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RECORD Recommends: Best New Bay-Area Architecture
San Francisco has seen a spate of high-profile projects in recent years, and nearly everyone on our panel recommended viewing a few of the best: The California Academy of Sciences by Renzo Piano in Golden Gate Park topped nearly every list, with the nearby de Young Museum by Herzog and de Meuron and SOM’s Cathedral of Christ the Light in Oakland close runners up. At the de Young, Mark Harbick points visitors to the Andy Goldsworthy “crack” in the courtyard as a standout feature of the project.
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Owen Kennerly went with a less obvious recommendation, suggesting a visit to Chrissy Field. He describes the George Hargreaves-designed section of the Presidio as “an epic undertaking of landscape architecture integrating wet-land restoration, an old military airstrip, and the sheer pleasure of place.”
Several panel members also recommended the imposingly designed and titled 18 story San Francisco Federal Building [(415) 522-4307] by Morphosis, which is the first naturally ventilated building on the West Coast since the advent of air conditioning.
For a quiet interior retreat, San Francisco Chronicle writer John King suggests the recently completed C.V. Starr East Asian Library at UC Berkeley by Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects. “You’re enfolded by layers of quiet grace—from the oblique shadows cast by a hidden skylight to the basement with its thick forms of granite and concrete that impart a geological heft,” he says. King also recommends checking out 8th + Howard/SOMA Studios by David Baker + Partners, a housing complex that King calls “a strong presence with bold colors, but with a tall glassed-in produce market along 8th Street that’s a great place to watch the changing world go by.”
Other new Bay-Area buildings touted by our group include the Dominus Estate winery by Herzog & de Meuron in Napa, which is available for tours; 560 Mission Street by Pelli Clarke Pelli; Daniel Liebeskind’s Contemporary Jewish Museum; SPUR Urban Center by Pfau Architecture; and several works by San Francisco’s own Stanley Saitowitz, including Beth Shalom Synagogue, the Yerba Buena Lofts, and buildings at 1022 Natoma and 1234 Howard Streets.
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