SCREENHOUSE
Compact housing prototype for overlooked city-owned lots in Los Angeles.
Los Angeles, US · Affordable housing · 2025
Details
Screenhouse is a compact housing proposal for overlooked city-owned lots in Los Angeles. It combines affordable and market-rate homes with shared amenities, outdoor rooms, and a protective brick screen designed for shade, privacy, fire resilience, and long-term adaptation.
Small units are supported by collective spaces: a ground-floor café and coworking area, access galleries, a planted courtyard, and a shared rooftop. The project tests how housing can feel more generous, social, and climate-aware on a constrained infill site.
Project
Screenhouse
Location
Los Angeles, US
Type
Housing / Infill
Status
Competition entry
Year
2025
Size
2,150 m² / 22,600 ft²
Program
Affordable and market-rate housing, café, coworking space, access galleries, planted courtyard, rooftop kitchen, laundry, and community gardens
Role
KOSY design
Facade screen
A fire-retardant brick screen shades the north and west façades while giving the compact building privacy, depth, and long-term flexibility.
Shared domestic infrastructure
Compact apartments are supported by shared spaces for work, gathering, outdoor living, and street-level activity. By moving selected domestic functions into collective areas, the project makes a high share of studio apartments more viable on a small site.
Urban infill
The proposal uses a narrow overlooked site to test a compact housing model where street-level activity, shared outdoor space, and a protective brick screen work together.
Plan logic
The plans organise compact homes around shared circulation, outdoor thresholds, and collective amenities rather than treating each apartment as an isolated unit.
Ground level
Typical residential level
Roof level
Filtered domesticity
The brick screen turns each apartment edge into a shaded threshold between interior rooms, planting, privacy, and the city beyond.
Street activation
Community-oriented ground-floor space, planted thresholds, and the brick screen give the small infill site a stronger public presence.
Climate threshold
Outdoor circulation, planting, and deep brick edges create shaded shared spaces that mediate between compact homes and the Los Angeles climate.
Design logic