An architect’s rendering of the approved eight-story condo project at 230 Anza St. in San Francisco.

San Francisco has largely solved the legal question of whether it will build more housing, but it is only beginning to grapple with the architectural question of how to build it well. 

If City Hall wants its residents to get behind the “Family Zoning” plan, it needs to work a lot harder with the architecture and development community to figure out how to deliver multifamily housing that’s not just dense but well-designed. 

It may feel like an afterthought, but now that California law requires us to build more, we shouldn’t settle for mediocre buildings. 

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I know I’m not the only one who’s been disheartened by some of the architectural renderings that have been emerging of late. Where is the design?

To be clear, I deplore the tired NIMBY argument of a building being “out of character” or “context” with a low density neighborhood. That’s a spurious argument designed expressly to stop housing — any housing — from being built. But that doesn’t mean we can’t still expect more from what we are going to build.

Take the aggressively bland skyscraper proposed — and, shocker, quickly pronounced DOA — for a site out at Ocean Beach.

Or this rendering of an eight-story building proposed on a block of single-family homes on Anza Street in the Inner Richmond. It’s like a manspreader on the subway, taking every inch of available space for itself.

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