The design competition of the Small Lots, Big Impacts initiative gives designers, architects, and students the opportunity to propose how small vacant lots across Los Angeles should be converted into compelling, community-oriented, resilient housing developments that make better use of land that typically sits empty or accommodates just one housing unit. Expanding homeownership need not equate with further privatization, but can instead present an opportunity to build up inclusive communities.
We call on designers everywhere to bring their ingenuity and compassion to the Small Lots, Big Impacts design competition with proposals that advance Los Angeles’ legacy of multifamily housing design and offer housing ideas rooted in equity, resilience, and sustainability. Submissions to the design competition are expected to demonstrate a variety of innovative housing schemes that help set the course for Los Angeles’ future.
Through the design competition, we ask participants to address one of the City’s fundamental housing challenges. Where one household lived in the past, today we need to increase the number of residents while retaining or even expanding upon the multiple benefits of home: access to the outdoors, comfortable relationships with neighbors, flexibility for changing needs, ample natural light, stability, opportunities for wealth building, a sense of identity, and safety from an increasingly volatile climate. Rather than focus on an isolated house on its own piece of property, Small Lots, Big Impacts asks for demonstrations showing how more households can share space while simultaneously creating more resilient neighborhoods. After the raging fires of early 2025 that expanded the housing crisis, destroyed whole neighborhoods, and destabilized all Angelenos, forecasting a more resilient, equitable, collective, 21st century urbanism in the Southwest and beyond is all the more urgent.
This Design Competition is organized around two site categories, both of which represent housing development opportunities inherent in Los Angeles’ residential fabric. The first site category, called Gentle Density, is aimed at developing small-scale multifamily housing on infill lots that are the by-product of urban sprawl. We include two Gentle Density sites in this competition. The second site category, called Shared Future, is aimed at reviving the missing middle and mid-rise multifamily housing that Los Angeles famously once built but has since forgotten. We include two Shared Future sites in this competition. From these four prototypical sites, applicants will select one.
The four competition sites stand in for hundreds of other similar City-owned properties and thousands of privately-owned infill sites in Los Angeles. All are overdue for much-needed residential construction.
The jury will select both student applicant and professional applicant winners. Monetary prizes will be awarded to first ($1,500), second ($1000), and third ($500) place winners from the student submissions (all sites will be evaluated together); the jury may also choose to award student submission citations that do not entail a monetary prize.
Professional winners will have the opportunity to join or form Development Teams in the second phase and will have access to expert consultants to assist with crafting a competitive proposal. From the professional submissions, up to ten winners from each site category (20 total) will be selected. Winners will be selected based on design quality and how well their proposals align with the objectives of the Small Lots, Big Impacts initiative. All student and professional winners and their proposals will be publicized widely through a range of media and events.
