Archinect - News

Details emerge for billionaire-backed startup community plan northeast of San Francisco

2024-01-24T19:14:00-05:00

The once-secretive plan for a startup new community in Solano County, Northern California, is beginning to materialize as the company known as California Forever has begun publicizing details for their proposed development ahead of a potential November vote to determine its future.

Details made public with the start of a requisite petition drive showed a preliminary map, renderings, and area plan for the project, which would notably be the first large-scale demonstration of the "walkable city" concept designed entirely from scratch in North America.

Image courtesy California Forever

Billed as a future "amazing success story" by the company’s founder Jan Sramek, the development intends to construct some 20,000 new affordable residences plus a solar farm and network of public parks before 2040. The plan reportedly allows for further growth to support a population of up to 400,000. As the announcement post notes, much of the preliminary proposal is focused on creating missing middle ho...

Anti-democratic vistas: Plans for a new city in Northern Californian farmlands draw ire from concerned officials

2023-09-04T12:00:00-04:00

Over a five-year period, the company became the largest landowner in Solano County after purchasing more than 55,000 acres of undeveloped land. The company has paid more than $800 million since 2018, according to court records. [...] On the eastern end of Solano County, the city of Rio Vista is now surrounded by Flannery Associates land. Mayor Ronald Kott said that, like many Solano County officials, he had not been approached by anyone from the company to discuss plans for the land.

Similar to Marc Lore’s utopian vision for a new $400 billion Shenzhen-style city from scratch called Telosa, the secretive land grab-cum-startup city lies suspiciously close to Travis Air Force Base and is being marketed as a “new city with tens of thousands of new homes, a large solar energy farm, orchards with over a million new trees, and over ten thousand acres of new parks and open space.”

Democratic Representative Mike Thompson told reporters last week he was “very concerned about our national security” related to the plan's proximity to the base. Some residents have reported “fear” in their dealing with the company, including concerns about retaliation. The company, meanwhile, maintains its secrecy is deliberate and intended to prevent possible real estate speculation on the part of landowners, a group of whom they have sued for collusion.

The U.S. is about to begin the largest dam removal project in history

2023-03-16T09:00:00-04:00

Preconstruction work is underway on the largest dam removal and river restoration project in U.S. history. The $450 million project will take out four hydroelectric dams on the Klamath River in Oregon and California to restore habitat and passage for migrating fish. Removal work will begin this summer, starting with Copco 2, which should be gone by this fall, according to ABC 12. The other three dams — Copco 1, the Iron Gate Dam and the JC Boyle Dam — will be removed by the end of 2024.

The projects were approved late last fall in the interest of protecting the local salmon population and other wildlife in the region. Local tribes will plant 19 billion seeds in the wake of the removals in order to boost the region's ecosystems, according to local public radio.

The removals are among the $3 billion worth of dam projects being funded under the new Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, though experts still say it isn’t enough to address the 15,600 dams across the country that are currently classified as “high-hazard potential structures” by the American Society of Civil Engineers in 2021.

Fougeron Architecture's 400 Grove mixed-use echoes classic San Francisco design

2017-10-10T17:59:00-04:00

Built in the heart of San Francisco's Hayes Valley, 400 Grove is a new mixed-use development designed by locally based Fougeron Architecture. At the corner of Grove and Gough streets, the project site opened up after the removal of the Central Freeway in 2003 to reconnect Hayes Valley with other neighborhoods.

When Fougeron started developing the project in 2013 for client/developer DM Development and DDG Partners, the architects focused on creating a space that provides a sense of residency and blends into the urban site. The project was completed in 2016.

Photo credit: William Timmerman Photography.

Based on the central mews typology, the building's angled, faceted exterior features wood dowels that echo San Francisco's traditional bay windows. Each of the 34 units are angled in a way to maximize views of the surrounding Hayes Valley neighborhood.

Photo credit: William Timmerman Photography.

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Architecture and the City 2014 celebrates in San Francisco for the month of September

2014-09-02T20:45:00-04:00

The 11th annual Architecture and the City festival officially began its month-long celebration during its opening night party this past weekend in San Francisco, California. The yearly San Francisco festival is described as the largest architectural event of its kind in the U.S. With "Home: My San Francisco" as this year's theme, the festival invites the public to join the fun with a variety of events and activities throughout the city.

Here's a few of the festival's events:

Find out more on Bustler.