A City in a Park - The Plan

Vertical Housing

Work # 4 San Francisco 1956

click on left icon to go to Concept of the Tower
click on right icon to go to Building the Tower

The floor plan is accomplished by a system of components including built-ins, kitchen and Baths units, partitions, doors and exterior glass walls, balcony rails and so on. All these can be configured by each family as they desire and can be changed as family requirements change. This systemization of components is simular to the Boulder Affordable Housing Project of 1980.

A few of the units have a second level (see section) which affords more private rooms and home office space. The layout shown is a “typical” arrangement with a Living Area, a Master Bedroom and two additional Bedrooms which share a Bath.

With this basic arrangement, all rooms are oriented outward like living in a tree house. In a landscape like the San Francisco Bay Area, trees grow to considerable height therefore eliminating the too detached aspect common with multi-story buildings. The placement of the towers in the existing landscape and the the planting of new tress is a critical design element in providing the appropriate mix of prospect, refuge and sun, shade, view, privacy. Families can exercise choice in this regard by selecting from towers with different compass orientation and by the floor level they take. Properly done, there can be as much variety of “lot” choice as provided in a hilly landscape.

The open two story Balconies will be oriented basically to the south with variety provided by different Towers facing more or less toward the Southeast or Southwest. These Balconies will capture heat from the sun which will be supplemented by on-demand floor heating. The idea is that this becomes an active outdoor living space which is appropriate for the mild climate of the Bay Area. In addition, because of the ready access to the mostly open landscape, this design is biased toward an active outdoor lifestyle something too rare in the Urban/Suburban setting. The acreage around the Towers will range from formal recreational areas to quite walks to as close to wilderness that can be achieved on this scale. The “simple” floor plan is based on this assumption. The loss of nature and access to landscape so common with the city is not necessary. Everyone living in this building is a few minutes away from the landscape they desire.

April 8, 2009 Update

The 3d Model shows the basic concrete structure of the 3/4 floor platforms upon which each resident can develop as they want from a kit of modular parts. The shadows are as they will appear at 11:50 AM, September 16, 2009 on a Tower which is pointed due south.

With modern, light weight, insulated, radiant heated and ecologically cleaner concrete, the superstructure will be self erected - using the central core as a crane - from pre-cast units. A floor a day can be put together from less than 20 pieces.

The recent housing melt down, water shortages, energy crises, transportation issues and economic blow out - add in the middle of it all an actual shortage of decent housing in may parts of the world - may present an opportunity for people to begin to reevaluate and re-act in how they think about their personal lifestyle and the human constructed environment they live in. If so, projects like this will have their place. There is no one solution. We need a variety of means. The underlying philosophy, however, has to be rethought and made congruent with Nature, human aspirations and the situation we find ourselves in which is very likely just a down payment on the future.

My early work of the 1950s, while I was doing my apprenticeship to architecture, focused on basic housing, the transportation infrastructure and education - all primarily in the San Francisco bay Area. This work was ignored. Now, 53 years later, most of the negative consequences I had hoped we could avoid have come to pass. Even, we are told, a top quality education is no longer possible for most let alone all. How did such a wealthy and creative society get into such a mess? For one thing, we read our own PR releases - and believed the hype. For another, integrity went out the window. Excess dominated in almost all reams, except common sense. Alternatives were not tried. Waste became our greatest output. We lost our way. It is not too late and we may find great pleasure in getting back to and relearning the fundamentals of life and living.

Architecture both reflects and facilitates life. Our present architecture is a monument to our carelessness. In A Future By Design Not Default I propose that the Human Enterprise is at risk as a consequence of neglect. We need to take a generation and put our house back in order. We can live very well while doing this and so can all life on this planet.

The Tower will be prefabricated from a kit of parts. After the building is out of the ground and to the second floor, work will proceed at a floor a day with interiors following shortly thereafter. Click on the drawing to go to Building the Tower.

It has been my goal from the day I walked into an architect’s office to go to work for the first time, to integrate the Design/Build/Use process. I do not know how an authentic architecture can be created otherwise. Going on 53 years of work - as of this posting - the means for doing this are just coming into hand. And, at last, the economic-ecological imperatives seem to be aligning in such a way that they will create a market for a new kind of architecture built a new way. It would be easy now, in this more economically and ecologically aware time, to reject the notions of tall buildings, mega cities and space habitats. This would be a mistake - throwing the baby out with the bath water. The problem is not these kinds of buildings. The problem is how they were conceived and built, how their ideas were exploited, what they cost and their unintended consequences because of non-systemic thinking. Tall buildings and mega structures are justifiable only when they facilitate density without crowding and open the land immediately around them for organic use - by humans and animals and including local farming. This works, of course, only if a new infrastructure is created along with radically improved transportation systems. This works only if it is approached from the perspective of Planetary Architecture.