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The winner for the Transbay Terminal Building will be -- for all intents and purposes and presuming -- New Haven, Connecticut's Pelli Clarke Pelli! If erected (hee), it should stand as the tallest building in the west. And if the above rendering is at all accurate, the Terminal will also emit a gentle, lavender glow.
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Yawn, another bland building for our increasingly bland skyline. Why can't our city's leaders show some leadership and push for a groundbreaking inspiring design. Instead we end up with a glass tower that looks like so many others around the world. Another park with more green space is great but that shouldn't be the best feature of a 1200 foot tower in the middle of our city.
Agreed and agreed, guest 1. Why this city has an aversion to unusual buildings is beyond me. Maybe it's that midwestern-transplant aesthetic that fears growth (save politics) or actual zaniness. (Also: sweeping generalizations rule!) Anyway, I don't know, but I do agree with you.
oh, come on!!! they picked the giant uncircumcised penis?!?!?! this is almost as bad as the rainbow penises with pearly white tips on North Halsted in Chicago.
and lets get real about the park folks, it's 3 stories in the sky, if you want more trees can't we just plant them at street level???
I think it's the most boring of the 3 that were presented. It's not horrible though. The majority of high-rise building in that area of downtown are flat-out UGLY. The park is the jewel in this design. I can't wait to see what Daly will try to extort from the developers on this one...
Maybe you should check out the plans in Chicago for THREE new major skyscrapers ( the Calatrava Spire, the Waterview, the Trump Tower) and the new Modern wing of the Art Institute of Chicago, and the always stunning Millennium Park before you start blaming midwesterners for San Francisco's lack of architectural imagination.
It doesn't matter what level you put the park on. Homeless people will still be able to get to it and it will eventually manage to smell like pee.
Me too - I'm not excited about it at all. My pants just naturally tent like that.
And still it will be a billion dollar bus station, with rail line to be built "later" (=NEVER). Why not get the developers to build the rail station?
How'd you like to be on the top floor of that thing when a magnitude 8.2 hits? Sooner or later...
I'm thrilled that the jury recommended the Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects design because it is the only one that offers something to the residents (today's and the future ones) of Rincon Hill - the 5.4 acre park!
Rincon Point Park is already having its days where there isn't much room left around that bow and arrow - imagine what it will be like with 20,000+ additional folks moved into Rincon Hill!! We DESPERATELY need the 5.4 acre park space that the Pelli design offers in order for our neighborhood to have a central spot for the informal interactions and events among residents and visitors alike.
The other designs are just more of the same ... high-rise building with shops, offices, condos, and hotels. Sorry, but I could give a shit what the tower looks like if it doesn't add anything to my neighborhood - the Pelli design clearly adds value to Rincon Hill with the park space.
Go Pelli!!
Yay giant dildo building! London's got one, now we're gonna get one!
guest [5] thanks for those links. The Calatrava, and especially the Waterview, are lovely. Chicago architecture has always been a cut above the rest and you are damn right to call out that statement. The park of the Pelli is nice, but compare the number of people who will use that against the number who have to stare at that uninspiring building day-in and day-out. I'd have preferred the Skidmore, Owens and Merrill, but frankly, they all left me a bit cold.
Unoriginal. Boring. Dare I say, lame.
At least it won't upstage the Transamerica Pyramid.
Come to think of it, architecturally, it may not even upstage the Ferry Building.
Any word yet on how Pelli fixed the jury?
Good Vibrations will be getting a rent free suite for the headquarters, right?
Well, the 2nd of those plans, while unboring and original, was fugly as hell. I do wish the 3rd one (Skidmore Owings Merrill) would have won out, but Pelli's tower concept isn't bad and the ground elements (which I agree with "RinconHillSF" may be more important) are a notch better than SOM.
Ugh, it should be illegal to have a building of that height in such an earthquake-prone area.
We're a big city, we need tall buildings. And because a building is tall doesn't mean it's always unsafe during an earthquake. During a big earthquake, shorter ones are prone to much more damage and death than the tall ones.
*yawn* The Pelli design is completely unobjectionable - which is why its so boring. Although not as bad as the completely soulless, corporate schlock from SOM.
The only interesting submission of the three was Richard Rogers tower - no surprise there. It was the boldest of the three - and took some risks, as evidenced by the the criticisms from some corners that it was "ugly".
As for the park as some public amenity - its gonna be two stories in the air. Any "park" that is two floors off the ground is going to come out looking like - and used just like - a well manicured, sterile corporate lobby. If you like the "open space" in the Embarcadero Plaza towers, you'll love it. If, on the other hand, you love real parks, you'll probably hate it. Mark my words - it will be underutilized and function primarily as a lunch area for office workers in the tower. Outside of M-F, 9-5 it will be a dead zone.
This "competition" came down to money. The Pelli development team offered $200 million more for the land than the other two proposals.
P.S. I find it completely hilarious the idea that Rincon Hill is going to be a bustling neighborhood of 20,000 souls all perambulating about like its the Mission or the Castro. About half of the units in all those towers are being sold to out-of-towners from NYC, London, Hong Kong, etc. as investments and second- or third- homes. (As expensive as it is here, SF is still a more affordable place to invest in real estate for international money than way overpriced Manhattan.) Most of the year, those units will sit empty. And when they are in town, they won't be pushing strollers around like its Noe Valley.
You forgot to mention pro-athletes like Baron Davis and ex-MTV VJ's like Adam Curry!
I empathize with folks' who can't imagine Rincon Hill becoming a residential neighborhood once again - it is going to take lotsa time. In the meanwhile, I love it even with the drivers who drive too fast, the surface parking lots where highway used to stand 18 years ago, and most businesses in the area closing on the weekends. That will change ... right now, there's only 2,000 of us that call Rincon Hill home.
Modern high-rises using reinforced concrete construction like that used in the highrise towers currently going up are quite safe in earthquakes.
During Loma Prieta, the Transamerica Pyramid shook for over a minute and the top swayed side to side by 12 inches. The building was undamaged and no one was seriously hurt.
Yep, this looks like a copy; it resembles the IFC building in Hong Kong.
Dude, you are so right.
Sad.
Rincon Hill will never be a residential neighborhood like Castro or the Mission, for many reasons. One, its built wrong. The development is the wrong scale. The socio-economic mix is too narrow-casted. Far too many units are second- and third-homes that are unoccupied most of the year. The retail space is far too overwhelmingly loaded with national credit chain stores.
Rincon Hill and all that crap being developed in Mission Bay is nothing more than Battery Park City West. And much like that most un-Manhattan of Manhattan neighborhoods, Rincon & Mission Bay will be the most un-San Francisco of San Francisco neighborhoods.
If it's going to look like a giant weenie, they should make the the window glass pink with red on the top 25 floors.
As far as the neighborhood getting a 5 acre park- that's grand! Now Rincon too can have a hobo city. Be sure to have a needle exchange in the lobby of this truly boring building.
You people talking about earthquake safety are morons. You seriously have no idea what you're talking about. Do even the slightest amount of research and you'll discover that a tower such as this will be much safer in a large earthquake than the house you live in almost certainly.
There are so many rules and systems in place to ensure seismic safety for a construction of this magnitude it's not funny. Have you had your head in the sand for the past fourty years? You think people who spend hundreds of millions of dollars on a building aren't smart enough to have thought about earthquakes, nevermind that it's required by law?
The entire foundation of this building will sit atop a roller system designed explicitly to absorb and deflect seismic shifts. The building will move in an earthquake instead of standing rigid and breaking. Not only that it's a tall building that is subject to massive winds. It will sway back and forth by SEVERAL FEET at the top on any typical windy afternoon and the people inside won't even notice.
Please, stop with the inane EQ babble. You clearly demonstrate the worthlessness of your opinion by even bringing it up. Earthquakes are not the boogie monster. They're also nothing new.
We may now return to our regularly scheduled critique of this boring corporate schlock.
yeah, but that building in china doesn't make the sky glow purple!
relaaax, you are right. yes, #25, as i already mentioned, tall buildings are safer than smaller ones during earthquakes.
The Transbay redevelopment area (all of those current surface parking lots where highways used to stand) is going to contain 33% below market rate rentals - in that mix will be drug rehab, senior citizen, and other social assistance type housing. Yes, there'll be folks who only live in Rincon Hill Monday through Friday for work purposes or even less as a vacation home, but lots of us folks live and work downtown. I love walking to work in 10 minutes ... and the Embarcadero is a great recreational area now.
What are folks' opinions of South Beach? Did the DeLancey Street folks ever imagine that area developing when they first set up? I'll tell you the facts - the facts are that a lot of folks bought South Beach condos as second homes, but they are spending more and more of the year there as the area has become pretty livable ... folks know the names of their neighbors' dogs even.
Even if it doesn't turn into the next Noe Valley or Mission, anything that brings even some amount of additional life to an area that previously had none is a plus for the city.
"Iconic" as applied to San Francisco ended circa 1937. Thank you oh wise commissioners for recommending yet another BORE for the city that, well, doesn't really deserve anything better.
Sad, isn't it? Aesthetics be damned - the rankings are precisely in the order of the amount of dough offered by the developers to the city coffers.
The west coasts tallest building? SF does not need something like that. SF does not need to play pissing match with other cities for tall buildings. SF has more confidence in itself than that. SF does not need to prove anything to anyone because SF is secure in itself. So do the moronic powers that be think SF needs any undue "tallest" building there? Am I the only one who thinks it will be a blemish and ruin the skyline?
Am I also the only one who remembers that the movie "Towering Inferno" was set in San Francisco?
I remember Towering Inferno. I also remember that it was FICTION - as in made-up, fake, not based on reality. Man, the Interwebs sure brings out the morons.
I also made a mistake - the park is not going to be two stories in the air. Its going to be 70 feet in the air, which is over FIVE stories in the air. This is higher than other landscaped "parks in the air" in downtown San Francisco, none of which get used very much at all. (Why? Because they are in the air.) Its funny, but most folks don't feel like walking to an office building to take an elevator up five stories to go walk their dog in a park.
This "park" is a cynical attempt to slap some "green building" PC nonsense on a rather conventional office tower (and rather conventional transit terminal design) in order to win brownie points with the fools on the jury panel - and the fools in the general public.
The other two proposals had much more forward-looking and public engaging terminal designs which where dismissed with a wave of the hand by the jury as soon as that $350 million hit the table.
No dogs allowed - for Christ's sake, don't we have enough park grass with dog poop on it already? Let's make this a sanctuary park for people who want to lie dog in shit-free grass.
"I remember Towering Inferno. I also remember that it was FICTION - as in made-up, fake, not based on reality. Man, the Interwebs sure brings out the morons."
Aww Jesus Fucking Christ, it was a tongue in cheek comment. Loser, get a sense of humor!
Today marks a victory for the mundane.
The worst of the buildings won.
Yay for banality!