transience
with Vanessa Lee, Lindsay Wong & Ishita Chandra
client: Urban Design Studio, UC Berkeley
location: San Francisco, California
year: 2021
Bayshore, a brownfield site on Southeast San Francisco's landfilled shoreline, faces numerous physical hazards requiring extensive remediation for long-term viability. Despite these challenges, the area serves as an informal refuge for RVs and unhoused individuals amid San Francisco's enduring housing crisis.
Historically, San Francisco has seen large-scale permanent developments in areas susceptible to seismic liquefaction, such as Mission Bay and the Financial District. Project Transience embraces a multi-temporal approach to foster urban resilience and devise alternative high-density urbanization strategies that also promote land healing.
As team leader, I coordinated efforts, delegated tasks, scripted presentations, and liaised with fellow groups and our studio mentor to drive the project forward.
background
Bayshore, once a thriving industrial hub, has a history marred by contamination. Its beginnings in the early 1900s saw landfilling for railway development, which included a wooden Roundhouse that burned down in 2001. Over time, industrial actors, such as the Schlage lock factory and Recology's hazardous waste facility, released toxins and pollutants, leaving Bayshore vulnerable to physical hazards. Comprehensive remediation is now needed for long-term occupation, aligning with the Green New Deal's objectives.
approach
The multihazard status of this warrants a series of short term uses until the land is suitable for permanent occupation. There already are a number of short term residents that illegally live on this site--the homelessness crisis of San Francisco presents the opportunity for allowing transient residence on this site.
Historically, large-scale permanent development has consistently been built in areas of San Francisco, as well as the Bay area at large, that are vulnerable to the very same environmental risks we see in Bayshore. We choose not to ignore them.
Project Transience embraces a strategy rooted in multiple temporalities, that generate iterative urban resilience and create alternative forms of concurrent living and healing. We propose multiple land uses categorized according to time scales which respond to the dynamic hazards on this site.
design
Our proposal imagines the site in 3 different timescales: 2030, 2050 and 2100. We focus on three different parts of the site to show how the design guidelines could be spatialized: transanct 01, transact 02 and transact 03.
final design deck