Explore Habitat: New luxury wellness apartments near Culver City. Featuring Kelly Wearstler interiors, indoor-outdoor gyms, and coworking for LA creatives.
There was a time when luxury in Los Angeles meant square footage. The biggest unit on the highest floor with the longest amenity sheet usually won.
That math has been quietly shifting for a while, and you can hear it in the questions people ask when they tour a building now. They want to know about light. They want to know whether they'd actually use the gym, or whether it's just there to look good in the brochure. They want to know if they can get to the grocery store without sitting on La Cienega for twenty minutes.
RELATED: How to Improve Circadian Rhythm at Home With Lighting, According to Experts That shift is the backdrop for Habitat, the new live-work-thrive campus from Lendlease and joint venture partner Aware Super, opening this week near the border of Culver City and the Baldwin Hills corridor. And before the doors officially open, LA Times Studios got an exclusive first look at the project to explore what today’s residents are actually looking for in a home, and how those shifts are shaping the future of living in Los Angeles.
Ryan Burton has been working on Habitat since before the pandemic redrew the rules for how people want to live in a city. As Director of Development and Senior Vice President at Lendlease, he led the project from raw site through opening day, and he's quick to admit that the brief at the end looks meaningfully different from the brief at the start. The first thing he wants to talk about isn't the building. It's the conversation around it.
'Residents are asking different questions than they used to,' he says. 'It's less about status and more about whether it actually improves their day-to-day life. ' RELATED: Can the Color You Paint Your Home Affect Stress or Calm? The reference point he keeps coming back to is The Proper Hotel in Santa Monica.
The kind of place where the design feels considered without feeling cold.
'We endeavored to create a community where everything feels elevated but still approachable,' Burton says. You feel that the moment you walk in. According to a recent press release, the interiors were conceptualized by Kelly Wearstler and brought to life by Jules Wilson Design Studio, with a materials palette that reads, as said in the release.
Like a love letter to the Southern California landscape: hand-carved wood applications, Serafini marble flooring, fluted glass panels, handmade tiles, and 'richly textured walls' meant to establish a tone of 'grounded sophistication and tranquility.
' The cabinetry, the release notes, draws from 'an olive green, pebble, mushroom and powder blush color palette,' with rounded detailing and softly curved corners. Across the building's 260 units, the language is much more interested in feeling grounded than glossy. The most telling move Burton describes is, on paper, almost mundane.
'The gym has an operable Nanawall that opens completely,' he explains, 'and flooring that extends seamlessly outside, inviting residents to take a yoga mat or roll a piece of equipment into the fresh air — eliminating the barrier between inside and out. ' The thing he's after isn't a workout view. It's the absence of a wall between exercise and the rest of the day.
The same logic, he says, carries into the residences, where 95% of units feature a balcony or terrace. And the campus itself, in his framing, was laid out to 'subtly draw people toward the 1-acre on-site park.
' His point is that none of it is decorative. 'These aren't standalone perks that check a box,' he says. 'They all work in concert to shape an environment built around everyday wellness. ' The harder question, the one a lot of new buildings dodge, is whether residents actually want what's being sold to them.
Hospitality services. Programming. Lounges. Burton's view is that the appetite is real, but it isn't really about the perks.
The way he frames it, the appetite isn't for amenities at all. It's for the implied environment.
'People crave genuine community, so they want a home that's also a social ecosystem,' he explains. 'The momentum behind hospitality-focused living since the pandemic shows that people are looking for a community that feels tailored to their lives. ' RELATED: 5 Best-Performing Building Materials for Modern Homes The design move he keeps returning to is choice.
'Every common space in Habitat is designed so that you can go about your day completely solo, or you can bump into a neighbor, join something, be part of something. ' Programming, he says, was treated as part of the design. Spaces had to be comfortable and functional, but also 'programmed and activated in ways that encourage regular interaction.
' The point, the way he describes it, isn't whether the lounge is beautiful. It's whether anyone is in it. It's the kind of 'third space' Angelenos have been searching for. Not quite home, not a bar or a café, somewhere in between, programmed enough to draw you in but not so structured that it feels like work.
There's a detail Burton mentions that helps explain the rest of the campus. Habitat was designed during COVID. It's one of the first major buildings in LA to be delivered after it. That timeline, he says, shaped almost every decision on the property.
'The old distinction between where people live and where they work,' he observes, 'has fundamentally changed. ' RELATED: Why Designers Can’t Stop Talking About Biophilic Design Right Now The coworking space inside the residential building was built around that premise. Individual pods, breakout space, high-speed Wi-Fi throughout, a media room that he says caters to 'the area's creative workforce' by day and doubles as a social space on evenings and weekends.
Some units also include a dedicated desk area that can be closed off for residents who actually need to take a meeting at home. What that produces, when it works, isn't a building with a coworking lounge tacked on. It's a campus where the line between living and working is genuinely blurred. The bigger argument of the project comes into view when you stand in front of it on a weekday afternoon.
A cyclist rolls off the bike path. An office tenant takes a meeting outside. A resident walks back from Whole Foods. Somewhere up above, a balcony door is open.
It's a small scene, but it answers the bigger question Angelenos have been asking for a few years now. What does luxury actually mean in a city that's recalibrating around wellness, walkability, flexibility, and community?
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