PROJECTS
Ryan Karczewski, Caelin Johnson, Makenna Karst
Amir Lahouti, Brianna Westbrook
Coming Together: Los Angeles
Traveling to Los Angeles, Coming Together Studio collaborated with the long-established Beverly-Vermont Community Land Trust (BVCLT) in Koreatown. Participants designed collective and prefabricated housing proposals on BVCLT's existing property, imagining denser living situations made possible by L.A.'s recent transit-oriented upzoning, which allows a denser housing mix on traditionally low density residential lots.
By building housing from the ground up for the community and alongside the community, Coming Together Studio worked closely with BVCLT to celebrate their common values and spaces, while still prioritizing the individual needs and particularies of constituents and families within the group. This shift in designing for the collective rather than for an individual serving the collective, and thus establishing the methods for doing so, was a core principal that oriented the studio's design work towards housing as a tool for collectivity from the beginning.