Sketching Star Apartments, Los Angeles – a drawing tutorial by Dan Hogman

Dan Hogman makes sure that whenever he is undertaking a journey, he gets to see every bit of history steeped in our cities while not missing out on new things that have come up.

In this video, he captures a sketched perspective of acclaimed architect Michael Maltzan’s prefab housing for homeless: The Star Apartments. Build in the Skid Row neighbourhood in Los Angeles – best known for his condensed homeless population – the geometric design of the building provides 102 housing apartments for the needy. The architects reused an existing single-storey building and built five storeys on top of it via modular techniques of housing. The layout ensured that there were enough open, communal spaces for people to remain connected. The 97,000 sq ft. project faced multiple challenges like constricted budget and timeline, yet it was successfully executed in 425 days, and became the first multi-unit pre-fabricated housing projects in the city.

Hogman captures a glimpse of the building’s front whose upper section reveals a play of stacked volumes with square openings and the lower, a glazed view deep into its interiors.

Watch this space every Wednesday for more tutorials by Dan Hogman.