Studio One Eleven, a Long Beach-based architecture and design firm, operates under a mantra of “housing for all,” though managing partners Michael Bohn and Alan Pullman recognize that all housing doesn’t work for all people.
Designing multifamily communities targeting underserved populations – such as homeless seniors, survivors of domestic violence and formerly incarcerated individuals – Studio One Eleven implements specific “trauma-informed design” principles across its demographic types.
“Really the focus of trauma-informed design is safety surrounded by comfort, community and choice,” Pullman said. “Everything we do is seen through that lens.”
Integrating urban design and landscape architecture into the studio’s housing projects is key to taking a holistic approach, Pullman said.
One project currently in the firm’s pipeline includes the Ross Center for Hope & Healing, which will transform a parking lot on The California Endowment’s Chinatown facility into a 124-unit multifamily complex. The apartments, developed in partnership with The California Endowment, will house formerly homeless, low income, as well as formerly incarcerated individuals and their families. Additionally, the project will have 66,000 square feet of space for nonprofit providers specializing in justice-impacted households and re-entry individuals.
When building housing for these communities, simply putting a roof over residents’ heads isn’t enough, said Sonnet Hui, a local managing director and vice president of real estate consultancy Project Management Advisors. Hui – who has a background in architecture and was instrumental in creating the Weingart Tower, the largest permanent supporting housing development in L.A. – asserted that details matter when preventing recidivism and the risk of falling back into homelessness.
“To break the cycle of homelessness, you have to provide support and services on site for that population,” Hui said, noting counselors, clinics, job training and food facilities as examples. “… The whole goal with these types of housing is to really help people transition back to a life that is sustainable for them (where) they can minimize the impacts of the trauma that they have experienced.”
In examining the different populations Studio One Eleven designs for, Hui said there are some overlapping strategies but catering to each population to some degree is still necessary.
Daryl Carter, chief executive and chair of Avanath Capital Management, sees the design formula as being 80% consistent on the basics and 20% individualized by demographics. The Irvine-based firm is active in the affordable housing space in Southern California, as well as nationally.
Strategy execution
One of the studio’s projects which was completed about one year ago is MLK + PCH in Long Beach, which is an affordable housing complex built for seniors. Half of its units are specifically reserved for seniors who had been previously homeless.
With that population in mind, Bohn said the firm incorporated community gardens into the complex at the podium courtyard noting that gardening offers seniors health and social benefits.
“It helps with wellness and eating healthy but also socialization,” Bohn said. “People come out and garden together. They share and trade crops and it becomes a way of engaging.”
On the other hand, when designing the Vanowen Apartments in North Hollywood, a supportive housing project for transition-aged youth, Studio One Eleven opted for landscaping tall, mature trees surrounding the courtyard.
“It was really about creating tranquility … so that it felt like an oasis and a place to escape,” Bohn said. “… Having a courtyard that’s very lushly landscaped creates this kind of cocoon or oasis for younger folks to engage and almost be a little bit protected from the world.”
Some more general practices the studio abides by include designing rooms with multiple entry and exit points so that residents can avoid the feeling of being trapped, using colors proven to exude calmness and leaning into biophilia.
Bohn and Pullman find data collection and tracking crucial in making these decisions, pushing back against the conception that these types of design principles are “fuzzy science or emotionally driven,” as Bohn puts it.
This means relying on case studies that have placed residents in trauma-informed designed apartments as well as standard apartments, measuring the differences in heart rates, sleep patterns and even people’s likeliness to respect the property in terms of damage.
An analysis published in the National Institute of Health concluded there is “substantial alignment” between trauma-informed design and feelings of safety and security, control and enrichment in supportive housing.
“We really are taking a scientific view of a lot of this, because there is science supporting it,” Pullman said. “It’s not just intuition anymore.”
Hui too stressed the benefits of taking the time to analyze and understand the community to best meet their needs through these housing designs.
“Understanding, their background, what got them there, their trauma, the issues that they’ve had to face and finding solutions in the built environment … can have a huge impact on helping people feel a sense of belonging and helping people integrate back into society,” Hui said.
Modular model
Aside from identifying best practices for residents, Studio One Eleven looks for ways to streamline and reduce costs during the construction process including using modular.
Bohn and Pullman design projects to work with both modular and traditional building because a developer can always decide to do a traditional build on a modular plan, but they can’t decide to do the opposite as the modular plan requires “rigorous” principles, Pullman said.
“(Oftentimes our projects) will be built more traditionally, but there will be modular components, like restrooms, bathrooms or kitchens that can be brought in,” Pullman said. “Anything we can do to help make it more efficient… we’ll look at to help advance the cause of more affordable housing.”
In the studio’s Vanowen Apartments project, they used metal stud modular construction with units built off location while the site was prepped.
Saving time and money through the modular plan can be a great benefit, said Carter, whose firm is working on panelized modular projects in Connecticut and hoping to replicate that in L.A.
“Projects can be built and assembled very quickly and at a significantly lower cost – at least half as much as what conventionally built projects are now,” Carter said
While money is saved overall, Bohn points out that modular typically requires more cash upfront because of the simultaneous work being done both on site and in factories as opposed to the traditional, more linear process where the cash can flow sequentially.
Thus, the Studio One Eleven team found success using HHH funding for the Vanowen project as some of the more traditional financing sources can be more hesitant to deploy more money right away, Bohn said.
“We don’t see modular as a silver bullet to solving the housing crisis, but it is an important tool,” Bohn said.
Community integration
Creating a project that’s well received by both residents and the community at large requires outreach on all fronts. One avenue is using virtual reality technology to allow clients and the community “to step into the project … and really get a sense of what it’s going to be like,” Pullman said. “We learn a lot from that experience.”
For project acceptance from the existing community, humanizing future residents, especially in affordable developments, can help dismantle a certain “boogeyman mentality,” Carter said.
This means opening dialogue with community groups who may have biases or preconceived notions about what an affordable housing resident will look like.
“I always say to people, ‘Look, (our residents can be) your son or daughter who is a recent college graduate and who has $100,000 of student debt, and may be working at a Starbucks,’” Carter said.
In terms of aesthetics, preemptive choices that
cater to a community’s vibe can go a long way.
“You cannot have a successful project without community engagement and making sure you find out what’s important to people in their community,” Carter said.
One example of this was a “blended density” approach when designing the exterior for Studio One Eleven’s MLK + PCH project, Bohn said.
The studio created a gradual height decline because the front of the development’s site was on a commercial corridor, but the back led into an alleyway where there was a mix of single-family and low-scale multifamily.
“As the building went back towards the alley, we stepped it down so as not to be intrusive and overwhelming to the neighborhood,” Bohn said.
When projects are built without paying attention to neighborhood aesthetics, it makes it all the easier for the community to disapprove of affordable developments, Hui said.
“It’s easy for people to make things very binary… It’s very easy to say, ‘We don’t
want those people in our community,’” Hui said. “So, the more you can help neutralize and help support that transition, the more (the development) will become integrated into the fabric of a community.”
