Bjarke Ingels Group Designs 28-Unit Silver Lake Apartments
It is BIG's second known Los Angeles project, after a long-planned Arts District tower.
Property owner H for Hyperion LLC has filed with the Los Angeles Department of City Planning to clear a Silver Lake plant nursery, Tenants of the Trees, and replace it with a 28-unit apartment building designed by Bjarke Ingels Group, the Copenhagen firm known for large-scale, geometric towers.
Why it matters
A name-brand international architecture firm taking on a 28-unit Silver Lake infill, rather than another downtown tower, is itself the signal here. BIG is using the city’s enhanced administrative review pathway, which skips a public hearing and separate environmental clearance, the same density bonus tool a growing number of LA infill projects are leaning on this fall. For developers weighing whether a marquee design firm will take a small residential job, this filing says yes, when the density bonus math pencils and the entitlement path is fast enough to make it worth the firm’s time.
The numbers
The application proposes a five-story building with 28 one-bedroom apartments over roughly 2,200 square feet of ground-floor commercial space, per Urbanize LA, which reviewed the filing. Five of the 28 units would be reserved for lower-income renters in exchange for the density bonus incentives that let the project exceed what standard Silver Lake zoning would otherwise allow. The design is described as a low-rise structure clad in steel, a departure from BIG’s better-known skyscraper work. The filing does not disclose a construction valuation or start date.
What’s next
The project can proceed under the administrative pathway without a Planning Commission hearing, so the next public marker will be when Building and Safety records show a permit filed for the site. BIG’s other Southern California work includes a recent expansion at Claremont McKenna College and a long-planned tower in the Downtown Arts District; this is its first known small-scale residential filing in Los Angeles. Builders should watch whether the firm takes on more infill-scale work here, or whether this stays a one-off.
Sources
Also reported by