block 27 - sacramento, california

Block 27 is a small four-unit apartment building in the Newton Booth district on Sacramento’s east side.  The compact structure sits on an empty infill lot at the threshold between an area of distribution centers, warehouses, and light-industrial buildings on one side, and a dense residential neighborhood with treelined streets on the other. In response to these two competing urban typologies, the project seeks to mediate between the large-scale, unadorned monoliths to the north and the fine-grained fabric of small bungalows and four-square homes lining 27th Street to the south.  

The simple, three-story massing gives Block 27 a robust street presence and echoes the geometric pragmatism of its bulky commercial neighbors, but unlike them, the building is not an obstinate, hermetic box.  Instead, the subtle manipulation of its cubic form and the cadenced articulation of its envelope temper the building’s volumetric rigor.  Stacked floor-to-ceiling wall panels and windows faithfully delineate the building’s entire perimeter, but their irregularity, tonal variegation and random distribution, along with a large void carved out of the volume’s top floor, intentionally subvert the purity of form for a more nuanced reading of the building – a counterpoint to the visual impermeability and stubborn self-containment of the nearby warehouses that allows it to transition comfortably to the more delicate scale of its residential neighbors.  

Because of its convenient location next to Sacramento’s major light rail corridor that connects Newton Booth with downtown in a short commute, Block 27 does not offer enclosed parking for cars, instead providing shared storage space for bicycles and scooters inside a wood-clad volume facing the street.  The wood volume articulates the building entry, its oblique side wall leading to the deeply recessed front door and into the vestibule.

The carefully restrained exterior palette is limited to wood, cementitious stucco, and glass. A series of vertical metal channels and corresponding lighting strips complement the overall façade composition and add to its rhythmic complexity, their thin yellow lines a subtle accent to the otherwise muted hues of the building. The exterior wood siding extends into the building vestibule and clads the walls of the staircase as it leads up to the communal roof terrace, a trellised outdoor room with ample shade and expansive views of a neighborhood in transition.