MAD Architects recently completed its first project in the United States at 8600 Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills. It's interesting (and beautiful) in that it was designed to resemble a village of gabled residences sitting on top of a green hillside.
The green hillside is actually a three-storey concrete podium that is covered in what is said to be the largest living walls in the country. The gabled houses on top are wood-frame construction and were assembled to create an open-air courtyard in the middle of the site. Eighteen residences in total. Prices starting from USD 3.7 million (as of May 2019).
At five storeys, I suppose you would call this a mid-rise building. The site area is about 25,700 square feet and the building area is not even 48,000 square feet, according to ArchDaily. So the overall density on the site is actually remarkably low. At least compared to what we're accustomed to building in Toronto. It might be dense for Beverly Hills.
I would love to see the development math for a site like this. After I got over the architecture, the first thing I thought was, "you could never build a mid-rise building like this in Toronto." I suspect it's also not obvious in Los Angeles. And you probably need "starting from 3.7 million" in order for it to pencil.
Photo by Darren Bradley via Dezeen
