San Francisco, California
325 5th street, SF is a 10,000, three story office tenant improvement located in the bustling SOMA area of San Francisco. Originally owned by a parking structure company that recently vacated, the three floors were in need of a major renovation in hopes of attracting a new, high tech company.
With such a unique site that has a south-facing façade with many windows, we recommended creating a more open floor plan that would allow the sunlight to penetrate deeply into the space and to have a contrast between rough existing materials like the wood floor joists in the ceiling and concrete columns with more clean and modern materials on the floors, walls and lighting.
One challenge was to take the ground floor that had been used as storage and parking and convert it to leasable office space. Through a Change of Use process with the City and with a new design, we were able to convert this floor into an office use while still maintaining some parking. Taking advantage of the site facing a quiet alley to the south, we replaced the existing garage doors with new modern obscure glass doors, allowing the center bay that was converted to office space, the opportunity to spill onto the alley on warm afternoons thus engaging with the bustling city at the street level if they want, or closing themselves off from the street when they desired by closing the movable exterior wall.
A shade screen on the southern façade and a roof-deck were designed, as well, but were unfortunately value engineered out of the project.
