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DAVID BAKER CREATES AN OASIS FOR FAMILY LIFE IN A DISTRICT KNOWN FOR BEING INHOSPITABLE.
Jammed with weary-looking buildings along blocks of drug dealers doing business, San Francisco's Tenderloin isn't a neighborhood where you'd expect to find children. But large numbers of Asian immigrant families now live there, drawn by proximity to the downtown shops and restaurants where many newcomers find work.
Program
In 2001, when the Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corporation (TNDC) had a chance to build housing from the ground up, the nonprofit, which manages 1,600 apartments in 21 buildings, knew the population it should serve. "There are 4,000 children in the Tenderloin," explained Donald Falk, TNDC's executive director. "There's a tremendous demand for family housing, and very little exists."
Curran House, a 67-unit complex where 38 apartments have two or three bedrooms, opened in 2005. It rises from a lot that's long and relatively shallow, wedged between aged apartment buildings on three sides. Zoning set the height of one side of the lot at 85 feet and the other at 120 feet, with a 20-foot setback from the street at the sixth floor. Parking spaces were required despite proximity to subway and bus lines.
"This is the hardest floor plan we've ever done--a Rubik's Cube puzzle where we had this volume and had to slide the units in," said Curran House architect David Baker, FAIA, who has made a specialty of high-density and often low-cost housing.
Solution
Baker's first move to solve the puzzle came when he convinced city planners to waive the upper-floor setback requirement, allowing the space to be used...