to build the fabric that supports social interaction. One architect who is deeply committed to this task is Lorcan O’Herlihy, founder and principal of the Los Angelesbased firm Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects (LOHA). The work of O’Herlihy and his team ranges widely, including multi-unit housing; urban master plans that encompass many square miles; transportation infrastructure; cultural facilities; and workplaces for entertainment, sports, and technology companies. A common theme underlies all these projects: the creation of points of connection. The practice does all this with an artistic flair. Fusing his lifelong love of painting and form-making with planning and spatial organization that stimulates human encounters, O’Herlihy lays the groundwork for cultural and economic vitality. And the task is not easy. If you look at LOHA projects – in Los Angeles, Detroit, Dublin, and Raleigh, ranging across residential, streetscape, and multi-block master plans – you will see that many involve harnessing complicated and often competing challenges. Often there are multiple stakeholders, tight budgets, tricky sites, ever more stringent building codes, and, in some situations, struggles between proponents and opponents of higher density urban environments. Yet, out of these challenges, LOHA produces coherent and powerful visual statements that are also social catalysts, reflecting O’Herlihy’s own convictions: “I believe that architecture is a social act and that the role of the architect is to do work of consequence. It’s not so much about how to design a building as an isolated object, but how to use architecture as a tool for engaging in politics, aesthetics, smart growth, and social structures.”
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LORCAN O’HERLIHY ARCHITECTS [LOHA] Architecture Is a Social Act
JAI HOUSE
REMAKING THE RESIDENTIAL DREAM While LOHA works on a wide variety of building types, it was in the multi-unit housing projects shown in this book that O’Herlihy first got to test and give physical expression to his ideas. Like many Angeleno architects, he cut his teeth on experimental houses – both for himself and for private clients, as with his Jai House in Calabasas (p.32) – back in the time when houses both defined Los Angeles and launched architectural careers. From there, he carved out a path in multi-unit housing, starting at the very moment when L.A. itself was on the cusp of a transition from its low-rise, dispersed, car-based lifestyle toward denser living, oriented around a fledgling mass-transit system. LOHA has designed housing for professional couples, for creative singles, for students, and for the formerly homeless – all these types have served as venues to explore ideas about social activation through the configuration of space. This was demonstrated perhaps most famously in Formosa1140, a housing project in West Hollywood (p.50). There, LOHA was given the brief to compose an 11-unit housing complex on the site of a “derelict Craftsman-turned-crackhouse” on a street containing a “nearly unbroken wall of stucco dingbat apartments.” O’Herlihy chose to expand the design challenge to take on a deficit in the neighborhood: Residents of Formosa Avenue had no nearby public park. Despite West Hollywood’s love of its pet-dog population, only 1 percent of its land is parkland. O’Herlihy proposed an ingenious solution: Reduce the floor area in the condo complex given over to internal courtyards for residents, yielding it to a site next door, which became a bigger pocket park accessible to the general public. In today’s lingo, you could say he hacked the program – and in doing so, created a community good via market-rate private housing.
FORMOSA1140
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INTRODUCTION
ENVISIONING THE STREET AT AN URBAN SCALE 1992–1997
1991 L.A.’s gang activity peaks. On the Westside, the Venice Shoreline Crips and the Venice 13 (V13), the two main gangs in the area, are in a fierce turf war over crack cocaine. A number of economic factors, including a decrease in defense spending following the end of the Cold War and a slump in construction resulting from overbuilding in the 1980s, cause a period of recession in the U.S. 1992 The acquittal of Los Angeles Police Department officers accused of involvement in the videotaped beating of black motorist Rodney King sparks the racially charged Los Angeles Riots, resulting in over 60 deaths and $1 billion in damage, mostly in South Los Angeles. 1996 U.S. President Bill Clinton signs into law a welfare reform plan that gives states control of welfare, ending six decades of federal government control. As a result, millions are denied federal aid. 1997 As fears about the Asian economic crisis hit U.S. shores, the Dow Jones Industrial Average plummets by 7% (the biggest one-day point drop in history at the time). 1998 To ease consumer concerns over the crisis in Asia, interest rates in the U.S. are lowered to 4.75%, which floods the world’s financial markets with dollars. Confidence in the U.S. economy is restored, igniting a decade-long economic boom. 2002 Gang presence in L.A.’s Westside reduces as property values and police presence both increase, leading many gang members to resettle in neighboring areas such as Inglewood and South L.A.
Main Street Projects Santa Monica 1992–1997
Dave Hackett skating a frontside slash in an empty Southern California pool, 1983.
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In Los Angeles, urbanism is often understood as if viewed from outer space: multi-billion-dollar, multi-year projects such as the widening of the already massively wide 405 Freeway; the reconfiguring of LAX; or the construction of a new football stadium in Inglewood for not one but two NFL teams, the Rams and the Chargers. We often mistake these colossal schemes for the engines that propel cities into the future. In reality, paradigm shifts usually begin almost invisibly, with small-scale changes that remake one building at a time, one block at a time. That’s what happened in Santa Monica and Venice in the early 1990s, when these neighboring oceanfront cities reawakened from decades of backwater sleepiness to become new urban hubs. At the time, both Santa Monica and Venice were known for their subcultures. Surfers and skaters and panhandlers shared the boardwalks and canals and palisades with itinerant (and sometimes successful) artists, poets, musicians, and architects. Main Street – literally the main drag that ran through both cities – was a helter-skelter stretch of seedy bars, run-down Streamline Moderne buildings, usedclothing stores, and old furniture emporiums. Prime real estate, in other words, for a facelift – some would say, for an invasion by arrivistes cashing in on cheap property and opening swanky shops for hipsters and the well-to-do. Either way, the area was transformed, led by Frank Gehry’s seminal Edgemar mini-mall, an outside-of-the-box, mixed-use museum, retail, and restaurant courtyard completed in 1988 on Main Street in Santa Monica. Good architecture was emerging in the new mix. That’s when our practice arrived in beachside Los Angeles, practically at the birth of this resurgence. Lorcan had lived in Venice for years, working as an architect, painter, and sculptor, soaking in the bohemian ethos of getting by on next to nothing and converting any available spot into a studio. A two-block chunk of Main Street in Santa Monica became a laboratory for proving that changes in the wider urban fabric begin at the scale of the street and the sidewalk. During a productive era in the mid-1990s, Lorcan, at first working solo, then as LOHA, undertook a series of small commercial projects – most of them tweaks to existing storefronts – intended to revive life along the street by connecting buildings to pedestrians. ENVISIONING THE STREET AT AN URBAN SCALE 1992–1997 Main Street Projects Santa Monica
Resourcefulness was a key part of the aesthetic of the times. Usually, architects were working with the existing buildings, looking for ways to create innovative spaces with almost no money and very little time. The trick was to build something architecturally meaningful for $50 per square foot ($85 in today’s money), creating extraordinary designs out of ordinary materials such as plywood and cement. It was a mildly intoxicating and invigorating moment. For a young architect, opportunity was something you made by going around knocking on doors. That’s how Lorcan landed a number of his early and formative commercial projects – he knocked on doors.
Venice Boardwalk with street performers, vendors, and bodybuilders.
Frank Gehry’s Edgemar in Santa Monica combines turn-of-thecentury warehouses, an Art Deco office building, and boutiques.
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JULIE RICO GALLERY, 1992 One of the first of these commissions came in 1992 from Julie Rico, an art gallery owner who was looking to transform a storefront into something other than one more blank wall with signage. The idea was to create a “facade of movement” that would bridge the gallery and the street. Lorcan devised a series of canted glass panels, leaning out from the top, allowing the interior to envelop a piece of the sidewalk. The tilt of the glass facade reduced glare and diluted the barrier between threshold and street. The gallery door was unusually grand to accommodate larger artworks, creating an entrance that was simultaneously exuberant and practical. These were deft, resourceful gestures achieved on a tiny budget, at once inventive and pragmatic. These simple changes – tilted glass, oversized door – encouraged an influx of pedestrians from Main Street, who now viewed the gallery’s entrance as a portal, rather than a boundary. The addition of window niches provided alluring outdoor perches for gallery patrons during exhibition openings, and for anyone who needed a convenient rest stop at other times of day. The distinction between public “urban space” and isolated “cultural space” was further blurred by a polished concrete floor that merged with the color and texture of the sidewalk. HARRIET DORN CLOTHING STORE, 1993 Building on this narrative of an economy of means, Lorcan’s vision for the Harriet Dorn clothing store in 1993 incorporated inexpensive, birchplywood surfaces, curved steel rods, and translucent parachute fabric in order to animate the daylight-filled central tower of Gehry’s Edgemar shopping center. Presented with a scant $8,000 budget (approximately $14,000 in 2020 dollars), Lorcan reinterpreted the 22-foot-wide by 52-foot-high trapezoidal volume as a whimsical performance space. To offset the silo-like effect created by the combination of a small floor area and a soaring ceiling capped by an unobstructed skylight, he turned the empty airspace into a visual and visceral playground. The design left the middle of the floor empty, with built-in cabinetry lining the perimeter, and clothes hanging on floating steel-and-wood fixtures slicing through the center of the space. These sculptural components were intended to LORCAN O’HERLIHY ARCHITECTS [LOHA] Architecture Is a Social Act
convey the lyrical movements and suspended-in-air acts of the trapeze artists practicing nearby on the Santa Monica Pier. Instead of being carved up into a progression of miniature rooms like some cramped medieval turret, the central tower at Harriet Dorn featured subtle horizontal divisions, which were created by the black galvanized-steel pipe and the blonde plywood cascading down from the skylight. To filter the effusion of sunlight, a nylon parachute was draped across the void, effectively lowering the ceiling to less imposing proportions without choking off the vertical drama of the space.
Lorcan and fellow architect Larry Scarpa, Venice, California, c. 1997.
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CARMEN’S EUROPEAN DELICATESSEN, 1996 DELICATESSEN R&B, 1997 By 1994, LOHA had become a formal entity. The practice’s solutions for Carmen’s European Delicatessen and for Delicatessen R&B extended the streak of independent projects Lorcan had begun in Santa Monica during the mid-1990s. Both eateries employed operable floor-to-ceiling windows to both lure in customers and create inviting, day-lit interiors. At Carmen’s, aluminum-clad window surrounds jutting from crisp blue walls engaged the sidewalk and also served as the armature for the suspended lettering of the store’s minimalist sign. The deli was broken into three areas that evolved from busy to calm, mimicking the progression from street to interior: seating for patrons at the front, a deli counter at the center, and a shop at the rear. Deli R&B, as it was called, is a 750-square-foot retail space that shares a lot with the Sea Shore Motel just off Main Street. Our makeover was intended to create a welcoming doorstep that could serve two sets of clientele: guests at the hotel and passersby. The deli had been slotted into an existing white-stucco box that was completely overshadowed by the motel. It needed its own identity, but without resorting to a grand gesture that would overwhelm the motel. To achieve this, we chose clarity, and in particular the simplicity of straight lines. What emerged was a white box clad in white square tiles, with a new parapet extending up and folding over the original motel roof. The overhaul also included large swinging windows that opened to the street, blurring the line between interior and exterior space and revealing the continuation of the tiling inside, accented in colors inspired by De Stijl. Along this evolving stretch of Main Street, these projects became magnets, drawing people in while not severing them completely from the sidewalk, in a manner reminiscent of the cafés and public plazas of Europe. They explicitly rejected L.A.’s diminished culture at the time, which could be summed up as “park, walk into the store, buy something, go back to your car.” Collectively, they are an example of how small fixes can become larger urban ones, thereby setting the stage for what would become our ethos for years to come.
ENVISIONING THE STREET AT AN URBAN SCALE 1992–1997 Main Street Projects Santa Monica
1
Volume is removed from either side of the canted glass entrance to create a sidewalk seating structure
JULIE RICO 1 Julie Rico Gallery, Main Street, Santa Monica, 1992. 2 Interior view, raw backside of the sculptural facade with exposed ceiling joists and wall studs. 3 Angled glass meets folded aluminum facade to create a dramatic entry.
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3
1
HARRIET DORN 1 Parachute fabric diffuses light from the 52-foot-high skylight.
Harriet Dorn floor plan, roughly 500 square feet of trapezoidal space
2 Clothes hang from floating steeland-wood fixtures modeled after trapeze swings.
FLOOR PLAN 2
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ENVISIONING THE STREET AT AN URBAN SCALE 1992–1997 Main Street Projects Santa Monica
CARMEN’S 1 Polished aluminum overhang juts from crisp blue exterior walls at Carmen’s European Delicatessen.
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1
1
DELICATESSEN R&B
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1 White tiles enlarge the building and make it pop. 2 Large pivot door opens to give access to outdoor dining.
“Built with simplicity and lack of pretension, the delicatessen proposes itself as a new mode of vernacular retail architecture, unabashedly generous in its conviction that even consuming a sandwich and a bag of potato chips should transpire in an environment of quiet beauty.” Ed Dimendberg UC Irvine Humanities Professor and Author
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ENVISIONING THE STREET AT AN URBAN SCALE 1992–1997 Main Street Projects Santa Monica
HOUSING OF ALL SHAPES AND SIZES 2002–2011
2000 61% of Americans live in cities. Los Angeles’s population reaches 3.7 million (a rise of 200,000 since 1990). 2003 The U.S. Federal Reserve continues to lower interest rates to encourage people to purchase homes. As a result, average mortgage rates decline to 5.21% from a high of 8.64% three years earlier, and those who could not previously gain approval for loans now qualify for subprime mortgages. American home ownership rises significantly. 2006 After reaching a new median of $317,300, and $550,000 in California, home prices in the U.S. begin to fall for the first time in 11 years. Construction of new housing falls by 28% and mortgage interest rates rise as high as 6.8%. 2007 The subprime industry collapses, leading several lenders to announce significant losses, declare bankruptcy, and put themselves up for sale. This triggers the “Great Recession” in the U.S. 2008 The financial crisis spreads to Europe and Asia. 2009 Governments in the U.S. and around the world put trillions of dollars into their financial systems in an attempt to stimulate their economies. 2011 The Occupy movement inspires worldwide protests that highlight income inequality, adopting the slogan “We are the 99%.”
Formosa1140 2006–2009
Map showing all of the parks (in dark blue) in West Hollywood, amounting to only 1 percent of total land.
The site with original derelict house, 2005.
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Los Angeles famously lacks urban public space, averaging 3.3 acres of parks per 1,000 residents. That puts it 74th out of the 100 largest cities in the United States. In the adjoining City of West Hollywood, the problem is far worse, with only 1 percent of total land allocated to public greenspace. This compact city at the foot of the Hollywood Hills has a population of just 37,000, yet was built to capacity decades ago and has a density greater than every major American city with the exception of New York. With no land to expand its existing parks, or build major new ones, West Hollywood decided at the turn of this century to find ways to green up the city, just as neighboring Los Angeles began to address the same crisis by making its own parks out of blighted empty lots. In 2007, West Hollywood became one of the first cities in the nation to adopt a green building ordinance that linked density to open space. It was at this very moment that we partnered with our client Richard Loring on our third and most ambitious housing project yet, Formosa1140, which simultaneously promoted West Hollywood’s mission and became a social experiment in its own right. The plot was located on Formosa Avenue in an older part of the city that had once been filled with small homes and duplexes in Craftsman and Spanish Colonial Revival styles, most of them built for the lower ranks of filmstudio workers. The surrounding block had long since been transformed into a nearly unbroken wall of stucco dingbat apartments; our job was to design an 11-unit housing complex on the site of a derelict Craftsmanturned-crackhouse. The new project was informed by the successes and challenges of our Habitat825 in a far more upscale part of West Hollywood, where we’d created a generous setback to promote a semipublic zone between the dwelling and the street. Although the building was not architecturally significant, the City of West Hollywood was pushing to save the Formosa Avenue house, since development was frowned upon at the time. In addition, this Craftsman was one of the few remnants of the original street. After months of deliberations between city officials, neighbors, our office, and the client, everyone finally agreed that demolishing the house and replacing it with housing and a publicly accessible pocket park would be a win-win solution. It took some further wrangling, but ultimately we found a way to make this unique public-private partnership work by HOUSING OF ALL SHAPES AND SIZES 2002–2011 Formosa1140
Lorcan’s father, Dan O’Herlihy, and the Formosa Cafe, founded in 1925.
How a typical West Hollywood street grid could become greener by adopting the pocket-park strategy.
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having the landowner lease the park, in perpetuity, to the city – a first for West Hollywood. The city paid for the park, and will continue to fund its upkeep. In one stroke, we unearthed open space, promoted neighborhood beautification on an especially bleak street, and provided much-needed housing, all the while creating a prototype for future block-by-block urban infill and greening in West Hollywood. The 11 units of Formosa1140 total 28,000 square feet, sharing a 13,442-square-foot lot with the pocket park. Less than a block south, at the corner of Formosa Avenue and Santa Monica Boulevard, is the Formosa Cafe, a 100-year-old Hollywood watering hole once filled with film-biz celebrities. One of these was Lorcan’s father, Dan O’Herlihy, who’d wet his whistle with his friend Orson Welles when they were working together at Warner Hollywood, just across the street. While much of the design for Formosa1140 was informed by the pocket park, it was the famous Naugahyde red of the Formosa Cafe that would be our muse, and become a hallmark feature of the project. A big part of our job was to rethink the standard courtyard apartment with its horseshoe layout – once found on nearly every block in Hollywood – and to extend the outdoor spaces of Formosa1140 out into the new park. As originally conceived, the building would be sitting to one side of the lot, carving out the park and making the apartments integral to this green space. This effectively bisected the parcel lengthwise, setting aside one-third (4,600 square feet) for the residents, neighbors, and general public to share. The park was not the only defining feature: Formosa1140’s vibrant color palette and unique metal facade create a striking presence in a neighborhood dominated by neutral-colored stucco boxes. Its exterior combines staggered geometric blocks of red and orange panels with perforated metal sheathing that shields the windows. This permeable screen projects outward from the building on the street- and park-facing facades, providing shade to the units. The variation of privacy screens and open balcony voids within the building’s skin gives residents a visual and visceral connection to the public park. At the project’s core is the building volume itself, cloaked in black wood paneling that seems to recede into the background, making the contrasting red/orange scrim pop. Formosa1140, we believe, created more than just some space for a pocket park or some good architecture for a street on a downward trajectory. In 2011, soon after we opened the project, Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa announced a plan to develop 50 pocket parks scattered throughout L.A., some as large as a residential lot and others as small as a parking space. We’d like to think that Formosa1140 was a harbinger, a forward-looking model of how to integrate public and private space. We showed how to find green real estate where none existed and how to bring neighborhoods closer together.
LORCAN O’HERLIHY ARCHITECTS [LOHA] Architecture Is a Social Act
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“Formosa1140 was one of those projects where, when I show it to people they’re just stunned, whether it’s in person or pictures, because it kind of looks like a painting more than a building.” Richard Loring Client, Director of Design + Construction, Domos Co-Living, LLC
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HOUSING OF ALL SHAPES AND SIZES 2002–2011 Formosa1140
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Digital Pantone drawing of a site plan
1 One of the busiest stops is Santa Monica College on Pico Boulevard. 2 The illuminated circular canopies are embedded with small solar panels that supply power to the high-efficiency LED lights. 3 The shade canopies, poles, and seats are all made of 100 percent recycled steel. 4 GPS is used to provide real-time schedule information that can also be viewed through a smartphone app.
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“Many of L.A.’s best houses were built on steep slopes: Here is a complex that subtly echoes Neutra’s response to topography.” Michael Webb Neighbor and former Contributing Editor, Mark Magazine
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HOUSING FOR ALL 2013–2019 SL11024
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“The project presents a transformational opportunity for the campus to nurture a collaborative and interdisciplinary living and learning community that ... encourages ... leadership and innovation in a diverse interconnected world.” UCSD Facilities Design and Construction Department
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LORCAN O’HERLIHY ARCHITECTS [LOHA] Architecture Is a Social Act
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HOUSING FOR ALL 2013–2019 UCSD Living and Learning
1 View from tower dorms above Muir College Drive. 2 Two-story open-air cut-out bisects the building. 3 View of interior grounds of Sixth College with Pacific Ocean in the background.
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LORCAN O’HERLIHY ARCHITECTS [LOHA] Architecture Is a Social Act
Site section highlighting the building’s co-living core
Level 3 floor plan, with co-living units on the interior, and one- and two-bedroom units along the periphery
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ON THE ROAD 2015–2020 Milwaukee Junction Neighborhood Study and Baltimore Station
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“If we want to confront the homelessness and housing crisis over the long run, we have to harness innovative solutions that bring unhoused Angelenos indoors immediately. Isla Intersections shows us what’s possible when we scale to build the supportive and affordable housing homeless Angelenos urgently need and deserve.” Eric Garcetti Mayor, Los Angeles
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1 Rendering of project within the vast expanse of Los Angeles, and at the foot of one of the busiest freeway interchanges in the world. 2 Rendering of Annenberg Paseo “living lung,” putting pedestrians ahead of cars. 3 Aerial view of groundbreaking ceremony, with prototype unit in the adjacent lot. 4 Interior view of 480-square-foot prototype unit.
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PUSHING THE BOUNDARIES 2017–2021 Isla Intersections
PROJECT INDEX 1990–2023 1997
1992 1993 Video Production Office Venice, CA Commercial Built Photo: Tom Bonner
1993
1992
260
Kelly Residence Marina del Rey, CA House Built Photo: Dominique Vorillon/Tom Bonner
1997
Harriet Dorn Clothing Store Santa Monica, CA Commercial Built Photo: Grey Crawford
p.16
Beckstrand/Goldhammer Residence Palos Verdes, CA House Built Photo: Conrad Johnson
1996 1993
O'Herlihy Residence (Now Trancas Canyon) Malibu, CA House Built Photo: Paul Warchol/ Conrad Johnson
1996
Reform Showroom Los Angeles, CA Commercial Built Photo: Conrad Johnson
Freund-Koopman Residence Pacific Palisades, CA House Built Photo: Tom Bonner
1990
p.16
Julie Rico Gallery Santa Monica, CA Commercial Built Photo: Tom Bonner
Kline Residence Malibu, CA House Built Photo: Juergen Nogai/ Julius Shulman
1995
p.16
1997
p.16
Carmen’s European Delicatessen Santa Monica, CA Commercial Built Photo: Grey Crawford
Meaney Residence Studio City, CA House Built Photo: Grey Crawford
LORCAN O’HERLIHY ARCHITECTS [LOHA] Architecture Is a Social Act
Delicatessen R&B Santa Monica, CA Commercial Built Photo: Conrad Johnson
2000
2004 2001
1999 Abraham Residence Studio City, CA House Built
Fusion Films Santa Monica, CA Commercial Built
Fineman-Bowman Residence Los Angeles, CA House Built Photo: Michael Weschler
Napoli Management Beverly Hills, CA Commercial Built Photo: Benny Chan/ Michael Weschler
2001
2005 2002
2000 Lexton-MacCarthy Residence Los Angeles, CA House Built Photo: Douglas Hill
Stuart Residence Solana Beach, CA House Built
Levinsohn Residence Los Angeles, CA House Built Photo: Roger Straus/ Esto
Vertical House Venice, CA House Built Photo: Juergen Nogai
2002
2000 2001 Nathanson Residence Los Angeles, CA House Built Photo: Michael Weschler
2001 Youbet Woodland Hills, CA Commercial Built Photo: Marvin Rand Nevitt Residence Los Angeles, CA House Built
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PROJECT INDEX 1990–2023
2004 Murphy-La Padura Residence Santa Monica, CA House Built Photo: Gary Murphy/ Jason LaPadura
Jai House Calabasas, CA House Built Photo: Michael Weschler
p.32
2007
2008
Urban Paramount Lofts Los Angeles, CA Multi-unit residential Built Photo: Tate Lown
Habitat825 West Hollywood, CA Multi-unit residential Built Photo: Lawrence Anderson
2008
p.40
2009
p.50
2007 Authentic Studios Burbank, CA Commercial Built Photo: Douglas Hill
2005
Sherman Residence Mill Valley, CA House Built Photo: Tim Griffith
W.A. Lofts Los Angeles, CA Multi-unit residential Built
2009
Formosa1140 West Hollywood, CA Multi-unit residential Built Photo: Lawrence Anderson
Jovanovic Residence Los Angeles, CA House Built Photo: Michael Weschler
2009 2007 2006
Gardner1050 West Hollywood, CA Multi-unit residential Built Photo: Lawrence Anderson
262
MGA Chatsworth Campus Northridge, CA Commercial Unbuilt
2010 2008
Old Lihue Sugar Mill Master Plan Lihue, Kauai, Hawaii Public Realm/Shortlisted Unbuilt
Willoughby Lofts West Hollywood, CA Multi-unit residential Built Photo: Lawrence Anderson
LORCAN O’HERLIHY ARCHITECTS [LOHA] Architecture Is a Social Act
Steele-Gelles Residence Los Angeles, CA House Built
2011
2011
Culver City Streetscape Culver City, CA Public Realm Built
2010
Mixers Santa Clarita, CA Commercial Built Photo: Lawrence Anderson
263
Port of Kinmen Botanical Bridge Kinmen, Taiwan Infrastructure/Competition Unbuilt
2014
2014 2011
Grupo Gallegos Creative Headquarters and Gym Huntington Beach, CA Commercial Built Photo: Lawrence Anderson
2010
2014
Skid Row Housing Trust Management Offices Los Angeles, CA Office Built Photo: Lawrence Anderson
2010
Palos Verdes Art Center Palos Verdes, CA Cultural/Shortlisted Unbuilt
p.82
Sunset Billboards West Hollywood, CA Infrastructure Built Photo: Lawrence Anderson
2012
p.72
Disney ImageMovers Digital Studio Novato, CA Creative office Built Photo: Frank Oudeman
Guggenheim Helsinki Helsinki, Finland Cultural/Competition Unbuilt
2011
p.60
AD House Los Angeles, CA House Built Photo: Paul Vu
Flynn Mews House Dublin, Ireland House Built Photo: Enda Cavanagh
PROJECT INDEX 1990–2023
2014
2014 Hungarian House of Music Budapest, Hungary Cultural/Competition Unbuilt
p.92
Big Blue Bus Stops Santa Monica, CA Infrastructure Built Photo: Lawrence Anderson
Founded in Los Angeles in 1994 by Lorcan O’Herlihy, FAIA, our practice has grown to a team of 25, with offices in Los Angeles and Detroit. Collectively and collaboratively driven by Lorcan’s passion and creative vision, LOHA has built a robust portfolio of work that is rooted in embracing architecture’s role as a catalyst for change. Over the years, we have brought together a group of talented architects and designers from throughout the U.S. and around the world, all of whom are dedicated to making cities more dynamic, more equitable, more livable.
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Aaron Baseman, Abel Garcia, Alex Anamos, Alex Morassut, Anna Hermann, Banu Ataman, Barbara Huang, Benzion Rodman, Brad Maddalena, Brian Adolph, Caitlyn Ulrich Smith, Cameron Northrop, Cameron Overy, Caroline Tse, Charles Sharpless, Chioma Velma Anelo, Chris Faulhammer, Chris Gassaway, Chris Mercier, Christopher Lim, Claudia Lugo, Damian LeMons, Damian Possidente, Dana Lydon, Danika Baldwin, David Thompson, Donnie Schmidt, Doug Macarag, Efren Soriano, Elaine Metzinger, Emily Ewbank, Emily Jagoda, Evan Brinkman, Franka Diehnelt, Geoffrey Ax, Geoffrey Sorrell, Ghazal Khezri, Giovanni Fruttaldo, Haylie Chan, Hui Zhen Ng, Ian Dickenson, Janice Shimizu, Jason King, Jennie Matusova, Jennifer Jardine, Jessica Colangelo, Joe Tarr, Jonathan Gayomali, Jonathan Louie, Juan Diego Gerscovich, Judson Buttner, Kate Chiu, Kathryn Sonnabend, Kathy Williams, Kayla Manning, Kazu Shichishima, Kevin Murray, Kevin Southerland, Kevin Tsai, Laura Williams, Lenea Sims, Leo Yu, Lilit Ustayan, Lisa Pauli, Lucia Sanchez Ramirez, Lyannie Tran, Maria Galustian, Mariana Boctor, Mark Mendez, Mary Chou, Matthew Biglin, Matthias Lenz, Michael Poirier, Michelle McCann, Molly Reid, Morgan Starkey, Neha Jain, Nicholas Muraglia, Nick Hopson, Nicole Violani, Nida Chesonis, Noelle White, Olga Mesa, Patricia Bacalao, Phillipe Bonpas, Phillip Ong, Pierre De Angelis, Qi Chen, Ricardo Diaz, Richard Warner, Richie Yu, Rosemary Jeremy, Ryan Caldera, Ryan Leifield, Sabrina SchmidtWetekam, Samuel Kim, Santiago Tolosa, Sean Gallivan, Sinéad Finnerty-Pyne, Sherry Rezvani, Tang Chuenchomphu, Tom Myers, Tyler Lown, Urs Britschgi, Vincent Lee, Vy Drouin-Le, William Duncanson, Yuval Borochov
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ABOUT LOHA
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Thanks to all of you who have made this book possible. First, to our staff throughout the years who’ve worked tirelessly to bring great ideas and inspirational projects to life. To those who’ve labored behind the scenes to make this book a reality, especially Michelle McCann and Richie Yu, your steadfast support has been invaluable. To Sinéad Finnerty-Pyne, our Project Strategist, who co-authored this book. Over the course of a year, she took on the monumental task of interviewing dozens of LOHA employees, clients, and collaborators, and scouring our archives, to assemble a series of stories that represent the core of what we are about. To our team, including Ian Dickenson, Brian Adolph, Noelle White, Kevin Murray, Kathryn Sonnabend, Vy Drouin-Le, Vladimir Gintoff, Geoffrey Sorrell, Morgan Starkey, and Judson Buttner, thanks for insights, stories, and design acumen, which made the book accurate and tight. To Kayla Ching and Paul Vu for their rendering and photographic support. To the team at Frame Publishers for being incredible partners, especially Ana Martins, for her diligence and close attention and the care she put into the book, as well as design director Barbara Iwanicka and editor John Jervis. And a special thanks to Darin Ciccotelli and Amy Steinberg, whose comments and feedback strengthened every aspect of the writing. And to architectural journalist Frances Anderton, who has been supportive of our work from the beginning. As in her reporting elsewhere, she approaches the Introduction from the viewpoint of the lived experience of architecture and design, from the policy, politics, and people that are shaping it daily. Finally, an extra special thanks goes out to Greg Goldin, our collaborator on every aspect of this project, in particular for his brilliance in summing it all up in the afterword. We couldn’t have done this so eloquently without you. To our collaborators on projects featured in this book, including Stephen Kanner, RIP (Disney ImageMovers Digital Studio), Theresa Hwang and Rosten Woo (Our Skid Row), Bruce Mau (Big Blue Bus Stops), Gensler San Diego (UCSD Living and Learning), Skidmore, Owings and Merrill LLP (Sunset La Cienega), and Design Workshop (Northwest Detroit Neighborhood Study) as well as all of our consultants throughout the years. And last but not least, to our clients and collaborators, as well as those who shared their thoughts, memories, and stories, especially Cristian Ahumada, Sierra Atilano, Olayami Dabls, Ella Flynn, Nick Halaris, Richard Loring, June Luo, Larry Korman, Marsha Music, and Julie Piatt.
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CREDITS All images copyright to Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects [LOHA] unless otherwise noted. PHOTOGRAPHY p.7 (top) Courtesy of Dermot Bannon’s LA Homes, RTE; pp.7 (bottom), 10 (bottom), 13, 44-49, 53-54, 56-59, 82, 86-89, 92, 95-99 Lawrence Anderson; pp.8, 10 (top), 120 (bottom), 122-127, 170, 175 (bottom), Photo: Iwan Baan; pp.9, 128, 129 (bottom), 131-137 Bruce Damonte; pp.11 (top), 64-65, 67 Enda Cavanagh; p.12, 148 Minh Tran; pp.16, 20-23 Tom Bonner; p.17 Glen E. Friedman/Wikimedia; p.18 (top) Wil540 art/Wikimedia; pp.18 (bottom), 34 (top), 37, 100, 118, 148 (top), 150-155, 162 (top), 166, 171-174, 175 (top), 248-249, 252 (bottom) Paul Vu; pp.24-27 Grey Crawford; pp.28-29 Conrad Johnson; pp.32, 38 Jasper Johal; p.33 (top) H. Armstrong Roberts, ClassicStock/Alamy Stock Photo; p.33 (bottom) Francesco Bandarin/Wikimedia; p.34 (bottom) Ye Rin Mok; pp.35, 39 John Coolidge; p.36 Michael Weschler; p.40 Tate Lown; p.41 (top) Courtesy of LADWP Historic Archive; p.41 (bottom) Schindler Family Collection, courtesy of Friends of the Schindler House; p.42 (top) Archive Werner M. Moser, Eidgenossische Technische Hochschule, Zürich; p.42 (bottom) Alina/Pexels; p.51 (top) Map data: ©2020 Google, altered by LOHA; p.52 (top) Cleary, Strauss and Irwin, Public Relations/ Wikimedia; p.52 (middle) Mark Peacock; pp.60, 66, 68-69 Alice Clancy; p.61 XeresNelro/Wikimedia; p.62 (bottom) Arnieby/Shutterstock; pp.72, 76-77, 81 (top) Nicholas Marques; p.73 (top) Mark Jayson Aranda/Wikimedia; pp.78-80, 81 (bottom) Frank Oudeman; p.83 (bottom) Russ Allison Loar/Wikimedia; p.93 (top) Eric Richardson/ Wikimedia; p.93 (bottom) Downtowngal/Wikimedia; p.94 (top) Courtesy of City of Santa Monica Big Blue Bus; p.94 (bottom) Ricardo de O. Lemos/Shutterstock; p.101 (top) California Historical Society Collection, USC/Wikimedia; p.101 (bottom) Joseph Sohm/Shutterstock; p.102 (top) U.S. National Archives and Records Administration/ Wikimedia; p.102 (middle) Tavo Olmos, Historic American Buildings Survey/Historic American Engineering Record/Historic American Landscapes Survey, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA/Wikimedia; pp.102 (bottom), 107 (top) Hunter Kerhart; p.109 Herald Examiner Collection, Los Angeles Public Library; p.110 (top) Stephen Zeigler/ Wikimedia; p.111 Alexander Laurent; p.119 (top) Courtesy of DWP, LA Public Library Image Archive; p.119 (bottom) Courtesy of Erik Berry, SoCal Historic Architecture, Via DWP Power Historical Photos; p.120 (top) © J. Paul Getty Trust. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2004.R.10); p.130 (bottom) Madeline Tolle/Shutterstock; pp.139, 140 (bottom) Alison Metzinger; p.141 Codera23/Wikimedia; pp.142-145 Gensler; p.146 Michele Laurita; p.156 Gibran Villalobos; p.157 (top) Jerry Kivela; p.157 (bottom) Adiamondheart/Wikimedia; p.158 (top) Robert Landau/Alamy Stock Photo; p.158 (middle) Jeff Costlow/Wikimedia; p.158 (bottom) Brent Jespersen; pp.160-161, 163, 164-165 David Lena; p.168 Clifford Beers Housing; p.169 Jonathan Schkolnick; pp.178, 186-187, 189, 190, 194, 196-197 Nadir Ali; p.179 (top) Dickens, Asbury & Forney, John W., eds. (1832) "Plan of Detroit" (Map). American State Papers. Vol. 6: Public Lands. 1:6,000. Washington, DC: Gales & Seaton. p. 299. OCLC 2053058. OL7014594M. LCCN 09033892. – via Archive.org/Wikimedia; p.179 (middle) Aivoges/Shutterstock; p.179 (bottom) Everett Historical/Shutterstock; p.180 (bottom) Woodward East Historic District, State of Michigan/Wikimedia; pp.182-185, 188 LOHA and Hamilton Anderson Architects; pp.191, 192 (top & middle), 214 (top) Queen Kamra Cooper; p.201 (top) Unknown/Wikimedia;
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p.201 (bottom) Unknown/Wikimedia; p.202 (top) Motown Historical Museum/Dig Downtown Detroit/Wikimedia; p.202 (bottom) Jackdude101/Wikimedia; p.203 (bottom) Originally uploaded to English Wikipedia from German Wikipedia by Shanes/A Generous German; cropped by Beyond My Ken (talk) 06:20, 15 February 2011 (UTC)/Wikimedia; p.213 (top) Detroit Historical Society; p.213 (bottom) Scott Hocking; p.215 (bottom) ©1966 CBS Television/Wikimedia; p.216 (top) Detroit Police Department photograph collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan; p.229 (top) Lewis Wickes Hine, U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (Department of Commerce and Labor. Children's Bureau. 1912–1913)/Wikimedia; p.229 (bottom) USGS/Wikimedia; p.230 (top) Courtesy of Dorothea Dix Park, City of Raleigh, Parks Recreation & Cultural Resources; p.231 Sixflashphoto/Wikimedia; pp.236-239 Brick Visual; p.240, 242 (top) Clifford Beers Housing; p.241 Map data: ©2020 Google Earth, altered by LOHA; p.242 (middle & bottom) Glen Dake/Flickr; p.245 Paul Vu/LOHA; p.251 Tim Ahem/Wikimedia; p.252 (top) Downtowngal/ Wikimedia; p.253 Ron Niebrugge/Alamy Stock Photo TEXT p.44 Richard Koshalek cited in Sydney LeBlanc, “Remaking the Condo With Light and Air”, New York Times, 10 January 2008 [https://www.nytimes. com/2008/01/10/garden/10condo.html] p.76 Clifford Pearson, Architectural Record, September 2009, p.77 p.95 Alissa Walker, “Seats in the street: How LA's outdoor furniture creates a more livable city”, Curbed, 20 July 2016 [https://www.curbed.com/2016/7/20/12217086/street-furniture-los-angeles] p.103 Sam Lubell cited in Mimi Zeiger, “Gimme Shelter: Inaugural A+D Museum exhibition promises to rethink Los Angeles housing”, The Architect’s Newspaper, 17 August 2015 [https://archpaper.com/2015/08/gimme-shelter-inaugural-ad-museum-exhibition-promises-rethink-l-housing/] p.113 Suzette Shaw, “Humanity, Dignity, Fragility, Transparency for All To See.....Time for Empowering the Life of A Skid Row Refugee”, No Place to Go, An Audit of the Public Toilet Crisis in Skid Row, June 2017 p.123 Michael Webb, Mark Magazine, June/July 2015, p.85 p.133 Marc Fisher cited in Shelly Leachman, “No Place Like Home”, The Current, 14 November 2014 [https://www. news.ucsb.edu/2014/014579/no-place-home] p.142 Request for Proposal (RFP) Documents for North Torrey Pines Living & Learning Neighborhood, University Of California San Diego, Project No.: 5058, Contract No.: A4l-413 p.188 Bedrock Detroit, City Modern Brush Park - Coming 2018 [Video], YouTube, 29 November 2016 [https:// www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3&v=s8O_ RJyRiGA&feature=emb_logo] p.197 Marsha Music, “The Kidnapped Children of Detroit”, The Detroitist, April 2014 [https://marshamusic.wordpress. com/the-kidnapped-children-of-detroit/] p.218 Maurice Cox cited in Heather Leighton, “How Detroit’s director of planning aims to recreate the city with equity for all in mind”, The Urban Edge, 23 May 2019 [https://kinder.rice.edu/urbanedge/2019/05/23/mauricecox-detroit-kinder-institute-forum-city-planning-equity] p.233 Corey Mason cited in Anna Johnson, “20-story development allowed near Dix Park and downtown Raleigh”, The News & Observer, 4 December 2019, [https:// www.newsobserver.com/news/local/counties/wakecounty/article238035344.html]
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS AND CREDITS
ARCHITECTURE IS A SOCIAL ACT Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects
PUBLISHER Frame AUTHORS Sinéad Finnerty-Pyne and Greg Goldin With Foreword by Lorcan O’Herlihy and Introduction by Frances Anderton PRE-PRODUCTION Sinéad Finnerty-Pyne PRODUCTION Ana Martins COPY EDITOR John Jervis DESIGN DIRECTOR Barbara Iwanicka GRAPHIC DESIGN Shadi Ekman and Zoe Bar-Pereg PREPRESS Edward de Nijs PRINTING Ofset Yapımevi
TRADE DISTRIBUTION USA AND CANADA Consortium Book Sales & Distribution, LLC. 34 Thirteenth Avenue NE, Suite 101 Minneapolis, MN 55413-1007 T +1 612 746 2600 T +1 800 283 3572 (orders) F +1 612 746 2606 TRADE DISTRIBUTION BENELUX Frame Publishers Luchtvaartstraat 4 1059 CA Amsterdam the Netherlands distribution@frameweb.com frameweb.com TRADE DISTRIBUTION REST OF WORLD Thames & Hudson Ltd 181A High Holborn London WC1V 7QX United Kingdom T +44 20 7845 5000 F +44 20 7845 5050 ISBN: 978-94-92311-45-0 © 2020 Frame Publishers, Amsterdam, 2020 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, or any storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Whilst every effort has been made to ensure accuracy, Frame Publishers does not under any circumstances accept responsibility for errors or omissions. Any mistakes or inaccuracies will be corrected in case of subsequent editions upon notification to the publisher. The Koninklijke Bibliotheek lists this publication in the Nederlandse Bibliografie: detailed bibliographic information is available on the internet at http://picarta.pica.nl Printed on acid-free paper produced from chlorine-free pulp. TCF ∞ Printed in Turkey 987654321
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Good architecture is no longer about simply designing buildings, but about meeting head-on the forces that are shaping today’s world. Architecture Is a Social Act addresses how the discipline can be used as a tool to engage in politics, economics, aesthetics, and smart growth by promoting social equity, human interaction, and cultural evolution. This book features 28 projects drawn from across LOHA’s nearly 30-year history, a selection that underscores the direct connection between the development of consciously designed buildings and wider efforts to tackle issues that are relevant in a rapidly changing world. LOHA’s projects are small, medium, large, and extra-large, from tiny Santa Monica storefronts to vast urban plans in Detroit, Michigan, and Raleigh, North Carolina. Each case study is evidence of LOHA’s mastery of scale, form, light, and space that gives people a true sense of place and belonging. Architecture Is a Social Act points the way ahead for both people and architecture.