Canal district resiliency
115 3rd Street, San Rafael, CA 94901
This project seeks to address resiliency in multiple ways, but particularly in response to sea level rise - utilizing rising sea levels as a design catalyst rather than solely a threat. Traditional coastal resiliency strategies often involve constructing barriers, while cutting off public access to the coast, especially for those in areas of lower socio-economic status. Thus, in addition to the typical program of a community resiliency center, this project also incorporates a public harbor bath and waterfront public promenade through a site strategy that protects the inland community without erecting barriers, allowing people to interact and enjoy the waterfront regardless of background. The design accentuates and highlights the changing sea levels and tides, as the experience of the space shifts with each tide - seeking to bring people back to a natural awareness of their environmental surroundings and the risks posed by them.
Site Strategy
The site strategy provides space for upland wetland migration to serves as a buffer to rising sea levels and natural water filter for the canal, and allowing water to play a part in the experience of the entire site. The site stitches together a public waterfront promenade along San Rafael Canal. The entire site is raised by 10-feet and accessed by sloped a deck, driveway, and docks to allow the resiliency center to continue to provide disaster support services in events of flooding. The reconstructed ground allows water to flow under the cantilevered building and around the entire site, providing reflections through glass floor reveals and promoting healthy wetland migration through water flow.
The meeting rooms, multi-purpose space, and kitchen are located on ground level; at the second level, a screened-elevated walkway leads to the library and roof terrace. The harbor bath is not directly connected to the canal, but the location of the locker rooms along the canal-front boundary provides the illusion that water permeates the entire site, bringing canal water into the building, directly adjacent to stairs entering the swimming pool.
The bath house is able to be flooded in high water events as its walls are composed of a slatted wood and metal screen. Within the bath house, people can walk along the boundary between the canal and pool water as they experience the shifting alignment and detachment of the water levels on each side due to the constantly changing tides. Shifting shadows and light streaming through the slatted walls further accentuate the temporal natural of the harbor bath.
Partis
The design follows a strategy of alignment and detachment formally, programmatically, experientially, and materially. The community center is composed of two primary bars, which are first aligned and then begin to detach and rotate in the more public spaces. The strategy of alignment and detachment is also evident in the relationship and experience of water throughout the site. The bath house aligns with the water, creating the illusion of connection, when in reality the harbor bath and canal waters are detached. Similarly, the buildings and pathways align along 3rd Avenue, and then detach from the original coastline protruding into the canal. The structure mimics the rationale of alignment and detachment as well where the steel structural grid detaches and rotates to create double heighted spaces.
Integrated systems
The community center makes use of natural daylighting and a mix of single-sided and cross ventilation through North-facing clerestory windows, slatted screens, skylights, and sliding doors which allow the multi-purpose space to transition into an indoor-outdoor utilization. Comfortable temperature is controlled through an integrated radiant system combining solar thermal and a ground source heat pump, where the exhaust heat is also used to temper the public bath water. Solar fins are located on the north-west clerestory windows, and slatted screens shade the south-facing skylights and doors. The vertical expression along the walls align with the metal ribbed roof, which continues this expression above.
Wall sections and details are concentrated at the location of this detachment, where the direction of the CLT panels align with the rotated structural grid throughout the building. The slatted wood material expression wraps from the exterior to interior to continue this language. Resting on the steel structure, the roof assembly consists of 18” glulam beams, spanned by CLT panels, rigid foam board insulation, plywood, and a standing seam metal roof. Louvers, solar fins, and clerestory windows promote cross ventilation and natural lighting in the multi-purpose space, while a walkable skylight brings top-lighting from the roof deck into the kitchen below.
Overall, the design celebrates resiliency and public waterfront access as the experience of the space shifts with each tide seeking to bring people back to a natural awareness of their environmental surroundings and the risks posed by them.
