Sky Apartments at Jordan Downs

Project Design

FSY Architects is a designer of housing complexes that exude liveability and calm. One of their latest is Sky Apartments at Jordan Downs (2024),part of the larger Jordan Downs Redevelopment Project in the Watts community of Los Angeles.

Jordan Downs was originally built in the 1940s as temporary housing for workers during World War II and subsequently was converted to public housing in the 1950s by the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles (HACLA). Following years of challenges, HACLA partnered up with two private affordable housing developers and a commercial developer to transform the original 700 units into 1,570 new housing units with added commercial spaces, community buildings, and shared parks. It was master planned by Mithun/Solomon, and different architecture teams took on pieces of the whole. They had to adhere to site planning and building massing guided by the Jordan Downs Urban Village Specific Plan and its Principles of Mediterranean Architecture, which were derived from extensive community outreach.

“Mediterranean” is a fairly elastic term in LA, encompassing everything from the decorative Spanish style courtyard housing to the pared down, cubist structures of Irving Gill. The latter is echoed in Sky Apartments, 81 units of one, two, three, and four-bedroom units in five buildings, that are crisp and contemporary – white with splashes of color – and arranged so that some are accessible from the street, and others open onto a large semi-private, landscaped patio with a play area and sense of safety and respite for the residents.

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Top, view of lower rise housing and courtyard at Sky Apartments at Jordan Downs. Bottom, view of whole complex. Photos by Natalia Knezevic.