The high-profile project, designed with the help of several well-known architecture firms, shows that factory-built structures can meet lofty design standards.
Construction has been underway at the Mission Rock development in San Francisco since last year, and prefabrication is playing a major part in the project’s creation. The 28-acre mixed-use development, which has been estimated at $2.5 billion, is a public-private partnership between the Port of San Francisco, the San Francisco Giants and commercial real estate company Tishman Speyer.
Prefabricated building systems firm Clark Pacific worked with the owners and design firms like Henning Larsen, MVRDV, Studio Gang and WORKac to come up with a prefabrication solution that would also achieve the aesthetic of the project, which will feature natural and iconic California scenes on the exteriors.
Jim Lewis, director of sales at Clark Pacific, said the kind of early collaboration between the prefabrication and Mission Rock teams was similar to how the company worked on the Apple “spaceship ” headquarters in Cupertino, California, and is necessary to achieving a design-prefab balance.
Using prefab on such high-profile projects, Lewis said, should help debunk the misperception that prefab elements are always utilitarian.
“It’s totally changing that,” he said. “You can do iconic architecture and do it prefabricated. You just have to start early… It’s a gamechanger.”
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