Details

Location San Francisco, CA
Year 2022
Size 6,339 square feet
Sustainability LEED Gold

Description

This brick gem of a formerly industrial building is sited at a prominent intersection in an historic San Francisco “warehouse” district. Constructed in 1906 by the R. N. Nason Company and long used by the McGlennon Company to manufacture lacquer and paint, the building is representative of San Francisco’s reindustrialization after the 1906 earthquake and fire devastation.

The building was attributed the name, MacLac, a combination of the previous owner’s name and the word, lacquer. This edifice was known as “Building D” of the factory. Building D’s architectural rejuvenation accentuates the symmetric geometry of its historically industrial heritage by introducing abundant daylight through ridge skylights, providing architectural lighting designed to highlight the historic brick walls and steel roof trusses of the original building, and incorporating crucial seismic upgrading with structural diaphragms that double as an architectural level that creates usable floor area with exceptional vantage points of the building volume.

2022

AIA California Design Awards | Merit Award

Architecture Masterprize - Heritage Architecture | Winner

AIA East Bay Awards - Medium Scale | Nominee

FX Design Awards - Mixed-Use Development | Finalist

AISC Judge comment:

“What stood out to me on this project is how successful they were at highlighting the existing structure. The brick is beautiful now. It's 100 years old unreinforced, but it wouldn’t have been a very good lateral system for this building nowadays, especially in San Francisco. So they put it in moment frames that don't hide anything. They added a new CLT diaphragm to the floor. They reused old timbers and the trusses for the compression element in the top where you need something stocky but took advantage of steel for the tension-bottomed portions of the trusses--a thin, sleek design, something you could only have done in steel that completely lets your eye pass to the historic pieces of the building that remain.”

- Jim Foreman, PE, SE, senior project engineer, Martin/Martin Consulting Engineers

2023

Architect Magazine:

“Its tectonic qualities are really beautiful for the adaptive reuse of a building… It transforms the building in a way that is extremely elegant and structurally refined.“

- Susan T. Rodriguez, FAIA

2023

Team

Architect - Peter Logan, Architect (PLAD)

Architect - Marcy Wong Donn Logan Architects

Client - Comstock Realty Partners

Developer - Comstock Realty Partners

General Contractor - RHC Construction

Steel Fabricator - Building Structure - Emerald Steel

Metal Subcontractor - Solher Iron, Inc.

Electrical Subcontractor - Helix Electrical

Plumbing Subcontractor - Madden Plumbing + Fire Sprinklers

Historical Preservation - Mark Hulbert Preservation Architecture

Lighting Designer - Architecture & Light

LEED Consultant - STOK

Code Consultant - Steve Winkle, Preview Group Inc.

Structural Engineer - Gregory P. Luth & Associates, Inc.; GPLA

Mechanical Engineer - Bayside Mechanical Inc.