Date Posted: 05.01.2015
Mithun|Solomon has been awarded two Charter Awards from the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU). The annual CNU Charter Awards celebrate the finest contributions to urbanism and urban architecture internationally.
UCLA Weyburn Terrace graduate student housing in the Westwood neighborhood of Los Angeles won the Charter Award in the category of Block, Street, and Building. This 500-unit nine story apartment block and community building ties together a fragmented part of the university campus and blends seamlessly into the distinctive fabric of Westwood. The project was designed by Mithun|Solomon in collaboration with executive architect STUDIOS Architecture. The project was initiated as WRT Solomon E.T.C.
“The project masterfully achieves a very high density, sensitively responding to the scale and tower forms of the adjacent town, while gracefully connecting to the campus,” notes Jeffrey Averill, UCLA’s campus architect, who called the development an “urban tour de force.”
Hunters View in San Francisco was awarded the Charter Award in the category of Neighborhood, District, and Corridor. Mithun|Solomon created the urban design plan for the complete transformation of Hunters View, San Francisco’s most isolated, dilapidated and crime ridden public housing. Fifty barracks-style buildings housing 264 families, built in 1943 and renovated in 1954, were arranged along curving, dead-end streets, where open space was shapeless, un-owned and terrifying. The neighborhood was cut off from the rest of the city and was unrecognizable as San Francisco.
The new master plan triples the previous density in a mixed-income neighborhood. It reorganizes city streets to connect with the surrounding blocks and takes advantage of the neighborhood’s hilltop location, offering public housing residents splendid views of the cityscape and the Bay. A new public park is situated in front of a large community room, and each block has a semi-private interior courtyard for children to play in a secure and supervised environment.
“The emerging Hunters View community is secure, immeasurably improves parks and public spaces, and is immediately recognizable as San Francisco,” said Rob Steuteville, CNU Senior Communications Advisor.
The first three blocks completed by architects Mithun|Solomon and Paulett Taggart clearly establish the new Hunters View as an organic extension of San Francisco’s distinctive city fabric. The project is proceeding in phases to insure that none of Hunters View’s previous residents are displaced from the site during the reconstruction, and their powerful ties of community remain intact. Hunters View was initiated under WRT Solomon E.T.C.
