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

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#1 · (Edited by Moderator)


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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.

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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

 
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#6 ·
It's been quite a while since there a new high rise building being developed in SFO.I've been there and all the tourists are attracted with Golden gate bridge than the SF city. This will be a great project!
actually there are 3, 600 foot towers being built the right now.

Apparently this is in addition to the Transbay towers..at least from the talk on SSP.
http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showthread.php?t=122300
Wow I did know that. Well the more the better
 
#9 ·
Massive new project being proposed for San Francisco
San Francisco Business Times - 3:21 PM PST Thursday
by J.K. Dineen


A development team led by the Solit Interest Group is proposing to build a 1,200-foot tower at First and Mission streets, part of a quartet of astoundingly ambitious buildings being designed by superstar architect Renzo Piano.

The proposed building, which would dwarf any existing buildings on the West Coast, would be part of a 2.9 million-square-foot development that would include 600 condominiums, 470 hotel rooms, and more than 520,000 square feet of office space, according to an application filed Dec. 21 with the city.

The 1,200-foot proposed skyscraper, which would be the third tallest building in the United States, would lag only Chicago's Sears Tower, which is 1,450 feet, and New York's Empire State Building at 1,250 feet. San Francisco's tallest current building is the Transamerica Pyramid, which is 853 feet tall.

The 51,000-square-foot development site on the northwest corner of First and Mission streets was assembled by David Choo, the president of California Mortgage and Realty. Over the past two years, Choo has acquired four buildings on First Street between Mission and Market streets as well as three adjoining vacant parcels on Mission.

Last summer Choo brought on Mark Solit to head up the development team. Solit was a developer for the Hyatt Corp. and was also involved in building Embarcadero West at 275 Battery St.

The buildings -- 50 First St., 62 First St., 76-80 First St., and 88 First St. -- would be demolished under the proposal. They are all small, Class C office buildings with a combined square footage of 250,000.

At current construction costs, the project would cost more than $1 billion to build.

Piano, who designed the rebuild of the California Academy of Sciences now under way in Golden Gate Park, is a highly sought-after international superstar architect. He's behind the expansion of both the Whitney Museum in New York and the High Museum in Atlanta has public and private projects in Sydney, Tokyo and Paris, but recent American commissions have made him a familiar and golden name in the United States.

"He's certainly one of a very short list of preeminent architects in the world that have a significant body of work," said David Meckel, director research and planning and former dean of architecture at California College of the Arts. "He's done a lot of buildings and almost everyone of those building responds to place. No two look alike."

The proposed development would be made possible by a planned upzoning of the Transbay Terminal area that is currently under review. In July, the Transbay Joint Powers Authority agreed to a plan to build a trio of soaring towers that would help fund a new Transbay Terminal as well as a funding and phasing plan for the transit hub.

The zoning changes could bring as much as $250 million in new funding to the terminal project, according to the work of the planners.
 
#14 ·
Sky's the limit South of Market
4 of developers' proposed high-rises would be taller than anything else in S.F.

John King, Chronicle Urban Design Writer
Friday, December 22, 2006


San Francisco developers are proposing to build the nation's tallest towers outside of New York and Chicago -- a pair of slender high-rises 350 feet taller than the Transamerica Pyramid.

The plan presented Thursday to the city's Planning Department envisions a cluster of thin towers rising from 2 acres at the northwest corner of First and Mission streets. The cluster would include two 1,200-foot towers, two 900-foot structures and a 600-foot companion.

Threaded between them would be an open plaza, covered passageways and a three-story building that is not part of the project.

By comparison, the Transamerica Pyramid is 853 feet high and the Bank of America building is 779 feet. The only U.S. buildings taller than those proposed Thursday are Sears Tower in Chicago and New York's Empire State Building, which are 1,451 feet and 1,250 feet respectively.

Though unprecedented for San Francisco, the proposal is in line with what city officials have been saying for months -- that extremely tall towers will be allowed on a handful of sites south of Market Street. But details of the project are likely to change during the city's review process, which could take at least two years.

Indeed, one member of the development team on Thursday described the "environmental evaluation application" presented to the city as "a placeholder."

"It is highly conceptual at this point," said Mark Solit, the lead developer. "Conceptual in terms of our discussion with the city, and conceptual in terms of the architects' vision of what they think might be appropriate."

The site is across from the Transbay Terminal, itself the focus of a skyscraper design competition seeking what the guidelines describe as "an iconic presence that will redefine the city's skyline." As many as a half-dozen teams are rumored to be putting together bids.

City planners earlier this year suggested raising building heights around the terminal as a way to attract projects that in turn would generate tax revenue. That money could then be used for the terminal and related transit projects such as an extension of commuter rail lines from the Peninsula.

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

Piano has likened the design approach to bamboo shoots rising from the ground, with different pieces stopping at different heights. The two tallest would be on First Street -- rising 1,200 feet on either side of the Jessie Street alleyway.

The height would be accented even more by the narrow dimensions of each tower. On the top 300 feet of the tallest towers, the floors would measure just 8,000 square feet -- less than half the size of the upper floors one block away at Fremont Center. That 600-foot-high office tower is currently the tallest high-rise south of Market Street.

The development site is now parking lots and four six-story buildings built in the decade after the 1906 earthquake.

According to the application, the new buildings would contain 600 residential units, 470 hotel rooms, 520,000 square feet of office space and a small amount of ground-floor retail space. However, Solit said, the final mix would evolve along with the project.

Any project of this scale will require detailed studies of how the buildings will affect the wind and block sunlight, as well as engineering studies to confirm that such tall, narrow towers can withstand a major earthquake.

During the past week, Solit and other members of the development team have shown the project to Supervisors Chris Daly and Aaron Peskin and members of Mayor Gavin Newsom's administration. Full architectural details are not expected before summer.

"If we're going to do these kinds of heights, this is the place," said Daly, who also is a member of the Transbay Joint Powers Authority, which will oversee construction of a new terminal. "I like how the project works on the ground -- it's very porous and attractive to people on the street."

Daly suggested the most controversial aspect of the proposal could be the twin 1,200-foot towers.

"Every American is going to look at them and think of 9/11," he said.

Whatever form the project eventually takes, it shows that decision-makers no longer see dramatic building heights as something to avoid.

This wasn't the case in the decades after the Transamerica Pyramid began construction in 1970; that concrete spike at the foot of Columbus Avenue crystallized opposition to the transformation of San Francisco's skyline. An urban design plan the next year capped heights at 700 feet, and a 1986 update sliced off another 100 feet.

In recent years, though, the city has allowed residential towers in areas that before were kept low -- such as the towers now rising north of the Bay Bridge. Three are under construction, and two will top 600 feet.

San Francisco isn't the only city where the sky is now the limit.

Piano has 1,000-foot buildings in the works for the centers of both London and Boston -- two cities once as tower-wary as San Francisco. In Paris, a 984-foot tower proposal was announced last month for a site 3 miles west of the Eiffel Tower. The architect is Thom Mayne of Santa Monica, who designed the soon-to-open federal complex at Seventh and Mission streets in San Francisco


 
#24 ·
I think SF will have to start building taller and taller like Manhattan because there is no room in the city to build any other way. Unfotunately for LA, there is still no demand for a new tallest. I doubt we will see anything taller than US bank for a while. Not that LA is not going to improve in a zillion other ways. Cus it is.
 
#31 · (Edited)
Don't overshadow Transamerica

To me San Francisco belongs to the category city that is perfect the way it is now (granted, every city is allowed to modernize and grow but the overall aesthetics of a city should be preserved). If its trademark building, the Transamerica pyramid, is overshadowed with these new proposed buildings it would mark the end of an era (in the same way that the construction of the Gazprom building in St. Petersburg marks the end of an era). I would thus prefer these buildings to be built lower than the Transamerica building.
 
#1,283 ·
Almost 7 years after these opinions were posted, do you think they still sway a lot of people living in SF?

To me San Francisco belongs to the category city that is perfect the way it is now (granted, every city is allowed to modernize and grow but the overall aesthetics of a city should be preserved). If its trademark building, the Transamerica pyramid, is overshadowed with these new proposed buildings it would mark the end of an era (in the same way that the construction of the Gazprom building in St. Petersburg marks the end of an era). I would thus prefer these buildings to be built lower than the Transamerica building.
SF could really do without stupidly tall towers -- it's got enough towers as it is, and needn't screw its charm up with latest trash. Tower crap is so yesterday, t'is a long time since a tower was special.
 
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