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Wrns Studio’S Mixed-Use Brickline Feels Right At Home In San MateoVisit almost any growing city in the country and a monoculture of residential architecture will likely become apparent—a proliferation of five-over-one apartment buildings, meant to meet a growing demand for commuter-friendly units amid nationwide housing shortages. When San Francisco–based WRNS Studio was approached by longtime client Prometheus Real Estate Group, the firm saw an opportunity to push back against this trend: the apartment developer, who had first met WRNS through the firm’s pro-bono work with the Trust for Public Land, wanted the studio to design a mixed-use housing and commercial project in San Mateo, California, just steps from a regional transit hub in the city’s walkable, vital downtown. The site, formerly occupied by a grocery store and surface parking lot, was ripe for development for young professionals seeking amenity-rich urban housing. It would also be the new headquarters for Prometheus, which wanted to convey its nearly 60-year history in the Bay Area with bespoke offices.
Brickline spans a whole city block in downtown San Mateo. Photo © Jason O'Rear
As the WRNS team and their clients toured the city’s streets during initial project meetings, “We looked at how to connect from a material perspective, but also on the massing side because San Mateo has a certain scale, and there’s a 55-foot height limit to this site,” says partner Brian Milman, who led the project for WRNS along with founding partner Bryan Shiles.
Stair leading to rooftop deck. Photo © Jason O'Rear
The finished building, spanning an entire block, respects the city’s pedestrian experience with a headhouse form on its North B Street–facing side, which gradually tapers and cedes to a widened sidewalk and end-of-block plaza sheltered by a pronounced roof overhang. The program’s elements are broken down by material cues: brick, wood, and ribbed metal facade panels mark five stories of studio and one-bedroom apartments, which residents enter from a tree-lined street. Referencing brick buildings nearby, corbeled brick and punched windows distinguish the four-story office volume, which contains Prometheus headquarters as well as spec office space, accessible from the busier side. At street level, the Prometheus office entrance is flanked by wood-framed windows and fluted terra-cotta panels. To connect that aspect of the building to the area’s history, the firm looked to the land’s original inhabitants, the Ohlone people of Northern California, for inspiration. “The cast terra-cotta was essentially an abstraction of the patterns that some of the Ohlone tribes had used when they built their grass and reed houses,” explains Milman.
Entrance to Brickline Flats, the residential component of the building (1); terra-cotta facade detail (2). Photos © Jason O'Rear (1), Celso Rojas (2).
These material considerations continue inside the Prometheus offices, also designed by WRNS, where textiles, wood accents, and metals evoke coastal California. “Sometimes we refer to it as the ‘summer Armani suit,’” jokes Milman. “Everything feels very light and refreshing, but most importantly timeless, because they saw themselves as fitting into the fabric for a very, very long time.”
Brickline’s Rooftop deck. Photo © Jason O'Rear
Though the climate is temperate year-round, it is unusual for Northern Californian office buildings to have operable windows. Prometheus’ offices buck this trend, opting to let employees enjoy fresh air indoors. The building also incorporates two large private terraces and a rooftop deck for additional office social space, and a private terrace and courtyard for residents. “Many clients would not go as far as Prometheus did on this,” says Shiles. “This building does not look like a spec building; they had a real pride of placemaking.”
Ground-level retail storefronts connect the development to the surrounding streetscape. Photo © Jason O'Rear
The architects also note that the building’s ground-floor retail space is demised to accommodate small businesses that have proliferated in San Mateo, seeking to become part of the varied local framework rather than overwrite it. Adds Shiles: “You get the vibe of a village, but it’s metropolitan in that it’s chock-a-block with the best noodle house in the Bay Area, adjacent to a traditionally Latinx shopping street that could be plucked out of San Francisco’s Mission District; then across the street there’s a German brewhouse, and so forth.”
While so many of today’s apartments rely on the appeal—and code-compliant ease—of what many call “anytown architecture,” WRNS hopes that the Brickline will give San Mateans pride in their town as it continues to grow.mixed-use
Aug 20, 2024
Architectural Record
Oklahoma City’S Legends Tower Could Be The Tallest In U.S. Following City Council ApprovalIn Oklahoma City, the seemingly improbable Legends Tower has passed a major hurdle towards its realization.
On June 4, the city council approved in an eight-to-one vote the rezoning of the three-acre development site, dubbed Boardwalk at Bricktown, of which the 1,907-foot-tall tower is the most conspicuous component. The skyscraper, if built, will be the tallest in the United States, a distinction currently held by One World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan. It would also be the fifth-tallest in the world, trailing behemoths such as Dubai’s Burj Khalifa and Merdeka 118 in Kuala Lumpur.
Boardwalk at Bricktown will span more than three acres, and its podium would include a host of retail and entertainment establishments. Image courtesy AO
Orange County, California-based Architects Orange (AO), a firm with expertise in entertainment districts, is leading the design of the 5 million-square-foot mixed-use development, which will include a retail-and-entertainment podium, and three other 345-foot-tall towers. The towers would house some 900 hotel rooms and 1,776 residential units, approximately doubling the amount of housing in downtown Oklahoma City. As reported by RECORD in March, the $1.2 billion project has been in the works for at least two years—and, according to Boardwalk at Bricktown’s developer Scot Matteson, founder and managing partner of Matteson Capital and Centurion Partners, it is fully financed.
The Legends Tower would stand out in the relatively muted Oklahoma City skyline. Image courtesy AO
Naysayers abound for the Legends Tower. Many question the economics of a supertall in America’s 20th-largest city, and the wisdom of building such a lanky edifice in the often-windblown Tornado Alley. For the design team, these concerns are misplaced, if not misguided. “Oklahoma City is the sixth-fastest growing city in the country right now, and if you look at a map, this property is dead center of substantial new developments, like the city’s new convention center; the planned $900 million downtown arena for the Oklahoma City Thunder and a 10,000-seat soccer stadium for the Energy FC, and others,” says AO managing partner Rob Budetti. “The city has invested a lot of money into this entertainment district, and Boardwalk at Bricktown is another piece of that puzzle.”
Although there is plenty of work to be done before the Legends Tower’s design is finalized, determining the structure is fairly straightforward, according to Ola Johansson, senior principal at Thornton Tomasetti, which is serving as the project’s structural consultant.
The structural system being developed by Thornton Tomasetti will likely consist of a concrete-and-steel building core, outrigger concrete columns and steel trusses, and post-tensioned concrete floor framing. Image courtesy Thornton Tomasetti
“Thornton Tomasetti has completed a number of skyscrapers in areas with very high winds, like Taipei 101 (1,667 feet) and Shanghai Tower (2,073 feet). It’s really just a matter of understanding wind forces, through, for example, wind tunnel analysis, and designing for them,” Johansson explains. “Controlling the movement of the tower, for occupant comfort, is the greater challenge.” To that end, the tower will likely be built atop a concrete mat foundation grounded into the earth by a grid of drilled piers, with a central core of high-strength concrete and reinforcing steel, that, in turn, reaches out to a system of perimeter columns with outrigger steel braces—post-tensioned concrete floor framing fills the gaps in between. The engineering team is still studying the efficacy of adding a mass damper to further reduce projected building sway, and, in terms of tornado events, the curtain wall can be strengthened at the lower levels against flying debris.
The project is still awaiting approval for its luminous LED display, which will also ascend the tower's curtain wall system. Image courtesy AO
With approval in hand, the design team is aiming to break ground before the end of the year on the larger development; work on the tower itself will likely only commence once two of the shorter towers planned for the site are at least 50 percent leased. And while the site is now rezoned to permit the incredible height of the Legends Tower, Boardwalk at Bricktown still requires city council approval for the proposed luminous LED display at the building podium, which, according to the design team, could be embedded within the tower’s curtain wall mullions, like Burj Khalifa.mixed-use
Jun 17, 2024
Architectural Record
Revamped Zoning Laws Allow Asap To Deliver Mixed-Use Infill In A Buffalo Historic DistrictBuffalo has had a rough go of it for the last 70-odd years. The Rust Belt city on the banks of Lake Erie has suffered decades of deindustrialization and demographic decline, losing some 55 percent of its population since 1950. In recent years, the city, with the help of fast-growing eds-and-meds industries and refugee resettlement, has seen a measured, but vital, revival of its fortunes; 15 Allen Street is a product of that upswing. The three-and-a-half-floor mixed-use infill building designed by Los Angeles–based Adam Sokol Architecture Practice (ASAP) is deftly inserted into the city’s Allentown neighborhood with contextual massing and straightforward, well-detailed materials.
The eclectic Allentown Historic District is located just west of Buffalo’s Main Street and runs along the de facto border of the city’s formerly redlined eastern half. In 2017, the Buffalo Common Council passed the Green Code, the first major revision of the city’s land-use and zoning policies since 1953. The bill effectively ratified what had previously been noncompliant, the mixed uses that organically emerged in Buffalo’s historic neighborhoods, and eliminated minimum parking requirements to enable infill development.
In 2015, developer May Wang purchased 15 Allen Street, a dilapidated two-story retail building constructed in the 1920s, hoping to capitalize on the prime location steps from the city’s light rail system and the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus. “It was absolutely trashed, with rotting wood, and past the point of complete conservation,” explains Adam Sokol, whose firm was a 2019 Design Vanguard. The site could only accommodate six residential units under existing zoning laws, a financially prohibitive proposition, considering the cost of restoration, even with the associated tax credits. However, the project was made viable by the subsequent passage of the Green Code, and the State Historic Preservation Office and National Park Service signing off on the partial demolition of the historic building, with just the brick and cast-stone facade incorporated into the new structure. It received approval from the city in 2017, one of the first projects in Buffalo to do so under the new code.
The building’s roughly rectangular footprint covers approximately 90 percent of its lot. The 10 rental units consist of 650-square-foot one-bedrooms, with one two-bedroom apartment and two loft-style duplexes. Residents share a courtyard and bicycle storage with adjacent 19 Allen Street, a mixed-use project also owned by Wang—it formerly housed ASAP’s studio before the firm decamped to the West Coast in 2018.
Three contrasting faces mark the project’s exterior. The historic facade was almost entirely rebuilt with new brick chosen to match the old. Parts of the existing cast-stone trim were taken down, cleaned, and reinstalled. In accordance with the city’s fire code, the east elevation is a concrete-masonry-block party wall shared with a privately owned and undeveloped parcel. That left the courtyard-facing and rear elevations as the primary avenues for architectural expression. There, the dark-gray steel-clad massing staggers upward and folds onto itself as the building steps back from the street wall, in a move that affords six private patio and balcony spaces across all floors.
The historic facade was rebuilt with brick chosen to match the old. Photo © Brett Beyer, click to enlarge.
The multifaceted character of the building exterior is echoed in section. The new structure, with primarily 10- and 12-foot-tall ceilings in the apartments, needed 15-foot-tall ceilings for the 1,400-square-foot retail space, which occupies just under half the ground floor. That expansive ceiling, supported by glulam posts and beams—the rest of the building is standard light-frame wood construction—took up valuable room for the residential units, so ASAP turned elsewhere to maximize leasable space. The building’s two ADA-compliant apartments are located on the ground floor, so there was no need for an elevator, and the design team was permitted to include just one point of egress for the apartments above—an orange-splashed stairwell. The second levels of the two loft units are classified as mezzanines, to fit in a half floor, and the skylight for the stairwell, which reaches nearly 60 feet tall, skirts height limits by taking advantage of a decorative-tower zoning allowance.
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A single point of egress saved valuable square footage (1). Glulam columns and beams support the retail space (2). Photos © Alexander Severin (1), Brett Beyer (2)
Apartment finishes are kept simple. Features like the light-colored hardwood flooring and white cabinetry and solid-surface countertops contrast with the building’s dark exterior. With the party wall to the east, and the retail storefront to the south, the west elevation, facing the courtyard, is the main source of daylight, with generous high-performance casement windows.
The apartment finishes are light and simple. Photo © Brett Beyer
Notably, 15 Allen Street is one of the first all-electric buildings in Buffalo, with ultra-efficient heat pumps and solar water heaters, all of which help keep energy use and costs down. But, without all of the bells and whistles, it may just be 15 Allen Street’s location that provides the greenest credentials. “The most important aspect of the project’s sustainability is that it is an infill building, with no vehicular parking, that’s far bigger than almost anything else you could do,” Sokol concludes.
Click plans to enlarge
Click section to enlarge
Architect:
Adam Sokol Architecture Practice
Engineers:
Siracuse Engineers (structural); Foit Albert Associates (civil)
Consultant:
Joy Kuebler Landscape Architects (landscape)
General Contractor:
Peyton Barlow Company
Client:
May Wang/Mayflower Allen Property
Size:
12,000 square feet
Cost:
$4 million
Completion Date:
May 2022
Exterior Cladding:
Watsontown Brick (brick); ATAS (metal panels); A. Jandris & Sons (architectural concrete masonry)
Roofing:
Holcim Elevate (elastomeric)
Windows and Doors:
Kolbe (wood frame and entrances)
Hardware:
Emtek (locksets); Zweil (pulls); Sugastune (hinges)
Interior Finishes:
Sherwin-Williams (paints and stains); Daltile (floor and wall tile); Roppe (resilient flooring)
Lighting:
Kuzco, Nora (downlights)mixed-use
May 07, 2024
Architectural Record
Oklahoma City’S Improbable Legends Tower Wants To Be Tallest In The U.S.Supertall skyscrapers, measured as 984 feet or taller, are on the rise globally—the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat affirms that there are 173 complete as of today. Such developments are herculean structural efforts, and often require immense sums of financing to build, and, as a result, are clustered in the world’s great metropolises where land is scarce and demand high, like within the Central Park–adjacent enclave known as Billionaire’s Row in Manhattan. However, a project out on the Great Plains, in Oklahoma City, is slated to buck that trend. This month, developers Matteson Capital and Centurion Partners announced to The Oklahoman that $1.5 billion in financing is now secured to build what would be the tallest building in the United States—and the fifth tallest in the world—the 1,907-foot-tall Legends Tower. The project ’s height is symbolic—1907 is the year that Oklahoma was admitted as the 46th state.
Project architect AO describes Boardwalk at Bricktown as an "exciting architectural tapestry of modern design and a rich mixed-use experience at the heart of a vibrant entertainment district.” Image courtesy AO
Currently, the Sooner State’s tallest tower is the Pickard Chilton–designed Devon Energy Center (2012), which rises above downtown Oklahoma City at 844 feet. Tulsa can claim Oklahoma’s second tallest skyscraper, Minoru Yamasaki’s 667-foot-tall BOK Tower (1976).
The proposed site, in Oklahoma City’s Bricktown neighborhood, is currently used for surface parking. The tower would form the lankiest and largest component of the proposed 5 million-square-foot mixed-use development, Boardwalk at Bricktown, designed by Orange County, California–based firm Architects Orange (AO). Renderings suggest a splashy retail-and-entertainment podium, replete with a 17,000-square-foot lagoon and roof-decks with city views, and three other 345-foot-tall towers housing nearly 600 market-rate apartments, over 100 workforce apartments, just under 500 hotel rooms, and almost 100 condominiums. The Legends Tower, if built, will add a further 400 hotel rooms, 1,000 luxury apartments, nearly 100 condominiums, and just under 50 affordable apartments. Notably, according to The Oklahoman, the development’s projected 1,776 residential units, would effectively double the amount of housing in downtown Oklahoma City.
The complex would join a burgeoning downtown Oklahoma City. Image courtesy AO.
Plans for the development were first announced in December 2023, with a 1,750-foot-tall structure, that would have placed the Legends Tower second to New York City’s Freedom Tower, the current tallest building in the U.S. at 1,776 feet tall. The developers upped the ante with a redesign in January that adds over 150 feet of spire, which would place the tower well ahead of its New York City rival. The required zoning variance for its construction will be reviewed by the Oklahoma City Planning Commission in April, with a final vote by the city council in June. The project also requires a sign off from the Federal Aviation Administration. Additionally, the developer will only proceed with the Legends Tower once the first two shorter apartment towers are at least 50 percent leased—those are already approved by the City Planning Commission.
The project will join a spate of new development projects in the city center, such as a new NBA arena for the Oklahoma Thunder and an expansive convention center.
Skepticism remains regarding the feasibility of the project considering the relatively slack demand for a megaproject in a tornado-prone metropolitan area counting just under 1.5 million residents (the 42nd largest in the country), as well as mystery surrounding the two developers—neither Matteson Capital or Centurion Partners have websites or a social media presence. Despite the secrecy of Matteson Capital and Centurion Partners, Scot Matteson, founder and managing partner of both companies, did make a brief appearance in 2018 on The Real Housewives of Orange County as star Shannon Beador’s love interest. And, in 2019 his four daughters launched a $100,000 GoFundMe fundraiser to support mounting medical bills related to his stage 3 pancreatic cancer. There is also the question of technical knowhow. The architect, AO, while prolific in designing stadium-adjacent entertainment districts, award-winning multi-family developments, and shopping centers, including a Tuscan-style outlet mall in Busan, South Korea, has never completed a project of this complexity.
Spanning more than 3 acres, the complex would include a host of retail and entertainment functions, as well as water features. Image courtesy AOmixed-use
Mar 25, 2024