ZOSO FLATS is located on a 1.14 acre, linear, greyfield lot, adjacent to a commercial street within a transit-oriented mixed-use urban district. The front of the site is across the street from a tall building and the rear abuts a single-family detached 1920’s neighborhood. The overall aesthetic was to take the 400-foot long brick facade and carve out shapes from it, thus exposing an inner layer. The external layer is a rich, warm brick color, and the inner layer is a contrasting green metal.
The scale and design of the facades
were influenced by the surrounding
neighborhood. The building needed
munumentality to address the 10-story
apartment building across the street; this was achieved by creating openings in the exterior facade that are 3-stories tall. An appropriate transition in the rear to the smaller singlefamily neighborhood was created by
reducing the building down to four stories and by inserting courts between the bays.
The retail function orient toward the street, while the office and residential functions face the linear garden in the rear.
View Original