Los Angeles’ New Carver Apartments are situated in a 97 unit 57,000 square feet building that provides housing to formerly homeless elderly and disabled residents. The apartment building was designed by Michael Maltzan architects for the Skid Row Housing Trust and is located right next to the 10 freeway at Hope and 17th streets.
This location posed a significant challenge since the noisy highway makes it almost impossible to build a comfortable and quiet residential apartment. The solution to this problem came partly through the complex’ iconic shape — the circular design minimizes the transmission of traffic noise into the building. Once the noise problem was solved, the architects explored ways to best utilize the highway. Their solution was to situate a community room next to the freeway, giving the project’s residents an enjoyable view over the urban structure.
They built in a view of the highway for the residents to sit there and…watch the cars drive by? Weird. Neat building, though.