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Exterior view of SuperLA bungalows

As a journalist writing about housing, architecture, and urbanism, my inbox is littered with the seeds of revolution. From 3D-printed houses to AI-assisted layouts, mushroom walls and self-repairing concrete, the urgency of the housing crisis yields myriad promised breakthroughs but little meaningful change. Against the more prosaic yet salient realities of policy, labour, land use regulations and public funding, the technological “solutions” tend to fall somewhere between the inconsequential and the outright misguided. Exceptions are dispiritingly rare. In California, Aaron van Schaik’s firm SuperLA may be one of them.

On its face, the three-storey building stakes an unexceptional — albeit quietly elegant — presence. On a corner lot in the Silver Lake neighbourhood of Los Angeles, a three-storey building replaces a former single-family home with a modestly scaled nine-unit “missing middle” development. Inside, the one- and two-bedroom rental apartments are elevated by luxurious (and naturally ventilated) dual- and triple-aspect layouts and organic finishes, from the blonde wood kitchen cabinets to the earthy cork floors. Although the airy suites convey a decidedly high-end — even bespoke — aesthetic, they are the product of a rapid, replicable and cost-effective pre-fabricated panel system poised to be duplicated across L.A. and beyond.

Exterior SuperLA close-up view

While panelized construction in itself is nothing new, van Schaik’s approach is distinguished by its standardized design templates and the vertical integration of design, development and construction under a single firm. “We are the developer, the architect, the landowner and general contractor,” says van Schaik of SuperLA, “and we’re trying to bring in more of the trades in-house as we scale up.” While the integrated structure makes for a more streamlined process, much of the efficiency is predicated on using just two bungalow-inspired suite layouts.

Interior kitchen view

Assembled using CLT and glulam panels, the two floor plans — which do not vary from unit to unit, or project to project — are the starting point for designing the building around them. It’s an inversion of the typical development process, which begins by iterating a building envelope, and then resolving circulation and interior layouts. According to van Schaik, himself a development industry veteran, it’s a recipe for an overly complex and time-consuming project. “In general, you approach every project as if it’s the first time a multi-family building has been done, and you’re designing every wall and every mechanical system from scratch.”

Interior living room view showing large windows in background

Even the most generic North American residential buildings necessitate months of design work and coordination between a team of sub-consultants — with little more than double-loaded corridors and awkward floorplans to show for it. By contrast, SuperLA stacks the same two “bungalow” layouts, reducing rote design work and avoiding the pitfall of poorly resolved interiors. “We’re very strongly focused on the resident experience, so we don’t want to squeeze in bad units just to make sure the project pencils,” says van Schaik. While the residences leave little room for flexibility, circulation, egress, landscaping and parking (if any) can be relatively easily adapted to each site.

Interior living room view showing large windows in background

“One of the big inefficiencies of off-site fabrication is that every new project still typically requires the pre-fab building company to retool their system and their workflow,” says van Schaik. Conversely, the SuperLA system remains (for now) limited to just two layouts of bungalows, maintaining a highly limited and easily replicable kit of parts. “We have standard components so that we can then standardize the manufacturing process,” he explains.

Outdoor terrace view

For now, the first Silver Lake project serves as proof of concept for an ambitious new paradigm. And it does quite a job. Designed with a joint emphasis on sustainability and livability, the house-like apartments — which feature no shared walls — are outfitted with Capri cork floors, RBW lighting, Pella windows, and Fisher & Paykel appliances, as well as advanced air and water filtration systems. The mass timber building also runs entirely on electricity, avoiding the use of natural gas, while solar panels line the roof. Moreover, ceiling fans augment the naturally cross-ventilated units, amplifying the impact of air conditioning and further reducing energy load. Framing the building, drought-resistant plantings are fed by a rainwater recovery system.

Exterior stair

On nearby Hyperion Avenue, meanwhile, a slightly larger 15-unit project (including two units for low-income renters) is now underway. For his part, van Schaik expects a quicker process. “It took two years to build the first project, and we want to cut that down to 14 months — which we think is a conservative estimate — and then keep chipping away at the timeline in future builds,” he says. More optimistically, van Schaik also hopes that the simple and repetitive nature of the buildings will lead to accelerated planning approvals. “Our ultimate goal is to get standard plan approved, so it’d be pre-approved at City level,” says van Schaik. Given North American planning practices, it’s a loftier ambition than it ought to be. In the meantime, however, the repetitive nature of the designs has already resulted in an accelerated approval timeline for the second project.

Exterior Stair with rainwater collection system in front

In a crowded landscape of housing tech innovation, the SuperLA bungalows are a refreshingly lucid, holistic response to regulatory and logistical constraints. And while these high-end homes are hardly a housing panacea, they integrate rapid, cost-effective construction with undeniable panache.

Listening to van Schaik describe the process, I was reminded of my own childhood home in Prague. Like the SuperLA bungalows, our Communist-era apartment was a simple yet functional dual-aspect suite within a boxy panelized building. After decades of living in North America, I recently realized it was probably more luxurious — not to mention affordable — than any of the apartments I’ve had since. Across Czechia, there are tens of thousands of homes almost exactly like it. Sometimes, the most transformative innovation really is just more of the same.

In Los Angeles, the California Bungalow Stacks Up

Vertically integrated design and development firm SuperLA offers simple yet elegant panelized homes at scale.

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