Campus housing merit: Clifton Hall Student Housing, California College of the Arts: Oakland, Calif.: Mark Horton / architecture: San Francisco

Residential Architect, May, 2005 by Kathleen Stanley

This nifty little dormitory had to please a roll call of constituencies. (Or, as architect Mark Horton tactfully offers, "it had to moderate a number of different conditions.") The front facade, which presents itself as a beacon-like lantern, is at the hinge point of Broadway, where commercial gives way to residential. The Broadway Terrace elevation faces residential housing; its set-back, stucco-colored bays are a nod to nearby housing styles. But it's the Clifton Street face, overlooking the college campus, that expresses the most action.

Here, the housing is organized in a checkerbox-patterned bar that runs along the long north line of the property. It's anchored by a sophisticated, zinc-covered, ovoid-shaped building that houses the dormitory lounges. "When you're doing a dorm, you end up with a single element, a window, that you have to repeat over and over," says Horton. "Putting the lounges into a separate object really helped the scale of the project."

The judges agreed. The phrase "nice scale" popped up again and again, along with "very orderly," "clever," and "quite spectacular." Call it a graduation with honors.

principal in charge / project architect: Mark Horton, AIA, Mark Horton / Architecture; general contractor: Rick Spickard, Oliver Construction, Richmond, Calif.; developer: David Kirshman, California College of the Arts, Oakland; landscape architect: Eric Blasen, Blasen Landscape, Sausalito, Calif.; project size: 24,100 square feet; site size: 0.28 acre; construction cost: $160 per square foot; units in project: ]26; photographer: Ethan Kaplan. See page 142 for product information.