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Adding visual interest along the street, the lower floors of the 10-story VHC San Jose are clad in articulated aluminum screens that play with light and shadow throughout the day and contribute to the walkability of the area. The uppermost floors recede to create terraces specifically for the staff. A glass façade adds to the building’s appeal while maximizing natural light and creating a comfortable indoor environment.
Features
Distinguished by open, outdoor spaces, a new public park connects VHC San Jose to the VTA Bascom Station. The site provides easy connection to nature and transit while fostering community.
VHC San Jose is part of a mixed-use development that creates a strong sense of place and is respectful of residential neighbors. VHC San Jose will double as a gathering place for county residents, promoting health-related social interaction.
As a ‘Signature Project’ of San Jose’s Urban Village strategy, VHC San Jose addresses the comprehensive criteria for creating complete neighborhoods, where daily needs can be met within close proximity.
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Design challenge
The design challenge was to create a space that invited both adults and children, individually or in groups, while uniting different social groups. Recognizing that Boeddeker needed more active programming, The Trust for Public Land, in partnership with the City of San Francisco and WRNS Studio, completely redesigned and rebuilt the park and its clubhouse, creating a safe, inclusive environment for all ages.
Inclusive, community-driven design
Together with The Trust for Public Land, we conducted extensive community outreach, hosting public meetings and forums not only at the site but also at nearby youth centers, senior centers, and churches—wherever local people were likely to participate. Residents from the Tenderloin participated, as well as representatives of the YMCA, Boys & Girls Club, Youth with a Mission, and City Academy. Key decisions were made at these forums.
The result is a new landmark park and clubhouse that embodies civic engagement, sustainability, and adaptability, drawing on San Francisco’s tradition of clubhouse design and the dynamic architectural contrasts of the Tenderloin. The park now features amenities for all ages, including adult exercise areas, basketball courts, youth play structures, a walking path, and a community garden.
Safety and sense of welcome
Security was a top priority. The old clubhouse sat four feet below grade, limiting visibility from the building to the park. During a meeting with the Boys & Girls Club, one teenager expressed the need to feel seen by an adult upon entering the park. The community echoed this sentiment, favoring transparency and openness over walls and gates for safety.
We repositioned the entry to ensure that everyone passes by the new, raised clubhouse. Now, once inside the park, visitors can easily access various spaces from a central point, without navigating through a playground to reach the lawn, for example. We also replaced the heavy, wrought iron fences with a lighter, visually transparent wire mesh that maintains security while improving sightlines.
A porch overlooking the street and the park
The new clubhouse, facing Eddy Street, frames the park’s main entrance. Raised and designed with all-glass facades, the building maximizes visibility, allowing the recreation director and others inside to easily notice anyone entering the park. Elevating the clubhouse also makes activity within the building visible from the street, positioning the clubhouse as a welcoming community hub. The recreation room extends into the park, blending indoor and outdoor spaces, while large window walls frame views of the basketball court, playground, and expansive lawn, reinforcing the sense of openness and connection.
The green dragon
Nicknamed the “Green Dragon” for its playful form, the new clubhouse is clad in zinc panels resembling scales and rises to a 30-foot peak at one end, tapering off with a roof monitor at the other. The 4,000-square-foot building shifts away from defensive design, embracing openness and transparency to create more welcoming spaces.
A community-driven vision for sustainability
We were inspired by the community’s commitment to prioritizing sustainability: neighbors asked for an off the grid project with solar panels and a community garden. In response, the clubhouse is heated entirely by a geothermal system—one of San Francisco’s first public projects to implement this technology. Beneath the basketball court, eight cores extend 200 feet into the ground, extracting heat from the earth to supply radiant heating through tubes embedded in the concrete slabs.
Likewise, the main spaces of the clubhouse are cooled naturally. The large, cathedral-like recreation room uses the stack effect to ventilate without the need for ceiling fans, while the meeting room relies on operable windows and ceiling fans. Only a few offices are air-conditioned.
Sustainable sites initiative
Boeddeker Park was one of the first participants in the Sustainable Sites Initiative, an interdisciplinary program led by the American Society of Landscape Architects, the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, and the U.S. Botanic Garden, which establishes national benchmarks for sustainable land design, construction, and maintenance.
The park incorporates a community garden, pervious concrete, bioswales, and a stormwater infiltration system beneath the lawn. We carefully selected a plant palette with many California natives, offering a sense of the state’s natural beauty to Tenderloin residents, many of whom are new to California. A comprehensive signage program throughout the park highlights its sustainable features, with a key map at the clubhouse entrance explaining each element.
All in
Success wasn’t just about design; it relied on collaboration with the Recreation and Parks Department, the San Francisco Police, and community groups to ensure ongoing operations, stewardship, and programming. Within three years of reopening, park usage tripled, with notable increases among children, teens, and seniors.
“This reimagined park, developed by the City … brings a touch of nature into the heart of this compact urban environment.”
Pro bono
The Trust for Public Land connected with WRNS through Public Architecture’s 1% pro bono program. WRNS provided services at a discounted rate, donating overhead and profit. Since our founding in 2005, we have dedicated ourselves to pro-bono work, partnering with nonprofits like the Trust for Public Land, 826 Valencia, and local schools to create welcoming, inclusive spaces in under-resourced communities.
Community driven-design
A safe and inclusive environment for all ages
Adult exercise areas, basketball courts, youth play structures and a walking path
Large window walls frame views of the playground
Establishing national benchmarks for sustainable land design, construction, and maintenance.
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Honoring legacy, shaping the future
The campus features two WRNS Studio-designed buildings: The Jill and John Freidenrich Center for Translational Research and the CJ Huang Asian Liver Center. These projects honor Stanford’s architectural legacy while introducing a modern sensibility that supports its forward-thinking mission.
A dialogue between landscape and architecture
Since 1885, Stanford has cultivated a harmonious interplay between landscape and architecture, blending oak-dotted grasslands with arcades and quads that frame views and foster connection.
The Translational Research Center builds on this legacy, reinterpreting Stanford’s vernacular with contemporary elements: connected outdoor spaces, timeless materials like limestone, terra cotta, glass, and wood, and thoughtfully designed deep arcades and roof eaves that heighten the sense of place, time, and scale.
Land use and infrastructure transformation
The first phase of the project involved consolidating land parcels previously occupied by individual practitioner offices under 99-year leases. WRNS Studio collaborated with Stanford, a land-use attorney, and the City of Palo Alto to re-parcel and merge two parcels, creating a cohesive campus experience with shared infrastructure.
A new entry road, running along the west side of the Freidenrich Center for Translational Research and connecting Sand Hill Road to Welch Road, enhances circulation and accessibility. Stanford’s investment in below-grade parking demonstrates its commitment to reducing asphalt on-site and prioritizing green, walkable spaces. This decision enabled the site to maximize landscaping and open spaces while meeting parking demands.
Physical Model
Community and connection
The main entry walks from the street are framed by terracotta panel walls and stone-covered arcades, which leads to quiet entry courtyards. Second-floor terraces overlook this courtyard, and outdoor stairs connect all levels of the buildings from this central space. Heritage oaks, cedars, and other large trees were preserved.
Subterranean parking and an outdoor café serve occupants of both buildings, reinforcing the continuity of the campus. A shared multipurpose, outdoor seating area, and lawn provide community space that promotes collaboration and accommodates fundraising and outreach events.
We interviewed Stanford University School of Medicine’s Assistant Dean for Facilities Planning and Management, Niraj Dangoria and WRNS partner and project designer, Kyle Elliott about the new building.
Q: What drove this project?
Kyle: Right now researchers are scattered all over campus, and may or may not be adjacent to someone else who is researching the same topic. We are pulling research teams together into their own dedicated clinic, where they can form groups based on disease commonality or what we like to call “communities of disease-focused translational research.”
Q: What is the advantage of this consolidation?
Niraj: The primary researcher is going to be right here in this building with the rest of his or her team. This will enhance communication and hasten the bench-to-bedside treatment delivery process.
Q: How long will a team work here?
Niraj: It will vary greatly. The research teams will be together for a while, and then disband when that particular trial is over, so the building will have to be flexible.
Q: How is that flexibility realized?
Kyle: The biggest strategy was to pull the private offices to either side to create an open floor plan that runs north/south through the building. This large, contiguous area avoids isolated islands of space that can be hard to reconfigure as teams change.
Q: What were the biggest challenges in developing the design?
Niraj: The basic design idea was simple: put everything a clinical research team needs in one place. But this hasn’t been done before, so there was no coherent model to reference and say, “Look, I want one of these.”
Q: How does the design offer a comfortable place for clinical trial patients?
Niraj: A clinical trial participant might be a perfectly healthy individual who doesn’t want to go into a hospital-like environment. Yet right next door there may be a very sick cancer patient whose survival depends on long-term, experimental treatment. These two users are in different mindsets and we have to accommodate them both.
Kyle: It’s more of a hospitality environment than a hospital, which allowed some freedom with the interiors.
Q: What were some of the early design decisions?
Kyle: We considered some two-story schemes. Our critical move was to add a third story and to separate clinical and research spaces.
Niraj: We put the clinic on the first floor, which is the ‘front door’ that interacts with the community and the world. The upper floors are for research and offices and are internally organized for clinical trial teams.
Open green space and sustainable design
The generous landscape—the site now has 50% more green space than asphalt—sets the Freidenrich Center and the CJ Huang Liver Center apart from their immediate neighbors, connects them with one another, and reinforces Stanford’s tradition of elegant landscape design.
Site-wide water conservation and management strategies include flow-through planters and a grey water irrigation loop for filtering all water on site. Concrete slabs taken from the site’s existing buildings were crushed on site and used for engineered fill.
“In working with WRNS, I have enjoyed your attention to every aspect of the project and in particular your fine detailing. There is not a joint, corner, or intersection that has not been thought through and considered from different angles to obtain the desired visual impact.”
A keepsake using forms and materials from the buildings was made as a thank you to the donors.
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A curved backdrop defines open space
The Roebling Road Parking Structure responds to the urgent demands of a growing life sciences campus while defining the site’s outdoor space. The building bends gracefully along the eastern edge of the site, creating a sweeping curve that embraces a central campus green in a dynamic interplay of shade and shadow. This outdoor space—featuring a lawn, shaded grove, and volleyball court—activates the heart of the campus, offering a welcoming amenity for employees. At the ground level, a stone wall peels away from the curve to invite pedestrians into the garage.
A cohesive architectural language
Visually, the Parking Structure draws inspiration from the adjacent lab building’s dynamic composition, where a tall mass transitions to a lower one through a bridge, forming a gateway to the plaza and outdoor court. Mirroring this variation in height, it integrates contrasting elements of metal mesh and concrete along its north and south facades, enhancing wayfinding. Angled insets along the curve echo the office building’s geometry, further unifying the site’s architectural language.
Passive comfort and renewable energy
Rooftop solar panels offset energy use and natural ventilation eliminates the need for mechanical systems. These strategies reflect the client’s commitment to environmentally responsible development while supporting functionality and comfort.
Balancing craft and speed
The structure combines cast-in-place shear walls and slabs with precast columns and beams, balancing the durability and customization of cast-in-place construction with the speed and efficiency of precast components. This hybrid approach supported the project’s rapid, six month timeline while ensuring high-quality materials.
A new vision for South San Francisco
As one of the first projects in this now-thriving biotech corridor, the Roebling Road Parking Structure meets immediate functional needs while setting the stage for the district’s evolution. By blending utility, design, and sustainability, it reflects the ambition and energy of a city reinventing itself.
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Beauty, functionality, and resilience
This confidential tech giant eschews loud, brand-driven spaces in favor of an aesthetic rooted in functionality, raw materials, and human-scaled proportions. Inspired by warehouse typologies—artsy yet utilitarian—the campus prioritizes honesty in design, crafting straightforward spaces defined by daylight and proportion.
Six principles informed the concept: connection to nature, a unified identity around open space, enhanced community connection and views, a prominent rail-adjacent entry, three-level workspaces for efficiency, and campus integrity through every phase. Pathways cut through and between buildings, optimizing navigation and fostering an accessible, pedestrian-friendly experience.
Ecological restoration and resilience are central to the design, aiming for Net Zero performance. Inspired by the tidal marsh, pathways evoke boardwalks, allowing seamless movement through natural landscapes that integrate with the central plaza and hardscape. Buildings are elevated ten feet to anticipate sea level rise, while site strategies offer sustainable connections to transit, the public realm, and future developments.
By blending utility with elegance, the campus embodies a forward-thinking vision—one where beauty, functionality, and environmental stewardship converge to shape a more sustainable and connected future.
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Nature and well-being at the core
The two-story “T”-shaped clinic is elegantly integrated into its natural surroundings. Positioned as a gateway to the campus, the building’s main entry aligns with a new sidewalk extending from an adjacent outpatient clinic, creating strong connections across the campus. The east-facing second floor cantilevers over the site, adding lightness to the structure, while the brick base grounds the design. A shorter wing extends toward Muir Road, nestled between clusters of oak and eucalyptus trees, creating a harmonious transition to the nearby residential community.
Visitors are greeted by a glass wall framing an oak grove, flooding the lobby with natural light and underscoring the clinic’s emphasis on the healing power of nature. A pathway encircling the grove leads to a serene healing garden, ideal for both quiet reflection and group meetings. Warm, durable finishes and VA-compliant standards ensure the interiors are both inviting and practical, supporting the clinic’s mission to provide a restorative and patient-centered environment.
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A thriving live-learn community
At the heart of the University’s live-learn community, the Administration Building creates a seamless relationship between the Town Center, undergraduate housing along Academic Walk, and the surrounding natural landscape. The building is organized into two wings: an academic wing housing the leadership suite, campus bookstore, enrollment center, and student services offices, and a classroom wing with flexible learning environments. These wings are connected by a breezeway, forming a vibrant “living room” for students, families, and academic leaders.
Designed for simplicity and efficiency, the building integrates Merced’s agrarian identity and Net Zero Energy goals. Long ribbon windows provide sweeping views and maximize daylighting, while corrugated metal and slatted sunshades mitigate the region’s intense sun. Deep overhangs create comfortable outdoor spaces, and the breezeway offers shade for gathering and relaxation. Sustainability and heritage are woven into the design, with reclaimed barn wood from campus symbolizing a connection to the university’s past, present, and future.
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Addressing a dire need
People with disabilities who experience poverty are priced out of housing and locked out of their communities at a much higher rate than nondisabled people—and this is certainly true in San Francisco. Twenty-five percent of the units will be dedicated to people with disabilities who use Home and Community-Based Services (HCBS). The project will offer 100+ units of affordable housing and all units will be open to those who qualify at 20%-80% of area median income, creating a truly mixed-income community.
Interdependence and support
In addition to the housing units, the Kelsey Civic Center offers a diverse program that includes community rooms, a garden designed to engage the senses, bicycle parking, and public spaces that foster a mutually supportive environment rooted in the ethos of interdependence and informal support networks. Live-in staff will help residents build relationships with one another, access services and events, and navigate the neighborhood and city.
Floor plans
Advancing the standards of universal design
Collaborating with Erick Mikiten, WRNS Studio gained insights into how individuals with sensitivities to light, smells, sounds, and other stimuli experience space. Design extends beyond the existing code, such as changes in floor materials at entries and balconies, acoustic ceilings that create an audible “map,” and curved circulation paths that enhance ease of movement. Vibrant colors denote different floors and program offerings, further enriching the user experience. This experience helped inform a new rating system for evaluating architects’ commitment to universal design, currently being authored by Erick Mikiten.
Healthy “lungs”
The program is organized around a large garden courtyard with seasonal plantings that promote biodiversity and urban agriculture. This courtyard acts as the building’s “lungs,” maximizing access to fresh air, daylight, and nature. Exterior circulation with planter balconies on every level promotes social interaction among neighbors. The courtyard and balconies sponsor a single-loaded layout with operable windows on both sides of each unit, allowing for cross-ventilation, enhanced shading, and ample natural light.
Heat recovery units with MERV-13 filtration in every home provide healthy and energy-efficient indoor environments. The project also features a vertical rain garden that serves as a biophilic landmark while filtering water. A sensory roof terrace provides breathtaking views and supports energy efficiency goals through a PV array, while capturing and pre-treating stormwater that flows down into the courtyard and is managed by an infiltration gallery under the pavement.
Community connection
The ground floor features a community space between Grove Street and the central courtyard. A large perforated-metal hangar door, which ceremoniously folds up to reveal a civic-scale artwork by local artist Joseph “JD” Green, was selected by the San Francisco Arts Commission from eleven different submissions interpreting disability inclusion and racial and social equity. The door’s metal screen, with varying hole sizes, recreates Green’s artwork, adding visual interest along the street while illuminating and texturing the interior.
Public Art by Joseph “JD” Green
Perforated bi-fold doors close during evening hours
Perforated bi-fold doors fold open during open hours
Site-specific design in San Francisco’s civic heart
The project sits at the heart of San Francisco’s Civic Center, directly across from City Hall. Design reflects the civic and historical context through patterns, materials, and scale. The building’s base, middle, and top complement the massing and organization of the neighborhood’s Neoclassical buildings, with a three-color cement board panel evoking Sierra Granite and anodized copper details echoing local accents. Double and triple-height windows ensure the building “holds its own” among larger neighbors. With the roof and courtyard visible from various vantage points, including the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, the design team ensured the project is visually appealing to the broader community.
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