Sticking Out Like a Healthy Thumb?

You don't expect to find one of San Francisco's most humane new buildings at the corner of Sixth and Howard streets, right in the squalid heart of Skid Row.

But that's where the new Plaza Apartments stand stocky and tall -- an eight-story cube that not only is designed to provide shelter and support for 106 once-homeless adults but to do so as a showplace of "green" design.

Aesthetically pleasing, non-uniform, environmentally friendly and advanced, and includes a Latino theatre company's home theatre, carefully planned for improvization and the possibility of economic viability as well---if San Francisco Chronicle Urban Design writer John King is right about this place, it must be an international model as well as a triumph for San Francisco.