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.
From Your Site Articles
- United Dwelling Raises $10M to Address the Housing Shortage ... ›
- Plant Prefab Raises An Additional $30 Million - dot.LA ›
- How 3D Printing Could Help Tackle Homelessness in LA - dot.LA ›
- New Bills, New Startups Address Housing in California - dot.LA ›
- LA's ADU Culture Still Faces Financial Barriers - dot.LA ›
- What Will Take To Make Modular Homes Mainstream? - dot.LA ›
Related Articles Around the Web
Shutterstock
"In 2019, the company tripled in size," said Murph. "That would have been literally impossible in a co-located space because we would have had moved offices at least three times — and just the time it takes to actually move would have prevented us from hiring that amount of people. We have been able to scale and grow at an amazing rate because of the efficiencies when you don't have to worry about an office building. You can run circles around companies that continue to do the co-located model."
Murph, who has been working at home for 15 years in various communications roles, was hired by GitLab last year into a position he thinks more companies should have. That's because, he says, for all its advantages, being a remote office is not easy. It requires intentionality, especially for employees who've spent their whole careers in offices.
"This isn't just something where people flip a switch and say 'oh great, we're remote' and everything can work as it always has'," said Murph.
Aside from being an evangelist for remote offices, Murph helps new employees onboard and wrote GitLab's Remote Playbook, which anyone can view. He recently spoke to dot.LA from his home in North Carolina about what other companies can learn from his experience and how many others will ultimately follow GitLab's path.
GitLab has been fully remote since it was founded out of Y Combinator in 2015 and far from slowing it down, Darren Murph, the company's head of remote, says the distributed model has been a major driver of success.
Why did GitLab decide to go fully remote when it started?
The first three employees at GitLab were based in three different countries, and so we were very much remote by default. The company did come to California through the Y Combinator startup accelerator — and as all companies do, they did what they were told and they got an offer in San Francisco. That lasted about three days before people just stopped showing up. The work continued to get done and it just dawned on the founding team really early on that spending money on real estate was not useful in any way, so they let the office fade and thus the all-remote company was born.
Did you ever feel before the past few months that there was a stigma put on you guys because of that decision to be fully remote?
Early on there were actually some investors that told the founding team, "Look, we love your business and we love your business model, but here's the deal: We have various companies that we can invest in and we've never seen a company do this long term. And so that means there's more risk associated with this. And we're not in a position where we have to take that risk and so we're not going to."
And what's crazy about it is over the years, many of those have made a complete 180 and are actively seeking remote first and all remote companies because it simply makes sense. When you look at a VC, if they're going to cut you a million dollar seed check and 40% of that goes to an office that you're leasing and you have no equity in, compared to a startup where 100% of that goes to people and technology, which do you think has the longer runway for success? It is amazing to see the turn of mindset from nine or 10 years ago. Last year we partnered with General Catalyst to host a half-day panel specifically on making remote work because General Catalyst wants to be known as a VC firm that is actively looking to invest in companies like that. That would have been unthinkable 10 or 15 years ago.
So these remote trends were underway before coronavirus?
Yes, well before COVID, because the technology is not the issue anymore. Fifteen years ago, Slack and Zoom did not exist. The only thing you have to get your head around is the management culture side, and (employers) have seen that startups tend to skew younger and they have never known a life without the internet. They've always been comfortable communicating digitally. It just makes sense. They don't view it as remote work. They just view it as work. And I think what has happened has simply accelerated what was already happening.
But VCs have always liked going in and walking around — to, in some sense, see where their money is going.
But that doesn't mean it's intelligent. Laying your eyes on people and on chairs that you don't own has never been a good way to measure productivity or success. And that is the great awakening that's happening right now, which is the question of, 'how do I know if someone's working remotely?' Well, how did you know they were working in the office?
This great migration is starting to force people to take a look at how much they were biased and how much they really should have been focused on results. But listen, I don't think you'll ever get away from some B.S. that they want their start ups in an office, because they they want to command and control. And look, it may work better for some companies than others. If you're dealing with physical hardware, it's still going to be really hard to do it remotely. But if you're dealing with a truly digital products, (working remotely is) really amenable to do that.
It seems like there's already been a whole backlash to the all-remote movement. Ultimately when there's a successful vaccine, how much of a shift will there really be?
There's definitely no putting this genie back in the bottle. I think the long term effects of this are going to be way more positive. That will outweigh any negative. I think one of the major things to come from this is it has finally democratized the conversation on workplace flexibility.
Working moms, caregivers, military spouses, people with disabilities and people that simply want to live somewhere outside of a major urban center have been (reluctant) to bring up the conflict in conversation and interviews. What COVID has done is every company is going to have to have an answer to question: 'What is your stance on workplace flexibility?'
To me, that is massively empowering and massively liberating. I don't think all companies are going to shut their offices down overnight. The point is to provide more flexibility and support for people no matter where they are. Companies need to realize that their offices are simply another place to go to work in. And if you look at it through that lens, you design your company to have a thriving culture no matter where someone is.
From Your Site Articles
- GitLab's Head of Remote on How to Run a Remote Startup - dot.LA ›
- gitlab - dot.LA ›
- The Future of Real Estate: Bigger Offices and Smaller Chains - dot.LA ›
- Nearly Half of Employees Want to Continue to Work From Home ... ›
- GitLab's Secrets for Running a Remote Startup - dot.LA ›
- GitLab's Secrets for Running a Remote Startup - dot.LA ›
- The LA Startups That Applied for Paycheck Protection - dot.LA ›
- The LA Startups That Applied for Paycheck Protection - dot.LA ›
- All Voices Allows Employees To Share Feedback Anonymously - dot.LA ›
- All Voices Allows Employees To Share Feedback Anonymously - dot.LA ›
Related Articles Around the Web
https://twitter.com/thebenbergman
ben@dot.la