The Hive Parklet is part of a movement to reclaim streets as public spaces shared by people and not just private single-occupancy cars. In its design—inspired by honeybees and the urban beekeeping movement – the Hive encourages community reflection on the interaction between nature and urban living. Bees are considered bioindicators of environmental health. With other insects, they are critical pollinators for flowering plants including many food crops. Due to a loss of habitat, among other reasons, there has been large-scale disappearance of honeybees.
How are we like honeybees in our need for healthy habitat?
How do shared public spaces contribute to sustainable, livable cities?
How can we make clean transportation options more accessible for all?
Urban sustainability is about putting people and communities first. Human-centered and playful, the Hive provides a unique but shared experience to residents, visitors, and nearby small businesses. It is one little park(ing) space toward building complete streets for everyone.
Program: Parklet
Project Area: 160 sf
Location: Denver, Colorado
Status: Completed 2019
Team: With Sola Grantham, Renee Ho, Yelena Prusakova, Manuel Lannaud, Susie Cho Lee and the students of Bollman Technical Education Center
Hosts: Spin, Better Block Foundation, City of Denver Department of Public Works, Denver Street Partnership and Downtown Denver Partnership
Awards: People’s Choice
This set of residential apartment units were one of the first to enter the permitting process under San Francisco’s new additional dwelling unit ordinances. The design pairs with mandatory seismic and life safety upgrades, meeting stringent requirements of the city’s planning department to create beautiful new living spaces in the lower level of a four story apartment building.
Program: 1-Bedroom and Studio+ Apartments
Project Area: 12,000 sf
Location: San Francisco, California
Status: Completed 2020
Team: Collaboration w/ Alda Capi
The existing 1950’s home backs into a hillside, surrounded by majestic redwoods with the distinctive volume of the main level hanging over a small garage below. The addition respects the original architecture by matching the scale and tectonic expression of the new volume to its neighbor, with matching roof lines, window rhythms and cantilever.
The natural context, with its crisp air and visually engaging topography lent itself to interior configurations that open to the outside while still maintaining a sense of cozy intimacy. The project went through a number of iterations, finally settling into a multiple bedroom addition whose irregular polygonal footprint fit snugly into a constrained area, minimizing grading work while providing equitable, airy living arrangements for the pair of teenage twins taking up residence in the space. A new entry hall, located at the original main access point to the rear yard, manifests the parti, blurring the transition between indoors and outdoors.
Program: Single Family Residence Addition
Project Area: 1,400 sf + 500 sf
Location: Mill Valley, California
Status: Completed 2019
Team: Collaboration w/ Alexander Key
The Moscone Center Expansion enlarges and updates one of the country’s most loved convention centers which welcomes upwards of 1 million visitors annually. Located in the heart of San Francisco, the project meets the challenge of increasing exhibition, meeting, ballroom and pre-function areas through carefully choreographed underground work and replacement of existing buildings along Howard St., the gateway to both north and south portions of the Center. The new work transforms the Moscone Center’s previous incarnation as a largely underground, hidden venue into a prominent public structure along Howard Ave., whose transparency and pedestrian-scale embellishments create a welcoming promenade. The clarity of architectural expression belies the extremely complex design process that navigated complex technical, regulatory and scheduling constraints.
Program: Convention center lobbies, pre-function spaces, meeting rooms, ballroom, exhibition hall
Project Area: 800,000 sf (305,000 sf new construction)
Location: San Francisco, California
Status: Completed 2019
Team: While at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill.
Role: Design Architect from competition entry to CD’s.
Kaleidoscope is both a Cafe and Performance Venue. During the day, it’s a calm place to sip coffee by the window, work in the warehouse, or read a book in the library. By night, tables and benches transform into a stage where bards tell tales and musicians fiddle lively tunes. A three-dimensional installation of triangles invites visitors in and frames the bar in a kaleidoscopic rainbow.
Program: Cafe, performance space
Project Area: 1,500 sf
Location: Point Richmond, CA
Status: Completed 2015
Team: Collaboration w/ Alexander Key
The condominium tower, LEED Gold certified, is currently under construction on one of the remaining available properties along San Francisco’s downtown Embarcadero waterfront.
As a design architect on the project, I participated in numerous iterations of 75 Howard to meet stringent zoning criteria, particularly as it related to scale and bulk within the urban grain. As the height of the volume diminished with each consecutive round of negotiations with stakeholders, new volumetric expressions were explored in order to maintain an appropriate relationship between the overall building proportions and its comprising elements.
The final design reflects the horizontal orientation of the pedestrian plane and panoramic water vista by means of setbacks that break the volume into a vertical assemblage of boxes. The spaces carved out between these boxes become long terraces that frame the wraparound views of the Bay Bridge and city beyond while seamlessly integrating into the open floor plans of the residences. To further enhance the indoor/outdoor connection, the ultra efficient structural design employs eight-inch post-tensioned slabs and sculptural stepped flag columns, allowing for 20 ft cantilevers and increased floor-to-ceiling heights.
Program: Luxury apartments, restaurant
Project Area: 335,000 sf
Location: San Francisco, California
Status: Completed
Team: While at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill
The homeowners of this Los Gatos rancher wanted to improve their cooking and dining experience and also bring more light into the home’s living spaces. We proposed to expand the kitchen and dining area, creating a larger, more open floor plan whose expansive windows allow a generous indoor/outdoor connection to the patio and wooded views beyond. A custom hutch separates the kitchen from the dining space, maintaining communication between the two areas even as it discreetly contains each space. Louvered windows optimize interior illumination while controlling unnecessary heat gain. A dedicated foyer offers a mediating threshold with functional storage.
Program: Single Family Residence
Project Area: 2,000 sf
Location: Los Gatos, California
Status: Completed
Team: Collaboration w/ Alexander Key
St. Paul’s Nursery School is a part-time educational program for 3-5 year olds, with a play based curriculum supporting the development of the whole child - socially, emotionally, physically and intellectually. A vital component of the program is the play yard, an expansive outdoor space where children spend about half of their time at the school. The existing space offers many zones, including two racing tracks, a grass lawn, a barn, an art area, a fall zone, a covered eating area, a sandbox and a dig/water area. As the fall zone area improvements reached the end of their useful life, St. Paul’s commissioned us to envision a tiered and phased approach toward the renovation that would take into account different budgets based on varying projected levels of fundraising.
Our solutions take into account stringent code requirements, salvaging existing components for reuse, working with play yard fabricators and custom design of new climbing elements responding to the community’s feedback regarding the best approaches needed to enhance the existing play space.
In addition to the fall zone schemes, we suggested additional improvements to other areas of the play yard, including a new art & science zone, increasing connection to and relocation of elements to the underutilized grass lawn, stage embellishment, a barn loft, and hill waterway improvement at the dig zone.
Program: Playground
Project Area: 10,500 sf
Location: Burlingame, California
Status: In Process
Drawings; Ainura Kasmalieva
Team: Collaboration w/ Sola Grantham
