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Old Posted Jan 7, 2009, 6:57 AM
JAC6 JAC6 is offline
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Join Date: Jan 2008
Location: San Francisco
Posts: 90
John King thinks 101 Second Street works better now that it has taller neighbors. I think there's something to that.

Why Zampa Bridge, 101 Second St., Target work
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...DDCS150N6H.DTL
... If Zampa Bridge was blessed by an act of subtraction, the addition of towers to San Francisco's skyline is what makes 101 Second St. look even sharper now than when it opened a decade ago.

From the start, to be sure, the 26-story tower had a presence that belied its modest height. It broke with the cut-and-paste historicism that defined too many towers of the prior 15 years, pairing green glass with pale yellow limestone and wrapping both around a rectangular shaft bowed slightly on the east.

The difference now? This tower no longer rises in isolation. New towers are popping up all around it - four in the past two years alone, each climbing higher and each clad in glass.

And each makes 101 Second stand out all the more.

The recent arrivals share a 21st century sheen. They're designed to make a splash, iconic markers of Now. They also lack depth, because glass by its nature has a two-dimensional look.

By contrast, 101 Second's design, by Craig Hartman of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, is all about texture and layers. There's ample glass, but the heavy limestone puts down roots. The details are modern, but the tower's stepped-back form conjures up a sense of the past.

It looks as if it belongs - high praise in San Francisco....
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