Over the past three decades, architects Larry Scarpa and Angela Brooks have established themselves as pioneers in affordable housing design through their Los Angeles-based firm, Brooks + Scarpa. The firm has worked on diverse projects spanning urban planning, high-density housing developments, and single-family homes, while also expanding into landscape architecture and public art installations. "We'll gladly do a doghouse if you'll let us do it well," Scarpa said in a recent interview, highlighting their prolific and versatile approach to design.
Since their first affordable housing project, residential development has remained a critical pillar of their practice, with a mission to bring quality design to populations who truly need and deserve it. The architects believe that exceptional design can combat NIMBY (Not In My Backyard) attitudes and positively impact project approval processes. Scarpa emphasized that good design should not be exclusively for the wealthy, stating, "You can provide it for those who are in need too."
The firm has demonstrated innovative approaches to integrating art and community engagement into their housing projects. They previously collaborated with the Marciano Art Foundation to include rotating art exhibits in an affordable housing development in Los Angeles's MacArthur Park neighborhood. Currently, they are developing the NEST Toolkit, an affordable housing system designed to provide tools for faster, cheaper, and higher-quality construction methods.
"We're working with a church in Santa Monica to do affordable housing on their parking lot for homeless students attending Santa Monica College," Scarpa explained, illustrating their commitment to finding creative solutions for housing challenges. The firm's core mission extends beyond simply finding locations where cities permit affordable housing construction; instead, they focus on identifying areas that need affordable housing and then developing innovative ways to build there.
Among their upcoming 2025 projects is Miramar, a seven-story housing development in Los Angeles's Koreatown that features a distinctive bright-yellow, off-center beacon as its welcoming entrance. Through strategic lot splitting, the architects doubled the number of units on the site, providing 134 units of much-needed affordable housing to the local Korean community. The project also includes retrofitting and upgrading an existing senior living facility, with both sections visually connected to maintain the site's original sequence. The narrow building features an undulating facade that provides shade while serving as an acoustic barrier from the busy nearby street.
Luna Vista, another 2025 project, represents a 100-percent affordable housing building designed from the inside out. The four-story, 74-unit development centers around a community room and courtyard, with the design fanning out in a vertically stacked composition that incorporates interesting angles to add visual appeal. Located in North Hills, California, the building targets recently homeless individuals and low-income residents, creating a quiet oasis marked by a welcoming archway that wraps around a central opening and connects the building to the surrounding community.
The Northview project, also scheduled for 2025, takes a different approach by extending like a porch toward the surrounding streetscape in Sacramento. This two-story, 67-unit low-income housing development invites the outdoors in through a white trellis system, two outdoor plazas, and a glass-enclosed community space. The outdoor areas can function separately or connect to form one larger space, with the building emphasizing visually accessible circulation through breezeways, upper-story decks, perforated materials, and fencing. This open-air design philosophy contrasts sharply with the more fortified, closed-off appearance of existing stucco apartment buildings in the suburban neighborhood.
Currently under construction, Berkeley Station represents a significant milestone as the first project built using the NEST Toolkit, a scalable housing concept developed in collaboration with PlantPrefab. This innovative system aims to provide quality housing for at-risk populations on lots that are 80 percent smaller than average lots in the greater Los Angeles area. Situated on an approximately 8,000-square-foot lot in Santa Monica, the project utilizes a modular design system to construct an ultra-dense, single-loaded apartment building that integrates housing, landscaping, and an open-air deck on the long, narrow plot.
With Berkeley Station's completion and several other projects in development, Brooks + Scarpa envisions expanding the NEST Toolkit to eventually allow developers to order customized buildings through an online ordering system. This ambitious goal reflects the firm's commitment to revolutionizing affordable housing delivery and making quality design accessible to communities that need it most, demonstrating that innovative architecture can address both aesthetic and social challenges in urban development.
