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San Francisco, California
What do you get when you add it up, same walls every day and night
I am already on record of saying that even though there are far less tours at Greenbuild than at any AIA Conference, that the Greenbuild tours are at very high quality. So while I usually take five or six tours at a typical AIA Conference, I was only able to take two of them at Greenbuild, the Transbay Terminal one and this one, to the brand new Google Mountanview Campus designed by Bjarke Ingels and Thomas Heatherwick. I was very excited about this tour and there are a lot of great things to say about the building, the campus and the tour, although even with a lot of great things to say, there are always a few things to say which aren’t so great.
I do not work for Google and do not know anyone who works for Google, so when I see the buildings stacked with awesome sounding free benefits, I should be the first person to take everything at face value and not question it. There are all sorts of free restaurants and pantries available for workers, along with lounge spaces and a free hotel. There are two ways to look at that. One is that they are free and fantastic benefits, but my view is that they are designed to keep you at work and in the building working. And how much are they overworking employees if it makes financial sense to build and operate a hotel at work? Seems like a prison to me, but I might be overthinking it.
Anyway back to the building, The roofs- with their fish scale solar tiles and interior light- are just downright genius. Inside though things fall apart a bit, The circulation is the opposite of intuitive- Google had to paint the floor so people could find their way around. And upstairs under that genius roof (where no photos were allowed) is kind of like a shantytown. Each team can put up their own walls and I have to imagine that the design team isn’t too thrilled about what they did. I was able to see a model of this at Thomas Heatherwick’s studio in London (see “Every time I think I'm done the plane keeps flying back, and every race beneath the sun just takes another lap,” Page 1 of 4, 2019) where the work spaces have some order to them, something which they do not have at all in reality.
This was my first time at Greenbuild but it will not be my last. It is far different than AIA Conferences, with a crowd that skews far younger and more interesting (there are a lot of non architects to talk to), and an exhausting schedule of presentations that were each always better than I expected them to be.
This picture is from one of the Greenbuild keynotes featuring Jane Fonda, who was an incredibly compelling speaker, and probably the most interesting keynote speaker that I have seen in person- take that Bill Clinton and two (Michelle and Barack) Obamas. One story she told was how she was an early adopter of wind turbines, and had one installed at a camp she set up for disadvantaged kids. Unfortunately they had to shut down the wind turbine when the guy who installed it- and was pretty much the only guy who knew how to maintain it- got his head chopped off by a different wind turbine. What are the chances?
If I only have time to see one museum in San Francisco, I have two choices to decide from. If I’m really interested in seeing great art and a solid building, I’ll go to SFMOMA. Alternately, if I’m really interested in a great building and solid art, then I’m going to the de Young. Luckily despite my constant complaining about not having enough time in San Francisco, I somehow found time to see both.
The de Young was designed by Herzog and de Meuron and opened in 2005, my first visit was way back in 2007 and each visit somehow still seems fresh. This time I made sure to see every gallery, see the big temporary exhibition (which included a VR swivel chair tour of an Abu Simbel tomb) and even made sure to hang out at the cafe for a while. Sometimes I’ll skip all that and just head right to here, the free observation tower, with its killer views and even better shadows and reflections.
And while I’ll usually skip the galleries at the de Young, I (almost) always skip the adjacent Japanese Gardens, a real shame since they’re really quite nice and worth the time, if you can find it.
As nice as these pictures may be, they don’t represent full reality. On the day that I was visited, the gardens were packed, yet somehow you don’t see the hordes of people surrounding me on every side. This also brings up a few other things that you are not seeing in these pictures, San Francisco in Fall 2022 was a little rougher than usual, as an example my BART train arrived at the platform at Powell Street, the first person I saw was a belligerent woman naked from the waist down, the first of several bottomless people I saw walking around Market Street that day. Media reports make it sound like a terrifying lawless war zone in San Francisco right now, something which (of course) is overblown and exaggerated. That said, while I wouldn’t call the area around Union Square (specifically Market Street near the Powell Street BART/MUNI Station) unsafe, I also don’t know if I would go the other direction and call it safe. It was always kind of rough, and the rough parts (and people) are certainly more visible now than they used to be.
Often when I visit a city, I try and avoid specifically touristy things with the conceit that I am really more of a local than a tourist. This of course is a dumb thing for me to do since even though I have been to San Francisco many times, I am not a local. I went against my instincts this time and bought a ticket for a sunset bay cruise on a tour boat, finally embracing the fact that touristy things are for tourists, and since I am a tourist that means that a sunset bay cruise on a tour boat is for me.
The natural beauty of San Francisco Bay is spectacular, and I was damn happy as we sailed around looking at touristy things. I really should give in and do things like this more.
But wait, there’s more
Just six or seven short months after Greenbuild, the AIA decided to hold their annual Conference on Architecture in the same city and the same convention center. Since the trips are so close to each other, I tried to treat them as the same trip with a big gap in between, going out of my way to avoid visiting the exact same sites and museums again and again and again. So, if you haven’t had enough of San Francisco, click below to fast forward from November 2022 to June 2023 and continue your journey, if you dare.
