1028 Natoma Street / Stanley Saitowitz | Natoma Architects

Jul 2009

By Nico Saieh — Filed under: Housing , Offices , Selected , California, Stanley Saitowitz | Natoma Architects, Steel, USA

Architects: Stanley Saitowitz | Natoma Architects
Location: San Francisco, CA, USA
Project year: 2004-2005
Photographs: Natoma Architects

This project, on a twenty-five-by-eighty-foot lot next to 1022 Natoma Street, continues the investigation of San Francisco infill buildings. At the street level are parking and entrance lobby; above are four stacked units. One thickened party wall provides vertical access and a light court. The other acts as a service zone, condensing kitchens, bathrooms, laundry, and storage behind sliding glass doors.

Floating walls divide the free space in the center, which is finished with a variety of materials all in different shades of white. The front facade has a bay-window silhouette constructed of horizontal aluminum bar grating, which provides both shading for the southern exposure and a veil shielding the city beyond. The surfaces behind the bay are sheathed in perforated metal.

: site plan

: ground floor plan

: second floor plan

: third floor plan

: elevation 01

: elevation 02

: sections 01

: sections 02

: facade detailed section

29 comments »

NM says:

beautiful

# July 7, 2009 at 04:36

Joe Klein says:

What doors are those can i get a manufactures name? plz been looking for doors like that for a long time.

# July 11, 2009 at 22:53

rebound2000 says:

very elegant. I have a concern though. How to clean the sliding doors facing out onto the road? From the detail they dont look like they swing round…

# July 7, 2009 at 08:42

M says:

Very nice, but why are there 2 staircases? It’s a one-family house…

# July 7, 2009 at 08:55

M – it’s a series of apartments not an individual dwellings

# July 7, 2009 at 09:04

sullka says:

M it’s an apartment building.

HOwever, you’re correct, you’re just pointing out to a dumb regulation in US architecture, atleast in some states and cases, and this one is a good example.

You have to have 2 means of egress, no matter how small your building is. In these cases the emergency stairs aren’t based on buidling size nor occupancy, nor minimum distance to the stair, it’s just a law, you have to have 2 of them.

I find that nonsense, specially in cases like this one, probably half the space in each floor is going to be circulation.

# July 7, 2009 at 09:43

Thiago Beck says:

I found this project to be very concise and objective, except for the 2-stair regulation wich is dumb. I enjoyed the way aluminum bars turned out to look lie one big solid mass.I also really like open plans like this. Congratulations.

# July 7, 2009 at 09:57

Joshua says:

@sullka and m

According to the section, one of them is to the car/park garage and the other serves the main entry. But you’re right sullka, it’s ridiculous.

I wonder if one of them could have been an exterior stair? Perhaps if used across the front facade reoriented 90 degrees it might serve as the required shading and also as a means of cleaning the sliding doors as mentioned above? Would entail replannign the space to push all of the bedrooms to the back maybe.

# July 7, 2009 at 10:13

Just one thing. If the regulations are so strict the 2 stairs are mandatory, what about railings? I haven’t noticed them! Please enlighten me!

# July 7, 2009 at 10:21

David Basulto [tricky] says:

Thiago,

They are there, I visited this building a few months ago. We just didn´t had images of the stairs.

I want to add that one that the volume on the left contains the apartments, and the other volume contains the offices for Natoma Arch.

# July 7, 2009 at 10:58

Kate says:

Only one bedroom each? What am I missing?

# July 7, 2009 at 12:14

Kate,

1 bedroom apartments are very typical in some cities, for young professionals with no kids for example.

# July 7, 2009 at 12:43

JustinM says:

Love the open plan design. Love the straight lines.

Love the shade over the front/sides of the building. Anyone know exactly what they’re made of? I assume metal but does anyone know the exact product?

# July 7, 2009 at 12:47

Well, not very typical over here.. but thanks for the intel!

# July 7, 2009 at 13:11

Thank you guys for explanation. It’s a weird regulation with those 2 stairs.

Now I remind myself all those US movies in which bad guys are escaping evacuation stairs on the outside of the building :]

In Poland, for example, the number of staircases depends on the area of a floor and is connected with the lenght of a escape route.

# July 7, 2009 at 17:15

Thanks David for the info!

# July 7, 2009 at 17:52

Terry Glenn Phipps says:

To me this is a non-response to the vernacular. Admittedly, there are valid reasons to ignore context in much of San Francisco but it seems to me that there ought to be at least be some kind of acknowledgement of what the city is. At the end of the day this is a box that responds to the need for volume and the building code.

# July 7, 2009 at 20:32

JuanLuisBurke says:

Finally somebody mentions the architectural context in which this box has been inserted, and the way it has been completely and utterly ignored. Whether this building is worthy of the space it took up or not, I find it inadmissible that architects do not, for a minute, regard the spirit of the place, and so easily go and alter an environment that is historically and aesthetically worthy of some respect.

# July 7, 2009 at 22:05

Metrozoe says:

I have to chime in about the context as well. I think it is pretty much a draw – the street is a mix of industrial and Victorian – so you could make a claim for either context. Still, seeing this next to that Victorian makes my heart fall. I like Stanley’s work but this is a scaleless and arid facade in a part of town that probably needs humanizing architecture at the pedestrian level more.

# July 7, 2009 at 22:30

Frank Phelps says: