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San Francisco, California
Black hole opened in the kitchen, every clock's a different time
Another day, another A’23 tour. This is ET305A MIRA: A Sustainable, Mixed-Income Urban Community With a Twist, which also has a fairly good self describing title, as long as you understand that MIRA is the name of the building. This was designed by Chicago architect Jeanne Gang, who likes to design buildings that look really interesting from street level.
MIRA may look really impressive from street level, but the views from the apartments on the upper floors aren’t too bad either.
According to the architect from Studio Gang who led the tour, the pop outs were based on San Francisco’s bay windows, but once you’re inside that doesn’t really matter. Inside they open up and focus the views in a very impressive way, and sometimes they even focus your view on reflections of the same city you’re looking right at.
Next up is ET222 Architectural Bay Cruise: The Tale of Two Cities. This was a chartered tour boat that left from the same pier as the touristy tour boat I took last Fall, except for a few differences. One was that it was filled (and I mean filled) with architects attending A’23 and no one else. Another difference was the route- it circled Treasure Island, went all the way past Jack London Square in Oakland and then doubled back to the Embarcadero before heading back to the wharf. And the last difference- and this was a big one- is that the touristy tour boat was a sunset cruise and this took place midday, meaning that I did not only learn about interesting developments and history of the area, but also I learned that if you sit on the roof deck that long, you’re going to end up with one hell of a sunburn.
On a gap between a tour and an event, I had just enough time to hop a BART train to 19th Street Oakland and pay a visit to another cathedral. This is Oakland’s Cathedral of Christ the Light designed by SOM, and this was a return visit specifically to test out my camera lens. In the past when I visited, I used to take multiple pictures with my point and shoot camera and then go back home and try and put them back together as a giant panorama using a program called Autopano Giga by Kolor. It usually did a terrific job and manufactured impossibly wide angle shots in rooms like this, but it often had trouble specifically with this building and lining up all those slats of wood that you see everywhere. I loved that program, however now the program effectively no longer exists, it was killed off a few years ago despite the fact that I have yet to find an autostitching program that can even come close to matching it. This trip (and really for a few years now), I have completely switched to using my iPhone only for photos, mostly out of convenience and because the difference between my iPhone and a point and shoot camera is almost negligible at this point and certainly not enough to justify carrying a camera around everywhere I go. And the iPhone has a really good wide angle lens, allowing me for the first time ever to get easy wide angle shots of the Cathedral of Christ the Light, something I have been trying to do all these years.
At every AIA Conference they usually hold a party, and most of the times I’m just not all that interested in it. It’s usually too busy and there are lines for food and drinks everywhere, and (like the tours) it’s an extra charge that often does not seem worth it. This time however things were different, not because the AIA solved the crowd or line problem (they most certainly did not), but because they picked a great venue. The A’23 Opening Night Celebration was held at the California Academy of Sciences (designed by Renzo Piano) and the party took over the entire damn building. Everything from the rain forest to the green roof to the aquarium in the basement was filled with architects, and they even let us see the planetarium show, although I think most of the people in the planetarium were probably just there to fall asleep for a bit.
The A’23 Opening Night Party at the California Academy of Sciences felt rushed, it takes a while to see everything and by the time you get around to seeing it, it’s already time to go home. Luckily when you step out the door of the California Academy of Sciences, you are met with this killer sunset view of Golden Gate Park and the de Young, it’s partner in crime on the other side of the Music Concourse.
