San Francisco, California (2000)
The design of this 65 unit affordable housing was the result of a series of community design workshops involving many residents from the Bernal Heights neighborhood in San Francisco. The result was a compromise permitting the maximum number of units, a reduction in the required number of parking spaces, with an attractive massing of roof forms that the uphill neighborhood considered important.
The ground floor contains a neighborhood adult school and child care center supporting a pre-school and daycare. The adult school for the surrounding community and tenants is structured to assist the mostly single mothers to become economically self-sufficient and language proficient. Behind a bar-building defining the urban edge of a major Mission District crossroads are groups of family townhouses arranged over flats and grouped around discrete courtyards.
This organization of dwellings provides play areas secure from the surrounding heavily-trafficked streets.