SkyscraperCity Forum banner

SAN FRANCISCO | Salesforce Tower | 326m | 1070ft | 61 fl | Com

2M views 4K replies 658 participants last post by  Zaz965 
#1 · (Edited by Moderator)


---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Cesar Pelli’s Transbay Transit Tower, soon to be the tallest building west of the Mississippi, will reshape San Francisco’s skyline



The city by the bay will have a new heart in its skyline, once the tower’s 61 stories soar to 1070 feet.

By David Knowles / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Published: Saturday, April 6, 2013, 12:01 AM
Updated: Saturday, April 6, 2013, 12:01 AM


Architect Cesar Pelli says he hopes his creation will add some spark to what has become a "rather boring skyline" in San Francisco.


SAN FRANCISCO--A tower rises in the west.

Designed by renowned architect Cesar Pelli, construction of San Francisco’s Transbay Transit Tower is now officially underway.

A mixed use skyscraper that will reside atop the Transbay Terminal — a future rail hub that developers are billing as the west coast equivalent to Grand Central Station — Pelli’s sleek tower will reach 61 stories, 1070 feet into the sky, making it the tallest building west of the Mississippi River. “The numbers don’t interest me,” Pelli told the Daily News. “What is important is that the building be visible above others.”


The Transbay Transit Tower will be more than 200 feet taller than the Transamerica Pyramid.


More than 200 feet taller than the iconic Transamerica Pyramid, the city’s highest man made peak since it was completed in 1972, Pelli’s design will go up just south of Market St., a part of town ripe for the addition of a bold architectural landmark. “I have known San Francisco for over 50 years,” Pelli said, “and it used to have a much more cheery silhouette than it does today. I’m sad to say it has become a rather boring skyline because of building codes.”

As with every building project in San Francisco, earthquake safety is a priority, but even though the tower is going up in a part of the city where landfill was used to cover over the Bay, Pelli says there’s no need to worry. “Towers are inherently safer in earthquakes than low buildings,” Pelli said. “If you know an earthquake is coming run to the tallest building you can find.”

The developers for the project — Boston Properties, Inc., which is owned by Daily News publisher Mort Zuckerman, and Hines — estimate that building the tower will cost upwards of $1 billion.


Part of the new Transbay Terminal, a high speed rail and transportation hub, the Transbay Transit Tower will feature approximately 1.3 million square feet of rental space.


With luck, by the time the tower is finished in 2016, the adjacent rail terminal will be have progressed beyond the planning stage. Then again, since California voters approved a high speed rail line connecting San Francisco and Los Angeles five years ago, the estimated cost of the project has doubled to a jaw dropping $69 billion.

Still, with or without the high speed train, the Transbay Transit Tower will be completed and offer 1,300,000 square feet of rental space. “It will be a shame if California doesn’t build high speed rail,” Pelli said. “When I go to Japan I never fly while I’m there. I take the Shinkansen everywhere.”


Set at the corner of First and Mission Streets, the Transbay Transit Tower will cost an estimated $1 billion to build.


With anticipation running high in San Francisco to see how the Transbay Transit Tower will reshape the city, Pelli is already on to new projects. When asked if there’s anywhere in the world he’d especially like to leave his architectural mark, he laughs and says he leaves that up to his clients. “I’m like a kid on Christmas, waiting to see what I’m going to be given,” he explained.


Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nat...san-francisco-article-1.1308926#ixzz2PfQXjXNm

Previously:


Older designs:

See posts 74 and 88 for older models/renderings.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

SOM design c.2007:


Proposal To Build Two Massive Towers In SF

- John King, Chronicle Urban Design Writer
Thursday, December 21, 2006

(12-21) 15:01 PST SAN FRANCISCO -- Developers have filed a proposal to erect the nation's tallest buildings outside of New York and Chicago - a pair of slender San Francisco towers that would climb 350 feet higher than the Transamerica Pyramid.

The plan, filed today with the city's planning department, envisions a cluster of unusually thin high-rises spread across two acres at the northwest corner of First and Mission streets: two 1, 200-foot towers, two 900-foot structures and a 600-foot companion.

Down on the ground would be an open plaza, covered passageways and two small existing buildings.

By comparison, the Transamerica Pyramid is 853 feet high and the Bank of America building is 779 feet. The only buildings in the United States of greater height than what is proposed for San Francisco are Sears Tower in Chicago and New York's Empire State Building.

Today's filing is an application to start the environmental review process, rather than a formal design unveiling. By the time that occurs, the heights and dimensions of the towers could change.

The lead architect for the project is Renzo Piano, who also is doing the new home of the California Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park.

"It is highly conceptual at this point," Mark Solit, a member of the development team, said of the project. "Conceptual in terms of our discussion with the city, and conceptual in terms of Renzo Piano Building Workshop's vision of what they think might be appropriate."

E-mail John King at jking@sfchronicle.com.


URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/12/21/BAGUNN44C07.DTL
Earlier Richard Rogers 1,200 ft. proposal:



*Tower renamed after anchor tenant Salesforce.com

 
See less See more
4
#1,285 ·
If that's what you expect you don't understand San Francisco. This building is being put where it is--in the tallest zoning area in the entire city--precisely because this spot has about the best public transportation in the city: Right next to the TransBay Terminal, multiple bus lines, 2 subways (BART and Muni Metro) a block away. Nobody needs to drive to it and not many people will be able to . . . intentionally.

I don't know any other major city--maybe New York--that restricts the number of parking spaces in new residential buildings to about 1 for every 3 units--and bans deeded parking (selling the parking space with the unit). San Francisco does. The city does not want, and makes it as difficult as possible, for people to drive cars.
 
#1,287 ·
Unfortunately there are a lot of people in SF that want to eat their cake and have it too. They don't want anything to be built but they also don't want land values to go up. They want things pretty, charming, unchanging and cheap. The reality is they can't have all that and their response is bizarre tantrums like those protests of the Google workers who dare live in their city driving up housing prices for those that stop anything from being built.

For the city to move forward those people must be marginalized and ignored.
 
#1,290 ·
Those are different groups. It is mostly an "I've got mine and I'm not interested in your problems" viewpoint. The people in rent-controlled apartments like most of the protesters only care about not being evicted and being forced into the market-rate rental market. They don't care about what newcomers and others have to pay.
 
#1,289 ·
^^Trust me--everybody I've ever met thinks their first 5 years of aware living in San Francisco (I put it that way because someone born here wouldn't know the difference for their first several years of existence) was the city's finest era and things only went downhill from there.

I wasn't in the city in the late 1960s or early 1970s when the TransAmerica and many other exiting downtown highrises were built, but given the number of them and the way they changed the skyline, I think right now--this year and the next 2--are the only comparable period in the city's history. I count about 16 300+ ft towers ether under construction or about to be. It is about doubling the apparent highrise downtown as it appears from out in the Bay. For all my previous life here people have been talking about "Manhattanization" as a bad thing but really it was a non-existent thing . . . until now.

The thing that makes San Francisco in any way comparable to New York--not really in size but in character--is its walkability. Like New York, the tall buildings are adjacent to each other or have infill buildings between them but not vacant land. Unlike much construction in Asia, the buildings do not sit in park-like settings and there soon will be almost no surface parking lots downtown. When walking, one has a continuous street wall, much of it retail or uses like restaurants. Which makes walking interesting and worthwhile as well as cramming a lot of services into compact neighborhoods.

The Salesforce Tower will be the tallest in the city for sometime because there is no other lot currently zoned for anything taller than 800 ft. It will have 2 800 ft'ers within a block of it as well a several 600 ft'ers nearby.
 
#1,292 ·
"Tech" is a part of us, and has been (to varying degrees) since the end of World War II. Where were these protestors in the late 1990s when Sony's Metreon–the city's grandest and most unapologetic monument to technology–was being built?

In any case, the completed Transbay neighborhood will mark the next era of America's loveliest metropolis.
 
#1,293 ·
Were you around then? Sony had a modest sized store on the ground floor (which it shared with restaurants mostly). The largest space in the building was and still is a movie multiplex. The top floor was a silly kiddie fun palace dedicated to "Where the Wild Things Are". Don't know why you associate it with tech.
 
This post has been deleted
#1,315 ·
Hmm, interesting name change. Maybe they'll abbreviate it to S F tower, and it can be pretended to stand for San Francisco.
;)
The name is just a technicality anyway. You can call whatever you like. I still call Willis Tower, Sears.
When can we expect foundation work to start- maybe this fall?
 
#1,326 ·
Due to the seismic requirements of San Francisco, foundations here are very substantial and take quite a long time to construct--about 18 months for a building of this size. They are now about 6 months into it so we aren't likely to see anything rising above the ground for another year. That fits into the timetable the developer has proposed: Completion in 2017 simultaneous with the terminal project of which it is a part. It will probably take about 2 years to construct the above ground structure.

I don't know the timetable for Wilshire Grand but the photos I've seen suggest to me it is farther along and so will probably be finished first.

On the other hand, in San Francisco this building will not be lonely. Within a block in 2 directions are an 800 footer (q.v. 181 Fremont) and a 900 footer (q.v. 50 First St.) The 800 footer should be finished in 2016. The other will be last and is still in the design phase.
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top