The winners of the 14th Architizer A+A wards are live! Discover an international cohort of architects shaping the future of style, and subscribe
to our Awards Newsletter for future program updates. Lorcan O’Herlihy, the starting principal of Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects [LOHA], died on June 15, 2026, at the age of 66, after a battle with glioblastoma. His loss is felt throughout an occupation he spent three decades pushing toward a higher requirement of civic duty. Born in Dublin in 1959, O’Herlihy studied architecture at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and the Architectural Association in London before working with Kevin Roche John Dinkeloo and Associates, I.M. Pei and Partners– where he added to the Grand Louvre Museum Pyramid team– and Steven Holl Architects. He established LOHA in Los Angeles in 1994.
Over the next thirty years, the company collected more than 200 awards and finished over 100 tasks throughout 3 continents, making Fast Company’s number one A lot of Innovative Company in Architecture for 2025. That innovative spirit extended beyond the structures (and watershed research studies): before his death, O’Herlihy restructured LOHA into a collective ownership model, formalizing what he described as the studio’s longstanding culture of shared authorship and guaranteeing the company’s future came from the people who had formed it.
What made his work really substantial, however, was never the awards– it was his persistence that real estate at every earnings level was worthy of official ambition and civic purpose in equal procedure. By promoting city infill, he also advanced a vision of architecture that is inextricably bound to the impact it has on its wider context. “I’m persuaded that social equity and cultural advancement are vital issues to architecture,” he said. “Architecture is a social act, and the role of the architect is to do work of consequence, but not forgetting artistry.”
The 10 jobs below bear that conviction out.
Isla Intersections Helpful Housing and Paseo
By: Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects [LOHA], Los Angeles, California
Jury Winner, Architecture +Prefab and Modular, 13th Architizer A+A wards
< img src ="https://blog.architizer.com/wp-content/uploads/1b-1-scaled.jpg" alt=""width= "2560" height="1440"/ > On a triangular residue of land wedged in between the 110 and 105 freeways– among the world’s busiest interchanges– LOHA constructed 54 units of supportive housing utilizing recycled steel shipping containers stacked into towers and linked by pathways. More than housing, the task is a living lung, where site-specific planting filters air contaminants and a public paseo prioritizes pedestrians and bicyclists. Roof edible gardens, retail incubation spaces and job training centers finish a plan that deals with one of LA’s most hostile pieces of geography as an opportunity to develop spaces where people can thrive.
Sun King Supportive Real Estate
By: Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects [LOHA], Los Angeles, California
In Sun Valley, LOHA created twenty-six systems of irreversible supportive housing for previously homeless individuals and families earning listed below thirty percent of the location average earnings. The style segments the structure’s mass into three bands, drawing natural light and cross-ventilation into every system while putting shared spaces on each floor to encourage day-to-day interaction in between locals. A broadened entryway staircase opens the structure towards the street– an articulate gesture of connection instead of containment– while an interior courtyard, kids’s play area, rooftop balcony and edible garden finish an environment developed to support the transition out of homelessness.
Granville1500
By: Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects [LOHA], Los Angeles, California
Jury Winner, Multi-Unit Housing– Mid-Rise (5-15 Floorings), 11th Architizer A+A wards
< img src ="https://blog.architizer.com/wp-content/uploads/3b-scaled.jpg"alt=" "width= "2560"height ="1706"/ > Santa Monica Boulevard’s stretch through West LA was once the western terminus of Route 66. LOHA’s 153-unit mixed-use development treats that legacy seriously, separating what could have been another monolithic housing block into three wedge-shaped volumes (a remarkable and iconic building footprint, truly) that lift far from the pavement and expand the sidewalk beneath them. A series of al fresco plazas– specified by pyramidal carve-outs at the building’s corners and a landscaped triangle that folds down to street level– imbues the block with a strong civic existence. It is a building that looks outside instead of inward.
Bellevue53
By: Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects [LOHA], Los Angeles, California
Silver Lake has altered considerably over the previous twenty years, however its real estate stock largely hasn’t. LOHA’s Bellevue53 addresses that space on a corner lot just north of the 101 Freeway, proposing a densification model that genuinely engages its neighborhood instead of merely inhabiting it. A balanced stepped massing echoes the location’s steep hillside topography, producing a series of outside amenity decks at each level. Open-air exterior passages provide cross ventilation without mechanical systems, while punched verandas guarantee every system has outside gain access to. The structure bridges the scale of its single-family next-door neighbors without pretending to be something it isn’t.
South E8
By: Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects [LOHA], Raleigh, North Carolina
< img src="https://blog.architizer.com/wp-content/uploads/5b.jpg"alt =" "width="2040"height ="1320"/ > As Raleigh’s development has actually sped up, so has the pressure on its residential communities to accommodate density without losing character. LOHA’s response on a single lot formerly occupied by one house is South E8– 4 systems organized through a thoroughly considered massing method that incorporates roofing decks, inviting shared outside areas, and a material scheme that transitions from brick at the base to metal panel above. The job is a design template for how infill real estate can increase density while respecting the grain of the streets around it– and look cool while doing it.
MLK1101 Encouraging Housing
By: Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects [LOHA], Los Angeles, California
On an uninhabited lot, LOHA and non-profit developer Clifford Beers Real estate transformed absolutely nothing into twenty-six systems of LEED Gold inexpensive real estate for previously homeless veterans and low-income families. An L-shaped plan guarantees every home gets sunshine and cross-ventilation while confining an elevated green patio area protected from street sound. Street-level retail units are created to produce income that supports the housing and provides workforce training for locals. The building’s expanded entrance stair is among LOHA’s a lot of intentional gestures– an inviting architecture that treats the act of going into as a civic occasion rather than a private transaction.
Canyon Drive
By: Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects [LOHA], Los Angeles, California
Taking Los Angeles ‘2005 Little Lot Neighborhood Regulation as its starting point, LOHA designed a cluster of individual homes in Beachwood Canyon that utilize the ordinance’s efficiencies to produce something really unforeseen. From a shared optimum envelope, single masses are divided by tilting outside walls at various angles, developing A-frame-like volumes that open external for light and air while maintaining privacy in between surrounding residential or commercial properties. Cedar cladding at ground level contrasts with aluminum panels and store glazing above; roof decks replace the conventional yard. Significantly, the task uses regulative restraints as a style tool instead of a restriction.
San Joaquin Student Housing at UCSB
By: Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects [LOHA], Santa Barbara, California
< img src= "https://blog.architizer.com/wp-content/uploads/8b.jpg" alt =""width ="1600"height= "1067"/ > LOHA’s LEED Platinum trainee real estate complex at the northern edge of UC Santa Barbara’s school inverts the conventions of the dorm typology. Where a lot of campus real estate presses circulation to the exterior and leaves the yard interior dormant, LOHA brings all circulation inward– through a vibrant, socially triggered yard consisting of reading rooms, collecting areas and dining. The exterior-facing edge is deliberately reductive; corrugated metal panels, more normally discovered on commercial buildings, produce a visually vibrant street existence. Inside, passive ventilation strategies and more than ninety percent permeable surface areas minimize heat island impacts on a school where the seaside environment is the most abundant resource.
SL11024
By: Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects [LOHA], Los Angeles, California
< img src="https://blog.architizer.com/wp-content/uploads/9b.jpg"alt= ""width= "1800"height =" 1200 "/ > Sited opposite Richard Neutra’s Strathmore Apartments in Westwood– one of the most architecturally sensitive addresses in Los Angeles– LOHA’s thirty-one-unit trainee and faculty real estate project for UCLA’s school edge had to earn its location in remarkable company. It does so by splitting into two volumes that step down along the hillside to satisfy the Neutra building at its own height, while landscaped roof balconies at each level develop a constant public gesture that links the structure to the street listed below. White metal panels in strong, perforated, and ribbed setups give the exterior movement; a gradient of green-painted cement board grounds the base and lightens as the structure rises toward the sky.
Formosa1140
By: Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects [LOHA], West Hollywood, California
In West Hollywood, LOHA did something most designers would never ever countenance: provided a third of the site back to the public. By moving what would conventionally have actually been an internal yard to the building’s exterior, Formosa1140’s eleven units are arranged along a direct strategy dealing with a 4,600-square-foot park– consequently leased to the City of West Hollywood as part of a network of pocket parks across the city. Every unit enjoys park frontage and cross-ventilation. The external skin of perforated metal panels functions as a climate screen for west-facing units while developing a layered facade that simultaneously exposes and conceals. It is, in O’Herlihy’s own framing, a project whose genetic code carries the imprint of a bigger urban style: one building contributing to a city it refuses to turn its back on.
The winners of the 14th Architizer A+A wards are live! Discover a worldwide associate of designers shaping the future of design, and register for our Awards Newsletter for future program updates.