Los Patios brings housing and commercial space to a lot in Barrio Logan that had stood empty for years, without demolishing a historic building or displacing anyone. Loft suites are arranged around a central patio, each with its own balcony and full-height glass for daylight and cross ventilation.

The courtyard opens onto covered commercial space and sidewalk seating, so residents and visitors share the same ground. The arrangement borrows from the Mexican vecindad, a communal housing form, adapted here to deliver workforce housing.

LIFTbuild, a Barton Malow company, builds high-rise towers from the top down. Rather than assembling a building piece by piece in the air, each floor is completed at ground level — structure, building systems, façade and interiors together — then raised up a concrete core and secured in place. The Exchange, a 16-story residential tower in Detroit's Greektown, was the first building delivered this way.

MDS_A produced the design development version of the Exchange. It gave LIFTbuild a common baseline for comparing the cost and schedule of its system against conventional construction of the same building.

Nok Nok is a mixed-use rental building on a 7,000 square foot site in North Park, a block off the El Cajon Boulevard transit corridor with its rapid bus and bike lanes. Twenty-eight apartments sit above a ground-floor coffee shop that keeps the sidewalk active.

The rents are market rate and unsubsidized: affordability comes from efficient planning and sharply reduced parking rather than a subsidy. The building works with the site's gentle slope, alley access and existing utilities, and the upper units look west over North Park.