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⧵ Up
⧵ Los Angeles, CA ⧵ 2025 ⧵ Competition Entry
⧵ Up
⧵ Los Angeles, CA ⧵ 2025 ⧵ Competition Entry
Units: 18 units
Density: 186 units/acre
Status: Competition Entry, 2025 (Small Lots Big Impacts Competition)
Eighteen fee-simple townhomes packed onto an improbably tight footprint; go up rather than out. Building on ownership-driven townhome developments in LA and across the country, these 628 SF units reject conventional scale and proportion—prioritizing verticality to unlock greater density.
Each five-story unit is assembled from prefabricated CLT panels, leveraging the expansion of Type IV construction and pushing mass timber into territory usually reserved for stick-built. Both structure and exterior cladding are designed as panelized systems, fabricated off-site to speed construction and broaden labor availability.
Acknowledging the car dependence of Los Angeles, half of the units include the possibility of parking with a 10’x15’ space – compact only — and challenging the amount of land typically set aside. Inside, fully compartmentalized plans allow living rooms to function as bedrooms, offering adaptability in layout while utilizing rooftop outdoor space for communal living.
At the rear corner of each unit, a steel, open-riser spiral stair climbs five stories through a 5’x5’ vertical corridor that doubles as a passive ventilation stack. Capped by a solar chimney, the stair becomes the building’s spine—circulatory, spatial, and environmental.
Two deliberate code challenges anchor the project’s provocations: the open stair exceeds the prescriptive four-story limit, demanding a variance to permit its full vertical run, and the 210 SF lot size undercuts zoning minimums. These intentional deviations allow fee-simple ownership at a density equivalent to multi-family developments. Yet challenges remain: the regulations of risk-averse national lending institutions become an invisible zoning layer, and eight of the units may face financing barriers due to their lack of direct frontage on a public right-of-way.
Ownership remains, but its expression evolves: tall, efficient, carbon-conscious, and rooted in the logic of urban intensification. UP is not a refinement of typical housing development—it is a strategic confrontation with it. It interrogates what infill housing can be when code, financing, policy and homeowner’s preferences are pushed toward their limits.
Density: 186 units/acre
Status: Competition Entry, 2025 (Small Lots Big Impacts Competition)
Eighteen fee-simple townhomes packed onto an improbably tight footprint; go up rather than out. Building on ownership-driven townhome developments in LA and across the country, these 628 SF units reject conventional scale and proportion—prioritizing verticality to unlock greater density.
Each five-story unit is assembled from prefabricated CLT panels, leveraging the expansion of Type IV construction and pushing mass timber into territory usually reserved for stick-built. Both structure and exterior cladding are designed as panelized systems, fabricated off-site to speed construction and broaden labor availability.
Acknowledging the car dependence of Los Angeles, half of the units include the possibility of parking with a 10’x15’ space – compact only — and challenging the amount of land typically set aside. Inside, fully compartmentalized plans allow living rooms to function as bedrooms, offering adaptability in layout while utilizing rooftop outdoor space for communal living.
At the rear corner of each unit, a steel, open-riser spiral stair climbs five stories through a 5’x5’ vertical corridor that doubles as a passive ventilation stack. Capped by a solar chimney, the stair becomes the building’s spine—circulatory, spatial, and environmental.
Two deliberate code challenges anchor the project’s provocations: the open stair exceeds the prescriptive four-story limit, demanding a variance to permit its full vertical run, and the 210 SF lot size undercuts zoning minimums. These intentional deviations allow fee-simple ownership at a density equivalent to multi-family developments. Yet challenges remain: the regulations of risk-averse national lending institutions become an invisible zoning layer, and eight of the units may face financing barriers due to their lack of direct frontage on a public right-of-way.
Ownership remains, but its expression evolves: tall, efficient, carbon-conscious, and rooted in the logic of urban intensification. UP is not a refinement of typical housing development—it is a strategic confrontation with it. It interrogates what infill housing can be when code, financing, policy and homeowner’s preferences are pushed toward their limits.
