Octavia Boulevard

City Block – Building Block was a concept for the San Francisco Prize Octavia Boulevard Housing Design Competition.

The urban texture of San Francisco is largely influenced by the homogeneous nature of its city grid. Hayes Valley’s grid structure is marked by occasional scars, which disrupt the homogeneity of the urban structure while also revealing the history or the geology of the place. Those scars of the past now hold the potential to become the expressions of the present, revealing the geology of the city and helping to create a diverse and multilayered, or living, city.

This problematic past and its resulting diversity however, is exactly what makes this neighborhood so diverse, vibrant and interesting; Its little nooks and crannies, its alleys that come to life on warm summer days, the ever changing flux of stores that are everything but traditional and even the scars that old city planning sins left behind. All of those things helped make Hayes Valley what it is today – one of the most attractive and interesting neighborhoods of the city. We want to preserve this diversity and use it as a concept to develop an architectural language that incorporates the existing without copying it; reflecting the past, incorporating the present and thereby creating the future.

We are using the image of a non-specific city block as an example for the built structure of the city, using the image as a graphic design guideline to develop the floor plan as well as the elevations for a system that reflects the geology or history of the city on a macro as well as a micro scale. The solid or the main structure represents the city block, the existing structure and the city. The cavities in the solid block stand for the urban change and growth, becoming the parts that will be filled with new meaning and functions – giving the area as well as the building a diversity of functions as well as a unique and contemporary architectural expression. As the overall concept is site un-specific, it can easily be adapted to different configurations and sites, becoming an extended design guideline for the whole development of the Octavia Boulevard.