The Team

Russell Brown

FORT: LA Board Chair

When Friends Of Residential Treasures: Los Angeles was launched in 2019, my vision for the organization revolved largely around celebrating the most fantastical and iconic works of Los Angeles architecture. I was thinking about the “big names” like Neutra, Williams, Neff, Koenig, Gehry, Wright – with the hope that we could eventually introduce some obscure figures into the mix, expanding the awareness of names beyond the most famous architects, and bring more work into the public consciousness.

As FORT’s programming unrolled, and my own personal awareness about what comprises the built environment expanded, it became clear that what defined a residential treasure must have a meaning far beyond this original vision. One of the early experiences in this regard was working with Frances Anderton – the co-author of Awesome and Affordable – on her multi-family housing trail, which was a springboard for her brilliant book Common Ground. Frances’s passion and enthusiasm is infectious and inspiring, and I will admit that I was quickly drawn into her spell. As a lifelong Angeleno, I’d been formed by the mystique of the single family home, but Frances’s work shattered this viewpoint – forcefully demonstrating the greatness of living together with others, as well as LA’s rich, if under-appreciated, legacy of delightful multifamily buildings.

When Frances and I were brainstorming about further possible collaborations, the concept of Awesome and Affordable immediately struck a chord. Much has been written about the need for Affordable housing, but I loved the audacity of exploring what makes many of these buildings Awesome. The concept that Affordable can be Awesome was simply a game-changer. It lifted the conversation out of the “doom and gloom” of our city’s problems, and offered hope and enthusiasm. Could we imagine a world where all affordable housing is great architecture, and is this dream really so unachievable? I hope that this ongoing project will prove that we can create a city that works for everyone – not just in having a place to live, but a place to live that generates happiness and joy for both its inhabitants and those walking by on the sidewalk. If Los Angeles is indeed a city of residential treasures, FORT:LA is excited to share this research that suggests a future that is awesome, affordable and possible.

Author: Frances Anderton

Inspired by a Tale of Two Mothers

I am a longtime writer and broadcaster about design and the cityscape. For many years I have lived with my husband and daughter in an apartment in a six-unit building in Santa Monica co-designed by Frank Gehry. The design of this building is a satisfying blend of sunny, airy, well-planned interiors, along with communal space in the form of a shared external staircase wrapped around a small court. Despite the good life it offers, my growing daughter became embarrassed that we rented an apartment. I also witnessed that stigma around rental living as I covered housing issues for KCRW radio station. This prompted my fascination with multifamily housing, especially rental, in a country that vastly privileges single family home ownership. Out of this experience came my recent book, Common Ground: Multifamily Housing In Los Angeles. However, it was the experience of extended family members that caused me to focus on the affordable part of multifamily housing.

Some years back both my mother and my mother-in-law became single — one through bereavement, the other through divorce. After my father died my mother yearned to go back to the city they had raised us – Bath, England – which had become excessively costly for an older woman on a teacher’s pension. My tenacious sister found her a studio apartment in a complex for senior singles, run by a charitable foundation dating back to 1174! It was housed in a four-sided, medieval building around a paved court with rose-beds and tables and chairs for gathering over beers and cups of tea. The residents walked through this court to get to their apartments which in turn had windows directly onto the courtyard area, giving tenants a constant view of the daily comings and goings of their neighbors. My mother made many new friends, thanks to a spatial arrangement that made it easy to meet people. The congeniality of the place utterly transformed my mother’s life from painful seclusion to pleasant coexistence with her neighbors.

Meanwhile, my mother-in-law bought a condo in a gated community that was only reachable by car. The condos themselves were designed in such a way that residents could not look on to each other or directly onto any shared space except the parking areas. She became too frail to drive and wound up cut off and isolated within her home.

The extreme differences in the social experience forged by space in this tale of two mothers profoundly influenced my thinking about “common ground” in residential design. But then there was the question of affordability. What distinguished my mother’s medieval courtyard home from my mother-in-law’s solitary condo was that it was both charming and socially satisfying and affordable, because it is owned and run by a nonprofit foundation. Subsidized housing of this nature often gets denigrated, especially in LA. It comes with assumptions about people on welfare, or those who could not get it together to buy a house, when in fact they are Angelenos who simply cannot compete in the real estate market economy: preschool teachers, care givers, service workers, the elderly, the disabled.

Figuring out how to achieve affordable housing in busy cities – where the jobs are! – that have constrained residential development is one of the primary challenges of our time. Doing it in a way that enhances people’s lives and the cityscape is integral to that challenge.

Author: David Kersh

Lessons Learned and a New Perspective

For close to 25 years, I was in the front-lines in “building” our region, as a construction industry leader and active participant in the midst of the political and social forces that form the built-environment and build our communities and cities. One way or another, I dealt with most industry sectors: airports, schools, colleges, mass-transit, freeways, bridges, shopping malls, hospitals, office buildings, parking lots, recreation centers, libraries, police stations, animal shelters and housing. Given the growing public concern and attention to the “housing crisis” it should not be surprising that my primary focus these past years was on the multi-family private and affordable housing sector.

All projects have a back-story, and are encoded with laws, legislative fights, competing interest groups, history, government staff, elected officials, lawsuits, lawyers, neighbors, corruption, dreams, justice, ballot measures. My job was to navigate this complexity to bring to life projects by supporting their passage through the development or public bidding process, as well as through the passage of policy proposals aimed at improving working conditions and stimulating development.

As the prior Executive Director of the Carpenters/Contractors Cooperation Committee (C/CCC), a non-profit organization comprising the Carpenters Union and construction contractors working throughout the Southwest, my focus was on striving to make sure that construction jobs were good-paying and rewarding middle class jobs. My lens was fixed on the impact on the lives of workers, their families and communities. When I walked into a room, that was my voice in the public conversation.

I am in a new stage in my personal and professional life. Whereas previously policy, compliance, or legal fights were strategic mechanisms to transform the economic conditions and power dynamics of the construction industry, I am hoping that my research and writing can help open up a public conversation to generate a broader understanding of why our cities and housing look the way do; and, along the way create a stronger sense of community, and promote beauty and dignity.

I bring a handful of basic skills: a passion to ask questions, contextualize, delight, analyze, discover connections and interpret the world. A deep belief in the power of coalition building has shown me the importance of trying to understand where others are coming from and how the pieces of our public political puzzle fit together. Clearly, my prior professional experience informs my writing and research, and it is wonderful to now share with a wider public a record of my internal processing of the visible and invisible forces that form our affordable housing culture.

Researcher: Coco Morgan

Early Experience Designing for the Homeless

When I was in the summer of my sophomore year, I enrolled in the USC Pre-College Architecture Summer Program. There, I was exposed to a myriad of current architecture professors, whose voices and lectures encouraged me to delve deeper into my interests in architecture. So, when my first day of junior year arrived, I decided to make a last-minute schedule change and join the architecture curriculum at my high school.

Then I learned that I would be joining a special project! As a high school student, I would help design tiny homes and a community center that would actually be built in the future for homeless, veteran women in the Antelope Valley.

Eventually, I won a Congressional Award for my participation. But, most importantly, I was able to use my creative energy to serve a community. Growing up in Los Angeles, my city would often be referred to as a beacon of the “American Dream” – a ‘final’ destination where only the upper echelons of society could afford to live. Over time, I realized that this sentiment was not only internalized but also externalized throughout the city’s infrastructure. Contemporary housing in Los Angeles is a growing and pressing issue, not only for its unaffordability but also through its inaccessibility. I saw first-hand how families were being forced to flock to the streets and become homeless. At the same, I also realized the other ways people were relocating: many were moving to neighborhoods hours outside of the city while still having to commute to their job inside the city. I was stunned to see such drastic disparities, and I recognized how inaccessible housing had become.

So, after seeing the veteran women’s reactions to the tiny homes project and beginning to understand the impact I could have, even at such a young age, I realized that I needed to spring into action. These collective factors drove my interest to contribute research to this field, and I couldn’t be more proud of the work we are presenting in this paper. Affordable housing is one of the most basic necessities here in the United States. With the time we have spent dedicated to breaking down this housing type, I hope that our research can be one of my stepping stones that will help change people’s understanding of housing.

Taylor & Company

Building Reputations One Story at a Time

Taylor & Company—the public relations and communications firm for the built environment—believes in professionals, companies, institutions, and organizations intent on bettering people’s lives through exceptional design. For almost 30 years, Taylor & Company has provided public relations, media relations, marketing advice, and communications services to a global roster of clients in architecture, design, landscape, building, development, engineering, building products, and furnishings. FORT: LA’s Awesome and Affordable program aligns with Taylor & Company’s mission of linking good design to the public through effective communications.

The firm was founded in 1994 by Julie D. Taylor, Hon. AIA, who has been professionally involved in design, public relations, marketing, and publishing since 1983. She began her career as a journalist and magazine editor and is the author of three books, as well as numerous articles, on design and architecture. She is currently the Editor of Society of Architectural Historians/Southern California Chapter News.

Julie served on the National Board of The American Institute of Architects as the 2014-2016 Public Director. In 2018, she was granted Honorary Membership—the highest accolade for a non-architect—from the AIA, recognizing her commitment to the profession. She also previously received Honorary AIA status from the Los Angeles Chapter and is the only public relations professional given an Allied Professions Honor Award by AIA California.

Julie is a regular guest speaker for UCLA Graduate School of Architecture, University of Southern California, AIA/LA, Southern California Institute of Architecture, and Society for Marketing Professional Services. She maintains active memberships in AIA, SMPS, and the Public Relations Society of America, among other professional, design, architecture, cultural, and creative associations.

She is a graduate of Northwestern University, where she received a BA in Art History.