Carved Terrace Block.

Setup

AIA San Francisco's Housing+ competition asked architects to answer the city's housing crisis with buildable, multi-unit schemes. Object Territories entered three. Carved Terrace Block is the one the jury kept.

oaki produced the renderings for all three schemes in 2023.

Tension

Three schemes, one deadline, one jury reading hundreds of boards in a sitting. Each scheme had to hold its own argument without borrowing from the other two, and all three had to read as one practice. Housing competitions are lost on the boards that look like every other housing board.

Approach

The frames stay at street level, where the jury's question lives: what is it like to live here, and what does the block give back to the corner. The carved terraces do the arguing from outside; the timber interiors carry it inside. One San Francisco light throughout, the soft overcast the city actually has.

Outcome

Carved Terrace Block received a Merit Award at AIA San Francisco's Housing+ competition. The results were covered by The Architect's Newspaper and Architectural Review. Source: the AIASF awardees announcement.

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