Work
Seniors Community Housing/Health Facilities
Bernal Gateway
San Francisco, CA (2000)
This 65 unit affordable housing was the result of a series of community design workshops design involving many residents of the Bernal Heights neighborhood of San Francisco. The result was a compromise permitting the maximum number of units, a reduction in the requirement for parking, 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 that supports a pre-school and daycare center. 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 over flats, grouped around courtyards.
This organization of dwellings provides play areas secure from the surrounding heavily-trafficked streets.