[di·a·crit·ic: a mark, point, or sign added or attached to a letter (street) or character (building) to distinguish it from another, to give it a particular phonetic (architectonic) value.]

San Francisco’s Octavia Boulevard aspires to be a “parisian”-style replacement that heals the urban scar left by the demolished Central Freeway. Yet it remains oblivious to the role of the pedestrian in the new streetscape. Operating on a narrow string of residual empty lots and their bounding structures, this thesis is an exploration of a unique urban condition that spans several scales - the city, the street, and the building.