This tiny unit answers LA’s housing shortage with an ADU featuring a garden terrace!

Two things you’re sure to find in LA are lines of stucco houses and a whole lot of false fronts– still talking about houses. Dubbed the “Los Angeles architectural mainstays,” stucco houses and false fronts are so intrinsic to the landscape of LA that Jennifer Bonner, founder of MALL, designed an affordable housing program for the city’s Standard Plan Pilot project in their image. Conceptualized as a reinterpretation of the backyard, all-American lean-to shed, Bonner’s program called Lean-to ADU (Accessory Dwelling Units) currently stands as a viable housing program for the city’s overwhelming housing shortage.

Two main parts give rise to Bonner’s Lean-to ADUs, an exaggerated, textured black stucco and metal shed roof that sits atop the unit’s cubic white stucco box. The shape of lean-to sheds derives from the mono-pitch roof that’s typical of lean-to structures and their name comes from the fact that the interior lean-to rafters literally lean on the primary structure of the building for support. When viewed from east and west elevations, each unit’s roof maintains the shape of a conventional right triangle, while the south-facing facade showcases a black rectangular panel that leads to the rooftop terrace stationed behind the home’s exaggerated false front. Situated behind tall black stucco fronts and hardly visible from the street, the garden terrace maintains an air of privacy atop the 515-square-foot living space.

While the home’s black-and-white stucco exterior will look just the part for the backyards of Los Angeles, each unit’s interior finds warmth from natural sunlight that floods through the home’s pitched roof, mellowing out the unit’s soft palette of plywood and colorful pops of marble tile work. Upon entering Bonner’s Lean-to ADU, residents find communal spaces like the living, dining, and cooking areas on one side while a bedroom and working area finds space on the other side. Separating the communal areas from the private spaces, the unit’s bathroom and utility closet is contained in a center rectangular volume. Outside, native California plants comprise a geometric garden outlined in wavy metal edgers to complement the Lean-to ADU’s cubic form.

Designer: Jennifer Bonner, MALL, Martin Rickles Studio

From east and west elevations, the Lean-to ADUs reveal a traditional triangular-shaped roof.

Facing the home from its south side, a rectangular-shaped panel leads the way to the home’s rooftop terrace.

Thanks to the home’s exaggerated false front, the rooftop terrace can remain private.

The kitchen features “a marble slab counter with yellow, green, and white cabinets, while [its] floors are bone and ash, ceilings are plywood, and tactile details punctuate throughout,” as described by MALL.

Depending on the chosen floor plan, different areas can be devoted to working or leisure.

The unit’s center rectangular volume separates the communal spaces from the private areas, keeping the bathroom and utility closet there as well.

One facade showcases a classic mono-roof pitch structure.

From the other side, a mono-pitch roof evokes the unit’s false front, which keeps the rooftop terrace hidden from view.

This tiny home in the Community First! Village is built for previously unhoused individuals

Beginning in 1998, a mobile food truck based in Austin, Texas, with the help of thousands of volunteers, has helped serve food to unhoused individuals seven days a week and 365 days a year. That food truck has since transformed into Mobile Loaves & Fishes, a social outreach ministry responsible for the development of “the most talked-about neighborhood” in Austin, Texas, Community First! Village. The village is one of MLF’s three core programs that were started to serve the unhoused population of Austin, Texas, and offers permanent and sustainable housing for an affordable price in a mutually supportive community.

Teaming up with Bailey Eliot Construction, McKinney York Architects, an architecture firm based in Austin, recently designed and constructed a micro-home for one of the residents of Community First! Village. In order to meet the new homeowner’s tiny housing criteria, McKinney York Architects planned to design a micro house that met both the homeowner’s requirements for privacy and the village’s commitment to community support. The home’s final design incorporates a butterfly roof, which implements the use of a central valley where the two pitched roofs meet to collect rainwater for further irrigation use. Additionally, installing a butterfly roof allows for plenty of natural lighting to enter through the windows without having an impact on the homeowner’s privacy.

Taking full advantage of the 200 square foot area limit for each micro-home, McKinney York Architects also installed a screened-in sunroom for the homeowner to have the option of either opening the screens up to the rest of the community or keeping them closed for optimal privacy. Inside the home, original pine timber lines the walls, giving the feel of a blank canvas for the homeowner to leave as is or design as they’d like. The tiny home manages to include a bedroom with room for a twin-sized or larger bed, a modest kitchen, a relatively spacious working area, dining space, and a cozy den for relaxing.

Community First! Village is a 51-acre development planned by MLF over the course of two phases which spanned over four years and has expanded to include a total of 500 tiny homes as well as community amenities such as gardens and behavioral healthcare facilities. In 2014, the first phase of Community First! Village commenced after Tiny Victories 1.0, a design competition in partnership with Mobile Loaves & Fishes and AIA Austin DesignVoice, invited firms to design sustainable, tiny housing solutions that take up no more than 200 square feet. Following the first phase, which culminated with a 27-acre master-planned community for the “chronically homeless” population of Central Texas, the village’s second phase kicked off in 2018. Today, Community First! Village offers permanent housing and encourages a safe, uplifting community space for more than 250 formerly unhoused individuals.

Designer: Mobile Loaves & Fishes, McKinney York Architects, and Bailey Eliot Construction