Lorcan O’Herlihy, Who Helped Shape West Hollywood’s Modern Architecture, Dies at 66

Lorcan O’Herlihy built at least nine buildings in West Hollywood. That’s not nothing in a city of 1.9 square miles where the development battles are often brutal and the entitlements never come easy. At least nine completed projects from one architect is a body of work. He died June 14 in Los Angeles. He was only 66.

His studio, Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects — known as LOHA — confirmed the cause was glioblastoma.

He’d been working in West Hollywood longer than most people knew. The first building came in 2006. Gardner 1050 at 1050 Gardner St. is a 10-unit apartment building, one of the earliest examples of what would become LOHA’s signature approach to infill housing. A year later came Habitat 825 at 825 N. Kings Road, built directly next to Rudolf Schindler’s Kings Road House. LOHA reduced the building to two stories on the north side to avoid casting shadows on the landmark next door.

Then Willoughby 7917 at 7917 Willoughby Ave., completed in 2008. Eight units on an infill lot, with staggered interior walls between neighbors that gave each unit a different layout.

Then Formosa 1140, perhaps one of the more personal buildings for Herlihy. Formosa 1140 was completed in 2009 on North Formosa Avenue. Eleven condominiums, four stories, wrapped in a grid of vivid red and orange metal panels. Developer Richard Loring said later that people would stop in front of it and just stare. “It kind of looks like a painting more than a building,” Loring said.

The color wasn’t random. O’Herlihy’s father was the actor Dan O’Herlihy, known for films including The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe and Waterloo. Dan O’Herlihy had spent evenings at the Formosa Café on Santa Monica Boulevard, drinking with Orson Welles. The red-orange panels on the facade were a direct nod to the café’s exterior. The building is a few blocks away.

There was also a design decision that turned out to matter to the City. Instead of building a private courtyard for residents, O’Herlihy pushed the housing volume to one side of the lot and gave the remaining third of the site — roughly 4,600 square feet — to the City of West Hollywood as a pocket park. It got leased back and developed as part of a network of small parks the City was trying to build out at the time. At the time of Formosa 1140’s design, West Hollywood had two public parks serving a population where 90 percent of residents lived in multi-family buildings and only 1 percent of total land was allocated to open space.

After Formosa 1140 came 1030 Kings Road, a 25-unit condominium building a few blocks from Habitat 825, with cantilevered corners, faceted facades, and perforated metal panels. San Vicente 935 followed in 2018 at 935 N. San Vicente Blvd., on a narrow lot between Santa Monica and Sunset. Seven units, four stories, built around a central courtyard lined with wood slats. O’Herlihy reduced the allowable building envelope to make the courtyard larger. Every unit has at least three exterior exposures. Rooftop terrace on top. The staircase runs through the courtyard and becomes the social spine of the building. It won a Best of Year Award from Interior Design Magazine and is considered one of the best multi-unit buildings in LA by the Westside Urban Forum. It’s been described as not just an apartment building but a work of art.

In 2022, LOHA completed Stanley 1351 at 1351 N. Stanley Ave. in Spaulding Square, a four-unit prefabricated building assembled on-site over two days from modular units built in a factory in Rialto. Last year, LOHA finished 1136 La Cienega, a 23-unit, five-story building at 1136-1142 N. La Cienega Blvd. with a cantilevering stepped profile that follows the contour of the street.

The biggest was AKA West Hollywood at 8500 W. Sunset Blvd., a two-building project on the southwest corner of Sunset and La Cienega — a full two-acre city block on the Strip. LOHA co-designed it with Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. Two eight-story towers, 190 units, 30,000 square feet of ground-floor retail. A pedestrian walkway runs between the towers, open to the street. The building went up in 2017 and now operates as a luxury extended-stay hotel.

Outside West Hollywood, LOHA completed work across California and in Detroit, where the studio opened a second office in 2016. The website describes LOHA as an architectural and urban design firm that embraces architecture as a social act. The firm built supportive housing for formerly homeless individuals, student housing complexes at UC Santa Barbara, affordable housing made from shipping containers. O’Herlihy received the Maybeck Award, the AIA California Lifetime Achievement Award, and the AIA Los Angeles Gold Medal. In 2018, Architect Magazine ranked LOHA No. 1 in design in its annual survey of American firms. In 2025, Fast Company named LOHA the No. 1 most innovative firm in architecture in the world.

He published a monograph in 2017 titled Architecture Is a Social Act. That was also the phrase he used to describe what his office was trying to do. “When we design a building, we’re concerned about how it impacts the sidewalk and the street, and how it impacts the social and civic world,” he said.

Before establishing his practice, O’Herlihy studied architecture at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, then received a Master of Arts in History and Critical Thinking from the Architectural Association in London. He worked for Kevin Roche John Dinkeloo and Associates, then for Steven Holl Architects, then for I.M. Pei and Partners, where he was part of the team that designed the glass pyramid at the Musée du Louvre in Paris. He founded LOHA in 1994.

He is survived by his wife, Cornelia Hayes O’Herlihy, and their twin sons, Daire and Darcy. His funeral will take place in Glencar, Ireland.