At 11815 Laurelwood, in the vicinity of Carpenter and Ventura, east of Laurel Canyon, developers are busy erecting the latest housing designed to appeal to urban sophisticates. Mortgage lenders are drooling as they ever willingly loan money and devise some devious financial quakery to those suckers who can convincingly fake a high income. Interest only loans anyone? The last days of the bubble are leaving behind some strange architectural oddities…..

For close to a million dollars, these unpleasantly angled townhomes called “Deckhousecourt” sprout a butterfly shaped entrance leading to a collection of 21 residences. Cold steel windows and asymmetrical angles are a turn-off. Warm colors of rust, burnt orange and tan are meant to counteract the clinical, medical office aura.

The interiors are predictably white walled with high ceilings and not much else. Collectively, the homes do not create a community but wall off the building from the neighborhood and neighbors from each other. There are no common gardens, just a narrow corridor of doors. The court yard Spanish style antecedent of old Los Angeles is nowhere in evidence.

The community, in its defense, boasts the lovely and academically praised Carpenter School. There are large trees and hills. Ventura Boulevard, with its mod hair salons and upscale sushi restaurants is within walking distance. Hollywood is but minutes away, and for those who work at CBS on Radford, or anywhere in the East San Fernando Valley, this is the promised land.