Located on a narrow infill lot in Silver Lake, Los Angeles, Dillon617 creatively integrates open, communal space into a dense urban development, adding a valuable park amenity to the community.
LOHA’s design for Dillon617 is derived from two long bars connected by an exterior walkway and pushed to one side of the property to allocate a significant portion of the site to a landscaped public paseo. This public gesture improves neighborhood connectivity across a long city block while adding green space for the benefit of Dillon617’s residents and neighbors alike.
To create a dynamic park space and bring light and air deeper into the building, Dillon617’s southern bar is pulled apart at each street frontage. This move opens up Dillon617's street-facing side to form a porous edge between the project and the community. Inversely, the corresponding paseo entrance is framed for an intimate moment that allows the paseo to open and unfold.
LOHA further articulates this paseo edge by carving away stepped terraces out from the central pinch point. These public and semi-private terraces take advantage of a southern exposure and centralize the common amenities to promote neighborly social interaction. This terracing is mirrored on the northern elevation to break away from the surrounding buildings and align with context. With punched balconies checkered across the long elevations, LOHA ensures that each unit has access to open space.
LOHA designed the dark metal exterior to contrast with a bright inner corridor, painted white to reflect natural light into the walkways and units as one of several passively sustainable strategies. The composition of solid metal siding and perforated screens animate the street-facing elevations for a more accessible relationship with surrounding context, further abetted by the open sidewalk plaza created by LOHA’s generous building setback.
As Los Angeles densifies, the inevitable conflict between multifamily apartment buildings and single family neighborhoods becomes increasingly apparent. By incorporating the types of spaces found in the surrounding neighborhood into a multifamily building - intimate green spaces, terraced hillsides, and public plazas- LOHA has allowed the two disparate typologies to coexist. Dillon 617 exemplifies how thoughtful design can help solve urban issues like densification while retaining sensitivity to context.
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