during my internship at Michael Maltzan Architecture summer 2016

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Crest Apartments for the Skid Row Housing Trust transformed an existing open site in suburban Los Angeles into a 64-apartment complex for formerly homeless veterans.  Located on a busy thoroughfare near two freeways, the project introduces a new density in the neighborhood with easy connections to public transportation and area resources.  The client’s permanent supportive housing model includes individual efficiency apartments with on-site social services and community spaces.  These combined programs effectively support the highly vulnerable residents in an effort to reduce chronic homelessness.

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-via Michael Maltzan Architecture

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For this project, I headed model landscape representation and hand crafted 18 custom trees and a morphing grass graphic to mimic the flow of wind and light within Michael Maltzan‘s Crest Apartments. Each tree was wire formed, gesso dipped, then hand painted to resemble the actual species of trees at Crest. The “grass” in the model was a 2D field of lines in shades of green. The apartment itself was made of laser-cut acrylic panels emphasizing the building’s control joints used to mitigate cracking on the exterior.

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Building fabrication in collaboration with Joseph Chang.