Design, Bitches
Looking to Build a Granny Flat in Your Backyard? Meet the Firms and Designs Pre-Approved in LA
Adding a backyard home in Los Angeles is now nearly as easy as buying a barbecue.
Homeowners who for years have wanted to build a granny flat in their backyard, but dreaded the red tape, can now choose from 20 pre-designed homes that the city has already approved for use.
The shift, made official last week, will speed up a weeks-long process and bring more badly needed units to an overpriced market. It also has the potential to elevate the 14 startups and firms building the next generation of homes.
The designs for the stand-alone residences range from a 200-square-foot studio to a 1,200-square foot, two-story, two-bedroom unit. And many of the homes are filled with design flourishes, reflecting the diverse architecture of the city, from a house in the silhouette of a flower to one with a spiral outdoor staircase leading to the roof.
It's no surprise. The program was spearheaded by Christopher Hawthorne, a former architecture critic at the Los Angeles Times and now the city's chief design officer.
The firms are primarily local and startup architecture and design firms, while others are well-known with a history of building granny flats, also know as accessory dwelling units, or ADUs.
The standard plans avoid the Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety's typical four-to six-week review process and can allow approvals to be completed in as quickly as one day.
Some aspects of the plans can be modified to fit a homeowner's preferences. Eight other designs are pending approval.
Mayor Eric Garcetti believes by adding more such units, the city can diversify its housing supply and tackle the housing crisis. Recent state legislation made it easier to build the small homes on the lot of single-family residences. Since then, ADUs have made up nearly a quarter of Los Angeles' newly permitted housing units.
Because construction costs are relatively low for the granny flats – the pre-approved homes start at $144,000 and can go beyond $300,000 – the housing is generally more affordable. The median home price in L.A. County in January was $690,000.
Here's a quick look at the designs approved so far:
Abodu
Abodu
Abodu, based in Redwood City in the Bay Area, exclusively designs backyard homes. In 2019, it worked with the city of San Jose on a program similar to the one Los Angeles is undertaking.
In October, it closed a seed funding round of $3.5 million led by Initialized Capital.
It has been approved for a one-story 340-square-foot studio, a one-story one-bedroom at 500 square feet, and a one-story, 610-square-foot two-bedroom.
The pricing for the studio is $189,900, while the one-bedroom costs $199,900 and the two-bedroom is $259,900.
Amunátegui Valdés Architects
Connect Homes
Design, Bitches
Escher GuneWardena Architecture
First Office
Fung + Blatt Architects
Fung + Blatt Architects is a Los Angeles-based firm founded in 1990.
The city has approved its 795-square-foot, one-story, one-bedroom unit with a roof deck. It estimates the construction cost to be $240,000 to $300,000, excluding landscape, site work and the solar array. Homeowners can also expect other additional costs.
Taalman Architecture/ IT House Inc.
LA Más
Jennifer Bonner/MALL
Massachusetts-based Jennifer Bonner/MALL designed a "Lean-to ADU" project, reinterpreting the stucco box and exaggerated false front, both Los Angeles architectural mainstays.
The design has been approved for a 525-square-foot one-story, one-bedroom unit with a 125-square-foot roof deck.
sekou cooke STUDIO
New York-based sekou cooke STUDIO is the sole Black-owned architectural firm on the project.
"The twisted forms of this ADU recalls the spin and scratch of a DJ's records" from the early 90s, the firm said.
Its design, still pending approval, is for a 1,200-square-foot, two bedroom and two bathroom can be adapted to a smaller one-bedroom unit or to include an additional half bath.
SO-IL
New York-based SO-IL was founded in 2008. It has completed projects in Leon, Seoul, Lisbon and Brooklyn.
Its one-story, one-bedroom 693-square-foot unit is pending approval. It is estimated the construction cost will be between $200,000 and $250,000.
WELCOME PROJECTS
Los Angeles-based Welcome Projects has worked on projects ranging from buildings, houses and interiors to handbags, games and toys.
Its ADU is nicknamed The Breadbox "for its curved topped walls and slight resemblance to that vintage counter accessory."
It has been approved for a one-story, one-bedroom 560-square-foot unit.
wHY Architecture
Firms that want to participate in the program can learn more here . Angelenos interested in building a standard ADU plan can learn more the approved projects here.
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Photo by Igor Karimov on Unsplash
Meanwhile social media companies like Facebook boosted their gaming platforms and Snap supersized its gaming effort with Bitmoji Paint, which it released in December.
Nintendo's "Animal Crossing: New Horizons" was embraced by politicians, with both congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and president-elect Joe Biden creating neighborhoods and encouraging their constituents to come pay them a virtual campaign trail visit.
It all meant a push toward a more social game.
And it was in a year that players spent big on their favorite titles - in November alone, digital games earned $11.5 billion, the highest monthly revenue ever recorded by Nieslen's SuperData.
Global gaming revenue smashed records with sales estimated to reach $174.9 billion by the end of this year, up roughly 20% from last year, NewZoo games analyst Tom Wijman wrote in a recent report. NewZoo predicts that by the end of 2021, roughly 2.8 billion people will be gaming worldwide.
Social media plays a crucial role in how well a game is received, and it hugely influenced which games took off this year. "Among Us" is a two-year-old game, but when streamers started broadcasting matches in early April, it quickly attracted new players.
Similarly, popular game streamers broadcasting Santa Monica-based Activision Blizzard's "Call of Duty: Warzone" game helped the game go viral and jumpstarted adoption of its newest title, "Black Ops Cold War," which was the top-selling console game in November with 5.7 million copies sold.
Adoption of multiplayer games and content is expected to keep rising, prompting startups including Playa Vista-based VENN to capitalize on a market ravenous for group entertainment.
VENN's network of gamer-friendly television is now expanding to smart TVs (it recently struck deals with Roku and Samsung) and existing social networks like YouTube, said Jimmy Wong, producer and co-host of VENN's talk show "The Download."
"Our view of the pandemic is one of someone dousing an already lit flame with lighter fluid," Wong said. "It's a step towards a wider acceptance of video gaming as being one of the most popular things for people to do."
In October roughly 931,000 people engaged with Santa Monica-based Riot Games' "League of Legends" page on Reddit, according to NewZoo's report on the most active gaming communities.
Ocasio-Cortez broke Twitch records streaming "Among Us," in November, when she linked up with several famous streamers for a live broadcast that reached over 400,000 people.
Social media not only expands the reach of a multiplayer game, but also its lifespan -- "League of Legends" is over a decade old, and Activision's "Call of Duty" franchise launched in 2003. "Among Us" came out in 2018, but it made $3.2 million in digital revenue this year and passed half a billion downloads in December.
"There's now so much evergreen video content surrounding these games which has made the lifespan and reach so much greater," said Ryan Horrigan(cq), CEO of West Hollywood-based Artie, a startup that designs multiplayer cloud-based browser games and will launch in 2021. "I do think gaming is becoming the next social network."
Social media and streaming drives players back to games but it's also a lucrative ad opportunity. "The world of gaming is permeating well beyond even the notion of a game," Horrigan noted, and lately includes film and TV adaptations of hit titles.
Scopely, a Culver-City based mobile publisher, both makes and acquires multiplayer games. "Marvel Strike Force," which it bought from Walt Disney Co. in January, is its biggest earner. "We will close the year above $900 million in revenue, nearly double the revenue of 2019," Scopely's head of strategic partnerships Mike DeLaet told dot.LA.
Tim Richards, vice president of publishing at Calabasas-based GreenPark Sports, is designing a virtual space for sports and esports fans to hang out and play that will launch in January. "We designed the idea around this data that 90% of Gen Z classify themselves as gamers," Richards said. He noted that even hardcore sports fans like virtual viewing -- "Even back in (pre-pandemic) days, very few folks went to every sports game."
Analysts agree gaming is now a more essential form of social entertainment than ever before and it will continue to grow in audience next year, as will streaming and virtual events that take place inside live games.
"Multiplayer games would have grown in popularity regardless of COVID-19," said Carter Rogers, principal analyst at SuperData. "This growth is sustainable, and we aren't likely to see any sort of video game 'crash' after most people are vaccinated. People are forming long-term habits as they play online games, many for the first time."
Correction: An earlier version of this piece mis-identified Tim Richards, GreenPark Sports' vice president of publishing.
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Courtesy of Thatgamecompany
The startup was founded in 2006, by University of Southern California students Chen and Kellee Santiago, with the goal of creating games that put the player at the center of an emotional escapade. The studio got its start with the title “Flow” for Sony’s PlayStation 3; the Japanese firm was an early investor in Thatgamecompany, providing it with a three-game production deal and housing the four-person startup at Sony’s Los Angeles office.
Thatgamecompany co-founder and CEO Jenova Chen.
Courtesy of Thatgamecompany
Thatgamecompany later won critical acclaim for its 2012 PlayStation game “Journey,” as well as its most recent game, 2019’s “Sky: Children of Light,” which was released on mobile devices and the Nintendo Switch. “Sky” won several awards and has been downloaded more than 160 million times.
Chen told VentureBeat his larger goal is to turn games like “Sky” into an immersive, interactive “theme park” experience. “There isn’t that equivalent of a kind of Disneyland experience or a Pixar movie experience in the game industry even today,” he said. “Hopefully, Sky and our future games will all be part of the theme parks in the future, like in a connected metaverse.”
To that end, Thatgamecompany also announced that Pixar co-founder Ed Catmull has joined the company as a “principal advisor on creative culture and strategic growth.”
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