Santa Monica Boulevard, often seen by Los Angeles commuters as little more than a freeway exit, is actually the final leg of Route 66—“America’s Main Street”—stretching from Chicago to the Pacific. In LA, this wide, linear corridor connects Downtown, Hollywood, Beverly Hills, and Santa Monica, historically lined with auto shops and showrooms: relics of car-centric urban planning. Within this context sits Granville1500.

Located just 10 minutes from UCLA’s main campus, Granville1500 is a 320,000-square-foot, 153-unit mixed-use project offering below-market-rate housing for UCLA medical students and staff, alongside academic, commercial, and public functions. The project aims to blur the boundaries between academic life and the city.

Echoing LOHA’s Westgate1515 across the street, Granville1500 works to heighten the pedestrian experience and reinforce a neighborhood identity. Rather than an immense imposing façade, the design introduces three wedge-shaped volumes lifted above the sidewalk by large, inverted-prism carve-outs at the corners. These voids pull the massing back from the property line, widen the sidewalk, and create public thresholds that ground the building in the street life of Santa Monica Boulevard.

Once a car dealership, the block-long site is reimagined as a model for denser, mixed-use development with a civic mindset. Ground-floor strategies foster walkability and social connection, favoring a vibrant street presence over traditional insularity.

With Granville1500, LOHA continues its commitment to civic engagement through architecture. The project proposes a new kind of “urban village” on a boulevard better known for fast-moving vehicles than community interaction. It repositions this stretch of roadway as a place of learning, connection, and daily life—reshaping how urban campuses and neighborhoods can coexist and thrive together.