DESIGN RESEARCH | DALY CITY, CA

Daylighting the Square

This project explored how a ubiquitous strip mall in Daly City serves as a community center for the St. Francis neighborhood. It employed research methods such as morphological study and ethnographic surveys to draft an RFP for an Open Ideas Competition, in order for the site to explore its development potential.

Where

Daly City, CA

When

Academic Studio
Fall 2017 UC Berkeley

With

Benjamin Lamb, Courtney Ferris

Tools

Ethnographic Survey, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Indesign

BACKGROUND

During the Urban Renewal of the 1970s, a large population of Filipino population moved from San Francisco to Daly City. At first glance, St. Francis Square in Daly City may appear to resemble any of the ubiquitous malls that define suburban America. This 6-acre parcel, located in a moderately dense residential neighborhood is 75% asphalt parking lot. However, St. Francis Square plays host to a number of economic, social, and cultural activities that are not necessarily evident at first glance. On one level it caters to different populations through programmatic uses of the site, while on a larger scale, it connects to a global level, by facilitating money remittances that contribute to another nation’s GDP.

Visiting the site on a Saturday morning, a Thursday night, and a Monday afternoon, we talked to people about -

Their background & why they were there
What they perceived was needed to make a better St. Francis Square

WHAT WE LEARNED

We used what we learned here as a jumping-off point to study the site through three connected lenses -

EQUITABLE CONVERGENCE DAYLIGHTING THE SQUARE BAY AREA HOUSING CRISIS TOOL