Granville1500 Housing: A Vibrant Urban Village by Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects

Granville1500 Housing, located along Santa Monica Boulevard in Los Angeles, transforms a car-centric urban corridor into a thriving pedestrian-friendly neighborhood. Situated on the last stretch of historic Route 66, this innovative 153-unit, 312,287 SF student housing development for UCLA reflects Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects’ (LOHA) commitment to creating vibrant urban spaces that prioritize people over automobiles.

Reimagining a Historic Urban Corridor

Santa Monica Boulevard has long been defined by its car culture: linking downtown Los Angeles, Hollywood, Beverly Hills, and Santa Monica with a mix of showrooms, restaurants, and retail. Granville1500 redefines this corridor by prioritizing pedestrian experience, social engagement, and mixed-use functionality. The project mirrors LOHA’s earlier Westgate1515 development directly across the street, reinforcing a sense of arrival and place in this bustling neighborhood.

Rather than dominating the streetscape with a monolithic block, Granville1500 breaks down its mass into three wedge-shaped volumes, each interacting gracefully with the street. This approach emphasizes residential and public engagement at ground level, transforming a former car dealership site into a model for dense, human-centered urban housing.

Pedestrian-Centric Design Strategies

Granville1500 employs several innovative strategies to enhance the pedestrian experience:

• Corner Cut-Outs & Pyramidal Voids: Large inverted-prism carve-outs lift portions of the building above the sidewalk, creating breathing room and widening pedestrian paths.
• Open-Air Parterres: Twin corner cutaways and smaller folds at setbacks form three public plazas for outdoor dining, seating, and landscaping.
• Podium Integration: A spacious podium connects two of the three building volumes, introducing voids that create openness at both street and upper levels.
• Landscaped Roofline: The podium roof folds into a triangle, bridging solid and void while connecting to a grand stair and commercial plaza.

These design interventions not only enhance street-level engagement but also improve environmental performance with naturally ventilated corridors, stormwater management, drought-tolerant landscaping, high-efficiency windows, rooftop solar, EV charging stations, and bicycle storage.

Sustainability & Civic Engagement

Granville1500 is more than student housing, it represents LOHA’s vision of the urban village. By emphasizing walkability, greenery, and communal spaces, the project encourages social interaction, civic engagement, and environmental responsibility. In an area once dominated by traffic, Granville1500 offers a blueprint for transforming car-oriented streets into vibrant, livable neighborhoods.

This development demonstrates how thoughtful mixed-use residential architecture can redefine the urban experience, merging sustainability, design innovation, and social purpose into a single cohesive project.

All photographs are works of  Paul Vu