cityLAB-UCLA
cityLAB, a research center at UCLA’s School of the Arts and Architecture, was founded in 2006 by Director Dana Cuff and Co-Director Roger Sherman. Since that time it has become one of the most well respected urban think tanks in America. cityLAB was featured in Architecture Magazine, on CNN International News, in Newsweek Magazine, and in the American Pavilion of the Venice Biennale. It gained worldwide recognition and the national spotlight with its open design competition, WPA2.0-Working Public Architecture, the results of which were presented to lawmakers in Washington DC and key members of President Obama’s urban advisory team. cityLAB’s important role in Los Angeles is increasingly evident through its frequent mention in the news, its work to revitalize Westwood Village, its studies about the ways high speed rail and transit systems can improve civic life, its role in advancing new urban policy, and its championing of good design in our region. cityLAB is successful when it explores new ideas for urban design that reach the public, students—our next generation of urban activists, and urban leaders of all stripes.
Daly Genik Architects is partnering with cityLAB to design and test the Backyard Homes prototype. Daly Genik, founded in 1990, is an award-winning design practice with a focus on craft, construction systems, and material research. The firm’s work highlights the interrelationship of research and fabrication, sustainability and livability, utility and form. Firm Principal Kevin Daly has designed some of the area’s most outstanding affordable housing for the Santa Monica Community Corporation, as well as widely recognized technological innovations that serve environmental goals, such as a model daylighting system at Art Center’s Pasadena campus.
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2 Submitted Ideas
PLAY ·2023 Grants ChallengeLA Pathmakers: From Neglected Sidewalks to Kid-Friendly Cities
As young people navigate the city without parental supervision, they create their own paths for safety and enjoyment. Small interventions along these routes can enhance their security, create a welcoming atmosphere, and inspire future urban investments. cityLAB proposes a series of micro-urban improvements along student walking routes in Westlake-MacArthur Park, an underserved neighborhood. These improvements address student concerns and exemplify the idea that kid-friendly cities are really cities for everyone.
- 2013 Grants Challenge
Backyard Homes: Sustainable Flexible Affordable Housing for LA
cityLAB proposes to build, study, and publicly display a prototype Backyard Home using innovative, simple technologies that will create sustainable, affordable, flexible, livable housing for Los Angeles.
Los Angeles developed as a city of suburbs, where yards and gardens surround individual homes to create our distinctive neighborhood identity. But LA’s suburban sprawl also created a laundry list of problems, from traffic congestion to unaffordable home prices. cityLAB, a think tank at UCLA, along with Daly Genik Architects, have developed a new concept and construction technology for “Backyard Homes” that will maintain the beauty of the Los Angeles home-in-the-garden pattern, yet has the potential to provide a substantial supply of new housing. The idea is simple: on a house-by-house basis, owners can acquire and customize a Backyard Home. It arrives to the site packed flat, allowing it to squeeze past side yards and tight spaces. Once in the backyard, a foundation is erected, the flat-packed walls expand to become rooms, and a skin is added to the walls. Homeowners can customize a studio, one-bedroom, and two-bedroom arrangement, much like purchasing a new car with various interior packages to choose from.
In fact, there are 500,000 single-family home sites in the City of Los Angeles alone. Already a number of those half-million lots have illegal rental units in their garages and backyards. In 2003, the State of California passed the Granny Flat Law, to permit second units on single-family lots, and in 2009, the City Council acted to make backyard housing possible across Los Angeles. Our project recognizes that the illegal units reflect a real need for backyard housing that is safe, legal, affordable, and easy to construct. The recent state and city rulings provide the guideposts to creating safe, legal units; the cityLAB prototype will create a model of affordable, easy-to-construct Backyard Homes. With the laws and the model home, everything is in place for homeowners to build Backyard Homes that will create a much more diverse housing supply and a more livable Los Angeles.