Public Art + Residential living
950 Tennessee is a 100-unit residential building in the Dogpatch and spans the width of a city block from Tennessee to Minnesota Streets. Handel Architects created a series of massing moves to integrate the building into its context by tuning the style and massing of each facade to meet its industrial and residential contexts on each face, while streetscape designs were tailored to continue urban canopies and facilitate a more enjoyable walking experience.
950 Tennessee, SF
Neighborhood: Dogpatch
Date: Completed 2020
Size: 1 Acre
Client: Leap Development
Role: Landscape Architecture
Features: Public Art Exhibition, Custom Urban Furniture, Courtyard Podium Design, Lighting Design, Roof Deck Design
Streetscape + Courtyard
Fletcher Studio developed a series of spaces for the project, including the new public passage The Dogpatch Artwalk [link to project page], streetscapes, inner courtyard, and roof deck. Kentucky Place had once been a multi-block passageway that saw the daily migrations of ironworkers to and from the working waterfront of historic Dogpatch. The project used this historic heritage, industrial materials, and daily circulation as the conceptual underpinning for the project. Each space focused on different methods of "daylighting" these processes. While daylighting traditionally refers to moving creeks and waterways out of sewers and culverts and back into the literal daylight through restoration, the 950 Tennessee project created an opportunity to daylight historic social processes through movement, form, and materials.
ROOFTOP
While the lower spaces focused on historic reinterpretations, the building's roof deck opted for a contemporary approach. After a tightly coordinated layout with the MEP team to maximize occupiable roof space and positioning to take in the sweeping views of the Central Waterfront and Downtown, the design team used a hide/reveal strategy of the mechanical system to inform the space's design. A series of perforated wind screens lend human comfort from the dominant western winds and hide much of the HVAC system. As a subtle counter, the paving system subtly extended the linear lines and right angles of the HVAC system into the ground plane of the occupiable roof deck. Collectively, a series of variously scaled spaces ranging form intimate nooks to expansive community and group areas are arrayed across the roof deck and tied together by metal screens, pavers, and integrated seating and cooking areas.
GREEN INFRASTRUCTURE
Rainwater from the rooftop is collected and transferred into an irrigation cistern below the building. That cistern is used to provide water for all of the planting areas across the site.
the Design Process
