Detached Accessory Dwelling Unit

Ara Hovsepyan Architecture

2025

Detached Accessory Dwelling Unit

Ara Hovsepyan Architecture

2025

A Downtown Cultural Centre

2025 - Ara Hovsepyan Architecture

For a successful downtown cultural center, the design of the void is as important as the design of the structure. In Tartu Village, the spaces are arranged to create multiple public and semi-private gathering opportunities between the Tartu Public Library and the Tartu Art Museum. The piece of land that directly connects to the river is currently unprogrammed, as we opted to find the greatest piece of land and not build there, but to keep it as park space. The required built and void spaces are fully contained across the street. The structural system is of concrete, and while the higher levels seems somewhat monolithic at times, the ground level incorporates colonnades, angles, and material changes and breaks down the volumes to the human scale for the inhabitant and the passerby.

The thermal mass of concrete tends to absorb heat during the day and radiate it out at night, making it the ideal building material both for Tartu’s moderately cold winters and its moderately warm summers. As well as adding further elements to break down the mass, control joints are used to guide cracks within the concrete, and expansion joints to allow for more substantial shifting and settling of the structure that may take place. Mechanical, electrical, and plumbing systems are incorporated into the plenum space, and their fixtures are displayed at the ceilings to express Estonian patterns, with decorative elements between them to help the patterns read more evidently. The glass is low-emissivity, limiting unwanted leakage of heat into or out of the space. At the ground level, the concrete flooring, designed with native Estonian patterns, is permeable to allow storm-water to drain through.

Also, the ground level utilizes mulch from local tree bark, local plant species like viper’s bugloss and pincushion peperomia, grass, and water features to both minimize the heat island effect and create pleasant public space to inhabit.

Multi-family

Ara Hovsepyan Architecture

2025

I documented the entire schematic design portion of this house on Twitch, hence the name. Most of the videos are down now, but I’ve saved them and plan to distill them into YouTube content.

( https://www.twitch.tv/arahovsepyan )

( 1984 North Avenue 52, Los Angeles, CA 90042 )

This project just got approved! This is our, and our client’s, take on California’s popular detached Accessory Dwelling Unit.

( 10958 Elinda Pl Sun Valley, CA 91352 )

With this house, I wanted to compel both the viewer from the outside and the inhabitant within to look at the house through the eyes of the designer. What I ended up doing was embedding the grid lines I had set up in the drawing into the architecture by having them articulate throughout the building. The lines can be read continuously as a reveal or an edge of a door or window element, from both the exterior and interior, with the exception of a few intentional glitches.

( 2516 Alma Avenue, Manhattan Beach, CA )

Like Ay D, You? the site for this project is within the R-A (Residential Agricultural) Zone. This one is in Granada Hills, CA.

( 12131 Louise Avenue, Granada Hills, CA )

The house number for this project happened to be 1984, and shared the number with the title of the novel by George Orwell while I was working on the project during the global pandemic of 2020. The number come across my desk while people drawing similarities between the book and the times. When it became clear that this project wasn’t going to be constructed, it compelled me to title the project with the number. Not that I think this is some dystopian reality because of the fact that most architects’ designed buildings don’t end up being realized. The mystery of unbuilt work does have its own captivating nature in a way. More is left to the imagination. (And the model can be shifted from image to image as the architect sees fit.)

( 1984 North Avenue 52, Los Angeles, CA 90042 )

Our first prototype for a high-rise office building

 ( 290 Kent Avenue in Brooklyn, New York )

This work was done in the programming phase, before site selection, in order to assist the client with site selection.

( prototype )

We designed and permitted this bathroom addition in 2017. The space is now being rented through Airbnb with its own restroom. The owner of the property lives on the floor above.

( 1909 Hill Dr, Eagle Rock CA 90041 )

GSAPP _ John Szot

Ara Hovsepyan’s modeling of some of Lebbeus Woods’ masterpieces

The 'elites', to generalize, have an established and symbolic architecture of icons.  Reformists do not.  Lightweight, deployable, improvised, and inexpensive architecture is the architecture of change, heightened by its contrast to conventional surroundings.  However, one wonders - would the structures of Lebbeus Woods contain their beauty and tasteful brutality if they were ad-hoc? ...if they were improvised by their builders, and made only with available materials?  Woods displays a very particular use of geometry, which one may better understand by means of digitally modeling them, and attempting to, in the most abstract sense of the phrase, inhabit the space.  Painters tend to learn from the masters of the craft.  Your most respected contemporaries and avant-garde painters are no exception.  Architects learn the history of the masters, but do not necessarily study the technique.  In this exercise, adapting video game software (the Unreal Development Kit) for use in architecture, I attempt, like a painter, to learn from the masters.

Collaborative Project

Ara Hovsepyan + Arthur Badalian

We designed the Blue Clay Spa for inhabitants to spend a few leisurely days enjoying its expansive guest house and experience the healing qualities of Blue Cay.  Its rammed-earth walls, also composed of clay, as well as sand and gravel, maintain the tranquility of its context while sustaining their thermally massive and durable properties known to last centuries.  Accommodations, which include baths, therapy rooms, sauna and massage rooms, are surrounded by the green nature that Latvia is known for.  A second roof connects the disjoined structures of guest house, spa, dining, and service quarters to maximize the comfort of traveling between during months of snow, while collecting solar energy and guiding rainwater into cisterns.

The lucid dream is a dream in which the dreamer is aware that he or she is dreaming. A misleading name for this is a conscious dream, as one is conscious during all dreams. The difference is that the dreamer typically mistakes the dream for reality. One of the most common tells of lucid dreaming is having the wrong number of fingers on one’s hands. Others include being able to breathe with one’s nose plugged, unaided flight, clocks displaying strange symbols, and other illegible text.

We know from some obscure writings that Salvador Dali left behind that he dabbled in this deep pondering of the dream world. He tried to use the lucid dream in a way to achieve the sleeping of the brain, but the waking of the hand. It is a self-induced variation of sleep walking with aspects of lucidity. He famously said ‘I don’t do drugs, I am drugs,’ escaping from the inebriated image of the prolific artist while drawing inspiration from the depths of his conscious/subconscious through this natural phenomenon of the dream world. I chose to paint, more as an illustrator of experiences I had in dreams than an author, to set my intention for further lucid dreaming.

GSAPP: Visual Study w/ Prof. Ezio Blasetti

 Ara Hovsepyan, Jerry Yu, Yao Ma

‘Encoded Matter’ is run in parallel to the NCertainties advanced architecture studio directed by Francois Roche, and is devoted to designing and prototyping environments via generative techniques.    While Francois Roche’s studio was not available to me as an urban design student, I was able to take this course and be present for some of the discussions around scenarios related to technology.  The research is not geared towards optimization - it’s focused on identifying potentials of emergent structuring tectonics that are guided with design intent and an interest in aesthetics.  The workshop was run mainly under the python programming language for Rhino 3D, along with some Grasshopper, and Autodesk Maya.

This project, one of many within the Encoded Matter course, begins with a surface that ‘waves’. The waving surface refracts its normals to a distance ‘x’ below. We then layer surfaces with evolving wave patterns, below the initial waving surface, that also refract points ‘x’ units below. This series of points finally forms the irregular structure through connections based on proximity, still linked to the original surface.

Columbia University. 2012

Mojdeh Baratloo, Lee Altman, Justin Garrett Moore

Collaborative Project: Ara Hovsepyan, Andy Golubitsky, Kyung Sun Park, Rod Shahbazi

Red Hook’s once vibrant and active working waterfront was rendered nearly useless with the advent of containerization. With an increasing number of storms and hurricanes that flood the entire site, its potential for growth of local businesses and future development also diminishes. Today, the water’s edge is being used by “anchor tenants” such as Ikea, Fairway Market, and Brooklyn Cruise Terminal, serving a socioeconomic demographic that is foreign to the immediate site.

The current residents of Red Hook have thriving new neighbors yet receive little outside economic activity. Currently, the regional and international visitors only pass through the town to these three destinations, or overlook Red Hook completely. With ‘The Hook’, proposed commercial and green corridors, visitors, including Brooklyn cruise terminal users, can be linked to the rest of Red Hook, generating revenue and creating employment for the local community.

This new urban political and infrastructural system begins to share resources, transportation and human capital among the new commercial tenants, visitors, and the existing residents, while mediating the inevitability of the rising water levels and storm surges.

Columbia University, 2012

Skye Duncan

Collaborative Project: Ara Hovsepyan, Wang Gu, Scott Archer

The senior population of NYC is expected to grow from 12% in 2008 to 20% in 2030.  The redesign of the urban fabric of Manhattan, with the Two Bridges neighborhood as a case study, will provide this rapidly growing elderly population with a safer and more comfortable environment to age in place.  New housing, transit connections, an accessible waterfront, and an integrated path network provide a framework in which the future populations can continue to use Two Bridges as a place of social interaction and graceful aging.

The project includes the following:

Transit Station: accessible subway station with connections to the B & N lines as well as the East River Ferry system

New Housing: mixed age group, micro-unit housing with shared spaces for social interaction & efficiency in housing floor area

Accessible Path Network: with rest areas of no greater than 1/8th mile apart to extend the distance the elderly population can walk

Collaborative Project

Ara Hovsepyan + Arthur Badalian

We use the A-frame as it allows for the creation of an architectural form with fewer surfaces than usual, simplifying the construction process.  This form contains a steep angle on either side, providing large surfaces ideal for solar panels that can be used differently for different locations, and that will shed snow and water.   The cabin is lifted off of the ground to minimize its penetrating footprint.  Either stairs or a ramp can be attached to the platform. 

The interior provides flexible space, in which tables can rotate and create different combinations of floor plans.  Hay is used between the wood ribs for its high insulation value and spatial quality.  Cabin A provides sleeping areas for up to 10 people (six below, and four on the mezzanine), composting, a storage area, rainwater collection, a kitchen, and a fireplace for both interior warmth and cooking.

We plan for a crew of a few people, enthusiasts, to be able to camp out for approximately one week to assemble Cabin A without heavy equipment.

Woodbury University

2010

Professor: Clark Stevens

Team: Ara Hovsepyan & Arthur Badalian

The goal of this studio was to create simple, ecologically sound, culturally and aesthetically appropriate homesteads on rural properties.  A $ 50,000 budget immensely confined our square footage and use of materials.  Looking for building materials that we could attain for a relatively low cost, we came across the sturdy and readily available wooden pallet, typically used to support goods as they’re transported.  Here, the pallets are used as modules to construct flooring with integrated beams and walls with reinforcing structure.  Pallets are simple to assemble, and each one contains an inner cavity that we propose to fill with various elements imperative to inhabitation in this wilderness, such as insulation and structure.  With just enough to meet the habitation needs for future ranch owners in Little Wood, Idaho, the cabin celebrates its context. For the outdoor enthusiast, there is no need to build extensive improvements that are wasteful and high impact.  The cabin provides extra insulation on the west wall with stored fire logs, a view of the North Star (Polaris) from the sleeping quarters through the large angled aperture, a food preparation surface, full bathroom, and a solar panel to power the few lighting fixtures.

Woodbury University - Degree Project

2012

Professor: Heather Peterson

Ara Hovsepyan

Disaster tourism, driven by morbid fascinations of unfavorable conditions, often hinders the recoveries of struggling ecologies.  But perhaps this type of tourism can instigate a positive change.  If not, it can at least educate.  In the case of Owens (dried) Lake, located conveniently between Los Angeles and the popular destination of Mammoth Lakes, the west facing surfaces of the proposed disaster tourist accommodations collect critical amounts of the arsenic and soda-ash infested dust blowing in the wind, keeping some of them away from the nearby town of Keeler.  Opportunities are created for packaging the soda-ash as a preservative and feeding the toxins to arsenic eating bacteria recently discovered in Mono Lake, while raising awareness of the fragile ecosystem by means of inhabitation. Particulate matter is entrapped on the electrostatic skin, rendering the interior habitable.  The lake’s corpse provides an incendiary yet serene backdrop, fit for planetary alarm conferences, a Davos-West. The dryness is due to diversion of the valley’s water into the Los Angeles Aqueduct.  Travelers are brought into contact with the site by forking a road to Mammoth, utilizing an existing berm.  Many of the goals of the project are met by creating a rest stop for passing by travelers on long drives.  

@ W.U. under Prof. Eric Olsen

Research & Design by Ara Hovsepyan

The proposal Investigates the Artibonite River valley, as Haiti’s most problematic and symbolic river region.  Of Haiti’s ten departments, Artibonite has reported the most cases of and deaths from cholera, which is a fleeting problem, but the outbreak has exposed a substantial vulnerability, which arises from many Haitians drinking untreated river water.  

Peripheral Cup claims a link between water diversion and urbanization and agriculture.  The project takes the form of a linear city, incorporating a series of water collection, treatment, and storage facilities, which reach the intervention areas of the residents through copper distribution pipes.  The water collection begins by defining reservoirs, and creating shedding structures with great surface area, which in the future will become roof structures for schools and hotels.  We know this is fit for Haiti because only a few hundred miles away we find the Dominican Republic, where resorts are filled with European and North American tourists.  But after studying the Caribbean, it becomes apparent that the other islands’ natural and historical heritages pale in comparison with Haiti’s.  And schools would be fit as the cycle of poverty causes people to not spend money on their children’s education, and peasants routinely become victims of crooked lawyers taking advantage of their inability to read land titles.  

Much value is placed on found site situations as the architecture adjusts to the land formation, considering flood plains and housing clusters, and anticipating growth.  After the recent destruction in Puerto Prince, much of its population has relocated throughout Haiti.  More Haitains relocated to Artibonite than any other department in the country.  The intervention occurs in the form of communal shower areas, potable water distribution, and communal restrooms stemming from the  water catchment and storage.  The proposal deals with the essentials (nourishment) first and eventually fulfills the tourism and education potentials.  A 12 inch copper pipe carries the treated water from the source, an 8 inch copper pipe carries it through the city, and 2 inch copper pipes ultimately distribute the water.  The pipes are exposed as earthquakes would damage underground pipes.  

Haiti’s large industrious population does not benefit from it’s government; education, health care, infrastructure maintenance, and disaster relief are all either lacking or assumed by NGOs.  Haiti is a country that gets virtually nothing from its government; restricting the government’s role would not be detrimental to the services, and would decrease the cost.

INTERTWINED
Twisting/Untwisting Post Traumatic Stress and Steel        

Collaborative Project: Ara Hovsepyan and Artur Nesterenko

The Ballona Wetlands, located in Southern California, is one of the fewremaining wetlands of the Los Angeles area, yet it continues to decrease in size dueto urban development. The area of natural land has been reduced by thousands ofsquare acres due to construction within the past 70 years. The PTSD treatmentcenter will be lifted above the wetlands to preserve the land by its bending nature.This makes for a building that only makes contact with the ground at two pointsand strengthens the structure by forming an arch. The twist of the structure makesit a spectacle from the freeway and raises awareness of post-traumatic stress, whilerepresenting a metaphysical twist in the victims of PTSD and the building twistingthem back into shape.

Steel as a building material represents the most contemporary in architecture,and allows for curved surfaces and long spans. The building serves as a retreatfrom the harshness of the city and creates a place of meditation in the heart of thewetlands. By being secluded and separated, it allows for peaceful reflection andreconnection with self. The journey through the building and the surroundingnature guides one to his or her true nature. Living in our modern times is a stressfulendeavor and leaves one with no time to spare. The treatment center will encouragethe people inhabiting it to spend time reflecting and breaking away from theunhealthy habits that have become widely accepted in our society.

The hybrid drawing, like a cubist work of art, attempts to portray the object from multiple views at multiple points in time.  Schindler interlocks volumes and spaces to create compact apartment layouts with striking form, making the hybrid representation  quite convenient.  Here, the building is depicted from multiple interlocking viewpoints, displaying plan, elevation, section and perspective.  The drawing reveals Schindler’s exploration of variable ceiling height and built in furniture.  It also attempts to portray the soft, diffused light on the interior and the geometric breakdown of mass.  This is done within its variable viewpoints and drawn in projections, using cubist notions of breaking up and reassembling the object.  It is not a hybrid between digital and analogue representation; it is hand drawn and hybridizes plan and section, and orthographic and perspective.