mission rock street rooms competition
San Francisco, CA
Competition Entry
Outdoor Pavilion
Completion: 2021
Project Overview
In response to Mission Rock’s “Street Rooms” competition, our team proposed “Inhabitable Skins: A Cultural Invitation”; an urban room that provides comfortable respite, potential for social interaction, and a reimagined intimate potential for public space.
Project Team
Hansy Better Barraza
Anthony J. Piermarini
Iris Kim
Youngiu Kim
Damian Bolden
Ivan Tae
Developer
Mission Rock Partners
Urban Layers
Skins as cultural invitations
The surrounding neighborhood revealed many urban layers or “skins” that function as moments of pause, community, and sense of place. Studio Luz played off of this concept as an opportunity to create socially interwoven spaces for the community to constantly redefine.
Current Events as Precedent
Covid-19 and the duality of skin
COVID-19 revealed to us that translucent and transparent skins have been dually used as barriers of physical contact and enhancers of social contact. We looked at precedents such as “hug curtains” to consider potential new uses of architectural skins to allow both physical and emotional contact in new ways.
an urban room
scales of inhabitance, changes in program
Users can enter this urban room to enjoy sheltered seating, interaction with others, and play of light, and ambiguity through the translucent layers of skin. At dusk, the skin becomes a canvas, illuminating in multicolored LED lights that can be tailored to special occasions or cultural events, or acting as a projection surface.
About Mission Rock
In San Francisco
Mission Rock is a new development project along San Francisco’s eastern waterfront. The new development will includes 8 acres of new public parks and open space, more than 1,000 new rental housing units (with 40 percent affordable to low- and moderate-income households), commercial and retail space, street reconfigurations and improved waterfront access for pedestrians, and sea level rise resiliency and
adaptation features.
Mission Rock’s Shared Public Way is a street plan that prioritizes pedestrian access and minimizes vehicle movement. This competition solicited proposals for “street rooms” that would create a lively and unique environment for the pedestrian-oriented space. Studio Luz Architects proposed “Inhabitable Skins: A Cultural Invitation” on a site along the Shared Public Way located in close proximity to diverse cultural communities such as Mission Dolores and Chinatown. Though this entry did not win the competition, we are proud of our submission and pleased to share our vision with you.
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