Sister Lillian Murphy Community

Sister Lillian Murphy Community, completed with Paulett Taggart Architects, Studio Vara, and Mercy Housing of California, provides 152 affordable homes in San Francisco’s Mission Bay neighborhood.

The landscape design is generated by historic geologic conditions at Mission Bay. Crisscrossing grade beams and slabs stabilize the structure and are expressed in the fractured checkerboard pattern, giving form and placement to the paving pattern, raised and sunken planters, seating and lights. Linking the two levels of outdoor space is a rock garden on top of a steel framed bicycle shed that serves as a night-time lantern, with laser cut metal panels and scuppers which direct the storm water to planting areas. Giant timber bamboo and giant bird of paradise are the dominant plantings.