A refuge in the Tenderloin, this affordable mid-rise replaces a surface parking lot with supportive homes for low-income and formerly homeless families and individuals. The 8-story building offers on-site social services, neighborhood retail, and flexible open green space—a scarce resource in the area. The 113 homes, which range from studio to three-bedroom, include 30 units designated for formerly homeless families.

The building form is decisively modern, with a faceted geometry that is made possible by its concrete structure. This faceted volume is covered in natural, local glazed tile that resembles and honors the brick characterizing the surrounding historic buildings. Layered on the brick, sunshades at each window have a carefully-designed tapered shape and two-tone color in order to optimize heat gain, daylight, and maintenance. These contribute to the building’s refined and dynamic appearance. Inside, the building is organized to maximize the number of homes while preserving openness and safe interconnection with the public and green space.

As the central urban site lies in a food desert with little open space, the development team dedicated both ground-floor retail and roof space to augment the owner’s urban agriculture program, provide a produce market, and support local business.

From its earliest conception the vision for this LEED Platinum project was to leverage a prominent, underutilized site in the heart of San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood to yield multiplying benefits to the residents and surrounding community.

222 Taylor is one of the first certified ENERGY STAR Homes for Midrise Multifamily projects in the state. A central hydronic heating system, high solar thermal offset, and efficient lighting controls and fans contribute to its low modeled energy use intensity. In combining solar thermal with PV, the building makes the most of the Btu of solar energy available to its limited roof area.

The design team modeled thermal comfort to ensure that sun shading, ceiling fans and tempered ventilation would be sufficient to ward off heat waves without air conditioning, including under future weather scenarios. To safeguard air quality, MERV-13 filtered fresh air is provided to all spaces.