One Steuart Lane is a LEED Gold certified condominium tower built on one of the last remaining sites on the downtown San Francisco waterfront. Located at the corner of Howard and Steuart streets, the tower contains 120 residential units on 20 floors above a premier restaurant space.
The design translates a classic concept in California residential design—indoor-outdoor living—in a way that is perfectly suited to an urban tower. Working from a complex zoning envelope, the architectural massing of the building strategically integrates private outdoor balconies and terraces with required setbacks to provide seamless indoor-outdoor living spaces. The locations of the outdoor spaces are coordinated to break down the vertical orientation of the tower into horizontally-proportioned volumes that relate to the panoramic waterfront landscape they face.
The facade is composed of an elegantly proportioned, shifting grid of cubic limestone pilasters and lintels. The depth of the stone grid gives the building an appearance of solidity when viewed obliquely, while preserving views from within the units. A minimally reflective, ultra-clear glass facade takes advantage of the abundant sunlight and cool ambient climate in San Francisco to passively heat the units and reduce energy consumption.
To facilitate the panoramic views and unobstructed wrap-around terraces, the building’s structural design comprises stepped flag columns along each elevation and sculptural corner column capitals, along with a computationally-optimized post-tensioning layout, to allow the eight-inch flat slab to cantilever as much as 20 feet.
