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Senior Member
Architectural Record
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Transbay Proposals Up for Comment
August 15, 2007
by James Murdock
Three architect-developer teams presented their plans for a massive downtown redevelopment scheme in San Francisco last week and the public now has until September 17 to comment on them. The designers are vying in a competition for the Landmark Transbay Transit Center and Tower: a 1-million-square-foot, multimodal transit hub and adjacent skyscraper on a roughly 12-acre site within a 40-acre downtown redevelopment district.
Transbay’s architect-developer teams are Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners—formerly the Richard Rogers Partnership—and Forest City Enterprises with MacFarlane Partners; Skidmore Owings & Merrill and the Rockefeller Group Development Corporation; and Pelli Clark Pelli Architects and Hines.
The centerpiece of the Richard Rogers-led team’s design is a 1,000-foot-tall tower that would be capped with an electricity-generating wind turbine. The building contains a mix of uses including hotel rooms and affordable housing, the design team wrote in its project description, making it a “microcosm of the city and bay region itself.†Similarly, the crown of SOM’s proposed skyscraper would also contain wind turbines as well as photovoltaic panels. The 1,200-foot-tall building’s first floor would be raised 100 feet above street level, creating a vast covered “portal†into two civic spaces, including a Performing Arts Park. And, lastly, Cesar Pelli’s proposal calls for a slender, obelisk-like tower with a 5.4-acre landscaped park in front of it.
The redevelopment is being overseen by the Transbay Joint Powers Authority (TJPA), which is controlled by the City and County of San Francisco, the Alameda-Contra Costa Transit District, and the Peninsula Corridor Joint Powers Board. The TJPA’s board will select a final proposal on September 20. Members of the public may comment on the three proposed designs by visiting the TJBA’s Web site, transbaycenter.org.
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The designs (from transbaycenter.org)
Richard Rogers Partnership and Forest City Enterprises with MacFarlane Partners
Rogers Daytime
Rogers Terminal Rendering
Statement from the Richard Rogers|Forest City|MacFarlane team:
Our bold and uplifting vision for the Transbay Transit Center and Tower expresses the heart of 21st century San Francisco--a city with tremendous diversity, creativity, and a willingness to question conventional solutions. With its exuberant waves of glass and steel, and its emphasis on transparency, the regional transit center will be as glorious a portal to San Francisco as the Golden Gate Bridge . Designed by world-renown 2007 Pritzker Prize winning architect Richard Rogers, the open, light-drenched transit center will be a natural gateway, welcoming visitors and daily commuters into the city. With its irresistible blend of local and destination retail, fresh food markets, and cafes and restaurants, the Transit Center will create a new public realm, bringing a 24-hour vitality and cohesiveness to an emerging neighborhood in our great city. Chairs, benches, natural light, trees and continuous movement and bustle will all serve to animate and humanize this grand public space and reflect the city's inclusiveness.
As designed by Richard Rogers, who has built his international reputation on visionary buildings and meticulous craftsmanship, the transparent, multi-use, 82-story Transbay Tower will define the city's skyline for decades. While the elegant tower will rise 1,000 feet into the sky, it will be dramatically set back at street level to create a large, welcoming public plaza. Crowned with a visually striking, working wind turbine that will create useable energy, the progressive green-design will be a model of environmentally sound, energy efficient sustainability. The Transbay Tower will be as practical as it is beautiful. Combining destination and local retail, office space, hotel rooms, condominiums, and affordable housing, the Tower, with its community spaces devoted to education and culture will be a microcosm of the city and bay region itself. Like all great architecture, the Transbay Transit Center and Tower begins with an extraordinary vision--a transformative leap of the imagination--and it will move forward as a fluid, collaborative effort.
Skidmore Owings and Merrill and Rockefeller Group Development Corporation
Statement from the SOM|RGDC team:
The SOM|RGDC proposal will improve transit operations, reduce annual operating costs and radically reduce the emission of climate-changing carbon dioxide. This is achieved by creating a double deck bus platform; effectively reducing its length by two city blocks. SOM has used this opportunity to create two dramatic civic gestures: a light-filled Transbay Hall, equal in scale to the central Vanderbilt Hall of Grand Central Station, and a full block Performing Arts Park. SOM’s Transbay Tower, a mixed-use tower 1200 feet to the top floor, is equally bold. The first full floor is lifted 100 feet above a full block urban plaza at Mission Street, creating a civic portal to the Transbay Hall. The Tower includes retail, cultural uses, office space, boutique hotel, condominiums and a publicly accessible sky room. The Tower’s unique form tapers as it reaches the sky, accommodating the uses held within. Atop the Tower are state-of-the-art wind turbines which, combined with its photovoltaic crown, reduces annual energy consumption by 74%. The project includes a partnership with SFMOMA for a major digital arts program and with the California State Library to house the Sutro Collection.
SOM’s Transbay Transit Terminal and Tower represent the highest level of environmental stewardship ever achieved in a major urban mixed-use project. The project’s combined reduction in emissions, over a conventional design, will be over 176,000,000 pounds of carbon dioxide over a ten-year period. The Transit Center will achieve LEED Platinum and the Tower LEED Gold and possibly Platinum. Both are designed to the highest levels of safety and security which will allow it to withstand a “2,500 year†earthquake and other security concerns. The project harvests rainwater, reducing the burden on the city’s infrastructure. The project makes extensive use of natural ventilation and natural light contributing to dramatic reductions in energy by harvesting solar and wind power.
Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects and Hines
Pelli Aerial
Pelli Bus Level
Statement from the Pelli Clarke Pelli|Hines team:
Our Transbay Transit Center aspires to become one of San Francisco’s great civic places. Its architecture is open, full of light and clean air, and environmentally sustainable. It is also functional, a pleasure to use, and adaptable to future needs. It is designed to be the centerpiece of a new neighborhood. As such, we propose transforming the roof of the Transit Center into a public park––City Park. The 5.4 acre City Park is accessible and inviting, complete with the attractions and activities that characterize great urban green spaces. The park also actively improves the environment around the Transit Center, absorbing pollution from bus exhaust, treating and recycling water, and providing a habitat for local wildlife. Sustainability is at the heart of our proposal.
Our Transbay Tower is a slender, graceful and beautiful icon. It is a simple and eternal form, like an obelisk, marking the location of the Transit Center against the San Francisco sky. At its base is Mission Square, a grand public space sheltered under a flowing glass and steel canopy, that forms the ceremonial entrance to the Transit Center. The timeless form of the Tower balances the richness of design of the Transit Center. The perimeter structure of the Center is sculpted like branches of a tree, covered with glass that waves like the petals of a flower. The Transit Center is infused with natural light coming through Light Columns that also open views of the sky and the trees of City Park to all users. The Transit Center and City Park are extraordinary new assets for their neighborhood, the City and the Region.
Link to article
Transbay Proposals Up for Comment
August 15, 2007
by James Murdock
Three architect-developer teams presented their plans for a massive downtown redevelopment scheme in San Francisco last week and the public now has until September 17 to comment on them. The designers are vying in a competition for the Landmark Transbay Transit Center and Tower: a 1-million-square-foot, multimodal transit hub and adjacent skyscraper on a roughly 12-acre site within a 40-acre downtown redevelopment district.
Transbay’s architect-developer teams are Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners—formerly the Richard Rogers Partnership—and Forest City Enterprises with MacFarlane Partners; Skidmore Owings & Merrill and the Rockefeller Group Development Corporation; and Pelli Clark Pelli Architects and Hines.
The centerpiece of the Richard Rogers-led team’s design is a 1,000-foot-tall tower that would be capped with an electricity-generating wind turbine. The building contains a mix of uses including hotel rooms and affordable housing, the design team wrote in its project description, making it a “microcosm of the city and bay region itself.†Similarly, the crown of SOM’s proposed skyscraper would also contain wind turbines as well as photovoltaic panels. The 1,200-foot-tall building’s first floor would be raised 100 feet above street level, creating a vast covered “portal†into two civic spaces, including a Performing Arts Park. And, lastly, Cesar Pelli’s proposal calls for a slender, obelisk-like tower with a 5.4-acre landscaped park in front of it.
The redevelopment is being overseen by the Transbay Joint Powers Authority (TJPA), which is controlled by the City and County of San Francisco, the Alameda-Contra Costa Transit District, and the Peninsula Corridor Joint Powers Board. The TJPA’s board will select a final proposal on September 20. Members of the public may comment on the three proposed designs by visiting the TJBA’s Web site, transbaycenter.org.
*****
The designs (from transbaycenter.org)
Richard Rogers Partnership and Forest City Enterprises with MacFarlane Partners
Rogers Daytime
Rogers Terminal Rendering
Statement from the Richard Rogers|Forest City|MacFarlane team:
Our bold and uplifting vision for the Transbay Transit Center and Tower expresses the heart of 21st century San Francisco--a city with tremendous diversity, creativity, and a willingness to question conventional solutions. With its exuberant waves of glass and steel, and its emphasis on transparency, the regional transit center will be as glorious a portal to San Francisco as the Golden Gate Bridge . Designed by world-renown 2007 Pritzker Prize winning architect Richard Rogers, the open, light-drenched transit center will be a natural gateway, welcoming visitors and daily commuters into the city. With its irresistible blend of local and destination retail, fresh food markets, and cafes and restaurants, the Transit Center will create a new public realm, bringing a 24-hour vitality and cohesiveness to an emerging neighborhood in our great city. Chairs, benches, natural light, trees and continuous movement and bustle will all serve to animate and humanize this grand public space and reflect the city's inclusiveness.
As designed by Richard Rogers, who has built his international reputation on visionary buildings and meticulous craftsmanship, the transparent, multi-use, 82-story Transbay Tower will define the city's skyline for decades. While the elegant tower will rise 1,000 feet into the sky, it will be dramatically set back at street level to create a large, welcoming public plaza. Crowned with a visually striking, working wind turbine that will create useable energy, the progressive green-design will be a model of environmentally sound, energy efficient sustainability. The Transbay Tower will be as practical as it is beautiful. Combining destination and local retail, office space, hotel rooms, condominiums, and affordable housing, the Tower, with its community spaces devoted to education and culture will be a microcosm of the city and bay region itself. Like all great architecture, the Transbay Transit Center and Tower begins with an extraordinary vision--a transformative leap of the imagination--and it will move forward as a fluid, collaborative effort.
Skidmore Owings and Merrill and Rockefeller Group Development Corporation
Statement from the SOM|RGDC team:
The SOM|RGDC proposal will improve transit operations, reduce annual operating costs and radically reduce the emission of climate-changing carbon dioxide. This is achieved by creating a double deck bus platform; effectively reducing its length by two city blocks. SOM has used this opportunity to create two dramatic civic gestures: a light-filled Transbay Hall, equal in scale to the central Vanderbilt Hall of Grand Central Station, and a full block Performing Arts Park. SOM’s Transbay Tower, a mixed-use tower 1200 feet to the top floor, is equally bold. The first full floor is lifted 100 feet above a full block urban plaza at Mission Street, creating a civic portal to the Transbay Hall. The Tower includes retail, cultural uses, office space, boutique hotel, condominiums and a publicly accessible sky room. The Tower’s unique form tapers as it reaches the sky, accommodating the uses held within. Atop the Tower are state-of-the-art wind turbines which, combined with its photovoltaic crown, reduces annual energy consumption by 74%. The project includes a partnership with SFMOMA for a major digital arts program and with the California State Library to house the Sutro Collection.
SOM’s Transbay Transit Terminal and Tower represent the highest level of environmental stewardship ever achieved in a major urban mixed-use project. The project’s combined reduction in emissions, over a conventional design, will be over 176,000,000 pounds of carbon dioxide over a ten-year period. The Transit Center will achieve LEED Platinum and the Tower LEED Gold and possibly Platinum. Both are designed to the highest levels of safety and security which will allow it to withstand a “2,500 year†earthquake and other security concerns. The project harvests rainwater, reducing the burden on the city’s infrastructure. The project makes extensive use of natural ventilation and natural light contributing to dramatic reductions in energy by harvesting solar and wind power.
Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects and Hines
Pelli Aerial
Pelli Bus Level
Statement from the Pelli Clarke Pelli|Hines team:
Our Transbay Transit Center aspires to become one of San Francisco’s great civic places. Its architecture is open, full of light and clean air, and environmentally sustainable. It is also functional, a pleasure to use, and adaptable to future needs. It is designed to be the centerpiece of a new neighborhood. As such, we propose transforming the roof of the Transit Center into a public park––City Park. The 5.4 acre City Park is accessible and inviting, complete with the attractions and activities that characterize great urban green spaces. The park also actively improves the environment around the Transit Center, absorbing pollution from bus exhaust, treating and recycling water, and providing a habitat for local wildlife. Sustainability is at the heart of our proposal.
Our Transbay Tower is a slender, graceful and beautiful icon. It is a simple and eternal form, like an obelisk, marking the location of the Transit Center against the San Francisco sky. At its base is Mission Square, a grand public space sheltered under a flowing glass and steel canopy, that forms the ceremonial entrance to the Transit Center. The timeless form of the Tower balances the richness of design of the Transit Center. The perimeter structure of the Center is sculpted like branches of a tree, covered with glass that waves like the petals of a flower. The Transit Center is infused with natural light coming through Light Columns that also open views of the sky and the trees of City Park to all users. The Transit Center and City Park are extraordinary new assets for their neighborhood, the City and the Region.
