Located just south of downtown Los Angeles and immediately adjacent to the I-10 freeway, New Carver Apartments creates new possibilities for its highly vulnerable residents and for the city at large. The project constructs a new optimism for public housing and catalyzes change through architecture.

The project’s 97 units provide permanent housing for formerly homeless elderly and disabled residents. By incorporating shared kitchens, dining areas, gathering spaces, gardens, and social services facilities, the project encourages its residents to reconnect with each other and the city beyond.

New Carver’s six-story circular form responds to the adjacent Santa Monica Freeway. Its spiraling shape defines a private outdoor courtyard which provides each unit with natural light and creates a sound buffer by minimizing the building’s area directly opposite the freeway. The smaller-scale facets on the facade position windows obliquely to the direction of sound, further shielding the units.

Individual studio apartments are arrayed off the central courtyard. A series of vertical fins line the inner edge of the central space. The fins act as privacy screens for tenants, provide structural support, and encase methane gas ventilation risers.