The Living Cultural Center of the Pinoleville Pomo Nation will allow the Nation to practice, preserve, and revive their unique Native Pomo culture. This community center enables active social exchange, cultural education, and cultural practices that integrate traditions with contemporary lifestyles.

The center is organized into a ring of buildings with the main exterior community gathering space in a courtyard at its center. The inner gathering space with views to the landscape through passageways at the cardinal directions reinforces a connection to nature.

The circular form of the building allows for views inside towards the central gathering space and outside towards significant elements of the landscape: the oak grove, the native plant garden, the mountains, and the wetland. The slope of the circular roof enables rainwater catchement and solar power.

Master Plan

The master plan of the site for the Pinoleville Pomo Nation Living Cultural Center integrates the building design into the landscape and reinforces a connection with nature. Each of the cardinal directions is emphasized in pathways and entrance between the programmatic spaces of the building and those in the surrounding environment. The east and south pathways lead to a nature path that circumnavigates the land trust property, stopping along the way at outdoor gathering areas to learn about traditional Pomo lands and medicine, in addition to meditation areas under the oak trees.

The landscaping between the South and East pathway contains the food and water harvesting that aims to promote tribal self-sufficiency by living off of the land. Grey water is collected the building, treated in a constructed wetlands and stored in a pond to irrigate the organic farm. A Native Plant garden surrounds the pond, acting as an educational pathway and gathering areas for medicinal plants. A space for traditional reed and willow Pomo house is sited adjacent to the pond, serving as a demonstration area and place for ceremonial gatherings. A children’s playground and educational garden help to establish a connection with nature for tribal youth.

The outdoor Gathering Area is a space for dances, ceremonies and celebrations. It is adjacent to indoor storage areas and changing rooms. The Display, Library, and Recording Studios are for demonstration as well as research, documentation, and teaching of the Pinoleville Pomo Nation language and history.

The Arts Studios are equipped for making traditional artifacts such as woven fiber baskets, dance regalia, and jewelry. This is also an area where youth can do homework and socialize after school.

The Health and Nutrition Center contain a community kitchen with state-of-the art appliances and place for cooking and preparing traditional foods, including areas of drying seaweed, dressing wild game, and processing abalone.

The Upper Yard is a 1.7 acre site at the corner of Geneva and San Jose Avenues in San Francisco’s Excelsior neighborhood. The site is currently used for employee parking by the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) and passenger loading by Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART). The site is rich in advantages: it sits directly above BART’s Balboa Park station, as well as within close proximity to several SFMTA bus and rail lines; it is located within walking distance of City College of San Francisco’s Ocean Campus; and it is well served by amenities like public parks and schools. Despite these advantages, the site is part of a cluster of under utilized parcels surrounding the Balboa Park station, and the area feels distant from amenities and services that are actually at its doorstep. This context makes it an ideal location for an urban infill development that will help to activate the area’s streets and stitch neighborhoods back together.

Golden Bear Partners has teamed up with Bernal Heights Neighborhood Center to develop a proposal for the site, named The Upper Yard to maintain the connection with the site’s history and character as a hub of transportation in southern San Francisco. The development will consist of 125 units, with 108 of those dedicated to families and singles making under 50% of the area median income (AMI) (plus a unit for the building manager). Sixteen of the units will be set aside for transitional age youth, specifically focusing on those who are emancipated from t he foster care system. These youth will be provided with several supportive services, through a partnership with Larkin Street Youth Services. The proposal also calls for a neighborhood clinic on the ground floor, which will provide a much needed amenity to the un- and under-insured in the area. This clinic will be run by the Mission Neighborhood Health Center (MHNC), which is seeking to establish a stronger presence in the Excelsior.

The Upper Yard provides needed housing in a location defined by its transit connections while meeting the following goals:

• Maintaining affordability: The Excelsior neighborhood is one of San Francisco’s last bastions for working-class and immigrant families. As the economy continues to drive up demand for housing and wealthier households migrate south, these residents will be particularly vulnerable to the displacement already seen elsewhere in the city. In order to maintain access to the city, adding to the Excelsior’s stock of affordable housing units will be essential.

• Strengthening the community: Several community organizations have called for development on the Upper Yard, in order to activate what is currently a barren stretch of Geneva Avenue. By including ground floor uses, The Upper Yard will help activate this critical gateway to the Excelsior, and create stronger community connections between City College, Ocean Avenue, and the residences to the east. Additionally, the clinic will provide a much-needed expanded and updated facility to the community, with a special focus on the immigrant families who live nearby. It will also provide our partners, MHNC, with a modernized facility to help attract talented staff to the mission of providing health care to vulnerable patients.

• Empowering residents: Residents of The Upper Yard will be provided with access to efficient transportation to job centers, resident-specific services that provide financial planning and career assistance, and affordable health care. In particular, the transitional age youth will be able to access City College’s Guardian Scholars program, which focuses specifically on post- secondary opportunities for emancipated youth.

• Embracing sustainable living: The Upper Yard will be built to high standards of sustainable design, and will include construction approaches that maximize the use of recycled materials. The Upper Yard also offers an unparalleled opportunity for transit-oriented development, allowing both residents and clinic patients to easily use public transportation for mobility rather than private autos. To that end, the project will include only a small amount of unbundled parking, and will emphasize car sharing and transit as transportation options.

• Capitalizing on infill opportunities: Challenging locations are a common issue with infill locations, and in this case, the Upper Yard will be located next to BART and freeway infrastructure that present unique issues. These issues are addressed through innovative design, and we intend to have the Upper Yard serve as a case study in tackling these obstacles.

Finally, given the current fiscal environment, we have sought to minimize the local funding burden, and are seeking out alternatives at the federal level, as well as containing costs through innovative construction. We are also using a unique joint venture with MHNC to have our non-residential space be completely self-financing, and tapping additional revenue through leasing our parking. We are confident that our proposed Upper Yard development will provide the Excelsior neighborhood with sorely needed community benefits: affordable housing for families, supportive housing for transitional youth, and community health facilities at a location with excellent access to the services of City College and ample public transportation options.

Golden Bears Team: Jacob Bintliff, Gwendolyn Fuertes, Elizabeth Kee, Pontus Lindberg, Greg Lukina, Ed Parillon, D’Genaro Pulido

Asian American Architects and Engineers Design Award for the Tuberculosis Laboratory built specifically for air borne diseases on the Thai-Burma border