Lorcan O’Herlihy and his design firm LOHA are leading the charge for architecture that matters with their work. His latest book is called “Architecture is a Social Act,” and it chronicles his team’s efforts to think of architecture as a force of creating spaces that are livable, that encourage community, and are socially equitable. I recently attended a lecture for Kennesaw State University’s architecture department and he presented several of his projects where he discussed design actions that doubled as guerilla tactics for creating social spaces and actual change for the communities.
Formosa 1140
This project for affordable housing in Los Angeles inverts an introverted building type (a courtyard) into a more extroverted one: an exterior walkway connects through-block units, giving them cross ventilation and a greater perception of interior space. Contracting the building’s form and pushing it to one side, and sinking a parking podium under the site, provided room and a creative strategy for a new community park space. The building itself is a study in layering and color and light and shadow: a painter designed these elevations, and even in a small 11 unit building they are rapturous and complex.
Screenshot from the LOHA lecture showing the Formosa elevation.
The park exists only because the architect made space for it and deemed it necessary and vital.
Inventive site section becomes the social act, creating social space where it would not otherwise exist.
MLK 1101
Designers cannot forget to carve the room to allow us to come together. What happens when a city cannot grow any further, and it discovers that sidewalks and boulevards are not enough? There are over 60,000 homeless in Los Angeles. LOHA designed this project for supportive housing for veterans and families with the simple tenet that open space and natural light are needed for a healthy mind. Architecture houses that healing mind, and creates outdoor living rooms, inviting community amenity spaces, and an uplifting spirit of design where residents cannot help but feel valued and anchor their dignity.
The building plan fragments, bends and encourages residents to gather on the roof of the parking podium.
The street elevation, with its peek at a green roof, stairs up to the piazza, and a healthy attention to a bright facade.
These LOHA projects are successes beyond being some of the best architectural design in affordable housing today; the designs began with purposeful action, the ‘social act’ of their mantra. Community matters, dignity matters, and these become design rudders for decisions that follow. The result is a place that connects, is alive, and has real significance to its neighborhood.