In 2016, architect Barbara Bestor used the term “stealth density” to describe a multifamily residential development that her firm, Bestor Architecture, designed in Los Angeles’s Echo Park. The neighborhood, historically a mix of Latinx families and bohemian artists and writers, was slowly, then very rapidly, gentrifying in LA’s overheated housing market. Any new construction was bound to be suspect—both as a harbinger of displacement and disruption of the old, streetcar-era urban fabric. Although the term “stealth” conveys a contextually sensitive approach, a way to fit into an existing condition, it also reflects the anxieties of a neighborhood in transition. Changing a neighborhood’s physical character threatens both longtime and recent residents.
Harvard Design Magazine is pleased to announce its 43rd issue: “Shelf Life.”
The more stuff we accumulate, the more space we need to store it all. Vast portions of the landscape are claimed and governed by spaces of storage, their maintenance, and the goods that move through them—or remain buried within them indefinitely.
This issue of Harvard Design Magazine investigates and unpacks the contents, containers, and systems of storage that organize our world. Read More …
Issue No. 39, “Wet Matter”
For issue No. 38 “Do you Read Me?”
Collaborators: Michael Kubo, Chris Grimley, Enrique Ramirez, Mimi Zeiger