Brooks + Scarpa is bringing good design to the people who really need it

Over the past three decades, Larry Scarpa and Angela Brooks have established themselves as pioneers in affordable-housing design. Brooks + Scarpa, their Los Angeles–based firm, has worked on projects that span urban planning, high-density housing projects, and single-family homes. Their practice has also evolved to include projects in the landscape and public art worlds. “We’ll gladly do a doghouse if you’ll let us do it well,” said Scarpa about their prolific output in a recent interview with AN.

From their first affordable-housing project, housing has remained a critical pillar of their firm, “bringing design to a population sec- tor that really needs it and deserves it.” They believe good design can combat NIMBY-ism and have a positive impact on getting their projects approved. Scarpa maintained that good design is not only for the wealthy: “You can provide it for those [who are] in need too.” The firm has previously worked with the Marciano Art Foundation to include a rotating art exhibit in an affordable-housing project in Los Angeles’s MacArthur Park neighborhood. With the NEST Toolkit, the affordable-housing system it is developing, Brooks + Scarpa will provide the tools for faster, cheaper, higher-quality construction, “We’re working with a church in Santa Monica to do affordable housing on their parking lot for homeless students attending Santa Monica College,” he added.

A bright-yellow, off-center beacon welcomes you to this 7-story housing project. The architects were able to double the number of units on this site through a lot split, providing 134 units of much-needed affordable housing to their local Koreatown community in Los Angeles. The original site featured a senior living project, which Brooks + Scarpa also retrofitted and upgraded. The two sections are visually connected, and maintaining the sequence on the site that predates the addition was crucial in designing the new build. The narrow project is defined by an undulating facade to provide shade and also serve as an auditory barrier from the busy nearby thoroughfare.

For this 100-percent affordable-housing building, the architects crafted their design from the inside out. Centered around a community room and courtyard, the design fans out in a vertically stacked composition that plays with angles, adding interest to the material plane. With 4 stories and 74 units, the building focuses on creating a quiet oasis for the target demographic, which includes recently homeless people and low-income individuals. Located in North Hills, California, Luna Vista is marked by a welcoming archway that wraps around a central opening, connecting the building to the surrounding community and making it an extension of the existing urban fabric.

This building was designed to extend like a porch toward the surrounding streetscape. The architects invite the outdoors in with a white trellis, two outdoor plazas, and a glass-encased community space. The outdoor spaces can remain separate or connect into one larger space. The low-density, 2-story building consists of 67 low-income units and emphasizes visually accessible circulation through its inclusion of breezeways and upper-story decks as well as perforated materials and fencing. The open-air nature of the project works in contrast to the more fortified, closed-off narrative of the existing stucco apartment buildings in its Sacramento suburban neighborhood.

This is the first project to be built using the NEST Toolkit, a scalable housing concept designed in collaboration with PlantPrefab to provide quality housing for at-risk populations on lots 80 percent of the size of an average lot in the greater Los Angeles area. Located on a roughly 8,000-square-foot lot in the heart of Santa Monica, the project uses a modular design system to construct an ultradense, single-loaded apartment building. The design for the 13-unit building brings together housing, landscaping, and even an open-air deck on the long, narrow plot. With the completion of this project and a couple of others underway, Brooks + Scarpa hopes to expand the Toolkit so that, eventually, developers will be able to order customized buildings through an online order form.