Southeast LA Design Guidelines

Lyric developed a set of design guidelines for South and Southeast Los Angeles Boulevards for the LA Department of City Planning. Lyric’s preliminary research on Housing Development Prototypes drove the creation of the Guidelines and development of Design Values for mixed-use/residential developments that primarily face main boulevards. Activating the ground floor/sidewalk level and creating building forms that are architecturally sensitive were commonalities in the case studies - all located in Transit Oriented Communities.

A matrix of 3d modeling exercises simulated commercial superblocks, retail strip malls, and residential mid-rise and duplex designs. Critical to the study was the transition between larger scale boulevard developments and smaller scale single family context between boulevards. Based on the case study research and analysis, Lyric created an objective toolkit for evaluating building access, massing, layering, articulation, window treatment and overall architectural features.

This Design Values Checklist is meant to be used by developers and non-designers in the LA City Planning Department to better understand building design at the macro and micro level, respecting ground level interactions, and perceptions from the boulevard as large scale multi-family meets smaller scale single-family built environment. 

The Department of City Planning folded a portion of this document into a Community Plan Implementation Overlay (CPIO) for Southeast Los Angeles.

A project with Patricia Smith, ASLA