Architect Breaks Down 5 of the Most Common Houses in L.A.

I'm Valery Augustin and I've been an architect

in Los Angeles for over 20 years.

Today I'm going to break down architectural details

of some of the most popular housing styles in Los Angeles,

from some of the earliest built structures in California.

It's a type of house that most people dream about

when they think about living in Los Angeles

that offers these amazing views to the Pacific Ocean.

[bright playful music]

First up, the dingbat.

Typically a six to 12 unit apartment building.

The front of the building is elevated to allow cars to park.

Another thing that you'll notice about the dingbat

is that it's a box.

It's all about efficiency and filling the lot to maximize

the number of units that can fit on a piece of property.

Dingbat apartments really define neighborhoods

all over Los Angeles.

They can be found pretty readily

all over the San Fernando Valley, West Los Angeles,

and neighborhoods like Culver City and Palms.

So why is it called a dingbat?

The term dingbat comes from typography.

It's a symbol that's not a letter or a number.

Many of your dingbat buildings featured a name

or had a symbol on the front,

a way to sort of decorate these flat banal facades.

The construction of dingbat apartments really exploded

in the post-war boom of the '50s and '60s in Los Angeles

when many people were moving for jobs.

What better way to give some sort of character

to a building that essentially had none

than to provide some sort of symbols

or some sort of fun playful elements

on the front of the building to make people feel

a little bit more excited about their homes?

Here's how to spot a dingbat in the wild.

First off, it's essentially a big box.

The ground floor space is then cannibalized

to allow parking for cars, which is known as a soft story.

The apartments are typically accessed

by stairs along the side yard,

and you can see that they've got

this ding bat symbol of a flamingo.

What you've also got is a full width curb cut

that runs the full face of the building,

and so the entire width of the lot

is given over as essentially a driveway.

Now, as someone who's almost been hit

by somebody backing out of their dingbat apartment,

I can tell you dingbat apartments really don't make

for great pedestrian friendly streets.

Now let's get a better look

at how dingbat apartments really define neighborhoods

all over Los Angeles.

So one of the first things we're gonna see

when we look at this image

is how closely spaced all these buildings are to each other.

There's only street frontage,

which is dominated by the parking spaces for the cars

and every building just has a tiny side yard,

which you can see here or there.

Another thing you'll notice is that all these lots

are maximizing the buildable square footage.

The typical side yard setback in Los Angeles is five feet.

So you can see here that the developers

went with the minimum and didn't offer any other space

for common areas to make sure

that they could get the maximum number of units,

but essentially the tiny lot sizes meant you had no privacy.

So if you opened up your window,

you were looking directly at your neighbor.

Now, this type of building wouldn't be allowed

in Los Angeles currently.

Zoning wouldn't allow for this many units to be built

on a standard 50 by 100 typical LA lot.

So these middle density buildings

are something that are a dying breed.

Dingbat apartments really are quintessentially LA.

It's something that makes them home.

It's kind of like bad pizza.

It's bad pizza, but it's still pizza.

Next up is the bungalow court, an LA original.

Similar to the dingbat,

bungalow courts are trying to solve

LA's affordable housing problem, but in a different way.

Whereas the dingbat apartment stacked

and maximized the property for a maximum number of units,

bungalow court apartments offered

a taste of single family residential living

for working class people who couldn't afford

a single family house.

The bungalow court apartment

really prioritizes outdoor space.

They really created a sense of community.

When coming out of your unit,

you can see your neighbor across the way

and it offered opportunity for people to interact

in a more meaningful way with their neighbors.

Architect, Sylvanus Marston, is often credited

as being the inventor of the bungalow court apartment

and a lot of his buildings are concentrated in Pasadena,

although many of these buildings were going up

around the same time all over South and East Los Angeles.

In this image here, we see a couple of things

that characterize a bungalow court apartment.

So you can see here that there's a central walkway

that went down the middle.

Every house had a sort of front porch

that faces the courtyard for access,

and people also had ample garden space

that made it feel much more like a single family house

than an apartment building.

Most of the bungalow court apartments

were built at the turn of the 20th century.

They're also an endangered species in Los Angeles,

much like the dingbat apartment,

because current zoning laws wouldn't allow

for this many units to be built on these size lots.

The houses were small, typically five to 600 square feet,

but you could essentially fit sometimes four to six units

on the same lot that would hold a single family residence.

Now let's take a look at how

the bungalow court apartments organized the lot.

So in this one block, we can see three different types

of bungalow court apartments.

The first one has a nice generous courtyard in the middle

and you'll see that each one of the buildings is separate.

The courtyard is lushly landscaped

and you'll see that there's a unit at the end

and parking happens at the rear of the building.

The second building provides smaller units,

but then there was a slightly larger unit

towards the rear of the apartment.

Each of the units is its own standalone separate house.

There's a generous courtyard in the middle

and the houses get light on all four sides.

What a contrast to a dingbat apartment.

In this example here, it's a much more dense example

of a bungalow court apartment,

but many of the characteristics that we love

about a bungalow court apartment are still available.

There are small courtyard spaces,

the courtyard is still landscaped

and abundant, natural light goes into every unit.

The bungalow court apartments were a great first stop

if you were coming to live to Los Angeles,

because wherever you came from,

you really got the LA experience

of being able to enjoy the outdoors,

it was really communal

and it was the closest you could come to living

in a single family house if you couldn't afford one.

So many of the things that bungalow apartments did

at the turn of the 20th century and into the early '20s,

the city of Los Angeles is revisiting now.

They realize that density really helps with affordability.

Many new ordinances are allowing

your standard single family lot

to be built with more additional units.

Next up, mission revival.

Now, what makes mission revival

so enduring to Southern California

is because it's familiar and traditional.

It has a certain warmth that people like and can relate to.

It really speaks to the history of California

before it became part of the United States.

Mission revival is the style of some

of the earliest built structures in California.

The Spanish built a total of 21 missions

in California over a period of about 65 years.

You actually find it in many neighborhoods of Los Angeles;

San Fernando Valley, South and East Los Angeles,

and also all over West Hollywood.

To learn more about mission revival,

let's start by looking at an actual mission.

The first thing you'll notice is the thick walls

that were built typically of adobe.

They had clay barrel tile roofs,

and then finally the arched colonnade,

which provided temperature control

by blocking the direct sunlight from these interior spaces,

one of the elements we typically would define

as sustainable in today's time.

Now, a lot of ideas from mission architecture

made its way into residential architecture

in the early 1900s.

Architecturally, you see a lot of similarities

between these two buildings.

First is the use of the colonnade,

and in the residential example,

you'll see that it happens at both levels,

up here and there.

These deep overhangs would protect the interior

of the house from direct sunlight

and keep it cool during the hot days

and warm during the nights.

Both use the red clay barrel tile

and of course the arch.

In addition to that, you'll see that the corbels

that extend out from the roof

is also evident in both of these examples.

You also notice, however,

some significant differences between these two examples.

The arch at the front of the house has a more peaked apex

and the ones at the second story,

one is more shallow and the other is more circular.

Another important difference to note

is that much of these residential buildings

were built out of wood framing,

whereas the missions were built out of actual adobe

or stone construction.

On a typical single family house

where you're building out of a wood frame wall,

the wall doesn't have to be as thick.

So you still were able to get some

of the shading value of these colonnades,

but because these walls were built out of wood framing,

you didn't get the same insulation value

out of these walls that you did

when you built out of adobe or stone.

Let's take a look at what mission revival architecture

looks like in a more contemporary example.

Now, this house is much smaller,

but once again, we still see a lot of the techniques

that made mission revival architecture pleasing to the eye.

These houses were able to be air conditioned,

but we still have this colonnaded protected entry

with a deep overhang.

We also still have a large arch opening

that goes into the primary public spaces of the house,

typically the living room.

There are few decorative elements on the facade,

wall sconces,

and then also a decorative roof vent,

which allows all the heat to escape

from the roof during the hot summer months.

Mission revival architecture is not only popular

for residential architecture,

it's also used all over Los Angeles

in places like Union Station, Beverly Hills City Hall

and a host of other building types,

including hospitals, churches, schools and train stations.

People often talk about Los Angeles

doesn't have much architectural history,

but mission revival architecture

is some of that history that's always visible.

Next up is a type of house that most people dream about

when they think about living in Los Angeles,

the boardwalk beach house.

LA is famous for its boardwalks,

like Santa Monica, Venice Beach or Manhattan Beach.

So what makes the boardwalk beach house different

from a typical beach house?

Let's start with the back,

which really reads as the front of the house.

There's a couple of important things to know

when looking at the boardwalk beach house.

First, is directly in front of the rear of the house

where the best views are is also a public boardwalk.

Another important thing to note

is that the rear of the house

is typically very expansive and open,

providing the views to the beach,

which is why you live there.

Much like a dingbat, the space between the houses

is relatively narrow, so there's not much emphasis placed

on windows or natural light at those locations.

All of the energy is put towards this rear facade

that offers these amazing views to the Pacific Ocean.

One of the things that sets boardwalk beach houses apart

from its other counterparts is the fact

that they're more likely to be a custom home.

Unlike a developer who might build six

or seven dingbat apartments at the same time,

a boardwalk beach house is more likely to be commissioned

by someone who will hire an architect.

You end up with a much more varied

and eclectic beachfront than you would

in a typical urban neighborhood in Los Angeles.

One of the main challenges with a boardwalk beach house

is how do you deal with public access

and protecting privacy and views?

One of the main ways is to either submerge

or elevate the primary floors of the house.

Other examples mean that you kind of close more

of that front part of the house down

when you're at street level,

and in other houses they'll use landscaping.

I often like to think of the boardwalk beach house

as a mullet, business and front party in the back.

Now, let's take a look at the business side

of the boardwalk beach house.

Boardwalk beach houses are typically on narrow lots

and the front of the house is typically on an alley

or a small street with limited views.

The business side of the beach house is pretty boring.

All you typically got is a two car garage.

Much like their friends, the dingbat,

you typically also have a pedestrian entrance

that happens along the side yard of the house.

So it's a typically dark and also canyon-like entrance

into the main house,

which is all about parking and the utilitarian needs.

The back of the house is really where all the action is;

the great views of the beach, the sand, the people,

all of the things that make a living in California great.

Boardwalk beach houses do provide

a great opportunity for architects to experiment

and create really unique houses.

Now let's take a look at a true classic,

the California bungalow.

The California bungalow was one of the other housing styles

that became popular at the turn of the 20th century

as California's population continued to grow.

The great thing about the California bungalow

is that these homes could be purchased from a magazine,

the lumber arrived precut much in the same way

as if you might get a piece of flat pack furniture,

and could be assembled right there

on site in a number of weeks.

Now, one of the most popular California bungalows

is the craftsman style bungalows.

You'll find them all over Los Angeles,

but also in areas specifically like Silver Lake,

Echo Park and also parts of South Los Angeles.

So what are some of the characteristics

that make a California bungalow quintessentially California

and so popular in Los Angeles?

Craftsman style architecture

has some specific characteristics

that we can clearly see here in this image.

Those include exposed rafters,

a large deep open porch, tapered columns, and gabled roofs.

A lot of this dates back to the relationship

of craftsman architecture to the Arts and Crafts movement,

which was really popular in the 19th century.

Craftsman is often what we associate

with the California bungalow,

but it's probably important to note

that not all California bungalows

were built in the craftsman architectural style.

There were a wide variety of California bungalow styles,

including shotgun style houses

where all the rooms were laid one after another

in a sequence.

You also had smaller two room bungalows

similar to the dogtrot house,

which you might find in the American southeast,

so-called because it was basically two rooms

on either side of an open breezeway

and a dog could just trot on right through the middle.

The California bungalow epitomizes

the Californian lifestyle.

One of the great things about living in California

is the indoor-outdoor living experience.

The word bungalow comes from a Hindi word

meaning a house in the Bengali style.

A house in the Bengali style typifies

some of the same characteristics

that we find in the California bungalow,

a wide veranda, a low slope roof that allowed shade

and protection from the environment.

The California bungalow epitomizes

the California living experiences.

As a single family house,

it offered all of the great things

people came to California for,

abundant sunshine, great weather,

and the ability to be outdoors for a large part of the year.

Those are just some of the architectural styles

that define life in Los Angeles.

Let me know which is your favorite in the comments below.

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