Linkedin Instagram Youtube Facebook Search Shopping-cart
  • Merit Award

666 Oak

666 Oak completes a through-block campus consisting of artists’ housing and gathering spaces amidst landmark buildings in San Francisco’s Hayes Valley. Two challenges predominated:

  • Externally, weaving a modern building into the building fabric of the old Sacred Heart Church campus within the Hayes Valley Historic District.
  • Internally, providing needed housing for diverse household formations within a restrictive ordinance that encourages fewer, larger apartments.

We channeled the DNA of Edwardian rowhouses to fashion a modern companion to the neighboring structures: front stairs of Corten steel cantilever from a solid brick base, and an offset building massing with corner glazing above captures long views like traditional bay windows. The slope of the site and complex zoning regulations induce a split-level building section where each 3-bedroom home spreads across multiple levels. The section split defines common living areas and discrete private zones ideal for the flexible roommate and family living scenarios the owner wanted to accommodate. This sectional thinking also enabled a fifth level bedroom suite with panoramic views using zoning accommodations for dormers and sloping roofs. A mid-block light court illuminates artists’ private quarters in the adjacent old convent, and the kitchens, baths and living spaces of the new building.
//comments

The architect has done a skillful job of handling the density given the tight site and required split-levels. | The Oak Street facade does a remarkable job of being of our time but also fitting well into the existing fabric.

//framework for design excellence measures
Measure 1: Design for Integration
666 Oak provides an ambitious combination of energy efficiency, air-quality,and renewable energy, and passive approaches. The buildings systems consist of hydronic radiant heating from a high-efficiency common boiler boosted by solar thermal panels, with common area electricity use offset by photovoltaic panels in a 5kw/h array.

Limited housing opportunity is the omnipresent crisis in the San Francisco Bay Area. Creativity is required to to provide more and diverse housing types. In a dense pedestrian city with a delicate physical context, buildings must complement and enhance the shared urban spaces of the streets.  To ignore this mandate is to enrage the NIMBY’s and bureaucrats to no one’s benefit. 
Measure 2: Design for Equitable Communities
Residential amenities include private balconies, a common roof garden, multiple laundry rooms, day-lit corridors, indoor bike room, landscaped courtyard.
Measure 3: Design for Ecosystems
Measure 4: Design for Water
Measure 5: Design for Economy
San Francisco has the highest construction costs in the United States, and some of the highest land and resale values.  A successful project must integrate the cost and revenue sides of the ledger: extraordinary expense must enable extraordinary return.   In this climate, localized constraints present an opportunity to differentiate and create something unique.  Construction is of platform frame construction with plywood shear walls with concrete and steel only used at the ground floor for retaining walls and to span the garage and workshop area.  Platform framing is inexpensive, lightweight, and flexible.
Measure 6: Design for Energy
The buildings systems consist of hydronic radiant heating from a high-efficiency common boiler with common area electricity use offset by photovoltaic panels in a 5kw/h array.
Measure 7: Design for Well-Being
3 of the units are triple aspect with daylight and ventilation coming from the front, rear and an internal court.  The fouth unit is double aspect.  This enables cross ventilation and ample daylight.
Space heating is provided by in-floor hydronic radiant systems run off a high-efficiency central boiler, and zoned for each separate bedroom suite as well as the living spaces.  This allows evenly distributed comfort and efficiency.
Measure 8: Design for Resources
Reuse of existing retaining walls to shore up adjacent properties
Reduction of material and embodied carbon. 
Local brick from Northern California was used in lieu of brick imported from out of state.
Measure 9: Design for Change
The garage space was designed to also serves as a workshop or art studio with a high ceilinged area with natural diffused light provided by corner etched glazing, and mechancial ventilation.
Measure 10: Design for Discovery
The garage space was designed to also serves as a workshop or art studio with a high ceilinged area with natural diffused light provided by corner etched glazing, and mechancial ventilation.
Skip to content