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Anyone visiting any growing city in the country is likely to notice a monoculture of residential architecture—a proliferation of five-over-one apartment buildings designed to meet the growing demand for commuter-friendly housing units amid a nationwide housing shortage. When San Francisco-based WRNS Studio was approached by its longtime client Prometheus Real Estate Group, the firm saw an opportunity to buck that trend: The residential developer, who had first become acquainted with WRNS through the firm’s pro bono work with the Trust for Public Land, wanted the studio to design a mixed-use residential and commercial project in San Mateo, Calif., steps from a regional transportation hub in the city’s walkable, vibrant downtown. The site, which formerly housed a grocery store and parking lot, was ripe for development by young professionals seeking urban amenities. It would also become the new headquarters of Prometheus, which wanted to express its nearly 60-year history in the Bay Area with custom-designed offices.
Brickline spans an entire city block in downtown San Mateo. Photo © Jason O’Rear
As the WRNS team and its clients toured the city’s streets during initial project meetings, “we looked at how we could make the connections both physically and massively, because San Mateo is a certain size and this site has a 55-foot height limit,” says partner Brian Milman, who led the project for WRNS with founding partner Bryan Shiles.
Stairs lead to the roof terrace. Photo © Jason O’Rear
Spanning an entire city block, the finished building respects the city’s pedestrian experience with a headhouse form on the side facing North B Street that gradually tapers to a widened walkway and end-block plaza protected by a pronounced roof overhang. Elements of the program are organized by material cues: brick, wood, and ribbed metal facade panels characterize five stories of studio and one-bedroom apartments that residents enter from a tree-lined street. Echoing nearby brick buildings, corbels and punched windows characterize the four-story office volume that contains Prometheus’ headquarters as well as office space accessed from the busier side. At street level, the entrance to the Prometheus office is flanked by wood-framed windows and fluted terra-cotta panels. To connect this aspect of the building with the history of the area, the firm looked to the land’s indigenous people, the Ohlone people of Northern California, for inspiration. “The cast terracotta was essentially an abstraction of the patterns that some of the Ohlone tribes had used in building their grass and reed houses,” explains Milman.
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Entrance to the Brickline Flats, the residential part of the building (1); detail of the terracotta facade (2). Photos © Jason O’Rear (1), Celso Rojas (2).
These material considerations continue in the Prometheus offices, also designed by WRNS, where textiles, wood accents and metals evoke the California coast. “Sometimes we call it the ‘Armani summer suit,'” jokes Milman. “Everything feels very light and refreshing, but most of all timeless, because they’ve wanted to immerse themselves in the fabric for a very, very long time.”
Brickline’s rooftop terrace. Photo © Jason O’Rear
Although the climate is temperate year-round, it’s unusual for Northern California office buildings to have windows that can be opened. Prometheus’ offices buck that trend and let employees enjoy fresh air indoors. The building also features two large private terraces and a rooftop deck as additional social space for the offices, as well as a private patio and courtyard for residents. “Many clients wouldn’t go as far as Prometheus here,” says Shiles. “This building doesn’t look like a blueprint; they really took pride in making space.”
Ground floor shop fronts connect the complex with the surrounding streetscape. Photo © Jason O’Rear
The architects also note that the building’s ground floor retail space will be used for small businesses, which have proliferated in San Mateo and want to blend into the diverse local fabric rather than overwhelm it. Shiles adds: “You have the feel of a village, but it’s big city, because it’s packed with the best noodle restaurant in the Bay Area, right next to a traditional Latin American shopping street that could have come from San Francisco’s Mission District; there’s a German brewery across the street, and so on.”
While so much of today’s housing is based on the attractiveness and legal simplicity of what many refer to as “Anytown architecture,” WRNS hopes that the Brickline will bring pride to San Mateo residents in her City that continues to grow.
