The Future of the Single-Family House: New Housing Models for Los Angeles

At once vulnerable and inviolate, a disappearing architectural species and the most protected building type in the city, the single-family house continues to play an outsize role in debates over architecture, planning and growth in Los Angeles. Can the suburban house-and-garden model that has helped define Los Angeles for nearly a century — and given architects a place to try out their most innovative design experiments — be updated and improved to make it relevant to a denser region? Or is the single-family neighborhood destined to be preserved in amber, a once-important product of the L.A. growth machine now no more than a relic?