This week we are featuring San Francisco for our Architecture City Guide series. Thank you to all of our readers for adding their can’t miss buildings last week. We hope to see your comments below this week too.
Follow the break for our San Francisco list and a corresponding map!
- California Academy of Sciences / Renzo Piano
- Congregation Beth Sholom / Stanley Saitowitz | Natoma Architects
- Golden Gate Bridge / Joseph B. Strauss
- SFMOMA / Mario Botta
- Saint Mary’s Cathedral, San Francisco / Pier Luigi Nervi
- Tramsamerica Pyramid / William Pereira
- Jewish Contemporary Museum San Francisco / Daniel Libeskind
- M.H. de Young Museum / Herzog & de Meuron
- V.C. Morris Gift Shop / Frank Lloyd Wright
- Mission Bay Block 27 Parking Structure / WRNS Studio
- 101 California Street / Philip Johnson
- Cathedral of Christ the Light, Oakland / Skidmore, Owings & Merrill
View Architecture City Guide: San Francisco in a larger map
What about the Federal Building by Morphosis. It certainly deserves to be on this list.
In addition to the (mostly) big names above, I’d recommend tracking down works by local architects Jim Jennings and Tanner Leddy Maytum Stacy.
If you go to the north, don’t forget the marin country city hall by Frank Lloyd Wright…
And read the book “grid on the hill” by Florence Lipsky, because the most interresting architectural thing about Frisco is it’s unique urbanism.
In addition to the serious omission of the Federal Building by Morphosis mentioned above, a few other major missing works include:
- 1 Bush St. (former Zellerbach HQ, a great mid-century glass tower) by SOM.
- SF Art Institute and SF State Univ. Student Ctr. by Paffard Keating Clay.
- The Hallidie Building on Sutter St. (AIA SF HQ, one of first curtain wall buildings in US).
And, Yerba Buena Lofts and 124 Howard by Saitowitz are both arguably better Saitowits works than the Beth Shalom project listed above.
Plus, if you’re going to include the Cathedral across the bay in Oakland, then the Berkeley Art Museum by Mario Ciampi and Oakland’s Museum of California (Dinkeloo & Roche, renovated by Mark Cavagnero) should be added.
Also in Berkeley: Asian Library at UC by Williams & Tsien, and the nearby building by Scogin Elam.
Lastly, there is a wealth of significant older architectural works left off this list by the likes of Maybeck, Polk, Julia Morgan, Neutra, Mendelsohn, Wurster, Henry Hill, and many others.
Nice site plan, but some chaos I think, thanks for sharing.