S.F. is rushing to build new housing, but we shouldn’t settle for mediocre design 65%
By Allison Arieff0%
8/3/2026, 4:00:00 AM
BS Summary: This article contains 29 faulty reasoning types, including Hasty Generalization, Biased Writer Voice, and Indoctrination, with Negativity Bias as the most egregious example at 29.2% saturation with 271 hits. Analysis detected 2,325 faulty-reasoning hits from 927 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 52.2% and a BS Rank of 65% (9,701 of 27,323 articles). This article is worse (more manipulative) than 64.50% of the article peer group.
San Francisco has largely solved the legal question of whether it will build more housing, but it is only beginning to grapple with the architectural question of how to build it well.
If City Hall wants its residents to get behind the “Family Zoning” plan, it needs to work a lot harder with the architecture and development community to figure out how to deliver multifamily housing that’s not just dense but well-designed.
It may feel like an afterthought, but now that California law requires us to build more, we shouldn’t settle for mediocre buildings.
I know I’m not the only one who’s been disheartened by some of the architectural renderings that have been emerging of late.
Where is the design?
To be clear, I deplore the tired NIMBY argument of a building being “out of character” or “context” with a low density neighborhood.
That’s a spurious argument designed expressly to stop housing — any housing — from being built.
But that doesn’t mean we can’t still expect more from what we are going to build.
Take the aggressively bland skyscraper proposed — and, shocker, quickly pronounced DOA — for a site out at Ocean Beach.
Or this rendering of an eight-story building proposed on a block of single-family homes on Anza Street in the Inner Richmond.
It’s like a manspreader on the subway, taking every inch of available space for itself.
It’s a truly lazy rendering that needs to go back to the drawing board.
I recognize that I may seem to be citing the oldest NIMBYest trope of all — that the “highrises” are out of character with the neighborhood.
But that’s not what I am arguing here.
I don’t have problems with the height or the density of the new building.
I do have a problem with bad architecture.
There are so many inspiring precedents for well-designed multifamily buildings throughout the state, especially in Los Angeles, which doesn’t get bogged down in appropriateness or character and as a result has some of the most interesting buildings anywhere.
There, architect Lorcan O’Herlihy, who recently passed away too young, was one of the most dazzling practitioners.
And San Francisco has more than its share of great ones.
Two new sculptural residence towers at Mission Rock — the Canyon by MVRDV and Studio Gang’s Verde — use sophisticated forms, color and materials while maximizing views and open space.
As does the five-story Hunters View affordable housing by David Baker Architects and Min Design, and DBA’s new senior housing on Valencia.
And as for fitting something taller on a single family block?
Windsor Gibson’s gorgeous 3-unit building on Dolores shows how it’s done.
Every single design submitted for the single-stair competition runs circles around the Anza Street proposal.
These designs gave serious thought to scale, materials, open space and, perhaps most importantly, to being a good neighbor.
As the architects of one of my favorite designs in the Mission, the aptly named “Let Me Live in Your City” put it, “this is a housing project that seeks to anchor residents in the life of the city through architecture that prioritizes light, air, and a shared relationship to the street.”
With the passage of so much significant housing legislation of late, developers are rightly moving quickly to try and take advantage of state housing laws meant to increase housing production by easing local barriers to qualifying developments.
That’s exactly what should be happening.
To counter our affordability and homelessness crises, we need to build more housing in every neighborhood.
But that doesn’t mean that the city should rubber stamp projects that pay little to no attention to aesthetics, or that residents have to cheer each and every middling development.
It is a sad truth that the arduous, multi-year, multi-stakeholder process of getting a project to the groundbreaking phase often leads to non-controversial, homogeneous designs.
Firms that get the work often end up being the ones that have been able to weather the storm.
Not inclined to take risks lest they run into complaints about designs that are out of character, they settle for blah.
And so we often get dull, risk-averse buildings more than architecturally interesting ones.
Still, I have to ask myself how we keep ending up with buildings that look like they were designed (and I use the term loosely), by early stage AI.
So many neighborhoods in the city have at least one of these standard podium projects under construction, and many of them are equally bland and generic.
So what we’re left with is an increasing number of homogeneous structures incorporating the same form, colors, and style you might see anywhere else in the U.S., a style that architecture critic Kriston Capps has termed “fast casual.”
Starting in 2024, San Francisco established objective design standards (addressing things like massing, height limits, setbacks, and the like) in hopes of integrating new development within the context of existing communities, and to replace subjective design guidelines.
(As of 2018, these are mandated by the state of California but cities and counties establish their own local versions.)
This pursuit of design objectivity makes sense in theory.
We can’t let people object to new housing simply because it doesn’t conform to their taste.
But while taste considerations alone shouldn’t get in the way of serving a population desperate for housing, not insisting on aesthetic excellence is a surefire way to make everyone unhappy.
Laws can legalize housing — but only good architecture can make people welcome it.
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