Appreciation: Architect Lorcan O'Herlihy rethought urban housing and changed Los Angeles for the better

Irish-born, Los Angeles-based designer Lorcan O’Herlihy, laminitis of Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects, known arsenic LOHA, died Sunday astatine the property of 66. His nonaccomplishment puts the spotlight connected a brave, soulful and restless creator who changed L.A. for the amended — rethinking, among different things, dense municipality lodging and its narration to the city.

O’Herlihy’s and his firm’s enactment was wide published and won much than 100 awards. LOHA was named AIA Los Angeles Firm of the Year successful 2018 and won AIA California’s Distinguished Practice Award that aforesaid year. O’Herlihy received the AIA Los Angeles Gold Medal successful 2021, and successful 2023 helium was awarded AIA California’s Maybeck Award, 1 of the state’s highest honors.

It’s hard for maine to deliberation astir O’Herlihy’s buildings without reasoning archetypal astir the antheral himself: his buoyant voice, speedy grin and sing-song enthusiasm. (“Hell-lo, laddie,” helium would accidental successful greeting, making maine chuckle each time.) How helium radiated empathy and appreciation. All of this shone vividly done his work, which shared his joy, artfulness and heavy feeling, and astir of each privileged quality acquisition and societal interaction.

He built his much than four-decade vocation astir the condemnation that architecture was an optimistic, societal art. A mode to amended mundane beingness and repair a tattered municipality fabric. He besides saw it arsenic a means of disrupting the city’s frustratingly outdated presumption quo — seeking amended possibilities for each mode of living.

A presumption of the San Joaquin pupil location analyzable astatine UC Santa Barbara, which opened successful 2017. Designed by L.A. designer Lorcan O’Herlihy (LOHA), the units diagnostic transverse ventilation and nonstop entree to the outdoors.

(LOHA)

O’Herlihy, who nurtured young endowment some astatine his steadfast and via his teaching astatine USC, was a person of a procreation of architects committed to expanding L.A.’s architectural reasoning into a much corporate place. In a metropolis obsessed with the single-family home, Lorcan (who designed galore stellar homes, opening aboriginal successful his career) became 1 of L.A.’s astir prolific and inventive designers of multifamily housing. Often traversing the hard mediate crushed betwixt luxury and affordability, his buildings leaned into the city, utilizing screens, layered facades, shared balconies, expanded exterior stairs, courtyards, and pouch parks to crook choky sites into jubilant places of transportation for residents and neighbors. He ever saw density not arsenic a compromise but arsenic an architectural opportunity.

His architecture exhibited a self-assured fluency archetypal honed astatine the Architectural Assn. successful London, past from stints with giants successful the assemblage specified arsenic Kevin Roche, I.M. Pei and Steven Holl. O’Herlihy employed color, worldly and texture with antithetic force, creating an unapologetic civic presence. He good understood the city’s brightness, harshness, improvisation and fractured essence.

As the lad and member of actors, O’Herlihy had much than a small intuition for drama. (He liked to accidental that his dedication to making societal spaces came from traveling astir Europe with his begetter connected acting gigs.) But his flourishes were some expressive and eminently practical. They shaded you from the sun, protected your privacy, drew you toward different radical portion inactive making adjacent the astir constrained sites consciousness alive.

Formosa 1140 by Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects was 1 of O’Herlihy’s breakthrough projects.

(Lawrence Anderson)

One of his breakthrough projects, Formosa 1140 successful West Hollywood, exemplified that approach, shifting the emblematic courtyard apartment’s U-shaped unfastened abstraction to the borderline of the tract to make a soft, elegant pouch parkland that served arsenic an inviting abstraction for occupants and the public. With its layered reddish metallic skin, graceful pathways, and choreographed framing of space, the gathering gave generously to the metropolis and received vibrancy and meaning successful return.

O’Herlihy branched into much challenging terrain — similar affordable, transitional and pupil lodging — wherever helium continued to nexus architectural invention with a keen sensitivity to place, and penetration into however radical really wanted to live. He was particularly funny successful thresholds: the infinitesimal you determination from sidewalk to entry, thoroughfare to courtyard, flat to terrace; from solitude to community. Those in-between spaces, truthful often treated arsenic afterthoughts, became 1 of the affectional centers of his work.

The Isla Intersections supportive lodging improvement by Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects has a pedestrian walkway that serves arsenic a buffer to neighboring buildings connected a cramped tract adjacent the 110 and 105 freeways.

(Eric Staudenmaier)

At Isla Intersections, a supportive lodging task successful South Los Angeles, helium transformed a barren triangle of land, erstwhile marooned by chaotic roads and distant freeways, into a vibrant, multi-scaled colony of alloy shipping containers packed with congregation spaces connected each level. There were outdoor hallways, planted patios, a sculpted and porous interior courtyard, and adjacent a caller “paseo” adjacent doorway — a closed thoroughfare turned into a beauteous abstraction for farmers markets and different gatherings for locals from each around.

“All of a sudden, it’s overmuch much welcoming, right?” O’Herlihy told me, with his emblematic unfiltered enthusiasm, erstwhile we visited the tract successful 2024. He added: “I truly similar this place. What tin I say? I ever consciousness bully astir being here. I consciousness this is what I privation to bash arsenic an architect, yeah?”

O’Herlihy was intellectually bare — ever probing caller territory, questioning wherefore things had to beryllium a definite way. In 2015 helium opened an bureau successful Detroit, wherever his steadfast would writer emphatically modern buildings that felt textured by the Motor City’s concern legacy, celebrating some its past and its caller promise.

Sandi Simon Center for Dance by Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects is simply a unified abstraction live with glowing airy that evokes the graceful, flowing question of the dancers inside.

(Eric Staudenmaier)

Back connected the West Coast, Canyon 5, a multi-unit improvement conscionable southbound of L.A.’s Beachwood Canyon, reconsidered the emblematic lodging model, splitting a azygous wide into angled, sculptural volumes that consciousness similar idiosyncratic homes, filled with space, airy and life. At Chapman University successful Orange, helium uncovered monolithic hidden trusses and blasted done the factual floors of a erstwhile orangish packing warehouse, creating the Sandi Simon Center for Dance, a unified abstraction live with glowing airy that evokes the graceful, flowing question of the dancers inside.

That benignant of unsocial engagement with past and mounting was a driving passion. Be it the originative restoration of Raphael Soriano’s location and workplace for lensman Julius Shulman, oregon the enactment of confident, multi-layered lodging projects adjacent to landmarks by Rudolph Schindler (Schindler House) and Richard Neutra (Strathmore Apartments), O’Herlihy’s curiosity pushed buildings guardant portion his empathy preserved their spirit.

The exterior of Jeffrey Hamilton’s condo successful West Hollywood, which was designed by Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects.

(Kit Karzen / For The Times)

Some critics were skeptical earlier the completion of each project, fearing they would overwhelm the landmarked buildings oregon erase indispensable history. But those controversies mostly evaporated aft the enactment was done, proving O’Herlihy’s acquainted optimism to beryllium good founded.

“It gave him the consciousness that what helium was dedicating himself to had meaning successful its ain right. And that it had a spot successful Los Angeles,” said my person and workfellow Greg Goldin, who worked with O’Herlihy connected aggregate books.

Nonetheless, O’Herlihy ne'er achieved the benignant of wide designation and personage enjoyed by predecessors similar Frank Gehry and Thom Mayne. Perhaps due to the fact that helium was amended astatine delving into the societal and municipality cloth than astatine creating fashionable spectacle.

But his warmth, purpose, and daring creativity are each present embedded into the city’s DNA.

O’Herlihy’s galore L.A. buildings are afloat of question and discovery, reflecting his restless intellect and optimism, a consciousness that adjacent the astir compromised municipality tract was susceptible of producing thing valuable; sparking meaning and togetherness. In a metropolis inactive struggling with affordability, homelessness, sprawl, and societal fragmentation, his enactment and his tone are reminders to beryllium much generous.

Architecture, O’Herlihy insisted done his work, is an enactment of religion successful the radical who volition usage it, and successful the metropolis astir them.