RENAISSANCE CENTER

Since 2017 we have been working with the <AIDS Healthcare Foundation / Healthy Housing Foundation addressing the global homelessness and affordable housing crisis through intensive collaborative design processes. As partners, our “overarching goal is to respond to the urgency of the housing crisis for those who are at extremely low and very low-income levels by creating as many safe, attractive housing units as possible, quickly, at an efficient cost, and to encourage high quality, durable, long term, sustainable, permanent supportive environments for persons experiencing homelessness”. Renaissance Center sited in downtown Los Angeles will be the first modular affordable housing high rise in the city. The rigorously designed modular systems building, will occupy a site in Skid Row, the epicenter of the homeless crisis, providing a resilient option for the residents earning less than 50% of the area median income a dignified place to live. This innovative proposal will serve as a national prototype that recalibrates for programmatic, site, environmental and budgetary constraints. The 15-story project includes 216 micro residential units, administration, with indoor and outdoor common areas. Ideally situated within the historic Flower Market district of downtown Los Angeles, it will serve as a visual beacon night and day through a modulated box-rib metal panel system providing texture, light animation, and pattern.  It includes a modular carved-out sky garden, a three-unit configuration. The ground level contributes to an active but safe street life through exterior ground floor entry units, secure open-air-mixed-use spaces, and informal garden gathering spaces. Project will commence construction in July 2023.