Residence Halls Units 1 & 2 Infill Student Housing at the University of California in Berkeley, CA
and EHDD Architecture in San Francisco, CA

View for Large Image

View for Large Image

The purpose of these new residential towers was to incorporate 800 additional beds and a variety of student services on two city blocks that were already heavily developed.

Programming and design goals were to: provide more student housing, centralize student services, revitalize neighborhood streets through synergy of mixed-use and 24-hour student support spaces, create an uninterrupted pedestrian network and regenerate urban design responsive to the residential neighborhood scale.

The design challenge was to renovate the blocks and their seismically un-repairable and functionally out-dated dining halls,  reintegrate the large monolithic buildings into the surrounding neighborhood, all  without disturbing the existing dormitory towers. The new buildings had to provide an interme­diate scale between the existing towers and the surrounding houses while responding to the student needs.

The solution was to build two new residential towers on each site, situated in the gaps between the existing four towers.

The project responds contextually to the existing neighborhood and helps knit together the urban fabric disrupted by the 1960s University housing. The new towers respond to the scale of the residential neighborhood with stepping façades, which appear like narrow individual buildings, with a variety of textures, colors, and bays.

Units 1 and 2 are among the most popular student housing at the University and many students choose to return a second year. The addition of 884 new beds contributed to changing the housing dynamic in Berkeley, while eliminating the need for additional parking or increasing demand on public transit and infrastructure.

The project was designed to achieve LEED Silver certifica­tion. Aptly named, "In-fill Student Housing", it addresses one of the primary sustainable strategies of LEED—urban redevelopment.

The jury said, "This project has done great things for the housing and for people living on campus by creating affordable housing right by the university. This is particularly important since the surrounding housing has become so expensive. What it has done for the community is amazing."

Project Team: University of California, Berkeley with EHDD Architecture and Rutherford & Chekene, structural engineering; Gayner Engineers, mechanical/electrical/plumbing; and GLS, landscape architecture.