Yes Community Architects

On Veterans Day, I want to give a shout out to my dad. He was drafted to the Air Force during the Vietnam War. Stationed in Thailand, fell in love with the culture, learned Thai, met my mom and they came to the US together after the war. I know that there are many stories he may never tell, but those that I know are full of his adventurous spirit, a dedication to world peace, and how he traded this 1964 motorcycle he rode in Thailand for 2 guitars and started a band. I know that the Vietnam War has made for many negative political histories we all learned in our history books, but technically, it’s also one of the reasons I exist. Just saying thanks to all the veterans out there today, with all the layers of complexity, contradiction, and community that come from such sacrifice.

We are SO proud to be selected by The Unity Council and Mithun to be Associate Architect on this important community housing work. We have been joyfully crafting an authentic community collaboration effort and after 12 months, we have some progress to share. Entitlements submitted. And this is just the beginning! Oakland Artists, please DM if you are interested in participating! "The?group’s community engagement?for the project included door-to-door conversations, meetings with local leaders, events at artist venues, tabling at the BART station and neighborhood listening sessions. The group also reached out to families affected by the 2016 fire for input on design plans that are still being finalized. “The Unity Council, Mithun and Yes Community Architects are working collaboratively with this diverse group on the nature and location of a commemorative memorial element, and welcome additional involvement,”

Check out our Yes Community Architects North Berkeley BART coloring book pages coming out for our community outreach event today! Success! Thanks to the Insight Housing and East Bay Asian Local Development Corporation (EBALDC) teams for voluntarily tabling in my hood and keeping local folks abreast of the latest project happenings. Glad to be a part of this essential neighborhood community-building by folks at BART. This is how we do it. Face to face, family to family. My mom and kids all came too!

We are so proud to sponsor Insight Housing at their Housing is Healthcare Community Conversation today. Moderated by Angela Upshaw, MPH, MBA, their expert panel helped center our housing work on the most important piece: the people. Their care, their experiences, their struggles, their histories and their hopes. We talked about prioritizing meaningful, trusting, human-centered relationships with their residents. Welcoming people in need of a place to land that accepts them where they are, accepts who they are, and hugs them with housing and healthcare, and a sense of hope and community. The friendly and compassionate care, the wraparound services, the safe, dignified, and healing spaces provided by Insight are their special qualities as an org, and it shows. Their person-centered approach involves a compassionate concoction of love, inclusion, non-judgement, housing, food, healthcare, community. To me, this is the big difference between merely providing a house, and actually making a HOME. They get it. As an architect and activist, I’m left inspired to do more, to meet folks where they are, to listen to their unique needs, and to design places collaboratively that prioritize humans, homes, health, healing and community. It’s what we do at our firm, and it’s the reason we love what we do.

Did you know Oakland is home to one of the tallest Wood buildings in the world? Tonight I am moderating a panel for AIA about off-site fabrication and client/architect relationships that foster innovation and experimentation. And if you have any burning questions you would like to throw into the mix, feel free to DM or leave a comment! If you want to learn more about 1510 Webster, the tallest wood building on the West Coast at 19 stories, or the trials and tribulations of using shipping containers, come on by! AIA East Bay oWOW Matt Baran, AIA Cal Inman The American Institute of Architects (AIA) #modular #masstimber #innovation #multifamily #commercial #offsite #prefab Link: https://lnkd.in/ggjVJqgX

The housing crisis is a National issue and needs national programs to get us back on track. These approaches aren’t new, just new to the US, and represent the multitude of approaches we need to build the millions of homes our communities and our country needs like yesterday. We need leadership from the top if we are going to really provide housing choice for all and not just the privileged and wealthy. This is not a solution, but it’s a start, and I’m here for it. Glad to see housing at the forefront of federal policy priorities.

Congrats to the “Hub at Berkeley” team for a transformative and visionary project in the heart of Berkeley. I was proud to approve this project enthusiastically on the Zoning Adjustments Board last night. This project really raises the bar on many levels(much of it voluntarily!): going all-electric, black water energy recapture, neighborhood scale micro retail, pedestrianizing center street, labor contracts, car-free living—-Berkeley is growing up, and I’m here for it. (Note there were 4 public comments: one concerned about ADA streetscape, and 3 in favor). This is a testament to the transparent, inclusive and thorough process from planning staff and the applicant team, making this a simple unanimous ‘Yes’ from the zoning board and the community. Core Spaces Rhoades Planning Group DLR Group site design group, ltd.

Yes Community Architects goes vertical! 20 stories. So proud of our team, and it's growing as we speak! If you are a fearless designer or architect, or a firm that wants to collaborate, please don't hesitate to reach out and say hello. We love what we do, and love to work with new firms and fresh faces that share our passions and purpose for urban housing. Great working with Rhoades Planning Group and Aran Kaufer of BrightStreet on this one. #multifamilyhousing #hirise #urbanhousing #berkeley #studenthousing #collaboration

We are short nearly 4 to 7 million homes in the US. https://t.co/g9ndor0iQj

Great article. Do you have any unique or examplary mixed use projects we should all be looking at? Share in comments below. Quick Monday Soap Box: Just as we have incentivized housing paired with transit, we should also incentivize building housing paired with other essential community resources. It’s a win/win for libraries, grocery stores, schools, childcare, the arts and so many other mixed-use community opportunities. The American Planner’s legacy of separating uses still cuts deeply and unfairly, yet the solution isn’t far away. (—See thriving historic and modern mixed uses in other countries around the globe). We should be able to sync up and capitalize on these community opportunities, as we now know the immense costs of having to separate them for the past 100 years. The only reason it’s difficult in American Planning is because planners made it difficult. And as new state laws finally allow for more mixed use residential/civic/commercial along our commercial corridors, we need to find opportunities to sync up funding, shared goals, and optimized schedules to capitalize on these hybrid win/win relationships, inside and outside of the property line. Perhaps it’s rewriting things to simply allow and provide incentives for: “housing on top of ________________(Fill in community-centric use) ”. For now, our firm is proudly collaborating on Housing on top of BART station and childcare, but we’re aiming for so much more! #mixeduse #mixedusedevelopment #libraries #grocerystores #transitorienteddevelopment #civicorienteddevelopment #communityorienteddevelopment #mixedusehousing