Project Overview
Located at the eastern edge of Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, Calif.’s historic Haight-Ashbury neighborhood, 730 Stanyan is a new affordable housing development featuring 160 apartments for low- to moderate-income families. The structure, which spans 88,003 ft2 across eight stories, was designed not only to provide living space for families from a variety of backgrounds, but also to house community-serving retail establishments, resident support spaces, and youth and senior programming—all with the intent of fostering long-term neighborhood resilience and equity. To meet the ambitious goals set for the project by the Chinatown Community Development Center, which included high performance and a tight timeline, local precast concrete producer Clark Pacific teamed up with New York, N.Y.–based architect OMA in designing a building envelope featuring architectural precast concrete and glass-fiber-reinforced concrete (GFRC) panels.
A Golden Solution
Clark Pacific manufactured the envelope for 730 Stanyan with GFRC on the building’s upper levels and architectural precast concrete panels at street level. The façade scope was coordinated with building information modeling (BIM), which enabled precision in fabrication; integration with mechanical, engineering, and plumbing systems; and efficient installation. Using BIM also enabled the team to resolve spatial conflicts early, streamlining the fabrication process and leading to cost and schedule efficiencies. Through careful coordination, precise panel designs were achieved, reducing waste and ensuring that performance details—such as insulation, air barriers, and water management—were fully integrated.
Building 730 Stanyan in the heart of the Haight-Ashbury district presented a unique set of challenges for the team. The development sits on a tight urban site at a highly visible intersection adjacent to Golden Gate Park, requiring a construction approach that minimized neighborhood disruption, maximized safety, and adhered to a fast-tracked schedule. Beyond the combination of residential, community, and retail uses, the design also called for a curved façade and a rounded public plaza at the entry. The intent was to create an open, welcoming space to soften the building’s presence and invite community interaction. Precast concrete was the ideal material to address these needs. Deploying a prefabricated façade with 460 panels allowed the project team to maintain the building’s sculptural form while reducing on-site time and mitigating construction impacts in a busy pedestrian environment. Producing both the GFRC and architectural precast concrete panels off-site allowed for clean, accurate curves and textures that aligned with OMA’s architectural vision while still meeting performance, durability, and installation requirements in a dense urban context.
In addition to providing speed and durability advantages, precast concrete also met several sustainability goals for the team. The project targets LEED Gold certification, leverages CleanPowerSF (San Francisco’s 100% renewable energy program), and reduces on-site emissions and construction waste through the prefabricated envelope. Additionally, 730 Stanyan achieves high thermal performance thanks to integrated insulation in the façade, and the building’s long service life ensures that the benefits to the community will continue for the foreseeable future.
730 Stanyan stands as a model of how thoughtful design, neighborhood partnership, and precast concrete can come together to deliver equitable, high-performance housing wherever it is needed most.
Mason Nichols is a Grand Rapids, Mich.-based writer and editor who has covered the precast concrete industry since 2013. |