A Two-Unit ADU in Los Angeles Offers Inspired Spaces for Creative Tenants

Architect Max Kuo transforms a back house and garage into a white-gabled duplex for a diverse mix of residents.

Sep 14, 2021 - 21:51

A Two-Unit ADU in Los Angeles Offers Inspired Spaces for Creative Tenants

Architect Max Kuo transforms a back house and garage into a white-gabled duplex for a diverse mix of residents.

In March, one year after California’s stay-at-home order first put a pause on live events, DJ Adam Cooper moved his show to the yard he shares with a small group of renters in Los Angeles’s El Sereno neighborhood.

With a blue sky above and palms swaying in the background, he livestreamed a mix of Afro-Caribbean and amapiano tracks to his virtual audience. It was everything his landlord, architect Max Kuo, had hoped for when he transformed the rear structure of a rental property that he owns into a blank slate for future tenants’ personal and professional pursuits.

DJ Adam Cooper, educator Brianna Swan, and their dog, Chu Chu, live in the 900-square-foot, two-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment on the ground level of a renovated back house in L.A.’s El Sereno neighborhood.
Photo by Brad Torchia

Photographer Richie Davis occupies the 700-square-foot studio upstairs. — Upstairs, photographer Richie Davis occupies the 700-square-foot studio.
Photo by Brad Torchia

Kuo, the cofounder of AllThatIsSolid, a practice based in the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur as well as in L.A., wanted to create a well-designed setting that would accommodate a mix of households sharing a single-family lot. "The project was always concerned with the question: How do you create a living space for different tenants to come together?," he says.