The story behind the new rec center

I'm honored to be the architect of Lincoln Square Recreation Center. As many of you remember, I was unfamiliar with the culture of Oakland Chinatown when I first started working on the project. I grew up in Seoul and LA County and was a relatively new transplant to Oakland. Through working on the project, however, I got to know the incredible patience and kindness of the Chinatown community.  

The patience and kindness I found allowed me to do what I've always dreamed I might do one day as an architect working in the public sector, which is the work of a translator, translating the community's vision into the architectural language. Many of us here have experience translating for others in our migrant experience. Perhaps this intimate understanding of what I was trying to do was the source of the patience and kindness the Project Advisory Committee gifted me with. 

The task was this: design a building that communicates the community's celebration of history and hopes for the future. Let the building express the love of the Chinese culture and the embrace of universal humanity in all of us.  

The work didn't always go well. We had many meetings where I misinterpreted things and brought in terrible drawings that nobody liked. But thanks to everyone's patience and kindness, we worked out what the building should be.  

It's a courtyard building, a nod to the traditional Chinese architecture.  It's nearly three times as big as the existing building and has five multipurpose rooms and three courtyards that can be combined for flexible uses. We preserved usable outdoor spaces by taking over underused spaces in the park. Adding dozens of new trees, we designed an urban grove that will cool the neighborhood, further helped by other sustainable materials, such as solar reflective roofs and paving. It will serve as a resilience hub for climate emergencies, with the ability to provide power and filtered air in extreme weather events.  

The ground level is mostly glass, transparent and engaging to the activities on the street. On the upper level, concrete panels embossed with images symbolize three themes. These are: the Chinese greeting that means May your luck be as vast as the eastern sea and may your life be as long as the southern mountains; the Ohlone basketry pattern, honoring our first peoples; and the California flora we all love. Creating the imagery, I was lucky again to receive patient and kind guidance from David Lei, a Chinese cultural expert, and Linda Yamane, a Rumsen Ohlone artist and historian.   

We have a dream team made up of architects and engineers of the design team and the City of Oakland's Planning, Building, and Public Works departments. I give special thanks to Henry Choi, the city's project manager; Denise Louie, a tireless advocate from Public Works; and Alan Kawasaki of Shah Kawasaki Architects, who gave me the opportunity to work with the Project Advisory Committee and their patient and kind vision for our city. I look forward to standing with you all in the completed building. Thank you.

-Written by Youngchae Lee, Shah Kawasaki Architects