A conference talk on why San Francisco's single-room-occupancy hotels keep failing the people who live in them, and what it would take to repair the systems around them, not just the buildings.
Research — The Weakest Link, 2026
Vivian Schwab
I'm an architect working across design, housing policy, and finance in San Francisco, where I was born and raised.
I've designed housing at architecture firms in San Francisco and Hong Kong, developed permanently affordable housing with the Northern California Land Trust, and served on the board of the San Francisco Community Land Trust. My research spans cooperatives in Basel and Berlin, social housing in Addis Ababa and Hong Kong, mass timber and climate adaptation in Houston and Santa Rosa, and single-room occupancy (SRO) hotels in San Francisco. I've also taught at California College of the Arts.
I'm currently a Partnership for the Bay's Future Fellow with the San Francisco Mayor's Office of Housing and Community Development and the Housing Accelerator Fund. I'm licensed in California and hold an M.Arch from Rice University and a BA from Wesleyan University, where I studied Studio Art and Sociology.
Work
Sixty-five permanently affordable, mass-timber condominiums in Berkeley — a zero-net-energy, LEED Platinum design meant to prove that ownership housing can be both affordable and fully electric.
Development — Woolsey Gardens @ Northern California Land Trust, 2024
A mixed-use mass-timber building in San Francisco, built on a cross-laminated-timber structure with a co-op and community investment trust holding the ground beneath it.
Architecture — Propped w/ Daniel Garcia & William Smith, 2023
138 replacement and affordable homes on Treasure Island for families who already live there, developed with Mercy Housing and Catholic Charities.
Architecture — Star View Court @ Paulett Taggart Architects, 2023
A 40-unit apartment building in the Tenderloin, bought for $9.4 million with no public money, backed by donations from as little as $20, to become a limited-equity cooperative owned by the people who live there.
Development — 285 Turk Street @ San Francisco Community Land Trust, 2022
A feature for The Architect's Newspaper on how California architects are designing homes and buildings to survive wildfire, from concrete guest houses to defensible landscaping.
Research — New Flames, 2022
A report with economist Naomi Zewde on Ethiopia's Integrated Housing Development Program, and what its scale can teach US cities about building public housing again.
Research — Addis Ababa w/ Naomi Zewde, 2022
A new house in Hillsborough, built around a pool and pavilion for a private client.
Architecture — Kenilworth @ MAK Studio, 2022
A new house in Hillsborough, opening its living spaces onto the garden and pool beyond.
Architecture — Jacaranda II @ MAK Studio, 2022
An M.Arch thesis at Rice: retreat from Santa Rosa's fire-prone wildland edge, and cluster its 9,000 displaced homes into a dense, mass-timber city on the rail line.
Speculative — Risk Urbanism, 2020
A 27-unit mixed-use building in San Francisco's Hayes Valley.
Architecture — 188 Octavia @ Edmonds + Lee Architects, 2019
A Rice studio project after Hurricane Harvey: a phased plan to give Houston's most flood-prone blocks along Hunting Bayou back to the bayou, and rebuild the neighborhood denser beside the freeway.
Speculative — Hunting Bayou w/ Stephanie Chou & Ozan Sen, 2019
A Rice studio project: a winery and artists' residency on the grounds of the Château de Chambord, set low along a ring facing the château to open the royal domain back up to the public.
Speculative — Chambord w/ Xi Luo, 2018
A village house on Lantau Island rebuilt around one long window that pulls the mountains and a nearby creek into every room.
Architecture — Ham Tin Residence @ plusClover, 2018
A tower model for Hong Kong's exhibition at the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale, built from stacked white grids that thicken into a cloud at its center.
Speculative — Complicity, 2018
A full exterior renovation of a Repulse Bay tower, wrapping its entries and podium in stone, tile, and metal that shift color from deep red to sandy beige.
Architecture — Ruby Court @ plusClover, 2018
A 1960s six-unit building in Repulse Bay, reworked unit by unit and reconnected to the ground with a new sequence of ramps, patios, and balconies.
Architecture — The Cove @ plusClover, 2018
A 279-unit residential building in San Francisco's Dogpatch.
Architecture — 22nd Street Building @ Min Design, 2017
A studio project at Rice: co-housing wrapped around the live oaks of four Montrose blocks in Houston, with private rooms along the street and shared kitchens and living rooms facing the trees.
Speculative — Co-housing, 2017
An article for Connection, the AIA Young Architects Forum journal, on Zimmerfrei, a Basel cooperative whose future residents worked out their building's program together before holding a design competition.
Research — Typologies for Collective Living, 2017
Exhibition design for Crossing Borders, a show of 37 student and emerging artists from 20 countries on boundaries and barriers, carried from its online premiere into galleries in San Francisco, Seoul, and Tijuana.
Art — Crossing Borders w/ Emergent Art Space, 2014
A cage of egg-carton chains, gradually ossified by dripping plaster over it until the shape warped and set solid.
Art — Sculpture, 2014
A senior thesis installation at Wesleyan: bare branches joined to bent steel tube, standing on loops of steel across the gallery floor.
Art — Roots/Routes, 2011
A park bench whose seat rocks on a steel arc, so the two people sitting on it have to balance each other.
Art — Benchmark, 2010
