Willow Court Lofts

Willow Court is textbook Thomas Dolan — the Oakland architect who literally wrote the book on live/work design. A 1958 clear-span warehouse with ten-foot-deep bowstring trusses became, in 2007, eighteen true live/work lofts of two and three stories arranged around two courtyards.

The exposed curved trusses run through every unit, and some come with their own roll-up doors. Eighteen homes is a genuine community scale — this is the East Bay's purest expression of the courtyard live/work idea, from the person who invented it.