print this article | 
e-mail this article
comment 
Museum Residences
156 West Superior
'PORTICO' Scots Church Redevelopment
Clipper Mill Assembly Building
De Plussenburgh
6747-6759 St-Urbain Street
Guerrero Street Mixed-Use Development
Viridian Noosa Residences
165 Charles Street
Lofts23Guerrero Street Mixed-Use Development
Three San Francisco townhouses frame views up to-and from-the roof
Unlike the typical deep mid-block parcel, corner lots lack access to both usable open space and a sense of privacy. In response, Kennerly Strong Architecture upended the horizontal front-back relationship of the typical row house to create three vertical homes that flow upward from a formal entry court to roof gardens with panoramic views. Externally, the building has two personas: the private one uses a required rear yard setback to create a sheltered entry court and parking access for the residents; the public one, a retail storefront, wraps around the corner, maximizing activity along the streets.
Based on what you have seen and read about this project, how would you grade it? Use the stars below to indicate your assessment, five stars being the highest rating.
The result is three townhouse condominiums of between 1,600 and 1,800 square feet each, and a street-level storefront with basement storage in a part of San Francisco’s Mission District that is considered a “transitional” area. Located at a busy intersection, the 50-foot-by-58-foot corner site was previously home to a one-story liquor store. Several small commercial enterprises and a variety of residential apartment buildings adhering to a 40-foot height limit form the townhouses’ immediate context at the toe of a hill.
Kennerly Strong developed and organized the building in section—placing the three town-homes side-by-side above the horizontal commercial storefront. Voids are opened up in the floor plates allowing extended interior vistas up through the units connecting the occupants with exterior split-level roof decks. The clerestory windows frame views of the city, sky, and distant hilltops.
Cantilevers pull the building beyond its property lines within the allowable bay-window envelopes and are rendered in a bold material palette of copper, glass, and steel. Combined with deep recessed planes of black stucco, these moves express the vertical grain of the interiors and convey a sense of rhythm and scale sympathetic with the older urban fabric that surrounds them.
Formal name of project: Guerrero Street Mixed-Use Development
Location: 201 Guerrero Street at the corner of 14th Street
San Francisco, California.
Gross square footage: 10,000 square feet gross. Includes all parking garages, basement, inhabited roof-decks and all stairways.
Total construction cost: Hard Cost*- $2.15 million = $215/ sq.ft . *exclusive of fees, financing, consultants, taxes, insurance and land costs.
Owner: Developer- Werner and Associates; Jan Werner
Architect:
Kennerly Strong Architecture
375 Alabama Street; suite 440;
San Francisco CA, 94110
www.kennerlyarchitecture.com
Reader Comments:
