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Architects: WORKac
- Area: 300000 ft²
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Photographs:Bruce Damonte
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Manufacturers: AEP Span, C.R. Laurence, Ellison Bronze, Carl Stahl, Saint-Gobain, Sherwin-Williams, Florim, PPG, Panda Windows & Doors, Royal Glass, Tnemec, Walters and Wolf, Wausau Tiles, Wilsonart
Building - Mission Rock Building B reimages the future of the workplace by fostering a seamless connection between interior and exterior spaces. Its eight stories feature cascading, carved-out gardens that serve as dynamic workspaces and outdoor meeting areas, encouraging occupants to work amidst lush greenery and stunning views of San Francisco. The building's flexible design, featuring two offset cores and expansive floor plates bathed in natural light, is ideal for a variety of tenants, from traditional commercial spaces to life sciences companies. Carved-out sections of the facade incorporate fritted glass, adding a unique, textured element while providing additional natural light to lower-floor interior spaces. WORKac designed open-concept, all-gender restrooms on each floor, ensuring privacy and inclusivity.
Building B is conceived as a series of layers that shift horizontally to create a dynamic sense of topography, reflecting the building's San Francisco home and ecologically oriented ideas. The horizontal layers are connected vertically through a series of carved gardens that become outdoor meeting rooms that enable creative thinking, collaboration, and recharging throughout the workday.
WORKac collaborated with GLS Landscape on the terrace landscape with the gardens and terraces ascending, the landscaping adapts, transitioning from leafy vegetation to hardy wind-resistant succulents. These terraces and green gardens also function as a "fifth facade" to neighboring towers, offering views of a park-like rooftop space. The diversity of garden types and sizes combined with the shifting layers work in tandem to bring the scale of the building down to that of the street, visually connecting the vibrant social life of Dr. Maya Angelou Lane and Mission Rock Square with Building B's stepping terraces and the development's dynamic skyline.
The sense of vibrant layering and movement created through the tectonics of the building are further accentuated through its materiality and landscape. While the overall lightness of the building's tone and its monochromatic quality accentuate its sculptural qualities, upon closer look a gradient of texture reveals itself, as the material of the precast façade transforms with curtain-like ripples with deep shadows. The ground floor storefront is conceived as an animated glass curtain that alternates between moving out onto the sidewalk to invite passersby in or in towards the interior to provide shaded seating and a moment to stop and rest. A spacious bike storage room offers building occupants alternative commuting options, complementing the Mission Rock BART station located on 3rd Street.
Sustainability - Sustainability was a core objective in the design of Mission Rock. Anticipating sea level rise within the San Francisco Bay, the entire development has been elevated 5 feet above sea level. Building B is LEED Gold Certified and houses a blackwater treatment system that receives blackwater from toilets, sinks, and showers located throughout the Mission Rock development. The blackwater recycling system is designed to conserve over 50,000 gallons of water per day for non-potable uses, including irrigation and toilet flushing.
Site - WORKac's Building B is part of the 28-acre Mission Rock redevelopment project led by Tishman Speyer and the San Francisco Giants. This new neighborhood replaces a former asphalt parking lot, providing unprecedented public access to San Francisco Bay and introducing over 500 new homes and 600,000 square feet of retail and office space to the city's Central Waterfront. The first phase of Mission Rock features China Basin Park, a new 5-acre public park designed by SCAPE that opened in April 2024, and four new buildings, each designed by an internationally renowned architecture firm. In addition to Building B Phase One's buildings include The Canyon, a residential building designed by MVRDV that opened in June 2023, the new home of Visa's Global Headquarters designed by Henning Larsen that opened in June 2024, and Verde, a new residential building designed by Studio Gang that opened in June 2024.
The buildings echo the dynamic San Francisco topography with their ecologically conscious designs. The ground floor features an extended storefront with an animated glass curtain, its inviting folds offer comfortable seating for the public to relax and enjoy the vibrant street life Mission Rock offers.
