Before there were hackerspaces, before there were coworking spaces, there was Project One. In the 1970s, a warehouse at 1062 Howard Street in San Francisco's South of Market neighborhood became home to a technological commune where artists, engineers, community organizers, and radio broadcasters shared space, tools, and ideas. Sometimes described as the first live-work building in San Francisco, Project One was an experiment in collective living and working that anticipated the maker movement and the digital counterculture by decades.
Project One occupied a former candy factory in SoMa, a neighborhood that was still industrial and cheap in the 1970s. Residents and tenants included visual artists, musicians, printers, community media projects, and technology experimenters. The building housed community radio station KQED's early operations and various activist organizations. The commune operated without a traditional management structure, relying on collective decision-making and shared maintenance. Residents built their own living and working spaces within the warehouse, creating a labyrinth of studios, workshops, and communal areas.
Project One was notable for its early engagement with computers and telecommunications technology. At a time when computers were room-sized machines owned by corporations and universities, Project One's technology experimenters were exploring how computing could serve community organizing, art-making, and grassroots communication. This work laid groundwork for the Bay Area's later embrace of personal computing and the internet. The commune's mix of artistic creativity and technological curiosity foreshadowed the culture that would later define Silicon Valley, though Project One's values were communitarian rather than entrepreneurial.
Project One eventually dissolved as the SoMa neighborhood gentrified and the economics of warehouse living changed. But its influence persists in the DNA of San Francisco's creative and technological communities. The concept of shared workspace, the integration of art and technology, the belief that community can be built around tools and ideas rather than profit, all of these threads can be traced through Project One to the hackerspaces, maker labs, and artist collectives that populate the city today. It was a commune that happened to be ahead of its time, and the time, eventually, caught up.
Located at approximately 37.78°N, 122.41°W at 1062 Howard Street in San Francisco's South of Market district. The building is not individually identifiable from altitude. Nearest airports: SFO (KSFO, 11 nm south), Oakland (KOAK, 10 nm east).