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New Urban Home at Blue Star Corner, Emeryville, California, USA The first New Urban Home debuts this fall in Emeryville, California. Developed by an award-winning team of architects, developers, and engineers, Blue Star Corner will bring sustainable modern urban design to a burgeoning new urban hub in the San Francisco Bay Area. Inspiration Architecture is an expression of the function it must serve. Recent revolutions in how we live, work, and communicate inform the need for a new type of housing. What differentiates this 2500 unit production development from most of its type is the intense concern for the quality of living the home can provide. In three ways, Borneo-Sporenburg has been an ideal model for the New Urban Home in California. Firstly, city life is accessible from residents' front doors, keeping people close to the urban reality of today's social climate. Secondly its maximum use of tight urban space is proof that a more desirable domesticity can exist in a well-appointed townhome than in a more spacious, but characterless suburban tract home. For example, many residences in tight urban infill are built around a courtyard void, such that natural light and green space are privately accessible from within the home. Finally, when urban land is used efficiently, keeping people in the city of their consumption, a natural sustainability through resourceful connectivity is created. The New Urban Home at Blue Star Corner
The New Urban Home is a solution to contemporary urban living. The following case study will outline the physical features of Blue Star Corner and how the comprehensive design of this project works to fulfill the needs of new home owners to live a domestic, yet urban and sustainable lifestyle. Domesticity Firstly, the New Urban Home solves the problem of housing new urbanites while maintaining a level of quality, comfort, and efficiency not oft found in even the most spacious of production homes. This new prototype promises a hybrid of the best qualities of suburban homes and city lofts. Starting with the facade, Blue Star Corner manifests the individual desires of different users. Looking at Borneo-Sporenburg, Holliday Development directed architects at David Baker + Partners to design unique but complementary facades for each Blue Star Corner town house. Though each facade at Borneo-Sporenburg was designed by one of 65 different architects, they make up a cohesive whole. Three prototypes are available at Blue Star Corner, 'Intiem', 'Soepel', and 'Ruimte', all named for Dutch notions of space. The Intiem, meaning warm, friendly, or intimate, is the most efficient model at Blue Star Corner. All Blue Star Corner homes have a fully appointed master bedroom suite, flex room, and open plan living room and kitchen. A single car garage will double as a work space, plenty of room left over for storage or a second refrigerator. The Soepel, meaning supple, flexible, and adaptable to change, is a larger version of the Intiem. Like the Intiem, the Soepel has the kitchen, bedroom, and bathroom suites, but also includes a mezzanine overlooking the double height living space, with storage/sleeping platform and space for an efficient office or guest room. The double wide Ruimte, meaning opportunity, expanse, and space for movement, is the largest unit. Differing in materiality, color, and floor plan, all New Urban Homes feature the open floor plan that distinguishes modern architecture. Perhaps it is here that we find the most obvious connection our California New Urban Home has to its European counterparts. To quote Mies van der Rohe, 'less is more': in this case, fewer boundaries within the floor plan means each room has more functions and the flexibility to change with the user. For those who don't need a large dining table, more space is left to them for casual living space. The 'flex room' featured in all units could be a dedicated guest room, complete with a built in Murphy bed, or perhaps a home office, adding a custom enclosure to serve double-duty as an idea board. Many design opportunities await the New Urban Home owners, who will feel confident that their home will grow with them.
Now matter how much time the developers have spent on the details, residents' always like to make the home their own. At Blue Star Corner, new resident's have the resources of 'Urban Designs'. Here decisions can be made, with the help of a design professional, to upgrade carpets, appliances, or window coverings. The goal is to create an urban enclave, which marries the best features of secluded suburban life with a vivacious city one. Urbanity The New Urban Home exists within the urban fabric, bringing people close to the places they work, shop, and play. Blue Star Corner, in Emeryville, is located across the Bay from San Francisco, the first exit off of the San Francisco Bay Bridge, a major area thoroughfare. Though rapidly growing, at a population of 8,000, Emeryville is still a burgeoning new 'borough' of the San Francisco bay. Though Emeryville itself is just beginning to grow, nearby Oakland, Berkeley, and San Francisco lend their urbanity to Emeryville. Hovering between the distinction of town and city grants Emeryville a hybrid identity; no wonder this is the site for an experimental new housing prototype. Fortunately, Emeryville planners have thought ahead, planning for the city's growth into an urban core and situating the town center near established infrastructure. Many urban amenities not found in fully developed cities can already be found here near to Blue Star Corner. BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) , the most efficient public transit system in America, has a station just a fifteen minute walk away from Blue Star Corner. Emeryville also has its own free local shuttle, which connects both to BART and the local train station. Indeed, Emeryville boasts a popular local commuter Amtrack station. Blue Star Corner is near to all major area freeways and highways, making it accessible to the places its residents will work. And finally, Emeryville has been established as a walkable town with local retail, businesses, and commuter hubs a sustainable walk away from housing.
As enjoyable as all of this will be for the residents at Blue Star Corner, the preservation of our current quality of environment depends on this sort of master planning. Through its innovative design, the New Urban Home brings sanctuary to the metropolis, so that more people may embrace city living. Simply by taking part in an urban lifestyle, the New Urban Home serves to contain sprawl and bring a social unity back into the city. Sustainability Though participation of sustainability on all levels, social, environmental, and cultural, is important to maintaining the integrity of any city, environmental sustainability is one which must be acted upon with utmost urgency and responsibility. Architects and developers must not ignore the need for more sustainable homes, which use fewer resources in the construction process and have greater efficiency throughout their usefulness as homes. Thus, the developers volunteered Blue Star Corner as one of nine projects to participate in LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Green Building Rating System for Homes pilot program. LEED is a voluntary, consensus-based national standard for developing high-performance, sustainable buildings. Through this system, 'green building' has been given definition, and LEED serves as a resource for those striving to build more efficient, less wasteful, more ecologically sound buildings. LEED is a sect of the larger USGBC (United States Green Building Council, which includes the nation's foremost coalition of leaders from across the building industry working to promote buildings that are environmentally responsible, profitable, and healthy places to live and work. LEED for Homes is the first program by USGBC and LEED to cater to residential design. Since this program was created to certify single-family homes, each of the twenty homes at Blue Star Corner will receive their own certification. Through this program, Blue Star Corner architects and developers strive to adhere to the strictest green building standards to date in residential construction. Emphasis is placed in implementation of sustainable buildings materials (recycled or non-endangered woods, recyclable and non-toxic building materials), utilization of local resources whenever possible (because of the decrease in petroleum usage to procure the materials/resources), building into the infill of the city rather than sprawling out (because this makes use of existing land, infrastructure and transit), and sustainable landscaping and appliances Without sacrificing the aesthetic integrity of their design, the team chose environmentally responsible materials and processes during the production of Blue Star Corner. Many of these will be visible to the end user: environmentally preferred woods, galvanized metals, and stuccos are all materials that fall under the rubric of sustainability. Within the home, surfacing materials like bamboo floors and Quartz counters are sustainable in two ways: in the material itself and its fabrication processes. Appliances and plumbing in Blue Star Corner are all EnergyStar rated per LEED for Homes requirements. What the new resident will never see are all of the sustainability measures taken during the construction of the home. Whenever possible, local materials and labor have been used, which reduces the gasoline used in transit and supports the local community where production is taking place. During construction, waste management followed strict LEED for Homes guidelines. The finished home will comply with strict air quality standards, and the landscaping will feature native and low-water planting materials.
Realistically, at a density any less than this, it becomes increasingly impossible for the middle-class to own property in a major metropolitan center. Property values increase to a point where purchasing land and building a house from scratch is an option available to only the upper echelon. To develop in the infill or reclaim a brown field is just too expensive unless it is done on a larger scale than a solo entity could afford. As America grows at increasing rates, it is imperative that housing is developed with foresight. Rather than sprawling into infinity, it is time to think more realistically about where all of these new people are going to live. Before a real crisis occurs, some developers and architects, namely those behind the New Urban Home, are thinking about alternatives and yearning for successful models. European city living, where flats and townhouses are the normative homeownership models in city centers, even for the affluent, has been an obvious model for the New Urban Home. This combination of modern European design, urban amenities, and the sustainability measures taken to develop Blue Star Corner make it the prototype for the New Urban Home. Finally, this is an example of how rethinking the American home can bring sustainable living to more people through the development of production housing. |
In the rapidly growing state of California, planners and architects are pressed to find solutions to growth that will preserve their urban centers and open green space. In a region with one of the highest costs of living in the entire country, many residents of the San Francisco Bay Area are hoping to remain in the city when they buy a home, raise a family, and advance their careers. New developments need to be compact to protect cities from sprawl, near to public transit to control congestion, yet must fulfill the American dream of true homeownership without sacrifice of space or quality. To evolve a housing prototype that would fulfill these needs, the developers at 
Blue Star Corner is the latest endeavor of Emeryville developers Holliday Development and San Francisco architects David Baker + Partners Architects. This team has been working together for 20 years producing adaptive re-use and urban infill housing in the California Bay Area. Blue Star Corner is the latest housing innovation by this award winning team; the result of many years of synergy. The New Urban Homes at Blue Star Corner will be the first of a new paradigm in housing, appropriate for the times and places the next generation of home owners will inhabit. Influenced by Amsterdam's Borneo-Sporenburg and Java communities, Blue Star Corner will bring sustainable, modern European living to the San Francisco Bay Area.
By identifying the design elements that make this possible, such as proportion, palette, and materiality, creative forces at Holliday Development generated a 'smart matrix' of facades that would insure that each Blue Star Corner facade would harmonize with its neighbors. According to this smart matrix, once a set of proportion was established the maintenance of such proportions would unify the various facade. Once this was decided, material and color choices were made to echo the similarities and accentuate the differences of these original facades.
Unique to the Rumite is the inclusion of the 'Eurospa', a large shower and steam room located on the mezzanine, and, since it is wider, has a two-car garage and utility space.
All New Urban Homes will be complete with quality appliances, finishes, surfaces, and detailing not typically found in production housing. At Blue Star Corner, in addition to evoking a modern design sensibility, appliances and finishes are, whenever possible, environmentally conscious as well. As part of Blue Star Corner's unique participation in the 
(native plants use less water, EnergyStar appliances use less energy). Participation is completely voluntary, though it is only a matter of time before these principles are mandatory-at least from the standpoint of social acceptance. Through this pilot program, Blue Star Corner will be influencing standards for all new residential construction to follow. A combination of elements unique to each project makes it possible for a house of any size, cost, or region to fulfill these principles of sustainable design. Blue Star Corner will earn its certification through a focus on these major themes: access to local transit and amenities through environmentally sensitive materials, responsible super-efficient appliances, and the production of high-density development.
As we have already discussed, some of Blue Star Corner's most desirable features come from its proximity to all of the beneficial amenities the city has to offer. LEED for Homes considers this environmentally responsible because such proximity encourages more sustainable means of transit and lifestyle. This is only possible through developing at higher densities than suburban sprawl can achieve. For example, in order to have a functioning bus system, a certain critical mass of density must be achieved to support it. Indeed, density alone can produce an energy saving greater to that of EnergyStar rated appliances-a savings mainly due to