Location: Octavia Street, Central Freeway Project Redevelopment Site, San Francisco, California
Scope: Proposal for the facade design for a new 5 story, 13 unit, apartment building for low-income adults with developmental disabilities. Ground floor commercial space is planned for a vocational art center and gallery.
Design Approach: The design responds to the neighborhood with strong forms that command the urban site balanced with interactive, human-scaled elements that engage the community around it. The building is conceived as a celebration of solar energy with the roofs angled and oriented to catch the maximum amount of sunlight. The high-tech photovoltaic panels are integrated into a whimsical “floating roof” design. The façade materials, formed metal siding, concrete block, and fiber-cement panels with metal battens were chosen for durability and low maintenance and were incorporated into the design to express the structure and program of the building.