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Martin de Porres House of Hospitality - San Francisco Year Originally Built: 1908 Sq. Feet of Project: 7,000sf Owner: Martin de Porres House of Hospitality Contractor: Roberts and Sons, Builders and MDP staff and volunteers Construction Cost: $200,000 This soup kitchen was a conversion of a two-story auto repair building. The facility contains an 80-seat dining room, full commercial kitchen, accessible restrooms, showers, offices, storage, a courtyard and an upstairs caretaker unit. Unlike other soup kitchens, guests are not lined up waiting along the public sidewalk, but instead gather in a sun-filled landscaped courtyard. The program called for restrooms to be directly accessible to the courtyard so that waiting guests would have access to them. New brightly painted structural concrete walls required for seismic bracing serve double duty as restroom walls. As a part of the design process, Zachary Nathan worked as a volunteer in the kitchen, prepping, serving and cleaning up to gain an understanding of the functional requirements and a sensitivity to the diversity and needs of the guests. Careful planning was necessary to have a smooth orderly traffic flow in the dining room to avoid bumping and altercations among guests. Meals are enjoyed in a spacious open skylit dining room. The kitchen is open to the dining room to foster a concept of oneness and to eliminate physical barriers between staff and guests. Staff and volunteers performed much of the construction work.
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