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 nan property of 66. His nonaccomplishment puts nan spotlight connected a brave, soulful and restless creator who changed L.A. for nan amended — rethinking, among different things, dense municipality lodging and its narration to nan city.

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

It’s difficult for maine to deliberation astir O’Herlihy’s buildings without reasoning first astir nan man himself: his buoyant voice, speedy grin and sing-song enthusiasm. (“Hello, laddie,” he would opportunity successful greeting, making maine chuckle each time.) How he 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 profession astir nan condemnation that architecture was an optimistic, societal art. A measurement to amended mundane life and repair a tattered municipality fabric. He besides saw it arsenic a intends of disrupting nan city’s frustratingly outdated position quo — seeking amended possibilities for each mode of living.

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

(LOHA)

O’Herlihy was a leader of a procreation of architects committed to expanding L.A.’s architectural reasoning into a much corporate place. In a metropolis obsessed pinch nan single-family home, Lorcan (who designed galore stellar homes, opening early successful his career) became 1 of L.A.’s astir prolific and inventive designers of multifamily housing. Often traversing nan difficult mediate crushed betwixt luxury and affordability, his buildings leaned into nan city, utilizing screens, shared balconies, expanded exterior stairs, courtyards, pouch parks, and layered facades to move tight sites into jubilant places of connection. He ever saw density not arsenic a discuss but arsenic an architectural opportunity.

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

As nan boy and relative of actors, O’Herlihy had much than a small intuition for drama. (He liked to opportunity that his dedication to making societal spaces came from walking astir Europe pinch his begetter connected acting gigs.) But his flourishes were some expressive and eminently practical. They shaded you from nan sun, protected your privacy, drew you toward different group while still making moreover nan 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 nan emblematic courtyard apartment’s U-shaped unfastened abstraction to nan separator of nan tract to create a soft, elegant pouch parkland that served arsenic an inviting abstraction for residents and nan public. With its layered reddish metallic skin, graceful pathways, and choreographed framing of space, nan building gave generously to nan metropolis and received vibrancy and meaning successful return.

O’Herlihy branched into much challenging terrain — for illustration affordable, transitional and student lodging — wherever he continued to nexus architectural invention pinch a keen sensitivity to place, and penetration into really group really wanted to live. He was particularly willing successful thresholds: nan infinitesimal you move 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 nan 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 nan 110 and 105 freeways.

(Eric Staudenmaier)

At Isla Intersections, a supportive lodging task successful South Los Angeles, he 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 pinch congregation spaces connected each level. There were outdoor hallways, planted patios, a sculpted and porous soul courtyard, and moreover a caller “paseo” adjacent doorway — a closed thoroughfare turned into a beautiful abstraction for farmers markets and different gatherings.

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

O’Herlihy was intellectually quiet — ever probing caller territory, questioning why things had to beryllium a definite way. In 2015 he opened an agency successful Detroit, wherever his patient would writer emphatically modern buildings that felt textured by nan Motor City’s business 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 pinch glowing ray that evokes nan graceful, flowing activity of nan dancers inside.

(Eric Staudenmaier)

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

That benignant of unsocial engagement pinch history and mounting was a driving passion. Be it nan imaginative restoration of Raphael Soriano’s location and workplace for photographer Julius Shulman, aliases nan statement 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 while 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 nan completion of each project, fearing they would overwhelm nan landmarked buildings aliases erase basal history. But those controversies mostly evaporated aft nan activity was done, proving O’Herlihy’s acquainted optimism to beryllium good founded.

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

Nonetheless, O’Herlihy ne'er achieved nan benignant of wide nickname and personage enjoyed by predecessors for illustration Frank Gehry and Thom Mayne. Perhaps because he was amended astatine delving into nan societal and municipality cloth than astatine creating celebrated spectacle.

But his warmth, purpose, and daring productivity are each now embedded into nan city’s DNA.

O’Herlihy’s galore L.A. buildings are afloat of mobility and discovery, reflecting his restless intellect and optimism, a consciousness that moreover nan astir compromised municipality tract was tin of producing thing valuable. In a metropolis still struggling pinch affordability, homelessness, sprawl, and societal fragmentation, his activity and his tone are reminders to beryllium much generous.

Architecture, O’Herlihy insisted done his work, is an enactment of religion successful nan group who will usage it, and successful nan metropolis astir them.