THE HOUSING
This project asks how density can grow without losing the feeling of home. Set on a traditional R1 lot in Los Angeles, it reinterprets cottage living within a modern townhome context — testing whether ten units can share a site the way four cottages might share a garden, through adjacency, orientation, and shared open space.
Designed across two typical single-family residential sites, the scheme balances built and open space equally while minimizing redundancy. Units cluster into four unique constellations — each with a distinct combination of unit types, unified by consistent thresholds and circulation patterns across the site.
The spatial strategy carves into both building mass and ground to form patios, paths, and communal space, creating a network of circulation veins that converge in a central artery. Despite that formal complexity, the isometric view reveals a structured simplicity: cottage-like principles distilled down to no more than six surfaces defining every exterior experience.
Facades conceal that repetition — stretched apertures and cohesive exterior treatments read as a unified whole rather than ten repeated units. The result is a community-oriented housing model that holds individual privacy and shared outdoor life in balance, adapted to the real constraints of modern residential development.
UCLA 2023
Professor: Heather Roberge & Mohammad Sharif
Contributors: Hanna Wittmack