San Francisco: The Latest Architecture and News

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The Transamerica Pyramid Center has just announced the completion of the long-awaited Foster + Partners led renovation in San Francisco, United States. An iconic landmark of San Francisco's skyline since its completion in 1972, has been undergoing its most significant renovation to date. Originally designed by American architect William Pereira in a Brutalist style, the 48-story tower was the tallest building in San Francisco for nearly 50 years. This renovation will also include enhancements to the adjacent buildings.

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SITELAB urban studio and Field Operations have revealed a design proposal to reimagine San Francisco’s iconic Powell Street. The street used to be one of the busiest pedestrian corridors in its district and a popular tourist attraction, with cable cars running up and down the street and connecting Union Square and Hallidie Plaza. Across the most popular three-block stretch, the storefronts have become mostly vacant. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, one of the reasons was the Covid pandemic, which led to a further decrease in tourism and in commercial activities. Now a new project led by designers SITELAB urban studio and Field Operations aims to revive the now underutilized transit corridor and to catalyze a renewed interest in the area.

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Renowned sculptor Richard Serra, known for his monumental steel structures that reshaped the landscape of contemporary art, passed away at the age of 85 at his residence in Orient, N.Y. His groundbreaking works, characterized by massive tilting corridors and spirals of steel, offered viewers a unique experience, inviting them to navigate through and around the imposing forms to fully comprehend their essence. Because of this invitation to explore space, materiality, and site, the artist has been long-recognized in the architectural community, earning him the Architectural League of New York President’s Medal in 2014, becoming the first artist to receive the honor.

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“Reinventing Cities,” C40’s renowned global design competition, has just announced its fourth edition. The competition’s main goal is to “transform underutilized sites or buildings into beacons of sustainability and resilience and act as a showcase for future zero-carbon urban developments.” This year, 15 cities have stepped up the challenge, inviting professionals from various disciplines to reimagine underutilized urban sites and design transformations prioritizing sustainability and inclusivity.

With a commitment to zero-carbon, urban resilient projects, Reinventing Cities has engaged over 3,500 businesses worldwide with 40 projects currently under development globally. This year’s competition is characterized by its ambitious environmental and social objectives; with participating cities spanning continents, including Almere, Bilbao, Bologna, Brussels, Glasgow, Milan, New York, Palermo, Renca, Rome, San Antonio, San Francisco, São Paulo, Seattle, and Venice.

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This article was originally published on Common Edge.

Can telling the story of one building tell a larger story about the city it’s a part of? That’s the central premise of John King’s engaging new book, Portal: San Francisco’s Ferry Building and the Reinvention of American Cities (W.W. Norton). The long-time urban design critic for the San Francisco Chronicle has written a brisk, lively history of this beloved edifice, which opened in 1898 and served as the principal gateway to the city until the emergence of the automobile (and the bridges that served them).

For decades it sat largely empty and neglected, cordoned off by the Embarcadero Freeway. After the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989, the damaged highway was eventually removed, freeing up the Ferry Building, which was given new life as a transportation hub, food hall, and office building. Last week I talked to King about the genesis for the book, the terminal’s seminal importance to the city of San Francisco, and the threat it faces from rising sea levels.

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This article was originally published on Common Edge.

It has been a bull market for downbeat urban reporting since the pandemic arrived in town. And it isn’t hard to see why. In 2020, central U.S. cities went from “comeback” success stories to ghost towns; transit lost nearly all ridership; tens of thousands of stores and restaurants shuttered; and many of the affluent decamped to the suburbs and distant Zoom towns. 

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