This week’s installment of Ninja Homes features Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects [LOHA] - a California based firm founded around 16 years ago by Lorcan O’Herlihy [go figure]. Seemingly specializing in residential / mixed use projects, the firm has been awarded with 24 separate design awards, including 7 American Institute of Architects Design Awards.

Gardener 1050 [pictured] is a multi-family housing development located just south of Santa Monica Boulevard [LA]. At 27,000 square feet, the project contains 10 individual units organized around a central courtyard. The building could be conceived as a ‘box’ - from which a void is carved out to form an interior courtyard space. The courtyard then serves as both communal green space for the building’s residents, and as a ‘buffer’ to the surrounding urban fabric.

Encircled by walkways [seen below], the courtyard is planted with indigenous species which are water efficient - and therefore require less watering. Vines from the courtyard even climb the steel cables along the walkways, creating a vertical / hanging garden within the core of the development.

The building’s skin alternates from horizontal cedar wood slats [which turn vertically to ‘screen’ the units’ decks, as seen above] and a system of painted cement board panels enclosing the units themselves. It then switches to translucent channel glass panels around the communal staircase [seen above].

Typical units have 2 bedrooms, 2 baths, balcony space, and a spacious kitchen / living / dining space - with a 2 storey living space, filling the unit with natural light and views to the courtyard / communal space.

.:Photographs by Lawrence Anderson -> via Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects

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