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This L.A. Housing Design Contest Is Exactly How This Is Supposed to Work

A recent competition engineered to take advantage of new pro-density legislation has already helped fund the development of 20 units.

Debates around housing development are often chicken-or-the-egg. To build more housing quickly we must have legislative changes that allow for more housing to be built; but in order to build public consensus around such legislation—to defeat the NIMBY class—we must demonstrate that density is not the enemy, and that new housing can be built without neglecting good design. In recent years, Los Angeles has had a perfect confluence of chickens and eggs: the state and city have begun to loosen restrictions that slow down new developments, while groups like CityLab-UCLA, an interdisciplinary urban development research hub, have been capitalizing on the changes by soliciting proposals from the design and development community to get new homes built across the city’s thousands of vacant lots.

Last year, as Dwell previously reported, CityLab-UCLA launched their Small Lots/Big Impact design competition, which sought plans for a variety of multifamily housing typologies using city-owned land. Winners were selected and announced last spring. But as many design competitions go, their award-winning ideas were just that—ideas. To actually bring new homes to life, CityLab-UCLA partnered with local community development financial institution Genesis LA to introduce a subsequent competition, a request for information from developers and architects looking to build new owner-occupied housing, between three and ten units, on privately-owned land smaller than half an acre.

King 1101 Apartments, a previous project by one of the winning firms, Holos Communities, in Los Angeles.
Photo courtesy Holos Communities

This week, they’ve announced three winners of their RFI that, with Genesis funding, will cover 95 percent of the development costs, according to CityLab-UCLA. On the smallest side, Stayner Architects will construct between five and seven units on a single lot in Echo Park; Holos Communities and Assemblage Works, which proposed a modular multifamily development, will target East Hollywood; and the team of co-developers Six Peak Capital and Frolic Community, with architects West of West and Aero Collective, plan to build eight units on a single lot on the city’s west side.

Los Angeles, and California at large, have been leading the nation in overhauling their housing restrictions: Over the last five years, state and local governments have legalized ADUs statewide, streamlined multifamily permitting, and helped developers mitigate costly development fees. Very recently, California made it legal to subdivide individual lots to construct multiple homes on one parcel through SB 1123, which passed last year and went into effect last summer. Now, developers don’t need variances to add up to ten homes on a lot, which saves time (and dollars) on development and construction. The CityLab RFI capitalizes on SB 1123, says Emmanuel Proussaloglou, CityLab co-director. "There wasn’t a particularly economically viable development path on a lot of these lots up until recently, and now there’s a sort of push to see what we can do with it," he says.

Importantly, all of the lots that will be developed are privately owned—a departure from their original design competition that solicited ideas for the nearly 4,000 city-owned vacant lots. They decided to pivot their RFI to use privately-owned land as a way to avoid the lags of getting approvals from city officials. "We made sure that the winners of the design competition would be the most eligible and promising partners for any development deal—private or public," says Dana Cuff, CityLab’s director. In addition to the 4,000 city-owned parcels, there are around 24,000 privately-owned vacant parcels, she continues, many of which are ripe for housing development.

Though renderings are provided for each of the winning designs (two of the projects by Stayner and Six Peak/Frolic were included in the Small Lots ideas competition), they are not finalized, Proussaloglou says. Rather than the usual glossy imagery of many design competitions, he continues, the RFI jury looked for submitting teams that had completed previous work that aligned with their vision.

Winners are responsible for selecting their lots and securing entitlements; only one, Stayner Architects, already owns the lot on which they’ll build. The others are now "targeting" specific areas: The co-development team of Six Peak Capital and Frolic Community is looking at sites in neighborhoods like Venice where land will be more expensive, but Proussaloglou says that they have experience in developing alternative home ownership models to separate expensive land costs from unit costs. Holos Communities and Assemblage Works are targeting East Hollywood, he continues, where they hope to show a proof of concept around modular construction technology’s efficiency. Finding an eligible parcel isn’t easy and securing entitlements can be a long process; CityLab has a set timeline, and in the case that the winning teams cannot secure land there are 11 "bench" winners who can step in.

"We will be able to work alongside the teams to make sure that the laws that are in place are ones that the planning department and all the different review agencies know how to deploy. Since they are kind of new laws, that will be a job for us to work with alongside the development and design team to make sure that it all goes smoothly and according to law," adds Cuff.

The Steps on St. Andrews, another project by Holos Communities in Los Angeles.
Photo courtesy Holos Communities

They hope that these new homes will be completed by 2029. It seems far off, considering that there will only be around 20 new units added to Los Angeles’s housing landscape, but CityLab organizers believe that their transparent, open-source process will influence how other developers take advantage of the new pro-density laws. "We are going to share as much as we can about the winning submissions—the designs, the pro formas, the summary documents from all 30 submissions," says Proussaloglou. Considering the climate in the Los Angeles real estate market, those developers who own lots and are ready to hit the ground running might have a leg up once the 20 forthcoming units are completed, and landing a chance to whittle down that list of 24,000 empty lots and turn them into a group of new homes as soon as possible.

Top image courtesy of Six Peak Capital

Can We Blame the Banks for the Dearth of American Starter Homes?

If You Love Midcenturies and Houseboats, This $1.2M Floating Home Has the Best of Both Worlds

Moored in Seattle’s Portage Bay, the 1958 residence by architect Gerald van Slyck conjures up cabin vibes with cozy wood-wrapped interiors.

Moored in Seattle’s Portage Bay, this 1958 floating home by architect Gerald van Slyck conjures up cabin vibes with cozy wood-wrapped interiors.

Location: 3130 Portage Bay Place E #C, Seattle, Washington

Price: $1,175,000

Year Built: 1958

Original Architect: Gerald Van Slyck

Footprint: 833 square feet (1 bed, 1 bath)

From the Agent: "Come live in your custom floating home with 43-foot moorage, parking, and a well-managed HOA. Enjoy the perfect balance of lakeside tranquility and city convenience in this floating home by architect Gerald Van Slyck. Vaulted ceilings and expansive windows flood the home with natural light, while two outdoor spaces offer seamless indoor/outdoor living on the water. A rare and atypical 43-foot moorage offers exceptional flexibility to accommodate a wide range of vessels, including sailboats. A well-managed HOA covers utilities and supports long-term upkeep for easy ownership. Live on the lake with quick access to Seattle’s metropolitan neighborhoods, dining, cafes, and entertainment."

The houseboat has been staged by solid oak furniture maker Keeps, rug design practice Studio Tenjung, and local vintage design shop In The Comfort Of. — The houseboat has been staged by furniture maker Keeps, rug design practice Studio Tenjung, and local vintage design shop In The Comfort Of.
Photo by Emily Un

A 1950s modular sofa by Martin Borenstein anchors the living, accented by Studio Tenjung's LIWU yak wool rug. — A 1950s modular sofa by Martin Borenstein anchors the living, accented by Studio Tenjung’s Liwu yak wool rug.
Photo by Emily Un

See the full story on Dwell.com: If You Love Midcenturies and Houseboats, This $1.2M Floating Home Has the Best of Both Worlds
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That’s One Way to Use Pandemic Office Pods

Portable glass enclosures built by an auto shop during Covid are the newest accommodations at one of America’s oddest camps.

Camp Wandawega looks every bit like your classic American summer camp. The forested Wisconsin property has a dusty lodge with antlers on the walls, a lake complete with canoes, hand-painted signs, old cars—Smokey Bear would live here. Peeking at the camp’s Instagram, the vibe is undeniably Wet Hot American Summer.

Only it’s never been a place to send your kids for capture the flag, archery class, or first crushes. Established in 1925 as a lakeside resort for Chicagoans, it was a Prohibition-era haunt and a Latvian Catholic camp before becoming a retreat again in the ’60s. In 2004 it was turned into a rentable resort and event space, and since, its owners have been laying the Americana on thick. They brought in cabins from an old Girl Scout camp, added an infirmary that looks plucked from the set of Moonrise Kingdom, and more recently, released a range of cottagecore home goods. Its latest accommodations, though, are a bucket of cold water on the campfire fantasy: a pair of aluminum-framed glass boxes originally built as custom office pods.

Camp Wandawega’s newest accommodations are two glass boxes originally built as office pods during the pandemic.

"Honestly, they found us," says Tereasa Surratt, who owns the camp with her partner, David Hernandez. "I spotted them on Facebook Marketplace and couldn’t quite figure out what I was looking at. They were these all-glass structures sitting outside a huge auto body shop in Lake County, Illinois. I drove down to take a look, and that’s when the story got interesting."

She discovered that the structures had been custom built by the owner of the auto-repair shop during the pandemic so that insurance adjusters stopping by would have a safe place to fill out paperwork and take calls. The proprietor also happened to own a commercial glazing company and so instead of ordering prefab pods he decided to build his own. As social distancing restrictions were lifted, they were no longer needed and moved outside.

They’d withstood at least two notoriously harsh Midwestern winters, which helped convince Surratt and Hernandez that they might be a good fit as lodgings at Wandawega. "One of my favorite details of the pods is that they were designed to move," Surratt adds. "Each one has integrated forklift pockets built into their base, so they could be picked up and relocated whenever the shop needed to be reconfigured." Of course, this was also ideal for getting them up to the camp.

The units rest on decks, which give guests usable outdoor area.

One of the cabins has a lofted bed and a seating area below. Sheers provide privacy to the interiors as needed.

See the full story on Dwell.com: That’s One Way to Use Pandemic Office Pods
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For $6.5M, a Spanish-Style 1923 Home in Los Angeles Comes With a Healthy Dose of Whimsy

Traditional bones meet an abundance of color and texture.

2230 Nottingham Avenue in Los Angeles, California, is currently listed at $6,500,000 by Sonya Coke at Sotheby’s International Realty - Los Feliz Brokerage.

Tucked in a private, lushly landscaped setting beyond a verdant front garden, this grand Spanish-style home unfolds in a series of formal spaces layered in light, color, and texture.

The living room, anchored by a wood-burning fireplace, holds space for either cozying up with a good book on the sofa in front of built-in shelves flanked by windows framing the greenery of the front garden or gathering under the dangling starburst chandelier with friends. A hand-painted abstract mural by Fromental of California's mountains sets a dramatic tone for the dining room.

The kitchen is dressed in dusty lilac cabinets with a large island and stainless steel appliances, and flows into the breakfast area and the lounge-y den. The lower level features a family and screening room with a laundry room and bathroom. Upstairs holds the bedrooms, with the primary offering a walk-in closet, an ensuite bathroom, and distant views of downtown LA.

Outside, lush rear gardens hold a swimmer's pool and a guest house currently used as a studio for a luxury collection of handmade vintage Moroccan rugs. Topping it off is a detached three-car garage.

Listing Details

Bedrooms: 5

Baths: 5 full, 1 partial

Year Built: 1923

Square feet: 5,618

Plot Size: 0.35 acres

Courtesy of Sotheby's International Realty - Los Feliz Brokerage

See the full story on Dwell.com: For $6.5M, a Spanish-Style 1923 Home in Los Angeles Comes With a Healthy Dose of Whimsy
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How They Pulled It Off: Building a Home Into a Steep Utah Mountainside

Park City firm Klima Architecture explains how a radical roof was the first step in tapping the slope’s potential.

Welcome to How They Pulled It Off, where we take a close look at one particularly challenging aspect of a home design and get the nitty-gritty details about how it became a reality.

After 30 years in Phoenix, Trisha and Brian Coffman were ready to relocate. They would soon be empty nesters and wanted a mountain home that captured the grandeur of its setting. So they bought a piece of hillside land in Summit Park, an old mountain community between Park City and Salt Lake City, that was surrounded by 100-foot Douglas firs and old-growth spruce. But what made it so stunning also made it exceptionally challenging to build a home on. Located at 7,100 feet, it falls off at a roughly 45-degree angle, only has one access road, and endures winters where nine feet of snow is the norm.

Chris Price of Klima Architecture designed an alpine home that mimics the grade of a steeply sloping site. — Chris Price, founder of Klima Architecture, designed an alpine home that follows the grade of a steep site. A band of windows runs down one side, enhancing the stretching effect.
Photo by Austin Lamoreaux

So how do you build a house on the side of a mountain? That was the question Trisha and Brian posed to Chris Price, founder of Klima Architecture, a Park City architecture, interiors, and landscape practice. Price has designed nine homes in Summit Park, including his own, and has lived there since 2009. "It’s kind of like the redheaded stepchild neighborhood," says Price, for its limited access and difficult terrain. But there also weren’t any covenants, conditions, or restrictions, and no HOA, unlike other nearby areas where, Price says, the rules can be particularly restrictive of style and materials. "Having less restraints really gives more freedom to the client’s voice and the land’s voice. Then I try to interpolate the two into a functional statement."

A deck extends from the main living space. A second private deck is connected to the primary bedroom. — A deck extends from the main living space.
Photo by Austin Lamoreaux

Despite the stylistic freedom afforded by the area, the site’s steep drop off created limitations. But Price viewed them as an opportunity to create a home that responds to the natural contours of the site. He designed a four-level house that, on approach, greets visitors with a subtle sloping metal roof and two cedar setbacks that create the illusion of multiple volumes. In section, the design turns dramatic, with a monolithic roof that appears to stretch down the hillside, tracing the angle of the slope as if being pulled toward the valley below. Here’s how Price worked with the land to build a home for Trisha and Brian that immerses them in their new setting.

Tricia runs her own design firm, T.Haus Design, and led the furnishings for the home, opting for a refined, contemporary aesthetic that feels appropriate for the alpine setting. — The roof in the living area shows the series of folds in the roof that Price designed in part to follow height limits.
Photo by Austin Lamoreaux

See the full story on Dwell.com: How They Pulled It Off: Building a Home Into a Steep Utah Mountainside

Exasperated by Your Landlord? Try Making a Diss Music Video

Two frustrated Clevelanders who wrote a song to call out their building owner are among the many American tenants becoming more vocal about their rights.

"I’m going to war with my landlord," proclaims comedian Caleb Hearon on the podcast The Downside. "These fucking evil freaks continue to ask for more, and we just accept it." The 2025 clip has since gone viral on social media, speaking to the growing boldface ire renters have for their landlords. Finding stability as a tenant comes at a cost that goes up year after year, and renters are increasingly becoming a vocal force for recourse, coming together to fight against rent increases and bad maintenance practices. Hearon calls for town halls between landlords and their tenants, which in today’s political climate have served as a means for the public to come together and yell at powerful folks like elected representatives. (They’ve been so effective that news about congressional reps dodging or the GOP outright barring the public meetings have made the news). His inclination to "go to war" is a shared one, like a biblical blood feud between ancestral land owners and their serfs; locate the enemy, put them in the stocks, and shame them.

In Cleveland, renter-roommates Julia Kim and Cameron Celebuski found themselves in an unusual conflict with their landlord and took their fight to a whole new level: They made a music video. As seen on the Instagram account "I’m From Cleveland," the duo wrote a yacht-rock-esque ballad called "Don’t Rent From Cindy" and produced a five-and-a-half minute video to accompany it under the duo’s name, Kimbuski. The video features some incredible outfits—matching tracksuits, clown costumes, wigs—as well as flute solos, choreography, and screenshots and voicemail messages from their landlord, Cindy. It’s symbolic of what it might mean for tenants to go to war, and the lengths some will go to to hold bad landlords accountable.

Roommates Cameron Celebuski and Julia Kim took a creative approach to their landlord dispute.
Courtesy Kimbuski

This latest dispute between Kim, Celebuski, and their landlord hinges on their four-bedroom house. In the ballad they detail how their two other roommates had moved out, and that Kim was contemplating also moving depending on a job change. Per their singsong narrative, their landlord assured them that they could stay in the house and would bring in two new tenants to live in the vacant rooms; however, she went ahead and rented out Celebuski’s room, too. "You gave [Kim] ’til the end of the month to decide but then you rented out my room to a stranger without even telling me," he sings. "That’s when you texted us out of the blue that one of us would have to leave."

As they recount these events, screenshots of the text messages from their landlord scroll onto the screen; she threatens them with fines—$100 for every day they stayed past their previous lease, plus a $100/month increase in rent "due to the economy." She also texts that "most landlords would have taken more extreme action," maybe a reference to Ohio’s loose tenant protections, which allow landlords to pursue nonpayment evictions on three-day notice. (Some states have laws that require notice upward of 60 days; others, like Indiana, require 10 days, while Texas also requires three.) As a voicemail plays over the instrumental bridge, we hear the landlord say, "I have the right to rent this house to anywhere [sic]."

Elaborate costumes and editing mirror the ridiculousness of the situation Kimbuski was put in by their landlord.
Courtesy Kimbuski

Her messages display how bad landlords often get away with neglecting maintenance or charging junk fees—by relying on tenants not knowing or being able to navigate the complex state and local laws that enforce rights and responsibilities. But Kimbuski did legal research to understand what they’re entitled to. Last year, Cleveland launched a three-year pilot program that is designed to help educate renters about their rights and "organize to fight neglectful landlords and tap into services to pay rent and avoid evictions." Kimbuski consulted with an attorney (also a right under local law) who said that her text messages giving them time to decide whether to stay or move are legally binding; they also found that the homes owned by the landlord’s company are unregistered, which violates Cleveland’s 2024 Residents First law that requires all landlords to register each of their rental units with the city. "It would be a shame if everyone reported you / ’cause you didn’t keep your promises it turned out the whole time / by renting out your house to us you committed a crime allegedly," they sing.

One hopes that Kimbuski’s music video might serve as a warning to other tenants of this particular landlord, who hasn’t issued any type of public rebuttal as of this writing. The internet is built upon the voyeuristic parts of us, reveling as we watch someone publicly put someone else on blast in such an artful way. But it also points to the ways that the tenant/landlord dynamic appears to be worsening, at least publicly, and as tenants become more vocal, some politicians have responded by attending to their specific woes: In New York, Mayor Zohran Mamdani has made news over recent months with his Rental Ripoff hearings that led to proposing an array of pro-tenant policies; in Chicago, Mayor Brandon Johnson introduced the Protect Renters Ordinance, which would, like Cleveland, require landlords to register their units with the city.

Kim and Celebuski’s landlord has yet to respond publicly to the music video.
Courtesy Kimbuski

See the full story on Dwell.com: Exasperated by Your Landlord? Try Making a Diss Music Video

The Spaceship Home From "Portlandia" Just Landed on the Market for $975K

Also know as the Eyebrow House, the radically renovated 1941 bungalow had a star turn on the hit show.

Location: 6221 SE Ash Street, Portland, Oregon

Price: $975,000

Year Built: 1941

Year Renovated: 2010

Renovation Architect: Edgar Papazian

Footprint: 2,431 square feet (4 bed, 3 bath)

Lot Size: 0.13 acres

From the Listing: "Tucked into Portland’s Mount Tabor neighborhood, the Eyebrow House began as a modest 1941 Cape Cod home before Yale-trained architect Edgar Papazian transformed it into one of the city’s most distinctive residences. He installed the sweeping arched steel dormers that are its namesake, traded hard angles for sloped ceilings and curved walls, and reoriented the home toward its deep, tree-lined backyard. Its unmistakable silhouette has made it a local icon and recurring filming location for IFC's Portlandia. The heart of the home is an expansive kitchen and dining space, flipped on its axis to transform the private backyard into a living backdrop. Ascending the staircase reveals a remarkably private, sculptural sanctuary on the second level. What was once a narrow tube of space beneath the eaves now soars, thanks to dramatic arched steel dormers that fill it with reflected light. Exposed bolts and fasteners along the ribbed metal ceiling lend an industrial edge, set against rich oak floors, radiant heated for quiet comfort. Triple-glazed arched windows frame the treetop canopy of the backyard below, creating the distinct feeling of living in an elegant, elevated tree house."