SAN FRANCISCO—In coming weeks, GlobeSt.com will be highlighting a few of the winners of the NAHB Pillars of the Industry Awards. For more on the awards, and NAHB, please click here.

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Winning Project: AVA 55 Ninth

Category: Best High-Rise Apartment (9-plus stories)

City: San Francisco

Developer: AvalonBay Communities

Architect: Solomon Cordwell Buenz

Interior Designer: Degen & Degen

The Mission: Part of the mission, says AvalonBay senior development director Joe Kirchofer, was to be part of a revival of the city's Mid-Market district. This section of Market Street, he explains, was the place you would go “to buy back your stolen cell phone. It was a rough stretch of about eight or nine blocks for the last 20 or 30 years and has resisted a lot of attempts to turn it around.”

All that started to change when the city began offering tax breaks to companies that would relocate there, and Twitter was an early taker that signed a lease for its world headquarters. That event happened to coincide with AvalonBay putting the finishing touches on a new, more youth-oriented brand, AVA.

Kirchofer says that the brand and the upwardly mobile neighborhood were perfect for each other. “We made it much more of an open plan,” he explains. “The living and sleeping areas are separated generally by a sliding glass wall. We changed the way the whole floor plan works to match the way people are living. They want flexibility and so our floor plans provide that.”

The Execution: The targeted parcel was actually a vacant lot entitled for office. But a planned project fell through, “just as we were putting the finishing touches on our AVA brand” and Twitter was signing its lease—as it turns out, right across the street from the empty parcel.

“Within a month of Twitter signing in 2011, we went into contract on this piece of land, which had been re-entitled for residential by the seller,” explains the director. “We broke ground in the summer of 2012 and completed it early in '14.”

As Kirchofer explained in his presentation to NAHB, AVA 55 Ninth “is 273 fully-appointed apartments with innovative open floor plans, along with generous indoor/outdoor amenity areas and social spaces. Our Chill Lounge and our 5,000-square-foot fitness center both open onto a 10,000-square-foot outdoor terrace, complete with BBQs, fire pits, and a movie wall. On the ground floor, our lobby features an internal connection directly into a café.”

That connection is a major part of the concept, he says, since part of the plan was to have locals and residents mingle. “All spaces in the building are designed to be activated and to bring people together, enhancing the connections among our residents and with the broader community.”

Probably the most eye-catching part of the project is the artwork, and this again is due in large part to the city and an ordinance requiring new buildings in certain districts to contribute 1% of their space to public art. Artists Brian Goggin and Dorka Keehn created a work entitled “Caruso's Dream,” consisting of 13 glass-and-steel pianos suspended from the side of the building.

Huh? Kirchofer explains: In 1906 famed tenor Enrico Caruso was in town to sing Carmen and was awakened by the equally legendary earthquake. “He is supposed to have said that he would never come back as long as he lives. He woke up, his room was rocking and he wasn't sure if he were awake or dreaming.” The artist's rendering of that dream now suspends from the side of AVA 55 Ninth.

End Game: In the presentation to NAHB, Kirchofer stated that the building averaged 35 leases per month through the first half of the year. In addition: “We're also doing our part to maintain housing affordability in San Francisco by providing 33 apartments that are reserved for Below Market Rate renters. We are pioneers of the Mid-Market, and our building is one of the neighborhood's first new landmarks.”