Private building, public space
Himanshu Burte -
Monday, August 24, 2009 2:27 PM
The Levi Strauss & Company campus development, just off the Embarcadero in San Francisco, is a great example of how you can enhance the public space of a city when you put up a new building. The site of the development is the original Levi Strauss factory--yes, the birthplace of denim.
The development is placed on two generous lots across a street. The buildings are organized to create well-shaped spaces between them. The arrangement of buildings on the western lot is the more remarkable part. The two corporate office buildings snake around the periphery of the lot to create a generous plaza in the centre with a sculptural water feature. The plaza provides a great welcome as one enters the complex.
But the subtlest, and most significant part, is that the two buildings leave a generous path between them that connects to the famous
Filbert Steps leading up the hill to Coit Tower. Remember, this path through the plaza was created for the public, and did not exist before the development. If it had been business as usual, a building would have been placed at the centre of the lot, and would have blocked the view of the mini-forested hill. Instead, fresh thinking by the team of client, architect (HOK with Howard Friedman and Gensler & Assocs), and landscape architect (the eminent
Lawrence Halprin) has transformed an ordinary office building project into a gift of public space. The beautifully landscaped park on the other side of the street on the eastern lot (by the side of another office building) completes the gift to the city.
The only thing, going by reviews on the web, is that security is rather strict: you are not even allowed to spread a blanket on the grass. Just goes to show that a good design is only half the battle in the struggle to make great places.