Public Congruency: Leveling the divide between neighborhood boundaries in the San Francisco Tenderloin

Bachelor Thesis by: Zedric Malmoux  B.Arch / Thesis Advisors: Philip Ra, AIA & Mini Chu

While European public infrastructure created tight relationships between people across generation, race, culture, and socio-economic grouping, the United States’ public infrastructure has yielded a loose relationship between people. Due to the underdeveloped public infrastructure in the United States, there is an inherent disconnect among people because of a lack of public shared spaces. A plural society is one based around the collective environment, rather than the singular. Thus, a strong public infrastructure has an influential capability to shape a strong community. This is essential in dense heterogeneous cities as the largest diversity among values and culture occurs here.

This thesis envisions a plural society based on a collective architecture that promotes healthy community and shared environments. The proposed scheme utilizes the different densities of pedestrian and automobile traffic in order to generate variations of architectural form and program. Located between three diverse San Francisco neighborhoods, the site poses opportunities for the design of an interactive hub of shared spaces for the cultural collective. Redefined education, health, and public park programs are introduced in order to establish the building as a comfortable and engaging space that bridges the divide between people across generation, race, culture, and socio-economic grouping.