Putting design first: six social housing projects from around the world
The Guardian features kdA’s Broadway Affordable Housing in Santa Monica as one of six examples of world-class social housing design.
In Houston, a Net-Zero Building Takes Inspiration From the Bayou
The Houston Endowment headquarters, the city’s first mass timber building of its kind, set out to create a model for sustainability.
Robertson Recreation Center wins Architect’s Newspaper Best of Design Award 2021 for Public building
“This rec center has real charm and does real work. The undulating walls and roof squeeze the program onto a tight sight while maintaining heritage trees and opening clerestories on the interior, allowing lots of daylight into the basketball court.”
—Aaron Seward
Houston Endowment Headquarters and Gramercy Senior Housing Named 2020 AIALA NEXT LA Award Winners
Gramercy Senior Housing (Los Angeles, Ca)
“The clear diagram of the central longitudinal circulation and event spine providing dynamic courtyard spaces in sync with sensitively scaled housing blocks on the street edge was greatly appreciated. The strategy gives just enough to the urban context and connections without compromising the privacy and security of the internal elevated urban street.”
Houston Endowment Headquarters (Houston, TX)
“There is an elegant restraint and clear relationship to the park scape, and the simple, exoskeletal skin gives it polished slenderness. Also beautifully-simple is the rewarding move of placing a parallelogram-plan shading superstructure over the orthogonal terraced building. The resulting parallax amplifies the pavilion’s spatial and perspectival depth in the round. What at first seems flat is anything but that.”
Robertson Recreation Center Wins AIALA Design Award
‘This project thoughtfully approaches its urban context so that it reads as a very special building, which I think all civic buildings should do. The design has a certain poetry that both centers it perfectly within its context and elevates it to another level.’
kdA Wins Houston Endowment Headquarters International Design Competition
Leading philanthropy Houston Endowment and competition organizers Malcolm Reading Consultants (MRC) today [7 November 2019] announced that the team led by Kevin Daly Architects (KDA) with Mexico City-based PRODUCTORA, in collaboration with TLS Landscape Architecture, has won the international competition to design the new Houston Endowment Headquarters.
BI(h)OME Included on Hive 50 Innovation in Housing List
Hive 50 Honors
For reimagining the accessory dwelling unit structure to make it an attainable option for more backyards.
What You Need To Know
The Backyard BI(h)OME is an ultra-modern, lightweight accessory dwelling unit that has the potential to meet Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti’s call for 100,000 new housing units by 2021. The BI(h)OME demonstrates—in its design, fabrication, occupation, and recycling—what sustainability means at a personal level.
Who’s Involved
The BI(h)OME was initiated by UCLA’s CityLAB and designed by Kevin Daly Architects.
Time Stamp
Kevin Daly Architects introduced BI(h)OME in 2015, and the project won the 2018 AIA National Honor Award-Small Projects, as well as a 2016 Westside Urban Forum Award, and a 2015 Fast Company Innovation by Design spotlight.
UCSB San Joaquin Housing Receives a National AIA Award for Design Excellence
Built around an existing residence hall, the new San Joaquin Villages introduce apartment-style housing for more than 1,000 students, along with staff and faculty residences, dining commons, a convenience store, and other amenities. SOM in collaboration with Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects and Kevin Daly Architects designed the various residences in order to infuses the project with architectural diversity.
The design team created a series of neighborhoods, each with a mix of housing types and amenities located within a 10-minute off-street bike ride from the center of campus. Each new facility is visually distinct, but all maintain a uniform sequence that balances efficiency, creativity and inclusivity. Plazas, recreational facilities, and courtyard gardens are added key components designed to enhance student life.
All the new residential construction has achieved LEED® Platinum certification for Homes. The site plan, which includes a new storm water management system to protect local wetlands, is also targeting LEED® Gold certification for Neighborhood Development.
Little Berkeley Recognized with P/A award
‘Affordable housing takes a new, distinctly Californian turn with Little Berkeley, an ingenious bit of civic-minded design from inveterate Angeleno firm Kevin Daly Architects. With an eye toward the improvisatory urbanism of the region’s beachfront cities, the team has created a neighborhood in miniature comprising eight units, each in a discrete volume, and all spread out on a single block wedged between a commercial corridor and a residential zone.’
BI(h)OME on Buzzfeed
11 Ways UCLA Takes The Lead In Tackling The Challenges of Tomorrow
8. Rethinking affordable housing
‘The Backyard BIHOME is cityLAB’s response to the challenge of providing affordable housing in urban centers, like greater Los Angeles. The BIHOME is lightweight and much easier to construct than traditional housing units, making it a low-cost solution to housing demand.’
BI(h)OME Wins National AIA Award
The Small Project Practitioners, an AIA Knowledge Community, present the 2018 Small Project Awards, to recognize small project practitioners for the high quality of their work and to promote excellence in small project design. This program strives to raise public awareness of the value and design excellence that architects bring to projects, no matter the limits of size and scope.
This year’s theme, “Renewal,” recognizes projects that engage the idea, and incorporate concepts and elements relating to this theme. The theme was intentionally open-ended to encourage wide interpretation.
BI(h)OME is one of 11 projects selected for the honor.
“It is very ambitious and very forward thinking. Worthy effort” ~ Jury comment
kdA Selected as Winner in Housing NW Arkansas Competition
FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – Twenty-five architecture and design firms proposed design solutions for affordable housing in Northwest Arkansas in a competition hosted by the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design at the University of Arkansas. The winning design concepts were announced Thursday as part of the Housing Northwest Arkansas Professional Design Competition, which speaks to the affordable housing crisis that also reaches across the country.
The design competition is the final component of Housing Northwest Arkansas, a three-tiered initiative led by the Fay Jones School and funded through a grant from the Walton Family Foundation.
The Northwest Arkansas region, and Bentonville in particular, is faced with the conflicting forces of rapid growth and the desire to maintain the small-town character of communities. A 2017 study on the vitality of the five largest downtowns in the region found that residential per-square-foot sales prices have increased by more than 200 percent in Bentonville since 2012, and commercial per-square-foot sales prices have increased by more than 30 percent in downtown Bentonville. This study was conducted by the Center for Business and Economic Research in the Sam M. Walton College of Business.
“Northwest Arkansas downtowns are known for their dynamic energy, and that vibrancy is driven by the diversity of the people who are part of these neighborhoods,” said Alice Walton, Walton Family Foundation board member. “These innovative designs will open downtown living and its amenities to a wider group of residents by increasing access to attainable housing options.”
The design competition winners are Digsau of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Kevin Daly Architects of Los Angeles; 5468796 Architecture of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada; and Merge Architects Inc. of Boston.
BI(h)OME in Detail
‘In appearance the light and airy unit mainly brings a summer pavilion to mind, making it difficult to imagine the “house” in a colder climate than California’s. Yet it is an important contribution to the current discussion on the constrained housing situation in big cities.’
BI(h)OME in London’s Architectural Review
‘Beyond its functionality and sustainability, the BB has an organic quality befitting its name. It shimmers in sunlight and glows from within at night. The interior has the quality of a cocoon wrapping its occupants in a soft embrace, taking you back to the playhouses and treehouses of childhood. It could as easily be located atop a tree branch or flat-roofed garage. Although the unitary structure would be hard to divide, one could easily add modules and cut openings in the skin to link them to the main space. And, if cityLAB were to partner with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Altadena, it might be possible to enhance the BB with materials and devices that were tested on the Mars rovers.’
5 Micro Houses Driven by Seriously Big Ideas
‘Recyclable? Check. Lightweight? Check. A natural habitat for rock lizards? Also check. That’s the Backyard BI(h)OME, a prototype designed by UCLA’s science education program CityLab, in collaboration with Kevin Daly Architects, to meet a demand for easy-to-install, low-cost, and sustainable housing units in Los Angles.’
Broadway Affordable Housing Wins National AIA Housing Award
Jury comments: The delightful common space unites the whole project. There is a lightness to it, and surprising touches such as the window treatment.
UCLA’s Ostin Music Building Debuts in Architectural Digest
‘The Schoenberg Music Building at UCLA is singing a snappy new tune these days thanks to two new pavilions by Kevin Daly Architects. The structures, collectively known as the Evelyn and Mo Ostin Music Center at the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music, represent the first phase of a master plan aimed at strengthening the school’s visual and social engagement with the campus at large. They’re also a tour de force of acoustical engineering married to bravura architectural form.’
