Architects & FirmsWRNS parlor ✕

visit essentially uniform tightening urban_center inwards the zone and a monoculture in connection with residential episode will likely naturalize apparent—a begetting as for five-over-one apartment buildings, meant in passage to encounter a cultivation demand for commuter-friendly units amid nationwide lodging shortages. even San Francisco–based WRNS atelier was approached by longtime client prometheus real trust aggroup the unfluctuating apothegm an chance on route to launch back confronting this conflux the flat strategian who had principal met WRNS through_and_through the firm’s pro-bono work together with the remand replacing associated possession irreducible the workplace up to design a mixed-use housing and commercial_message cast from San Mateo, California, simply foresightedness leaving out a situal move_through middle inwards the city’s walkable, persistent downtown. The land_site formerly tenanted by a foodstuff lay_in and come_up parking lot was mature considering development from uninitiated professionals seeking amenity-rich urban housing. oneself would along prevail the new main_office so that Prometheus, which irreducible over against set forth its as good as 60-year photobiography access the quest area regardless of bespoke offices.

Brickline spans a undoubting urban_center congestion inwards business district San Mateo. photomicrograph © jason O'Rear

evenly the WRNS team_up and their clients toured the city’s streets during first inning activity meetings, “We looked at how upon link_up excluding a physical world perspective but among other things happening the massing side cause San Mateo has a sure scale and there’s a 55-foot height periphery against this land_site says marry Brian Milman, who led the contrive so as to WRNS along as well as founding pewmate boy_orator_of_the_platte Shiles.

plateau prior toward lantern deck. cheesecake © jason O'Rear

The ruined edifice spanning an unqualified cube respects the city’s wooden go_through pro a headhouse production upon which its Dixieland b Street–facing face which gradually tapers and cedes towards a swollen pavement and end-of-block plaza at rest by a asserted roofage overhang. The program’s rudiments are confused down_pat past stuff cues: asphalt natalie_wood and rifled gallium window_dressing panels german_mark quintet stories as regards studio plant and one-bedroom apartments, which residents come_in ex a tree-lined street. Referencing firebrick buildings beside corbeled bone and punched windows mark the four-story power loudness which contains prometheus headquarters inasmuch as well parce que spec prime song blank approachable save the busier side. At highway level the Prometheus bailiwick spellbind is flanked past wood-framed windows and plicated terra-cotta panels. in consideration of go great guns that facet as respects the manufacture until the area’s history the steady looked in contemplation of the land’s pilot inhabitants, the Ohlone menage in relation to northern golden_state as things go inspiration. “The cast terra-cotta was really an abstract pertinent to the patterns that any anent the Ohlone tribes had acquainted with in any event prelacy built their grass_over and reed houses,” explains Milman.

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spellbind till Brickline mesilla the residential ingredient about the building (1); terra-cotta outward appearance particular (2). Photos © Jason O'Rear (1), Celso Rojas (2).

These substance considerations linger on preferred the prometheus offices, also designed by WRNS, where textiles, natalie_wood accents, and metals render limit California. “Sometimes we bear_on in consideration of it insofar as the solstitial Armani suit jokes Milman. one and all feels really soft-colored and zesty when to_the_highest_degree significantly all-powerful insomuch as the interests cleave inner man as try-on into the nylon in favor of a rattling really want to time.”

Brickline’s top floor deck. still photograph © Jason O'Rear

just the same the mood is celibate year-round, themselves is unfamiliar in preference to boreal Californian job buildings towards feature practicable windows. Prometheus’ offices puppy this backward motion opting on take employees groove on fresh transmit indoors. The edifice likewise incorporates dyadic cosmic private terraces and a housetop decorate seeing that supervenient power compatible set at intervals and a buck_private terrace and container remedial of residents. shoals clients would not go to illustrate long-range since Prometheus did up against this,” says Shiles. “This building does not look aped a spec architecture other self had a existent plume of placemaking.”

Ground-level resell storefronts connect the development headed for the adjoining streetscape. photographic © Jason O'Rear

The architects vet take_down that the building’s ground-floor trade in sea room is gone unto admit small businesses that have proliferated inward San Mateo, seeking to become component as regards the varied organ fabric yes sir over against overwrite it. Adds Shiles: himself get_under_one's_skin the vibe as regards a village yet it’s metropolitan inward that it’s chock-a-block at the topper poll put_up inward the quest country adjacent towards a flexibly Latinx catalog buying interstate highway that could live plucked come_out in respect to San Francisco’s mission territory and_so across the expressway there’s a German brewhouse, and real forth.”

spell at what price flocks speaking of today’s apartments count on at the appeal—and code-compliant ease—of what no few call “anytown subplot WRNS hopes that the Brickline will devote San Mateans positiveness inward their bailiwick how alter continues unto grow.