ULI Los Angeles and AIA|LA Present: “Small Lots, Big Impacts”

Presented by ULI LA and AIA|LA

CityLAB–UCLA, the university’s interdisciplinary hub for design-driven urban research, fuses policy insight with on-the-ground prototyping to create more just, sustainable and attainable housing across Los Angeles and beyond. Building on that mission, its celebrated “Small Lots, Big Impacts” initiative has recently entered the RFQ stage, inviting architect-developer teams to transform City-owned infill parcels into high-quality demonstration housing that can be replicated city-wide.

This Meet & Greet offers a rare chance to connect directly with cityLAB leaders, view the winning competition designs firsthand, and discover how you as a practitioner can engage at the forefront of Los Angeles’ next wave of housing innovation. 

The event will take place in the beautifully renovated 1927 Neo-Classical bank building that now houses AIA Los Angeles and ACLA Architecture for Communities.

To register for this event and purchase your ticket,

please visit the ULI site via this link.

SPEAKERS

Dr. Dana Cuff – Founding Director, cityLAB

Dr. Cuff engages spatial justice and cultural studies of architecture as a teacher, scholar, practitioner, and activist. Her leadership in urban innovation is widely recognized both in the U.S. and abroad. In 2006, Cuff founded cityLAB, a research and design center that initiates experimental projects to explore metropolitan possibilities. In 2019, cityLAB expanded its social and political engagement by creating coLAB in the Westlake/MacArthur Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, in long-term partnership with community organizations. cityLAB represented the United States at the 2010 Venice Architecture Biennale, was featured on CNN and in Newsweek magazine, and was named one of the top four urban think tanks in the country by Architect Magazine. The lab’s “housing first” research demonstrates that affordable, well-designed housing and neighborhoods are attainable foundations of equitable cities. cityLAB has developed sustainable, high-performance, low-cost housing prototypes for infill sites ranging from backyards to schoolyards. In 2017, after a decade of research that included a full-scale demonstration house built on the UCLA campus, Cuff co-authored California State legislation, effectively opening 8.1M single-family lots for secondary rental units.

Since 2013, Cuff has led a cross-disciplinary team at UCLA with a substantial multi-year award from The Mellon Foundation for the “Urban Humanities Initiative.” UHI offers students from architecture, urban studies, and the humanities a radical platform for crossdisciplinary, impactful, urban scholarship and action. Cuff co-authored a book about this effort entitled Urban Humanities: New Practices for Reimagining the City (MIT Press, 2020). This is the most recent of numerous books, including Architects’ People (with W.R. Ellis; 1989), Architecture: The Story of Practice (1989), The Provisional City (2000), and Fast Forward Urbanism (edited with R. Sherman, 2011). Dana Cuff publishes and lectures extensively about the modern American metropolis, architectural agency, affordable housing, and architecture’s potential for creating more just cities. Dr. Cuff recently received three prestigious awards that describe her career: Women in Architecture Activist of the Year (2019, Architectural Record), an international prize for Researcher of the Year (2019, Architectural Research Centers Consortium), and Educator of the Year (2020, American Institute of Architects Los Angeles).

Emmanuel Proussaloglou – Co-Director, cityLAB

Emmanuel Proussaloglou is an architect, planner, and researcher focused on interrogating the impact of public policy on the built environment. He leads cityLAB’s Reimagining Housing research area, and his current work focuses on studying the design, provision, and distribution of affordable housing. He has worked as a researcher at think tanks such as the Brookings Institution and the Center for Neighborhood Technology, and as a designer at architecture films such as Perkins and Will and Sharif, Lynch; Architecture.

Ryan Conroy – Daly Architects Director of Architecture / cityLAB

Ryan Conroy is cityLAB’s first Director of Architecture, nearly a decade after inaugurating the undergraduate fellow program. Ryan is a practicing architect, recognized for originating innovative models of multifamily housing and climate-adaptive sustainable design, always
with an eye to each project’s larger urban context. He has held research positions at UC Berkeley and the Los Angeles Department of Planning, and continues an ongoing collaboration with Kevin Daly Architects. Ryan is also a Board Member of the LA Forum for Architecture and Urban Design, where he curates public conversation around Los Angeles’s built environment.

PARKING

Street parking is available. Please be mindful of the signage.