Project: Abaca Apartment Complex
Architects: Studio O+A
Team: Perry Stephney, Jon Schramm, Dani Gelfand, Jill Gentles, Amy Young, Elizabeth Vereker, Jeorge Jordan
Location: San Francisco, California
Size 8,670 sf
Year 2017
Photographer: Garrett Rowland
Text by Studio O+A
Abaca is the plant that produces the fiber used in making rope. In 1856 the Tubbs Cordage Company began manufacturing rope in San Francisco and with its neighbors, Hazard Gunpowder Company and Union Ironworks, defined the industrial character of its neighborhood. Today that waterfront neighborhood is a coveted residential location and Abaca an apartment complex designed for makers and innovators.
The Definition of Home
O+A’s design for the common areas of the complex combines the practical character of a workshop with the wind-swept expansiveness of its location by the Bay. Mixing traditional Dogpatch values—part welder, part chef, part biker intellectual—with the tech-oriented thrust of Bay Area prosperity, Abaca adheres to a concept of home that takes in as many definitions as possible.
Dogpatch Values Then and Now
These new urban living spaces embrace the ethos of modern San Francisco: forward-looking, diverse, tech-friendly but natural, environmentally aware and culturally stimulating. Abaca Apartment Complex continues a thread of vitality in Dogpatch that extends from the earliest ships in the Bay to the digital voyagers securing the future of a growing city.
Making an Amenity of the Bay
The roof deck at Abaca gives this complex a uniquely San Franciscan asset: daily interaction with the Bay. On warm summer days, it will be a space for picnics and parties; on foggy days for solitary contemplation or snuggling with a loved one. But whatever the weather, the close proximity of this great body of water (and Potrero Hill in the other direction) is nature’s gift to Abaca’s design.
