AI and Affordable Housing

Zeiger, Mimi and Casey Rehm

| “AI and Affordable Housing” | Course | Los Angeles, CA | Spring 2020

AI and the Future of Housing critically considers the fundamental tools and approaches undergirding housing in a densifying city like LA. How is housing development changing? What are the significant requirements driving housing in contemporary urban culture? How do current trends in housing evolve in response to cultural desires—are these reflective of changing lifestyles or are they symptomatic of economic imbalances. Students address these questions, specifically looking at intervention housing models like rezoned renovations of existing building stock and ADU units. These projects force students to consider issues of accessibility, finance, speed of construction, sustainability, customizability, and desirability in housing.

The aim for this course is to explore housing issues from three directions, utilizing automation and artificial intelligence to assist in the generation of new design and analysis solutions. First students develop research into emergent typologies and the policy and economic factors driving the current housing shortage. Based on that research they develop a position on the future of housing. Concurrently, students work with platform-based design and fabrication strategies to propose and prototype new forms of housing. Finally, students work with AI based platforms to analyze and map potential sites for intervention in Los Angeles based on economic and policy feasibility.

HT2519

Instructors: Mimi Zeiger, critic, editor and curator Casey Rehm, MS Architectural Technologies Coordinator

h.LA

Team: Luke Falcone, Zihan Gao, Sadvi Jayanth, Amanda Kotch

In an effort to address the housing crisis in Los Angeles, house.LA proposes a future housing solution in the form of an app-based matching service, where a digital platform pairs owners and renters of Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs). House.LA utilizes the latest in AI technologies, employing neural networks and video game design applications.

ADUs provide a viable solution to the problem of how to quickly and easily create more units of affordable housing in the city. California state law AB2299, made effective in 2017, streamlined ADU construction on existing single family lots, but homeoners still face challenges in regards to city planning, approval, and permitting. house.LA operates between the homeowner, the renter, and the city. It takes the responsibility for permitting out of the homeowner's hands, provides a kit-of-parts for ADU construction, and acts as a matching service between homeowners and renters.

house.LA is set to meet demand created in response to new ADU policies by taking responsibility for ADU design, construction, and management. Favoring a kit-of-parts approach, we devised a system that accounts for both density and variety in ADU design.

As of January 2020, California and Los Angeles policy builds upon the success of 2017 measures to create more flexibility around ADU construction. Critical changes include the allowance of two ADUs on a single property, lesser restrictions on ADU height and square footage, parking exception and setback reduction, reduction or elimination of impact fees, shorter approval periods, and ease of legalization. The continued trend towards ADUs as an affordable housing solution shows no sign of slowing, and new policy allows for greater backyard home density at the neighborhood scale.

The house.LA platform protects a homeowner from risk, while creating possible long-term benefits for the owner by increasing property value. The question of risk in the assessment is absorbed in the platform by the company, and house.LA is able to create a safe and secure space for users on both ends.

Our flat pack system is focused around a centralized utility core, a prefabricated and enclosed unit that saves homeowners the hassle of resolving how to connect existing city utilities to new units. Resulting diversity of communal spaces goes beyond the current scope of ADU design to create a new civility of backyard urbanism, using densification as a way to create community.

AI technologies, such as neural networks and video game design applications, are deployed throughout all stages of the design process and matching service: from sourcing lots where there is preexisting space for an ADU, to placing utility cores effectively while avoiding existing trees and foliage, to the tectonic arrangement of component parts around the core in configurations appropriate to site and user, as well as in the digital app as a way to match owners and users with particular quantitative and qualitative needs.

Infrastructure Prosthetics

Team: Julia Pike, Lourenco Vaz Pinto, Philippe Maman, Yash Mehta

Infrastructure Prosthetics reimagines co-living at both the city and living unit scale. The system pairs iterative housing with artificial intelligence to produce to accommodate the needs of lower-income residents in Los Angeles and is designed to tackle development on brownfield sites.

The complexities of entitlement processes and on-site infrastructural development pose expensive hurdles in developing affordable housing in Los Angeles County. The roadblocks presented in this project stage often hinder redevelopment or adaptive reuse projects.

Infrastructure Prosthetics proposes a tactical infrastructure that can be deployed on various sites throughout the LA region and are jumping-off points for future construction. They provide a multitude of potential solutions to the most expensive and complex part of developing a project—the infrastructure. Each platform contains accessible hookups to water, electricity, waste, and gas.

Located on brownfield sites along the Alameda Corridor, these platforms attach to existing city infrastructure in a simple efficient manner and allow for gradual, affordable development over time. Each site begins with a mini structural platform, which provides the groundwork for build-out by future developers, architects, and owners, who may add a variety of attachable structures.

Site strategy is determined by using artificial intelligence and other softwares to find the shortest path on the site based on the existing grid lines overlay from the city. The generative system helps the developers/designers to develop a platform that densifies the site with natural growth of housing units.

Infrastructure Prosthetics’ plug-in platforms are raised to allow for remediation at ground level. They are also designed for sites that fall within the Transit-Oriented Communities (TOC) ordinance, which waves parking requirements. The platform design, however, anticipates deployment in non-transit-oriented or brownfield sites. This elevated network of platforms acts as an extendable structural system and could be reused by future developers or architects in a myriad of layouts.

Automated Compression Tectonics

Team: Jules Benillouche, Jennifer Rufener, Leo Wan, Andrew Stone

ACT (Automated Compression Tectonics) proposes a tactical approach for ADU development by individual homeowners on challenging topographic sites. On-site 3D printing is capable of expediting design/deployment of ADUs uniquely adapted to steep sites using compressive structural and spatial systems. In identifying historic street stairs throughout Los Angeles, this strategy incorporates Transit-Oriented Communities locations (Section 65852.2). By mitigating otherwise unusable property with automated strategy, this adapted design/build method streamlines opportunities for individual homeowners to expand occupancy and extend property value.

Purpose and Need
Stagnancy in home construction in Los Angeles has not been able to keep up with demand and population growth, contributing to a growing housing crisis. ACT implements terrain mapping through site surveyed data in order to generate a minimized-footprint compression system. Deployable 3D printed components printed at the scale of an individual ADU utilizes compressive structural strategies, whose properties are comparable to contour-crafted wall assembly. In order to minimize site impact, these automated compressive structural models can be integrated with specified point-loaded spring-point schemes anchored by pier construction that allow for low impact intervention. Ceramic Paste Printing allows for the application of fire resistant materials that may afford a community a fire-resistant shelter given the wildfire risk associated with steep terrain locations.

Implementation Methods
ACT’s on-site 3D printed approach is automated and customizable. It allows for structural adaptation as well as varying wall articulation infill to account both structural and mechanical demands. 3D printing also produces a custom aesthetic and functional variation at each site.

Site Selection
ACT brings value to value otherwise underdeveloped neighborhoods. Five sites were chosen based on proximity to existing street stair locations in Mount Washington: Galena Staircase in Omaha Heights , Clermont Staircase, Kilbourn Staircase, and Frieda/Cleland Stairs. These staircases cluster around steep hillside communities near historic transit lines, especially steep-street communities that developed in the 1920s. Public staircases abound in Silver Lake, Echo Park, Mt. Washington, and El Sereno, and the elevated areas of Highland Park, Hollywood, and Santa Monica, and can be found as far from downtown L.A. as Pasadena, Pacific Palisades and Avalon, on Catalina Island.

ADU Policy
Current ADU policy allows up to two units per property with an ordinance to provide one parking space per property. Given the historic and transit-oriented nature of these now forgotten paths, ACT proposes much needed flexibility in ADU policy by targeting existing hillside development within transit oriented districts. Implementation of this design approach in turn proposes a strategy in extended land use occupancy upon owner execution.

iLive

Team: Hari Deshpande, Isabel Socorro, Philip Hood, Soledad Chamorro

iLive is the opportunity for people with physical disabilities within the lower-income population to live in Downtown LA in an affordable model which offers coliving and coworking in a friendly and healthy environment that fosters community life.

“Being part of the community and living as independently as possible are among the most important values and goals shared by people with disabilities, their families, and advocates. A home of one’s own—either rented or owned—is the cornerstone of independence for people with disabilities.”
—The Arc

iLive explores affordable coliving and coworking models to address the needs of people with physical disabilities by adapting existing industrial buildings and implementing artificial intelligence.

Physically Accessible: Housing and work spaces are designed for singles and couples with physical disabilities, fitting their specific needs and improving the minimum requirements established in the City Code

Economic Independence: iLive offers opportunities to work on-site, allowing the residents to live and work in the same place. iLive admits Section 8, Section 504, Section 811, Housing Choice and Non-Elderly Disabled Vouchers. Sharing living spaces reduces living costs and on-site agriculture generates incomes for residents.

Affordable for Lower Income Populations: The median earned income of disabled people is less than the half of people who are not, iLive addresses people in Extremely Low Income, Very Low Income and Low-Income categories, providing a new way of living for these more vulnerable sectors.

Adaptive Reuse: iLive adapts existing industrial buildings located in potential rezoned areas of Downtown Los Angeles. Conversions of industrial warehouses offer an opportunity to locate new developments in current relatively low-cost areas that are strategically located in proximity to commercial and civic centers. This is an opportunity to anticipate the logic of the private market, as these areas will increase their cost values as conversion and land use changes occur.

Artificial Intelligence: iLive uses AI to locate existing industrial buildings within LA according to the following parameters: one-story buildings within the Industrial Zoned Areas, and within the Transit-Oriented Communities (TOC) ordiance areas. Custom interior floor plans are also generated by AI.

Coliving and Coworking Community: iLive aims to improve the quality of life of the residents by providing private spaces required for personal comfort and needs and by designing shared spaces for community socializing. Social bonds emerge through the participation in shared activities and common spaces. By including coworking, it is feasible for a lower-income population to be included, as it provides an economic opportunity to residents.

Design: iLive’s design is based on the combination of a set of modular components, which generates the different spaces required, and gives flexibility and possibilities for use. iLive uses artificial intelligence to generate layouts of the component system adapted to individual existing warehouses.

The flexible component system components adapts to any size, proportion, and scale of building, which generates a wealth of spatial options . Each component is designed to provide natural light, air, and different degrees of privacy. Components define each set of programmatic spaces and accommodate all the required elements for each space: piping, toilets, wet cores, closets, and furniture.

Aeroponic Vertical Gardening: iLive brings vertical gardening into the heart of the existing warehouses to bring light, air, and green space inside the building—into a coliving and coworking environment. The incorporation of vertical gardening through the aeroponic system makes possible that people with disabilities have the opportunity to work in a communal environment. This is a key factor not only as an economic possibility, but it is also a shared activity which generates a sense of community through coworking and the exchange of responsibilities. Residents will garden with robotic assistance in order to make the job easier.

Partner: Pando Days