The first decade of the 21st century marked the San Francisco landscape in ways that nobody would have predicted a decade before.
New glass towers stand south of Market Street, many filled with residents and one set disconcertingly close to the Bay Bridge. The old rail yards of Mission Bay are home to a UCSF campus and upscale condominiums, the latter lining a once unpleasantly fragrant creek. Lauded international architects have placed bold buildings in provocative locations.
In this city, the process of getting a project approved makes it easier to cut deals than to let architects do their best work, and too much of what's been built is inept or cynical or both. Even so, the decade saw a heartening number of memorable additions to the landscape. Some are Big Buildings by Big Names, but most are locally produced, modestly scaled.
This is an excerpt from a larger article. To see the entire article, click here. To find out more about SOMA Studios, click here.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
