SL11024

2016 Residential Architect Design Awards
Student Housing: Citation

Significant site challenges defined the form of SL11024, the new university housing complex designed by Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects (LOHA) near the campus of the University of California, Los Angeles. It’s located on a narrow pizza-slice of a site with a 50-foot elevation change, and it sits across the street from a Richard Neutra–designed apartment building. To address these challenges, and honor its distinguished neighbor, LOHA’s design for the 31-unit complex mixes bold forms and colors with volumes that blend into the landscape and other surroundings. Solid, perforated, and ribbed white metal panels make up most of the building’s envelope, but green-painted cement board panels add flourish to some exterior walls, walkways, and roof decks, the last of which are accessible from every floor. Split into two volumes to enable cross-ventilation, the building cascades down the hill to the site’s low point, where it aligns with the roof of the Neutra apartments, a neighbor with which this newcomer is very much at home.