GAB Report library
Mixed-Use
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2014 AIA COTE Top Ten Green Project Winners Announced
The American Institute of Architects (AIA) and its Committee on the Environment (COTE) have just announced this week their selection of the 2014 Top Ten Green Projects, examples of sustainable architecture and ecological American design projects that protect and enhance the environment. The projects include new and adaptive re-use buildings, ranging from government offices to…
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Historic YMCA Transformed Into Green Affordable Housing
One of the things I miss most from working at Citizens Housing is my weekly visits to our construction sites. I had the chance to witness buildings get built from the ground up and renovated into modern, seismically safe, and energy efficient buildings. You can imagine the excitement I had when I was invited to…
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Zero Competition Architecture Responds to California’s 2020 ZNE Goals
Team Folium, consisting of Herman Coliver Locus Architecture, EBS Consultants, and Architectural Lighting Design, won the Special Recognition Award from the Architecture at Zero 2013 design competition. The Folium concept presents a fresh urban design solution that brings a sense of vitality and adds architectural interest to the surrounding neighborhood. A high-density, residential-commercially zoned site…
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5 Terre Vertical Farm Concept Addresses Urban Population Growth
Editor’s Foreword: Capellini Architects is an architecture studio based in La Spezia, Italy. The firm was selected as one of the 30 finalists among hundreds of contestants for the 2013 Vertical Farm & Botanical Garden SkyScraper (Seoul) Competition organized by SuperSkyScrapers. For its competition entry, Capellini Architects created a 250-meter tall skyscraper built to cultivate fresh, high…
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Station Center Family Housing Wins 2013 ULI Global Award
Congratulations to developer MidPen Housing and David Baker Architects, one of my favorite San Francisco architecture firms to work with, for winning the 2013 ULI Global Award for Excellence for its LEED Platinum certified project, Station Center Family Housing in Union City, California. Station Center consists of two buildings housing 157 high-density affordable rental apartments, community gardens,…
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How Abode Communities Builds Green and Affordable
The recently completed Casa Dominguez affordable housing and community facility by Abode Communities is touted by the organization as innovative. Upon a recent site walk and visit, I can say that its innovation lies not only in it’s unique program but also lurks unseen, behind it’s walls, beneath it’s ground, and above it’s roof. The…
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A Success Story: Healthy Homes, Neighborhood Revitalization, and L.A. County’s First Graywater Irrigation System
Is it possible to build multi-family housing without air conditioning in Southern California where the weather averages high 70s F in the daytime for most of the year? With smart building design, it is definitely possible to do so. During their building walk-throughs in the middle of the October heat wave of 2009, the developer’s…
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Affordable Housing Project Incorporates Largest Residential Solar Photovoltaic System in San Francisco
What do you do when your project has close to 40,000 square foot of roof space in one city block, good sun exposure, and no shading impediments? Go solar, of course, and generate your own electricity with a renewable energy source. Mosaica, one of the largest green, mixed-use projects located in San Francisco, California, boasts…
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Mosaica: A Sustainable Community
Years ago, I came upon a bustling weekend flea market situated on a lot disfigured by broken concrete and asphalt, and anchored by a dilapidated warehouse structure in the middle of the site. Who would have thought that I would end up as the construction manager working for the developer who gave the site a…
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Berkeley’s Latest Super-Green Project
During my student days at U.C. Berkeley, my friends and I would go to the Great China Restaurant for dinner and the California Theaters for a movie. Along the way, there was a big parking lot which was often viewed as an eye-sore. More than 10 years later, this lot has been transformed into two…