Elderly housing remains one of the few viable social housing types in the United States today; and yet, its social quality is often obscured. The historic heart of social life—the residence—hides behind solid facades that isolate residents from their broader networks and comprehension within the city.

Viewfinder is a retirement home in Los Angeles, California. The retirement home offers a highly diverse group of users: residents, support staff, and visitors, amplified in this project through ancillary programs including a daycare center and a branch library, located at the highly visible intersection of US Hwy 101 and Vermont Avenue. The design uses a meta-prism that breaks into pieces and formalizes aprogrammatic places for seeing and being seen. Residential units push to the edges, where three levels of care assert unique facade conditions in the residents’ private exterior spaces. Private spaces, celebrated at the project’s boundaries, lend the center its openness, apertures, and freedom of geometry.