Pelli Clarke Pelli’s Transbay Tower Breaks Ground in San Francisco
Rendering of the Transbay Tower, which will be SF’s tallest building. (Courtesy Pelli Clarke Pelli)
Last Wednesday, Pelli Clarke Pelli’s long-anticipated Transbay Transit Tower, at San Francisco’s First and Mission streets, finally broke ground, and architect Cesar Pelli was on hand to help turn dirt with ceremonial gold-plated shovels. At 1,070 feet and 61 stories, the tower would be the tallest on the West Coast—at least until AC Martin’s Wilshire Grand opens in Los Angeles—and seventh tallest in the nation, taking the title from New York’s Chrysler Building. At the ceremony, Pelli told the San Francisco Business Times the tower is “svelte but dynamic, elegant, and very gracious.”
According to the Sun-Times, the Kennedy family and top tier developer Hines are working on plans for three towers at the Wolf Point site, just west of the Merchandise Mart, to be designed by Cesar Pelli. Currently used as a parking lot, the Kennedy-owned site has dramatic views of the covergence of the Chicago River as well as the Loop. Plans call for the tallest building to reach 60 stories. No word yet on the uses for the buildings. Full details of the proposal are expected to be released in March or April. Pelli’s only other building in Chicago is an office tower at 181 West Madison.
Unforgettable Images of PDC’s Red Building In Process
©Kenneth Johansson
The Pacific Design Center’s Red Building, the final piece of a three-structure complex, is nearing completion. Designed by Cesar Pelli, the building’s jutting red glass facade is in now in place, and the project should be complete by this fall. Photographer Kenneth Johansson has been documenting its construction for the last two years. His pictures don’t just reveal the developing bones of the building, they showcase the often-overlooked construction workers who make projects like this happen. “I have all the respect in the world for these guys,” said Johansson, of the builders, who he calls “heroic” (you can see why). He plans to release a book on the project next year. Enjoy this slideshow of the construction from start to the present. (Click on an image below to start)
Architects with Altitude
Towering figures in the field of architecture. Click to enlarge. (BK / Architect's Newspaper)
Witold Rybczynski, smart writer, stupid article.
Last Thursday, Slate‘s respected architecture critic weighed in with the dubious notion that the shorter in height, the greater the architect. This silly notion has gone viral on the web, and we felt it was our job to rebut it with some tall figures. Here they are.
What Were You Thinking, Mr. Foster?
The Architect prepares to take off.
Last night, I was lucky enough to enjoy assorted swells (but not very many architects) at the Hearst building for a screening of the enigmatic “How Much Does Your Building Weigh, Mr. Foster?”, a film devoted to his lordship’s extravagantly photogenic architecture and life of work. Or so it looks in this approximately 90 minute film which sweeps us from the Engadin Alps where Foster annually plows through a 26-mile mile cross-country ski marathon in tight black lycra with some 14,000 others to his redbrick childhood home quite literally on the wrong side of the tracks in Manchester to his current home in a Swiss villa, spectacularly void of human touches, to his 1,000-plus strong office in London to the early Sainsbury Centre; the Swiss Re gherkin; the British Museum Great Court; the Berlin Reichstag, etc, etc, and of course, the Hong Kong Beijing Airport that is the largest building on earth as narrator Deyan Sudjic intones mellifluously. (The trailor below provides but a morsel of this delight.) Read More
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