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San Francisco, California
Shouts from both sides, well we've got the land but they got the view
This year's AIA (American Institute of Architects) Convention took place in late, late April in San Francisco, California. Ever since I joined up (which honestly wasn't all that long ago) I have made some effort to attend the annual event, not for a sense of fellowship with other architects from across the country (although that can most certainly be interesting) but rather for the much more selfish reason of attending the various tours offered by the AIA, tours in the past which have gotten me inside buildings and spaces I would otherwise be denied access to. A great opportunity that is hard to pass up and one that I'm sure you'll be bored with over the next few slides.
Despite all the talk and promise of special access tours, I'm starting the San Francisco slides with two buildings that I visited completely on my own. Staring across Golden Gate Park from each other are two (generally) new landmark buildings by two world class architectural firms. This first photo shows the view of one (the California Academy of Sciences) from the other (the de Young Museum).
If you haven't been to the California Academy of Sciences (and statistically the chances are that you haven't), it is sort of like a cross between New York's Museum of Natural History and I don't know, let's say the Central Park Zoo. It contains a planetarium, a rain forest, dinosaur bones, penguins and an aquarium, among other exhibits that all sort of relate to the same general topics. The Academy's original building was damaged in the Loma Prieta Earthquake (1989) and after relocating to a temporary home downtown near the convention center, they just moved into a brand new building designed by Renzo Piano. The building is a damn nice one with many interesting features but none as impressive as its undulating two and a half acre green roof. As a LEED Accredited Professional, I can tell you that a green roof with indigenous or adaptive plants offers many benefits including naturally filtering rain run off and reducing heat island effects, but as an architect I can tell you to forget all those LEED talking points because they can also just look really, really good. And of all the green roofs out there, none beat this one's three little hills, completely overtaken with little round hatch skylights and complete with a viewing platform where you can see all that green action close up.
The mound with all of the skylights above hides a huge glass sphere that contains the Academy's rainforest exhibit. Visitors enter the sphere at its base, follow a spiral base to the top of the sphere and then descend an elevator to the aquarium in the basement, an aquarium that starts underneath the glass floored pond in the rainforest. From throughout the ramp, throughout the sphere and from right through the water underneath it all, the round skylights through the green roof remain a thoroughly delightful constant.
Those little grass mounds of the roof hide giant spheres- a glass sphere on the right with a tiny rainforest inside and a solid, IMAX theatre on the left, both floating above the aquarium in the basement. In the center, a skylit courtyard anchors both of them, and no matter where you look, it always feels as if you’re looking through two or three or four or five levels of super clear glass and reflections.
Maybe after all this time, all those well designed and generally elegant Renzo Piano buildings are starting to get a bit repetitive. This is the fourth Renzo Piano building I've been to in the last year or so (including the Nasher Sculpture gallery in Dallas, the de Menil in Houston and LACMA in Los Angeles, I'm not counting the NY Times Tower). All have some type of flying carpet, a generally flat and generally clear glass roof and/or a similar language of structure and design. Luckily for Piano, most of the buildings are saved by his skill and most of their flaws forgotten. Of the four, this feels the most refined, even better than the otherwise excellent stone and glass Nasher. Can't wait to see his just opened, well reviewed new addition at the Chicago Art Institute, another chance to see another flying carpet, a generally flat and generally clear glass roof and/or a similar language of structure and design, but this time in a totally different city. Can't wait.
Despite the fact that is was not my first visit to Herzog and de Meuron's de Young Museum and despite the fact that is was not even my first visit late that April- I visited the park two different times, once on a bright and sunny afternoon and then again on a cold rainy San Francisco evening- I still remain impressed by the building, by its slowly fading copper screens, by its twisting twisted observation tower and by its impossibly cantilevered (and totally useless in bad weather) perforated canopy.
More than most buildings, the joy of walking through the de Young (for me at least) always seems to be about the layers of surfaces and materials and especially the reflections in the glass. This is the view looking up at the stair between the entry and coat check, still my very favorite part of the building. Here on a rainy and windy early evening, the gardens outside and copper screens beyond start to fade away and mix with the interior stair reflections. A great little space and always a great little experience.
More reflections, this time from the building's observation tower, an iconic, twisting copper screened piece of the building that in reality has quite little to do with the rest of the museum. The tower in fact is admission free, unlike the actual museum and its all over the place collection of contemporary, early American, African and Oceanic art. Still the views of the tower (including of the California Academy of Science's green roof- see the first picture this page) are certainly interesting enough to hold your attention, at least for a while.
