This unique development is a key urban ecological linkage in the transformation of the Transbay neighborhood from transit infrastructure to community. Centering on the word ‘ecology’ and its original Greek sense of “house” or “environment”, the project encourages interactions, engaging biological systems in complex living relationships and generating diversity. A new system of shared streets and pedestrian amenities provide much needed nature and respite. This city block expands upwards as a dense vertical “neighborhood”, and as designers we were very aware of the 5th Elevation – that is, how this project is understood from above – from the “Bird’s Eye View”. These multiple roof tops are designed as a landscape of elevated grounds, all vegetated for residents to enjoy, and as a shared resource with the native ecology of the Bay Area, with seasonality, planting diversity, habitat potential, and stormwater management – all watered by reclaimed grey water generated by the residents themselves.
The MIRASF Landscape
There is over 54,000 square feet (over a 1 acre) of open space on 5 levels, it is a new vertical neighborhood; equivalent to 16 blocks of single family homes in a typical city, all in a one block complex. The landscape design aspires to balance human development with ecological benefit, through a shared design language of building and landscape that creates a vibrant, urban environment characteristic of downtown San Francisco, contrasting complementary spaces, both extroverted and introverted, comforting and vibrant, timeless and contemporary, diverse and simple, durable and tactile.
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