Introducing San Jose’s Next Great Outdoor Space
With the Nabr towers, San Jose will get a beautiful, publicly-accessible plaza — and new amenities that will create a vibrant hub in the heart of the city.
At Nabr, we are bullish on the future of San Jose. We see the work of organizations like San Jose Downtown Association, which has introduced murals, lighting, and new public spaces to SoFA through its Street Life Project, and want to build on that momentum.
This is a new paradigm for San Jose. You can still see many of the trademarks of traditional development throughout the city: buildings where the first three to four floors are dedicated to parking; few to no active retail spaces on the ground floor; little attention to how and where the building meets the street; and limited public space.
The Nabr approach is different. We’ve designed our first two buildings, SoFA One and Two, to incorporate over 10,000 square feet of publicly-accessible, beautifully-landscaped plaza. In this blog post, I’ll describe what our design has in store — and how we’re hoping to create San Jose’s next great outdoor space.
Designing the Plaza
We’re lucky at Nabr to have access to the brilliant design minds at Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG), who took inspiration from some of the greatest public spaces around the world to help us design a flexible, yet elevated outdoor space for San Jose. We’ve sited the plaza so it’s northwest facing, so visitors can enjoy lots of pleasant late afternoon and early evening sun. We’re blanketing the area with Wi-Fi so people can stay connected. We’ve also designed a retail-lined street front with plenty of outdoor seating — and have committed to curating the businesses so that they aren’t just an amenity for our residents, but meaningful additions to the San Jose community.
Relationship with the street. We wanted to make sure that our publicly-accessible plaza integrates seamlessly with its context, so we extended the city sidewalks along our property lines (along South Second, South Third, and San Salvador Street). In collaboration with the City of San Jose, we’re also developing protected bike lanes, which will be separated from the pedestrian zone via planting. A lush green edge will surround the plaza, offering a bit more safety and separation from the street.
Local plantings. We hired local firm TGP to help us select the native, drought-resistant plantings that will thrive in the San Jose climate (and will require very little water, which is increasingly critical for California’s sustainability goals). Inspired by New York City’s Lincoln Center North Plaza, we imagine multiple leafy trees lining the plaza, providing plenty of shade where people can get relief from the sun on hot days.
Furniture Kit of Parts. To create a high-standard of design, maximize flexibility and programmability, and minimize the costs of construction/maintenance, we decided to combine an off-the-shelf furniture system with custom built-in elements. The furniture — made from steel, Nordic Pine, and concrete — not only looks great and is durable, it can be moved/removed to adapt to different needs over time.
One of the featured elements of the plaza is a simple “activity stage” that can hold community performances or, when not in use, serve as seating. We plan to define the programming of the stage in collaboration with the community — and would love to see how we can work with folks in San Jose to bring more arts and culture into our outdoor space.
Why We Care
We’ve designed SoFA One and Two not just as buildings, but as a place — a place where neighbors can gather, grab a coffee with friends, watch their kids play, walk their dog, take a meeting, or watch a concert. This is the kind of publicly-accessible space that can inspire a sense of belonging for residents in San Jose, especially Nabr residents.
Why do we want to create such a space, despite the extra cost and effort? It all goes back to our mission of accelerating the shift to sustainable, urban living. As our CEO, Roni Bahar, has put it: owning a Nabr home means “putting down roots in a community of people who are invested in the future of the neighborhood. We believe the neighborhood is as important as the building itself.”
Read more about SoFA One’s shared resident spaces in “Designing community into SoFA One.”
