UC Law San Francisco, Campus Housing

San Francisco, California

An Academic Village in San Francisco's Civic Center

Together with UC Law San Francisco, we created a welcoming hub for the university’s San Francisco-based College of the Law students. Anchored by residential life for graduate students and faculty in a range of unit types, the Academe at 198 will feature distinct common spaces, academic classrooms, community engagement spaces, and food and retail options.

The reconstructed site of 198 McAllister (656 new units with 668 beds) will feature housing units along Hyde Street and add an internal courtyard that will focus on the level 7 sky lounge. This sky lounge features the majority of the common spaces for the housing programs. The design extends connectivity across the city block, provides maximum transparency, and visually extends the vertical connections through the development, drawing students and the community to the campus.

Client: UC Law San Francisco
Size: 365,000 square feet
Completion Date: 2024

A ribbon of transparent public spaces winds its way across the buildings via a series of windows. The transparency provides a connection between the inner workings of 198 McAllister and the public realm, ascending to show a number of study rooms before culminating at a skyline lounge and terrace.

What Makes It Cool

The building’s residential façade is composed of custom concave aluminum panels that are an abstraction of the depth and texture of the fluted classical columns found in traditional judicial design.

A mix of public uses define the entry to 198 McAllister, highlighting the overlap between the Academic Village and the community.

Generous transparency at street level and a skylight above bring daylight deep into the lobby of 198 McAllister, creating a welcoming hub with a strong connection between inside and outside.

“We want to create an academic village where students and potentially faculty from multiple campuses can be housed. This is our biggest project ever."

David Seward, CFO, UC Law San Francisco

The building will include 650 beds for graduate students, as well as a community auditorium, courtrooms and retail. 80,000 square feet will be specifically dedicated to academic spaces, and about 35 percent of the residential units will be reserved for UC Law SF learners and employees.

198 McAllister will anchor the Academic Village on the southern and eastern edges of campus.

Project Team

John Long

David Damon

Matthew Pierce

Anders Carpenter

UC Law San Francisco, Campus Housing

Project Team

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