Sister Lillian Murphy Community

This project was selected as an Honor winner in the 2022 Residential Architect Design Awards, Affordable Housing category.

"I like that urbanistically it’s four buildings with a courtyard inside. If you’ve been in San Francisco, there’s not a lot of outdoor space available to people. This massing model is great as opposed to the kind of generic mega box.” — Juror Barbara Bestor, FAIA

At the white-hot center of America’s housing debate, San Francisco has become a battleground of competing ideologies and models for bringing prices down and ending the city’s pervasive homelessness problem. Into this contentious atmosphere, the Sister Lillian Murphy Community from local firms Paulett Taggart Architects and associate architect Studio VARA comes as a sort of architectural salve: A quiet, assured composition in muted white and gray, the complex exudes an air of serenity even as it provides 152 much-needed units of below-market family housing, right in the heart of the city’s Mission Bay neighborhood.

The ensemble comprises four distinct volumes. A fairly standard, seven-story modern residential block sits on one side, while two rather less-typical-looking segments—one fitted with metal louvers and the other sprouting irregular, Rubix-like twists and turns in the façade—rest on the other. Most remarkably, between them, a peaked wedge of a structure presides calmly over the street corner. For all its visual appeal, the logic of this unusual plan is functional in inspiration, with the passageways between the components allowing light and air to filter through and around the complex and into the courtyard within. It is there, in the lushly planted landscape with its multilevel terraces sheltered by the building, that the project’s communal character finds its fullest expression, offering a vision of inclusive civic life that just might be able to bridge the city’s yawning political and economic divide.

PROJECT CREDITS
Project: Sister Lillian Murphy Community, San Francisco
Client/Owner: Mercy Housing
Architects: Paulett Taggart Architects (Paulett Taggart, FAIA, principal; Roselie Enriquez Ledda, AIA, assoc. principal and project manager; Karl Vinge, associate, project architect; Melissa Steenport, designer; Jacob Kackley, designer; Mojdeh Kasraie, designer; Hanna Sul, designer; Matthew Ridgeway, designer; Elise Riley, designer), San Francisco, with associate architect Studio VARA (Christopher Roach, AIA, principal; Jacquelyn Fung, AIA, studio director; Nick Brown, AIA, associate), San Francisco.
Interior Designer: Studio VARA
Electrical/Mechanical Engineer: Emerald City Engineers
Structural Engineer: KPFF
Civil Engineer: Luk & Associates
Construction Manager: Regent Construction Management
General Contractor: Cahill Contractors
Landscape Architect: GLS Landscape | Architecture
Lighting Designer: Auerbach Glasow
Acoustic Consultant: Charles M. Salter Associates, Inc.
Green Consultant & Energy Modeling: Bright Green Strategies
Dry Utilities/Joint Trench: Urban Design Consulting Engineers

MATERIALS AND SOURCES
Adhesives, Coatings, and Sealants: Sherwin Williams paint
Appliances: General Electric, Frigidaire, Broan, LG
Bathroom Fixtures: Kohler
Cabinets: Lanz Cabinets
Ceilings: Rulon International linear open wood ceiling planks, Armstrong tectum panels, Conwed New Dimensions acoustic ceiling panels
Concrete: E-Cure cure, 1100-Clear cure, Fibre Expansion Joint filler, Waterstop-RX waterstop, CETSEAL waterstop accessory, Plastic Keyway forming accessory, Insulfoam EPS BUS foam, SC Multipurpose Grout non-shrink grout, MasterFlow 928 Grout non-shrink grout, Spec-Strip form release, Bio-Strip form release, Hilti epoxy
Countertops: Ceasarstone (common area), Daltile Quartz (units)
Exterior Wall Systems: Morin aluminum panels, JamesHardie plank, panels and reveal panels, Sika BMI cement plaster products
Flooring: Flotex Modular seagrass flooring
Lighting Control Systems: Legrand Wattstopper
Lighting: Gotham EVO, Modern, Lucifer, Prudential, Alight, Finelight, Aion, Tech, Lumini, Bega, Delta Light, Panasonic
Metal: Morin aluminum panels
Paints and Finishes: Sherwin Williams
Roofing: Sika Sarnafil G459 membrane
Site and Landscape Products: landscapeforms Strata Beam benches and Strata tables
Windows and Doors: Vitro Architectural Glass, Oldcastle Glas, Guardian Industries Corp., Viracon, VPI Quality Windows, Kawneer Storefront Systems, Aluflam Fire-rated Storefront Systems