Photo © Marisol Diaz

Regionally, El Monte established a precedent regarding communal areas for housing projects. Prior to the complex’s construction, collective housing was built around inner courtyards, cutting residents’ activities off from the streetscape without allowing any privacy within the space. At El Monte, a semi-public sense of privacy is maintained in both the exterior and interior spatial sequence of landscape and architecture. These two innovations helped to create a new local precedent in the landscape design of future multi-family housing developments.

Furthermore, the landscape of El Monte Norte (North) is of relevance as an early surviving Hideo Sasaki project.

Sasaki founded a Massachusetts-based firm in 1953 while heading the Landscape Architecture program at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. El Monte evolved in his office during the period in which Sasaki was engaged on now-celebrated projects including Hilton Head Island (1958 onwards) and the Upjohn Corporation World Headquarters in Kalamazoo, Michigan (with SOM, 1957-1961).

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