969 Mixed-Use | 2024

Located at the intersection of two major Los Angeles boulevards, 969 is a seven-story, 59-unit mixed-use building composed as a dialogue between expression and concealment. Market-rate and low-income one- and two-bedroom apartments sit above ground-floor retail, restaurant space, a café, and a resident lobby. The project brings architectural distinction, social equity, and quality of light to Los Angeles housing at every income level.

The site falls ten feet across its street frontage. The project lets the topography drive the massing. A series of rust-toned metal-clad volumes shift in three dimensions; stepping up with the grade along the street, sliding back from the property line, and offsetting vertically floor to floor, breaking the mass into the reading of residentially-scaled houses climbing the hill.

The roof of each lower volume becomes the patio of the unit above; outdoor space emerges directly from the displacement. Strategic navigation of the grade and the regulatory envelope yields an additional story while maintaining a comfortable pedestrian scale at the sidewalk.

Set against the stepped metal volumes is a white stucco block holding the efficiently stacked units. The window pattern across this surface is intentionally scrambled, dissolving the legibility of the unit module within. The move is enabled by a structural reorganization that transfers the building’s lateral shear inboard through interior walls, freeing the exterior wall from carrying lateral loads.

Released from its structural role, the façade opens into larger windows, generous balconies, and an asymmetric fenestration pattern that reads across the surface as a single composition. Where the metal volumes articulate the house as a discrete object, the stucco volume abstracts the apartment unit into a continuous field. The façade alternates between declaring its repetition and erasing it.

Community is built into the project’s structure. Ground-floor retail, restaurant space, and a café anchor the building to the sidewalk. A public rooftop terrace serves residents as a communal outdoor room and the neighborhood as a public amenity, with shaded seating beneath a large trellis, gathering and barbecue areas, and views to the Hollywood Hills and the Pacific Ocean. The roof becomes a shared backyard at the scale of the block.

Sustainability runs through the building’s systems. A photovoltaic canopy on the roof generates on-site renewable energy. Stormwater filtration planters capture roof runoff and slow its release into the municipal system, reducing peak flows and filtering on-site. Green roofs mitigate the urban heat island and extend the building’s contribution to the neighborhood ecology. All residential and shared spaces are oriented for daylight and natural ventilation; low-flow fixtures throughout reduce potable water demand.

Inside, residences are warm, light, and materially calm; integrated millwork and engineered wood flooring anchor the rooms while orientation maximizes daylight and views. The architecture reads as a row of houses climbing a hill, a single calm volume, and a tightly stacked apartment block. 969 is three compositions forming a neighborhood within one building.

Category:Mixed-Use BuildingsYear:2024Location:California, USAArchitects:Aux Architecture Lead Architect: Brian WickershamLandscape Architects:SQLA Inc.Design Team: Matthew Aulicino, Kuhane Blackburn, Francis Wu, Liu Qiao, Taylor Nunez, Yoann Liu, Alexandra Butnaru, Chase Lee, Ivan Laguna, Ricardo Moura, Tess Stilman, Lindy Hsieh, Nora Gharib, Monika Uguryan, Oscar Gutierrez, Sean McCusker, and Titus Dimson General Contractor: Guild GCClient: Vitruvian Development Group Photographer: Courtesy of the Architects