Rose Apartments, a building that opened last spring in Los Angeles’s Venice neighborhood, is the opposite of bland, monolithic, institutional-looking housing. With casual elegance, it greets the street with lightness, in both massing and color—its verdant terraces and roof decks playing against its bright-white volumes. “This is the first 100-percent low-income, multifamily housing from the ground up in Venice in over 20 years,” says Becky Dennison, executive director of Venice Community Housing (VCH), the nonprofit that commissioned and operates the 35-unit, mixed-use structure for a formerly homeless population. “We encountered appeals at every level of approval,” she recalls, “but local support ended up far outweighing the opposition.” Successfully harnessing legislative changes—which made the project possible—VCH worked closely with Los Angeles–based architects Brooks + Scarpa (B+S) to create a building that embraces its residents’ needs while also contributing to the surrounding neighborhood.

The building in context. Photo © Jeff Durkin, click to enlarge.