Shipping Container Homes & Buildings: Isla Intersections - Modular Shipping Container Affordable Housing, Los Angeles, California

Location

Project	Isla Intersections
Architect	Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects (LOHA)
Builder	Clifford Beers Housing
Area	35,000 sf
Units	54
Location	Los Angeles, California
Year	2024

In 2018, Los Angeles opened more than 1,700 of its city-owned parcels to affordable housing developers in a bid to address the housing crisis. Much like other infrastructural zones, this particular plot is ringed by high-traffic corridors, freeways, derelict industrial buildings, and a disused railway line—conditions that make it difficult to weave into the surrounding city and raise urgent questions about how to design livable, well-connected communities in such in-between settings.

Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects (LOHA) takes on these challenges with non-profit developer Clifford Beers Housing in a 35,000-square-foot (3,250-square-meter), 54-unit housing complex and accompanying pedestrian paseo known as Isla Intersection. The project, which won the Architizer Jury Prize in the Concepts + Prefab and Modular category, occupies a 19,814-square-foot (1,840-square-meter) triangular site and unfolds along Broadway Street as a procession of sixteen staggered volumes.

The term “liminal” comes from the Latin limen, meaning threshold—a state of transition that holds movement and stillness, clarity and ambiguity, belonging and estrangement. First used in anthropology by Arnold van Gennep and Victor Turner to describe rituals of passage, the word has since traveled into psychology, media theory, and cultural studies, and more recently into popular culture, where it conjures dreamlike images of deserted airports or empty malls evoking nostalgia and unease.

In architecture, though, liminality carries a more concrete meaning. It refers to transitional areas—corridors, stairwells, lobbies—as well as infrastructural or leftover spaces like underpasses, rail yards, rooftops, waterfront edges, border zones, and city seams. Although they often feel uncertain or in flux, these spaces reveal how we move through and inhabit the built environment.

Within LOHA’s scheme, each “box” consists of three modular steel containers measuring 20 by 8 feet (6 by 2.5 meters), recycled and welded into 480-square-foot (45-square-meter) apartments. Stacked into towers and linked by walkways, the units form a single connected building. The towers are intentionally set along the site’s edge, framing a string of pocket parks and establishing shared outdoor areas between the residences.

A key ambition of the project is to deliver housing that is both compact and robust—shielding residents from the harsh surroundings—while remaining permeable and welcoming at a human scale. Height shifts along certain edges respond to the neighboring single-family homes and the west-facing paseo, creating a “slow space” for pedestrians in an otherwise vehicular environment.

At ground level, retail and office spaces line the paseo without compromising the project’s residential and green character. This marketplace and walkway function as a “living lung,” filtering diesel and other pollutants through a landscape of carefully selected trees, vines, and shrubs that offer relief from the surrounding expanse of concrete.

As cities grow denser, more fragmented, and more tightly programmed by data, goods, and capital, liminal spaces are often erased, polished, or treated as residual clutter. Isla Intersection counters this tendency by designing its threshold spaces deliberately, not as accidental leftovers. Rooftop farms weave the project into a wider network of urban agriculture in Los Angeles, supplying affordable produce to a neighborhood widely considered a “food desert.”

The development stands as a model for how architects can reimagine the in-between. At the same time, it signals a caution: abandoned or residual sites can easily be over-designed, gentrified, or commodified—stripping them of the openness and ambiguity that make them valuable. Architects must find ways to engage with liminality without fully resolving it, preserving its fluid and unpredictable qualities.

Isla Intersection offers both clarity and indeterminacy, inviting residents and passersby to experience it through multiple stories and rhythms. Rather than “finishing” the in-between, it slows and enriches it—embracing liminality as a state that is adaptable, layered, and firmly rooted in place.

Isla Intersections is a groundbreaking permanent supportive housing community designed to reinvest in South Los Angeles and strengthen neighborhood connections at the junction of the 110 and 105 freeways. Located on a city-owned site at 283 W. Imperial Highway, the development will deliver 53 homes for people who have experienced homelessness, with 10 apartments specifically reserved for unhoused military veterans. Conceived by Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects, the project will be built entirely from repurposed shipping containers. Each residence combines three containers assembled on-site in an extraordinary 30 days—a dramatic contrast to the typical 18–24 months required for conventional multifamily construction. Overall, the build-out is expected to be completed within 12 months. In addition to offering equitable, affordable housing, Isla Intersections introduces an innovative model for addressing long-standing community concerns.

The project emphasizes connection and shared experience. A key feature, the Annenberg Paseo, will create a public park and “shared street” that slows traffic and enhances safety while linking community-serving shops and services. Located just north of Harbor Gateway, along Athens Way between W. 113th Street and Imperial Highway, the redesigned street will reduce vehicle speeds to 5 mph and transform into a hub for neighborhood events—from farmers’ markets to street fairs and live performances. Lush landscaping, watered by a greywater system, will help mitigate air, noise, and light pollution from the nearby freeways. A new tree canopy—featuring species like Camphor and California Bay Laurel chosen for their ability to absorb pollutants—will combat the urban heat-island effect and stand as a model for freeway-adjacent development. Together, these elements make Isla Intersections the first project of its kind in Los Angeles.

Beyond housing, Isla Intersections will provide vital onsite supportive services, including job training, mental health care, counseling, and life-skills programs. It is one of several capital projects aimed at reinvesting in neighborhoods within City Council District Eight after decades of disinvestment, offering not just housing but a new community anchor for South Los Angeles.