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Lehrer Architects transforms a freeway park into its second transitional tiny home village

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Lehrer Architects transforms a freeway park into its second transitional tiny home village

Los Angeles-based Lehrer Architects announced the official opening of the Alexandria Park Tiny Home Village last week, a candy-colored North Hollywood bridge housing community that can accommodate up to 200 homeless Angelenos. Designed in collaboration with architects and engineers from the Los Angeles Bureau of Engineering, the transitional housing village at Alexandria Park marks the second tiny home-based community completed by Lehrer Architects and the Bureau of Engineering and the first large-scale deployment of what the firm calls an “experimental solution to the city’s housing crisis.”

Also vibrantly hued and located in North Hollywood, that first project, the Chandler Boulevard Tiny Home Village, greeted its first residents in February as a pilot initiative. Making good use of an awkward, long-rejected infill lot, the Chandler Boulevard Tiny Home Village is roughly half the size of the new community located 2 miles away at Alexandria Park, an existing park off of Laurel Canyon Boulevard that abuts the Hollywood Freeway.

Although the Alexandria Park Tiny Home Village is situated within a leafy public green space, the city-owned strip of land that it occupies is described by Lehrer Architects as an “edge space” near the freeway that was “otherwise unused and hard to reach.” As detailed by the firm, its long-standing philosophy of ‘no throwaway spaces’ aligns with the city’s mission to “seek out spaces that would be passed over by other developers for their size, shape, or lack of existing infrastructure, and transform them into functional land for use in the city’s ongoing effort to create more transitions to housing for the unhoused.”

The Alexandria Park Tiny Home Villages include 103 diminutive modular dwellings, support structures, and ample open space. (Courtesy Lehrer Architects)

Like at the Chandler Boulevard Tiny Home Village, Lehrer Architects and the city have populated the Alexandria Park community—also operated by faith-based housing nonprofit Hope of the Valley—with 64-square-foot modular units manufactured by Everett, Washington-based Pallet. The community is comprised of 103 of these diminutive, single- or double-occupancy units along with other larger modular structures arranged in such a way to give the community a self-contained village atmosphere complete with a “main street” and a range of communal outdoor spaces that benefit from the leafy nature of the existing parkland. Both newly planted and mature frees were incorporated into the footprint of the village.

The village’s non-housing-dedicated structures include dining and gathering spaces (three daily meals are provided), showers and restrooms, secure storage, support services, and more. While (very) tiny as described, the individual pitched-roof housing units—each come complete with air conditioning, heat, fold-down beds, electric outlets, and all-important locks—provide the privacy and autonomy sought by many of those within the unhoused population who are traveling along the pathway to securing more permanent means of housing. Like at the Chandler Avenue village, residents at the Alexandria Park Tiny Home Village must be actively on this pathway. Despite being viewed as a temporary means of housing, there are no time limits that dictate how long an individual can—or can not—take up residence at the village. Residents also must be over 18 and abide by a strict no-alcohol as well as a village-wide curfew that provides some flexibility under employment-related circumstances. Pets are welcomed.

blue and yellow-striped pavement with boldly colored tiny houses
Each modular unit features a lockable door, four windows, heating and cooling systems, and fold-down beds. (Courtesy Lehrer Architects)

“L.A. is surely among the most vibrant laboratories in the world today to be designing and building projects in—big, small, permanent, transitional—to remediate and eliminate homelessness,” said Michael B. Lehrer, founding partner of Lehrer Architects. From design to policy to sweating bureaucratic and regulatory conflicts and challenges, this is an auspicious and unprecedented period of experimentation and idea churn, learning lessons fast and embracing those lessons from one project to the next. It is thrilling to be here using our medium to give, develop and invent form and processes to transform LA into a fully housed city. Making a difference is a joy of citizenship.”

The entire village was realized in just 13 weeks, 2 weeks ahead of the anticipated construction end date. The project team, which also included Ford Construction, was able to move with such speed thanks to lessons learned while establishing the pilot tiny home community on Chandler Avenue.

“Each component (tiny home, admin trailers, hygiene units, etc.) has exact technical requirements,” explained Nerin Kadribegovic, a partner at Lehrer Architects, in a statement. “Being already familiar with these requirements enabled us to solve problems quickly and focus on making the Village an attractive and welcoming community.”

The Alexandria Park Tiny Home Village is the second tiny home-based bridge housing community completed by Lehrer Architects and the L.A. Bureau of Engineering. (Courtesy Lehrer Architects)

Like at Chandler Avenue, the eye-popping color palette deployed at the Alexandria Park Tiny Home Village is welcoming and aids in the organization of the various spaces throughout the community all the while adding an additional layer of visual interest.

“They used a cinematic design approach due to the attenuated geometry of the site, rolling a 3D camera down the ‘Main Street,’ of their architectural model and strategically picking which homes to paint to ensure there is a colorful visual offset at every step as you move through the community,” said Lehrer Architects of the team’s methods. “They also introduced permeable pea gravel to the palette to help distinguish various village ‘neighborhoods’ whilst being mindful of the environmental impact of the development.”

Larger modular structures at the village contain shared restrooms, showers, laundry facilities, and more. There’s even an on-site dog run. (Courtesy Lehrer Architects)

While the opening of the $8.6 million Alexandria Park Tiny Home Village has been widely celebrated, Alissa Walker recently reported for Curbed that the project doesn’t come without complications (or protests).

As previously mentioned, the swath of freeway-adjacent parkland that’s now home to the village has been described as being unused, which isn’t exactly the case. The park was home to an established community of unhoused people who were displaced by the construction of the village. These individuals were invited to return and live in the new Hope of the Valley-operated community although some, as detailed by Curbed, have been hesitant to do so for various reasons.

In addition to the scattering of an existing homeless encampment at Alexandria Park, the unveiling of L.A.’s latest tiny home community for the unhoused (there’s another underway in Echo Park) has prompted housing advocates to once again stress that bridge housing solutions, no matter how thoughtfully designed and compassionately operated, cannot be truly impactful unless there’s permanent, affordable housing to eventually transition into when residents are ready. And in L.A., that type of housing remains woefully out of reach.

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