HomeDiagramsDatabaseMapsForum About
     

Go Back   SkyscraperPage Forum > Global Projects & Construction > City Compilations


Reply

 
Thread Tools Display Modes
     
     
  #81  
Old Posted Feb 26, 2004, 5:39 PM
craeg's Avatar
craeg craeg is offline
Proud upstanding member
 
Join Date: Mar 2002
Posts: 1,501
You'll see a 1k plus footer in sf before you see another residential tower on russian hill. Heights on the crest of the hill were solidly capped when neighbors got wind of a 50 story tower proposal for a vacant corner parcel of land. The neighbors surrounding the parcel got together and purchased it. Its still an empty site.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #82  
Old Posted Feb 26, 2004, 7:05 PM
J Church J Church is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Jan 2002
Location: SF, CA
Posts: 12,883
even Balboa Park...

what?! no there's not.

and you're not going to see anything taller at mission bay b/c a) it's much farther from the existing skyline; and b) it's flat. rincon is much easier to make the case for b/c a tower there would accentuate the landscape, and b/c it's on the downtown side of the bay bridge approach.

^even if the Transbay tower is 820 feet, it should have more of a presence then the TAP because of TAP's tiny upper portion. The 778 foot BOA tower overpowers TAP at certain angles.

good point.

craeg, where'd you hear that story?
__________________
San Francisco Cityscape
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #83  
Old Posted Feb 26, 2004, 7:27 PM
craeg's Avatar
craeg craeg is offline
Proud upstanding member
 
Join Date: Mar 2002
Posts: 1,501
Quote:
Originally Posted by J Church
craeg, where'd you hear that story?
From the Russian hill neighbors website - rhn.org

Quote:
955 Green, Architect, George Homsey, 1999-2000
The last remaining undeveloped property in this block is currently a massive rocky outcropping which intrudes into the street. Over the next year or so, the rock will be removed in front of this property, and in it's place, a 6 unit luxury condominium will be developed including a 23 car garage. The design by George Homsey, is Spanish Revival. It will step down from western side of the lot from a height equal to the adjoining condominium whose address is 8 Florence Place. George and Putnam Livermore purchased this property along with the adjoining property at 1020 Vallejo to prevent development of a 50 story apartment building on this site. They commissioned Homsey to design two properties, the award winning shingle style 1020 Vallejo and the Spanish style 955 Green.
I'm by that spot frequently and as far as I can tell nothing has been built on it. Its a thickly treed lot though, surrounded by large retaining walls - so maybe im just not seeing it.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #84  
Old Posted Feb 27, 2004, 1:25 PM
FourOneFive FourOneFive is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Sep 2002
Location: New York City
Posts: 1,911
Quote:
Originally Posted by J Church
even Balboa Park...

what?! no there's not.

and you're not going to see anything taller at mission bay b/c a) it's much farther from the existing skyline; and b) it's flat. rincon is much easier to make the case for b/c a tower there would accentuate the landscape, and b/c it's on the downtown side of the bay bridge approach.
well, technically you're right. Although there won't be a *signature tower* at Balboa Park, the Planning Department still floated the idea of adding buildings around Balboa Station at 160' (prehaps to 240'), which would still be significantly taller than anything else there now. Although it wouldn't be a signature tower, it would still clearly define Balboa Park at a focal point in the city.

as for Mission Bay, I'm stilll hoping the city can throw in a 30 story residential tower some near 4th and Townsend eventually. It would sit just outside of the Catellus Mission Bay development, sit next to major rail lines (Caltrain, Muni Metro), and be just far enough away from SBC Park to prevent people from looking into the park.

and, as for a 50 story residential tower at 955 Green Street. Can't imagine it now, but it would have been interesting if it was a dignified design. Gotta love the go go 60s and 70s.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #85  
Old Posted Feb 28, 2004, 9:44 PM
EastBayHardCore's Avatar
EastBayHardCore EastBayHardCore is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Aug 2003
Location: Inner Sunset
Posts: 5,047
OK fellas, heres some pics of the crown on the St. Regis from an angle I haven'seen too many pics of it taken from...



__________________
"This will not be known as the Times Square of the West," City Council President Alex Padilla declared last week. "Times Square will be known as the L.A. Live of the East."

Will Rogers once said, "children in San Francisco are taught two things: love the Lord and hate Los Angeles."
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #86  
Old Posted Feb 29, 2004, 10:39 PM
EastBayHardCore's Avatar
EastBayHardCore EastBayHardCore is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Aug 2003
Location: Inner Sunset
Posts: 5,047
Cool new rendering of 301 Mission from Skyscrapers.com, anyone know who the big tenents will be? Like the hotel and stuff like that.
__________________
"This will not be known as the Times Square of the West," City Council President Alex Padilla declared last week. "Times Square will be known as the L.A. Live of the East."

Will Rogers once said, "children in San Francisco are taught two things: love the Lord and hate Los Angeles."
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #87  
Old Posted Mar 1, 2004, 7:49 AM
FourOneFive FourOneFive is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Sep 2002
Location: New York City
Posts: 1,911
no tenants have been announced yet. The developer, Millennium Partners, is still lining up the financing for the project. Demolition of the current buildings should begin soon!
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #88  
Old Posted Mar 1, 2004, 9:33 AM
EastBayHardCore's Avatar
EastBayHardCore EastBayHardCore is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Aug 2003
Location: Inner Sunset
Posts: 5,047
I haven't been by the site. What does the current building look like? Is it some crappy low rise 50's-70's box or an actually decent older structure?
__________________
"This will not be known as the Times Square of the West," City Council President Alex Padilla declared last week. "Times Square will be known as the L.A. Live of the East."

Will Rogers once said, "children in San Francisco are taught two things: love the Lord and hate Los Angeles."
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #89  
Old Posted Mar 1, 2004, 9:37 AM
FourOneFive FourOneFive is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Sep 2002
Location: New York City
Posts: 1,911
The 301 Mission EIR describes the buildings as three, low rise buildings dating from 1900s-1930s. All are currently abandoned.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #90  
Old Posted Mar 1, 2004, 5:06 PM
J Church J Church is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Jan 2002
Location: SF, CA
Posts: 12,883
the site is primarily a vacant lot. the one right across the street from transbay.
__________________
San Francisco Cityscape
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #91  
Old Posted Mar 1, 2004, 5:26 PM
dimondpark's Avatar
dimondpark dimondpark is offline
Pay it Forward
 
Join Date: Apr 2003
Location: Piedmont, California
Posts: 7,888
found this on the net while looking at John King's archived articles..I think the design is pretty cool.

An 850-foot-tall tower by architecture students Mariah Nielsen and Kwong-won Kim is envisioned for the Transbay Terminal. Photo courtesy of Mariah Nielsen


San Francisco-Somehow I didn't expect the architect of an 850-foot tall tower on San Francisco's Mission Street to hail from West Marin.

The wooded calm of Inverness or Point Reyes Station isn't the logical setting to breed a skyscraper that could be the world's tallest set of tweezers -- one that splits in two around the 30th floor, from there climbing another 50 stories or so, with a slender hotel staring across a slender void at slender condominiums.

But if Mariah Nielsen grew up in West Marin, she also traveled to Asia and Europe before hunkering down to study design at the California College of the Arts. Even if the design is fanciful -- and it is -- she represents a globe-infused future that may look far different from what we've come to know.

"I love the quality of San Francisco, but coming back from Asia, there's something practical about how those cities grow that's very much opposed to the United States,'' says Nielsen, who created the tower with design partner Kwong-won Kim in an ambitious design studio this fall. "Being from West Marin I'm really against sprawl. We should be growing up instead of out."

The odds that this tower gets built are on par with the odds that Matt Gonzalez and Gavin Newsom will trade grooming tips now that the election is over. But practicality is not why I spent Monday afternoon sorting through student visions of how the blocks around San Francisco's Transbay Terminal could be redeveloped into a high-density neighborhood. The point was to see how smart young people think urban design should evolve.

That evolution is already picking up speed, knocking aside the protective limits crafted during the past 30 years. Here in San Francisco, developers are clamoring to build residential towers between the Financial District and the Bay Bridge. Seattle's mayor wants to jettison height limits approved in the mid-1980s.

Migawd, the city of London -- home to Bertie Wooster and Sherlock Holmes -- has approved a tower next to the London Bridge that would be 1,000 feet tall.

But if the designs by Nielsen and the studio's other students are any indication, the city of tomorrow won't simply have extra stories piled atop the city of today.

They imagine a world where people live in a swirl of action that blurs traditional lines between public and private, street and block. The architecture isn't just a simple question of shape or style. There's an effort to break apart traditional buildings and create an environment where sensations fold in at all levels -- like multitasking come to life.

The creativity comes in the manner of living. One example: a live-work complex by Aron Eisenhardt and Jess Springer that would look from the air like a narrow V, with the living space in glass towers on one side of an atrium and the work space in concrete slabs on the other.

"There's a definite shift, no question, one that's just beginning to emerge. It's in the air," says Craig Hartman, who taught the studio. "Fifteen years ago, architecture was all about how do you replicate what history has ordained. Now, students are thinking about how architecture serves to orchestrate events."

To which skeptics will reply: Who's in Liz Smith's column today? Kids will be kids, right?

But Hartman is no black-clad lecturer who scorns the dreary bricks and mortar of everyday life. Far from it. In fact, he's probably San Francisco's most accomplished large-scale architect.

As a partner at the international firm Skidmore Owings Merrill, Hartman's local work includes the international terminal at San Francisco International Airport, the stylish 101 Second St. office tower and the restoration of the Federal Court of Appeals at Seventh and Mission streets. Next up: a new cathedral for the Diocese of Oakland.

Yet he carved out time over the past four months to teach a seminar where students puzzled over a real-life problem -- how to redevelop the Transbay Terminal area, transforming it from a motley patchwork of office space and parking lots into something that could flourish in unexpected ways.

"I wanted to explore some things you just can't do in a normal professional environment," explains Hartman, 53. "We have deadlines, clients. . .. Architecture is as much about trying to create consensus as about raw design talent. This was an opportunity to look beyond that."

What surprised me is that the designs show so little interest in fanfare; no blobs, no swirls, no exclamation points at odd angles.

"The students sensed they were immersed in relevant issues that the city itself is grappling with," suggests Rodolphe el-Khoury, who chairs the college's architecture department and led the studio with Hartman.

The tower crafted by Nielsen and Kim was deemed the best of the eight projects done by the studio's 15 students. It contains four-story-high interior parks; as for the tweezerlike form, it would be wrapped in some sort of screen so that it would stand on the skyline more like a draped sculpture than a stack of countless windows.

The notion of a veiled tower rising up and splitting in two doesn't exactly bring Victorians to mind.

"I'd love to drive from my house into the city and see amazing towers ahead of me," confesses Nielsen. "Since I've been studying architecture I've come to realize how conservative this city is, how difficult it is to be fresh or radical."

There are good reasons for tight reins, of course: Ask the people torn from their houses in countless cities by urban renewal in the 1950s and '60s.

But there's a case to be made for freshness, too.

San Francisco's natural environment is so striking that it needs vigilant care. But in terms of architecture and urban design, there's danger in being too protective, too dutiful. If all we do is mimic the past, there's a danger that we'll suffocate the very qualities that make San Francisco distinctive as a city.

So let the search for the city of tomorrow continue -- even if we rear back at some of the results.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...GH53IO9B25.DTL
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #92  
Old Posted Mar 1, 2004, 6:17 PM
Carol Doda Carol Doda is offline
The Original
 
Join Date: Jul 2001
Location: San Francisco
Posts: 493
that tower is just another box.... booo!
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #93  
Old Posted Mar 1, 2004, 8:21 PM
EastBayHardCore's Avatar
EastBayHardCore EastBayHardCore is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Aug 2003
Location: Inner Sunset
Posts: 5,047
Yea, I agree with Ms. Doda. If this is going to be the focul point of SOMA it should be either the sexiest box i've ever seen or another shape, perferably a cylinder, octagon, etc. But I think I'll take 850ft just about any way I can get it, as long as its not some ugly cement bohemoth.
__________________
"This will not be known as the Times Square of the West," City Council President Alex Padilla declared last week. "Times Square will be known as the L.A. Live of the East."

Will Rogers once said, "children in San Francisco are taught two things: love the Lord and hate Los Angeles."
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #94  
Old Posted Mar 1, 2004, 8:54 PM
J Church J Church is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Jan 2002
Location: SF, CA
Posts: 12,883
i think we ought to buy the designer drinks, tho. or since she's a CCAC student - maybe a meal.

"I love the quality of San Francisco, but coming back from Asia, there's something practical about how those cities grow that's very much opposed to the United States,'' says Nielsen, who created the tower with design partner Kwong-won Kim in an ambitious design studio this fall. "Being from West Marin I'm really against sprawl. We should be growing up instead of out.

"I'd love to drive from my house into the city and see amazing towers ahead of me," confesses Nielsen. "Since I've been studying architecture I've come to realize how conservative this city is, how difficult it is to be fresh or radical."
__________________
San Francisco Cityscape
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #95  
Old Posted Mar 2, 2004, 12:40 AM
Carol Doda Carol Doda is offline
The Original
 
Join Date: Jul 2001
Location: San Francisco
Posts: 493
SF highrise architecture:

Singapore highrise architecture:

Tokyo highrise architecture:

HK highrise architecture:

mainland China highrise architecture:
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #96  
Old Posted Mar 3, 2004, 7:42 AM
FourOneFive FourOneFive is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Sep 2002
Location: New York City
Posts: 1,911
I saw that article in the SF Chronicle too. Personally, I hate it. The design, while innovative, would be too much for San Francisco. If we had more 700ft-800ft skyscrapers like Chicago or New York, this building would blend into the urban environment. Unfortunately, if built in San Francisco, it would stick out like a sore ugly thumb.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #97  
Old Posted Mar 5, 2004, 4:27 AM
123elm
Guest
 
Posts: n/a
San Francisco deserves better.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #98  
Old Posted Mar 5, 2004, 9:15 PM
FourOneFive FourOneFive is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Sep 2002
Location: New York City
Posts: 1,911
123elm, are you talking about that design for the Transbay Tower by the architectual student or all of the proposed projects for San Francisco?
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #99  
Old Posted Mar 6, 2004, 8:30 AM
EastBayHardCore's Avatar
EastBayHardCore EastBayHardCore is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Aug 2003
Location: Inner Sunset
Posts: 5,047
Has anyone driven by Mission and Embarcadero lately? There's a pretty big crane there and some consturction going on, but I can't say I've heard anything about a project in that area. Any ideas?
__________________
"This will not be known as the Times Square of the West," City Council President Alex Padilla declared last week. "Times Square will be known as the L.A. Live of the East."

Will Rogers once said, "children in San Francisco are taught two things: love the Lord and hate Los Angeles."
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #100  
Old Posted Mar 6, 2004, 3:41 PM
JMGarcia's Avatar
JMGarcia JMGarcia is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Jul 2001
Location: New York
Posts: 3,723
There's a pretty interesting article here with some good pics.

http://www.archnewsnow.com/features/Feature126.htm

I'm particularly fond of this one

Reply With Quote
     
     
This discussion thread continues

Use the page links to the lower-right to go to the next page for additional posts
 
 
Reply

Go Back   SkyscraperPage Forum > Global Projects & Construction > City Compilations
Forum Jump


Thread Tools
Display Modes

Forum Jump


All times are GMT. The time now is 8:25 AM.

     
SkyscraperPage.com - Archive - Privacy Statement - Top

Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.7
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.