When new buildings go up in old neighborhoods it is essential that the design connect with the community. Abaca is a high-end residential complex in the Dogpatch district of San Francisco that was once a rough-and-tumble waterfront neighborhood.

The design for the common spaces pays tribute to the nautical and industrial traditions in a way that links the digital voyagers who live there now with the literal voyagers and dockworkers who built the city. The designers researched former uses of the site and used their findings to inform the branding and design. Abaca comes from a kind of hemp used in making rope, a nod to the rope factory that once occupied this block.

The lobby here is a spacious, light-filled, all-purpose area as open and breezy as the deck of a ship. The palette suggests the Bay at its most sparkling and the space is partitioned by shelving that keeps sightlines open.

Though Abaca’s amenity spaces are named after areas of a ship overt nautical references are kept to a minimum. Only on the wall of the 16 Crowns Bar does the maritime theme emerge literally. There a collage of wheat-pasted pages from Moby Dick, The Old Man and the Sea, The Odyssey and other seafaring classics evokes a time when San Francisco was one of the world’s liveliest ports.

It’s still one of the world’s liveliest portals into the culture of the young and educated, and it is their values that Abaca celebrates. Elevated informality is the pervading spirit of this project—lighting fixtures envisioned as sculpture, a roof deck for solitude or for sundown soirees. The result is a series of spaces that capture with subtlety and wit the tang of a sea breeze in a part of the city where sea breezes do continue to blow.

Photography: Garrett Rowland