Students Win 2024 AIA Dallas Design Awards
Cities expand in patterns of voids and fills. They have tiers of occupation, privacy, and demographics, all structured around urban tissues that express a part of the whole. While infill is the densification of housing, Paula Cano and Ciara Hackman’s proposal for an urban infill project in San Francisco’s Sunset District infills by opening a gap in the site and organizing public and private programs around one of the dominant architectural elements: the wall.
The project, 2209 Taraval, completed in Assistant Professor Martin Haettasch’s Fall 2023 Integrative Studio, recently received a Student Design Award from AIA Dallas’ 2024 Design Awards. Held annually, the AIA Dallas Student Design Awards recognize the most innovative and thoughtful student work from the architectural programs that have historically supplied talent to AIA Dallas member firms.
Cano graduated from the School of Architecture with her Master of Architecture degree in May 2024, while Hackman is in her final year of the program this year. Working together, the two followed Haettasch’s charge to the entire studio: replace the existing density (one unit per lot) of a site in San Francisco’s Sunset District with up to six units.
Looking to address San Francisco’s housing and public space crisis, 2209 Taraval offers a range of unit types, from studio occupancy to a three-bedroom duplex, while also creating space for public programs. While usually a wall represents a barrier, the curved wall of this project constitutes a courtyard, combining people, the city, and thermal comfort. Facing south, the courtyard provides light distributed uniformly across units, and the north façade works as a windshield, protecting it from dominant winds and noise pollution from Taraval Street.
Cano and Hackman’s project is one of three student projects recognized by AIA Dallas this year and also received one of the school’s 2023-2024 Design Excellence Awards. They were officially recognized at the AIA Dallas Design Awards Announcement Celebration on Thursday, September 12.
