DILLON617 Housing / Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects

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Text description provided by the architects. Los Angeles’ Silver Lake neighborhood has transformed in the past two decades from a sleepy Eastside enclave, to one of the city’s most vibrant creative communities. Yet, the majority of its housing stock has remained unchanged since the 1970s. The residential streets comprise a mix of historic homes and mid-century “missing middle” bungalows, duplexes, and fourplexes, that once accommodated its population of urban dwellers. Today, there is a need for much more density. Not only to keep up with demand but to retain a level of affordability in a housing market that has priced-out the majority of artists and ethnic communities responsible for giving the area its unique flair. A new “missing-middle” housing typology has emerged, one that has expanded in scale and placement to the edges of the neighborhoods, along with commercial corridors and busy thoroughfares (where automotive repair shops and warehouses once stood.) With these changes comes a need to bridge these new missing-middle communities to the neighborhoods and streets that they straddle.