A busy street corner in the historical context of Culver City, the original building was taken from an old typology: an SRO that was failing, a building in distress that was depressing the neighborhood.
Project Name: Mayumi
Studio Name: ShubinDonaldson
Project size: 10000 ft2
Completion date: 2018
Building levels: 2
Location: Culver City, California, United States
Photography: Benny Chan
Mayumi stands as a genesis of a new housing typology responding to a needed condition within a new demography; explicitly designed for the rapidly transforming urban fabric attracting young creatives with a hunger for a new way of living and working.
The street corner entrance is adjacent to a ground-up two-story structure housing communal spaces on the ground floor and views into the lush courtyard oasis through a protective planted screen. The shared lounge and kitchen is glazed and opens directly to the courtyard, where a fire pit and gathering areas under mature trees allow for a truly Southern California inside-outside living experience.
Wrapping the continuous circulation of the courtyard is custom-built steel structures clad in green perforated screens allowing for plants to engage with the interior façade while offering privacy at the entries to the 35 micro-units. Each micro-unit is designed as smart, minimal, and self-supported with built-in features and furniture for the contemporary tech-savvy lifestyle.
The intent of this adaptive-reuse is to transform a worn and tired hourly-rate motel on a busy corner into a sophisticated and efficiently furnished extended-stay product designed for the minimal minded user who feeds on the energy and engagement of shared space. Mayumi is a highly-curated prototype of how architecture can redefine old conditions by integrating new approaches of organizing space to restructure flow — illustrating the power of design to produce creative collisions.
