The Future of Gaychitecture

We always love renderings of things that are allegedly going to be built, particularly those things that probably won’t, as happens in these cases. We don’t think you should hold your breath for “BOOM,” which is a proposed development in Southern California for community living for the gay “retiring” population. (And before we enjoy the fun architect porn, may I somberly and joylessly point out that there are huge, monster, enormous issues facing the gays, particularly those between 35 and 55? The next generation will likely have family structures not dissimilar to straight people to assist in aging issues; the previous generation often just died in silence, particularly prematurely. But what becomes of us current childless gays in our coming golden years — particularly the un-rich ones? Not that this is something that keeps me up at night every night or anything.) So this planned community idea is a “$250 million love child of BOOM Communities, Inc., a Los Angeles-based real estate investment company,” which has no public-facing information. (Development projects are so annoying: sure we’ll talk about the potential architects, and the competition: but, like, whose money is it?) Here is a very comprehensive look at the architecture and marketing challenges, and here you may enjoy renderings by all ten architects that have submitted, including some of our faves like LOT-EK.