26 POINT 2 AFFORDABLE HOUSING
By Michael Webb
Over the past 30 years, Michael Maltzan and his associates have been bringing exemplary design to those most in need, along with a wide range of project types including cultural and institutional buildings, expansive houses for art collectors, and a landmark bridge over the Los Angeles River. It began with Inner City Arts, an educational program for disadvantaged kids in downtown Los Angeles, and continued through four projects for the Skid Row Housing Trust. The firm brings a spirit of invention and humanity to the most frugal of their commissions, inspiring many other L.A. architects who share their commitment to social justice. Sadly, demand far exceeds supply, as the homeless population of L.A. continues to grow, and progress in constructing affordable housing is painfully slow. Funding is inadequate, homeowners throw up obstacles, and plans are delayed by a tangle of constantly changing, often unreasonable regulations.
In contrast, the 77-unit block of permanent supportive housing for the homeless near the port city of Long Beach was approved in six months and constructed in under two years. It was commissioned by an enlightened, locally based developer, Excelerate Housing Group, which named it 26 Point 2. That is the distance in miles of a marathon run, and it refers to the adage that life is a journey. For Maltzan, it came as a welcome relief from the ordeal of building in his home city. “A preconception that architects are extravagant is still prevalent among most developers”, he explains. “Excelerate shares our belief that architecture can help in the healing process, by creating a balance between private and social spaces, the building and its surroundings. A well-designed building gives residents greater visibility and respect rather than a generic structure”.
The wood-framed block occupies a corner site in what was once an oilfield, and a cluster of storage tanks is a near neighbor. The ground is full of methane gas that has to be evacuated. To the north, a five-story façade of white stucco with punched out windows faces the heavily trafficked Pacific Coast Highway – though it is well inland from the ocean. Along the residential street on the east side, the block is cut away to emphasize the corner stair-elevator tower and the entry, which is inset and expressed as a gabled pavilion. The block steps down two stories to the south with a gabled roof line that respects the character and scale of the single-family houses beyond.
The homeless rarely own cars so the mandate for onsite parking was challenged, leaving a few spaces for staff. It would have been too costly to put these underground as they are in market-rate housing, so the building was raised on columns to leave most of the site open with a shady area for informal gatherings. Planting will add another layer to the composition. At ground level, staff offices and services, laundry and a communal room occupy two sides. Upper-level walkways surround a central courtyard, giving access to compact, well-equipped studio apartments. At every point, cut-out openings frame views, and there is an expansive terrace looking out to the ocean. As residents rebuild their lives, following the trauma of camping on the street, they feel part of a community, within and beyond.
Maltzan uses color as an inexpensive building material and as a device to enrich perceptions, never more creatively than here. One is reminded of Le Corbusier’s palette in the selection of colors: a vibrant green for wall reveals and columns, a dark blue to mask the exposed piping on the ground floor soffits, a pale blue for window reveals, a staircase and the upper stories, alternating with a rose pink in the communal room and second staircase. These colors articulate the forms of the building, creating a sense of depth, contrasting sharply with the white exterior and giving the spareness of the scheme a sense of joy.
“We spent a lot of time choreographing the spaces to add character and serve the residents”, says Maltzan. In his first low-cost housing project, some of his best moves were eliminated as an economy – a process euphemistically called “value engineering”. That experience taught him to make every key feature serve two or more purposes. At the south-east corner, the block rests on an upturned gable, a witty echo of those above and an essential support. Metal cylinders are set at an angle within the courtyard – the large ones concealing vents for the abandoned oil wells, the slender tubes carrying rainwater from roof and walkways. They impart a dynamism to the inner façades and cost less than if the vents had been concealed within the building. As Mies observed, “God is in the details”, and that is as true at every level of design.
