ADU: Big Little Canvas

Frances Anderton (FA): These five ADUS are joyfully eclectic. Can each of you describe yours? 

Casey Hughes (CH): La Maida is a tiny (305 sf), and fairly low-budget project. Because of this, we designed a simple floor plan and articulated the ceiling to get some interest in the project, while not doing something too complicated from a foundation or structural perspective. The project is directly connected to the existing house, but one of the goals is to minimize that connection so that the project appears to be an independent object. This is one of the formal strategies we use so the project relates to the existing home while developing its own character.  

Ben Warwas (BW): Stiff Peaks was a replacement of an illegal structure in the exact same place, in the middle of the rear yard. The client was a screenplay writer. She had purchased the house from a set designer who had attempted to make the backyard look like this Versailles, secret garden situation. We took these aspects - almost vernacular, but pseudo-European aspects - and turned them into this small structure. But because it's on a hill, we ended up creating a roof deck, which made the building feel a lot bigger. And then with the arches and scallops we were really trying to play into this whimsical, vernacular feel. The breakthrough moment was the upside down arch on the staircase to the roof deck. That was where you could do this playful thing that everyone could understand. It was trying to create some (architectural) humor that wasn't overly sophisticated (or) needs an in-depth knowledge of the field. 

Melissa Shin (MS): Four Corners is unbuilt. It came out of some research that we were doing where we had this large, standard pre-1920s Victorian house that we had initially wanted to convert into a duplex. But we would have had to comply with a Highland Park CDO, a community development overlay that would require us to add commercial space into the project which was tricky because of parking and whatnot. Each one of the four ("Corners") was a study on how to insert some form of additional housing - an ADU or JADU – and commercial space into an existing home. The formal language is meant to be a play on Victorian architecture, secretly inserting these strange and uncanny moments. We were interested in the construction techniques and the exactitude of a lot of the details, so we ran this fictitious project through the same type of tectonic study that we would have for a built project. 

Warren Techentin (WT): This ADU was in Montrose, California, which is up by La Crescenta and San Gabriel Valley. The husband works for JPL. He's an electrical engineer and his actual day job is driving the Mars Rover around on Mars, navigating rocks. His wife's a graphic designer. They just had a second child and a garage collapsed in their backyard, so this was the rebuild of a garage-slash-storage place for his motorcycle, extensive computer collection, as well as a (play space for kids stuff) and a bedroom for their parents, who would come visit; that's where it became an ADU. It's based on a (a very cool) unit that I lived in in New York, which was this 360 square feet cubed off space in an old loft building, and was 14 feet tall. So (the project is) essentially a two story, but (has a) mezzanine in the projection piece, looking north towards the San Gabriel Mountains. It began (with the) idea of taking this wrap, or sustainable skin, or clothing made out of wood, (and) putting it into this suburban deck language, and creating this layer, or insulated skin, which was responsive to (its) site. 

CH: Formally speaking, if you look at the projects presented, they all have fairly simple footprints, and they get more articulated as they rise up, and that, again, speaks to the idea of constructability. 

FA: Because these are sometimes secret, and they're on the back of the lot, they're not front of house, do you think you have more freedom to be genuinely individualist? 

CH: From a broader perspective, what I'm seeing is that there was a moment in the early 2000s when architecture gained a heightened cultural prominence. With that came the rise of starchitects, and the rise of exuberant buildings heralded as attractors that could spur economic development. More recently there's been a backlash to that formalism, in terms of people feeling that it’s extravagant and a little bit hedonistic.

It feels like we're now coming into a more balanced perspective where we can embrace formalism, but at the same time have a deep connection to construction and normative methods of building. We look to conventional building techniques, which have an inherent economy, tweaking them to inform the formal expression of the building.

BW: In the Stiff Peaks project, we did exactly that. There's no steel at all, it's all just wood construction. I really wanted to play into a fun formal aspect, but it's very much like a stucco box. I mean, it required quite a bit of foundation, and then these classic vernacular windows, which were a little costly, but generally there's not a lot of complexity in there. 

FA: This is a perfect segue to Jared, who may not agree, because he's tried to not use the classic drywall and stick construction. 

MS: One of the excitements about the ADU typology that so many new and emerging voices are building now, is perhaps the lack of knowledge they have. The ease of construction techniques for most ADUS offers an interesting, though inefficient, window for experimentation and creativity. 

WT: Whenever we get hired to do an ADU, everyone in the office gets pretty excited. Most people think that they are these really fun little objects (on which) we can spend short bursts of design, thought and conversation; and collectively as a group have some fun just discussing language and architecture. I appreciate Jared's project, which has no stucco, and I feel like we all start large with these ambitious ideas, and then in the end, we go back to Type 5 construction and talk about cladding and how we lay surface and material onto the project. I do think it would be really interesting to develop alternative construction types, or just more prefab modules but so far, every one of our ADU projects has been in these situations where you couldn't get a truck in. 

CH: A good portion of our ADU clients come to us after going down a very long road with prefab! What we've found is they don't pencil out. Often in Los Angeles, there are many site constraints and access issues, so you can't get a module onto a lot. There are the narrow side yards, there are power lines in front of the property... Clients might have initial conversations and get really great numbers from these prefab companies, but when it comes down to it, they're typically unaffordable. 

FA: Is there something distinct and specific about an ADU versus doing a single-family home? 

CH: One thing that is interesting about the ADU from a design perspective, is the scale. We're able to do more material exploration on smaller buildings because the cost differential grows exponentially with the size of the project. The La Maida project is clad in standing seam metal panels, but the idea of cladding a whole house in standing seam would - unless you're working with a very wealthy client - be infeasible. 

One of the other things I really love about these small-scale ADU projects is that you can take the entire project in a single view, which is so different from a house. This means you can design it as more of an object, whereas many times a house has to step with the topography or negotiate other constraints that don't allow it to be as concise of a design object.

BW: It's like a sculpture in your backyard. It becomes like a folly. But also for me, it gives this new ability to activate the backyard. Because (typically) they're these vast spaces, and they're depressing, and by placing this object either in a corner or in a middle, you can start to cut the backyard into a series of different moments. And also in some of the projects, when the garage is at the back, as soon as you permit the ADU, you no longer have to have a driveway. And so this whole concrete swath of the backyard can be torn up. It can become dirt (or an) area where the kids can play soccer. And it's a real relief from the car-centric life of LA. 

WT: ADUS are different from the suburban Genesis, or birth of Los Angeles, where it's the one house to one plot of land beginning that Banham popularized in his book. They come from the collective idea that we can densify the city - double it in theory, right- without having to resort to building taller or larger structures. 

FA: Several of you have pointed out that this is essentially a sculpture in the garden. But isn't that how the single family home in LA used to be perceived? 

CH: I agree that historically the single-family home was like the gem in the garden. Planning and community input was the Wild West where you could do more or less what you wanted from a zoning and aesthetic perspective. If you look at the contemporary planning environment, there are so many restrictions for homes that ADUs can sidestep. They’re located towards the rear of the lot, which relieves the pressure to be directly contextual to the neighbors and the heft of the state-mandated ADU laws mitigates the ability to needlessly block a project.

MS: Another jurisdiction cannot prevent an ADU being built. And so when you're up against historic boards and community development committees, they technically cannot prevent you from doing what you want. So again, it gives ADUS a formal freedom.

BW: I definitely think about the secret garden concept, and trying to create an ADU that does not look like the house, and makes the backyard feel more unique and different from the typical experience. It also plays into LA (past), because you have these secret garden moments in Venice and in many backyards in LA, where the backyard is just a totally different place, and you're really escaping the highway aspects of the city. 

FA: So the secret gardens of Los Angeles could be the garden of a large house or they could be found in another LA typology, the bungalow court, the little cluster of houses around a shared garden. To what extent are ADUS also giving room for social experimentation in terms of the configuration or the relationship of the ADU to the existing house? 

MS: I think that it depends so much. ADUS are sometimes rented, sometimes they're for private use. On one of our projects, they share a wall but they're sited from facing away from each other, and then we carved in all these pockets that are private outdoor spaces that negotiate some of that extreme directionality. There have been a lot of conversations about creating these shared social spaces with ADUS, which would be speaking to the bungalow court, but we haven't done a project yet where there's some really big shared space. I'd say that people still want their own private space within a shared lot. 

CH: If you take a conventional house, let's say a 1930s LA house, they have openings, but they weren't really focused on the rear yard in the way that clients want today. In the case of the La Maida project, it has a strong connection to the rear yard. In fact it offers two separate connections, one to the rear yard and a second to a private garden court between the existing house and the project. These two connections allow clients different use scenarios: obviously the idea of being able to rent it, the idea of being able to downsize and move into the ADU and rent the house, the idea of being able to rent both and travel abroad, whatever it might be. Its configuration opens many opportunities that give people flexibility in their lives. 

BW: I love the idea of this communal garden between the spaces, and it sounds like Jared has been the most successful at being able to create something that can do all three at the same time. But randomly I have been reading this book about those amazing Spanish revival courtyard buildings and I started thinking about how - with ADUS - you're now shrinking the American dream, but you're giving them this expansive community garden. And with the SB9 thing (allowing up to four extra dwellings, and lot-splitting), I mean, it's even more interesting. 

CH: We could have a whole separate conversation about the economics of housing and ADUs because there's so much there. One issue that I’m seeing is with the current high interest rates, homes are even less affordable. Many of our clients initially explore purchasing a new home but are priced out of the market so building an ADU becomes the more economical solution. One of the things that I like the best about (the ADU) is how it's the most democratized housing type that's applicable to the most prevalent zoning in Los Angeles. I know there are MAJOR housing affordability issues that the ADU doesn't address, but they’re a unique opportunity to create very individualistic projects that add subtle housing density.

FA: I do wonder how democratized this all is, because it seems to me the ADU law benefits those who could buy a property in the era when the interest rates were low, and then add on to their property. So they wound up with two properties, but the people who have not been able to enter the market at all have nothing. And I find it fascinating politically, that of all the housing crisis solutions that have been put in front of voters, the ADU is the one they've embraced. And is that because the homeowners get to win from this one, but they don't get to win from the apartment building that lands at the end of their streets? 

BW: I totally agree. It's a complete win for the homeowner and the person who already owned a home and it fairly further pushes renters into debt and into just losing more and more money. If you look at these LA Times articles (about ADUs), some of these things are being rented for $4500 a month and it's just a two-bedroom and it's really just helped people to gain more. 

FA: The only way it can work is if you can split the lot and sell the ADU, per SB9. So then it becomes a bit more like the Small Lot Ordinance perhaps where you wind up being able to buy a small house for 800 grand but still someone can get to buy that.

CH: Why are ADU's so much more burdened with solving affordability than other types of residential architecture? If we want pure efficiency, then we're talking about high density multifamily buildings. What I was trying to say about democratization is the idea that it gives agency to homeowners. Unfortunately, ADUs are only applicable to homeowners, but it adds flexibility to their properties and allows them to develop much-needed units that wouldn't otherwise exist.