Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects: Building in Place

Modern urban architecture by the renowned and multi-award-winning firm praised for structures that respond to often-challenging contexts, and with a self-imposed mandate to build in a way that furthers the social good.

A desire to redefine the ways architecture can contribute to truly progressive causes has always been a hallmark of the work of Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects (LOHA). From transforming unloved parcels of land in Los Angeles and Detroit to intensely creative and eminently livable housing complexes for students, tech workers, and underserved populations such as veterans, this firm has time and again proved its ability to design intelligently and with a deeplyembedded social conscience. LOHA ensures that even its most contemporary-looking creations reflect in some way the personality of the site or longtime inhabitants. The firm may accomplish this by incorporating familiar materials, such as the stone used in a surrounding neighborhood’s most beloved historic downtown buildings, or reinterpreting 1970s A-frame houses by cleverly updating their angles for the twenty-first century to bring light and air deep into a constrained urban lot.

Founded in 1994 by Lorcan O’Herlihy, FAIA, LOHA has been recognized with over 100 awards, including the AIA CC Distinguished Practice Award; the Architect’s Newspaper’s Best of Practice, Best North American Firm Award; the 2021 AIA Los Angeles Gold Medal; and AIA Los Angeles Firm of the Year Award. In 2018 LOHA was awarded the status of #1 Design Firm in the US by Architect Magazine. Greg Goldin is co-author of Atlas of Never Built Architecture (2024) and was co-curator of the exhibition Never Built Los Angeles, which premiered at the A+D Architecture and Design Museum, Los Angeles, in July 2013. For more than a decade, he was the architecture critic at Los Angeles magazine. His work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Architectural Record, the Architect’s Newspaper, Rolling Stone, Playboy, and dozens of other magazines.