Los Feliz LEED-Gold Affordable Housing
This 56-unit affordable housing project in Thousand Oaks, CA—known as the Garden View Terrace Apartments or the Los Feliz Housing Project—was developed for the Ventura County Area Housing Authority with resident comfort and wellness in mind. Completed in October 2014, the highly-collaborative project was led by Mainstreet Architects & Planners, with our team at California Energy Designs serving as the mechanical engineer & plumbing engineer, Lucci & Associates providing electrical engineering services, Jensen Design & Survey as the civil engineer, and built by general contractor Staples Construction Company.
Designed around a series of four interconnected, lush garden-style courtyards, the multi-family housing development was not only able to meet wellness design goals for residents but also, to achieve significant energy-savings that earned the residential complex multiple certifications. Working closely with the project’s LEED-certification consultant, Green Dinosaur, the California Energy Designs team was able to design efficient and energy-conscious HVAC and Plumbing systems for the multi-unit structure which earned Garden View Terrace both LEED Gold-Certified status and an official Greenpoint Rated listing.
To achieve such results, our energy system designs incorporated both structural elements—such as airflow provided by the cross ventilation of non-adjoined units—and additional energy-saving features including efficient appliance provisioning, solar paneling, solar lighting, and other green technologies. The collaborative approach also led to significant resource savings through landscape elements—provided by project landscape architect, Dufau Landscape—such as permeable paving, bio-gardens, and a vegetated roof.
Highly atypical for low-income residential developments, the building’s multiple energy-efficient certifications & wellness design features formed the “central nervous system” for a multi-family housing complex that transcended the ordinary limitations of its affordable housing category. Complete with an elevator, solar panels at the rooftop, interior courtyards, accessibly-designed units, Energy Star appliances, laundry room, community room, and offices for on-site staff, Garden View Terrance demonstrated the potential that affordable housing projects can embody, when tasked to an innovative development team.
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For more information on the multi-family affordable housing development, see the project pages on the architect, builder, and client’s respective websites. Additionally, for more energy-related and resource system information, please see the LEED-certification consultant, Green Dinosaur, website for the project’s profile page.
1972 Los Feliz Dr, Thousand Oaks, CA 91362, USA