Gallery

Housing Made of Concrete Culverts (Boyle Tower)

Jose Herrasti
Principal Architect, Mutuo

The team at Los Angeles-based architecture studio, Mutuo, in collaboration with Urb-in and artist Miguel Nobrega, has designed and engineered a new way to build affordable, high density housing using reinforced precast box culverts – commonly used for infrastructure projects – and re-molding and re-designing them into modern, compact, affordable housing (micro units). The pioneering construction method is planned to break ground in in the near future on a hillside site overlooking Downtown Los Angeles, in Boyle Heights.

This new modular building system consists of 4 interlocked boxes – one for each space: living, kitchen, bathroom, and bedroom – each box interlocks with the next creating a long and narrow unit. The 5-unit tower is entitled, engineer-stamped, almost permitted, with construction expected to begin in early 2022.