View from San Francisco: San Francisco may be suffering because of the collapse of the e-industry, but its ambitious infrastructure projects are a fair bid to make it the most civilized city on the US Pacific Coast

Architectural Review, The, Jan, 2002 by John Ellis

At the foot of Market Street, the 100 year old Ferry Building is being renovated by the San Francisco firm of SMWM to once more become the gateway to the city with the increased use of high-speed ferries criss-crossing the Bay. The restored landmark building will contain offices and restaurants and be home to a popular farmer's market. A new plaza designed by ROMA Design Group terminates Market Street and acts as an appropriate forecourt to the Ferry Building.

Further along the northern waterfront, the former Crissy Field airstrip, within the Presidio National Park near the Golden Gate Bridge, has become the city's latest outdoor amenity. Designed by the local firm of George Hargreaves & Associates, it consists of a new two-mile long esplanade, offering unparalleled views of the Bridge and the Bay. The design combines natural features and man-made forms with rows of newly planted trees and chevron-shaped mounds. It enhances the presence of many former military buildings, including the Gorbachev Foundation, a group of buildings donated by the US Government as a future peace forum. A new salt-water tidal lagoon has been created as well as the restoration of sand dunes, a vast new meadow and biking and walking trails.

Infrastructure burgeons

Next year will see the start of the five-year $3billion replacement of the eastern span of the Bay Bridge. The existing prosaic looking cantilever design span, which partially collapsed in 1989, will be replaced with a new suspension bridge with a single tower intended to match the design of the double suspension western span between Yerba ,Buena Island and the city. The structural design is by TY Lin International with architectural design by Donald MacDonald, San Francisco. The new span has an innovative structural system incorporating a 'self-anchoring system' for attaching the cables to the long causeway from Oakland.

Other future transportation improvements still in the planning stages include the proposed new Transbay Terminal with a new inter-modal transportation centre designed by SMWM/ Richard Rogers Partnership with Ove Arup Engineers. The new terminal will replace the original Interurban train and later bus facility, built when the Bay Bridge was first opened in 1937, with a new five-level transit hub containing three levels of naturally ventilated bus platforms, above grade, and a new train station for an extension of the Caltrain line from SanJose and a future new transbay tunnel under the Bay to the proposed High Speed Rail line to Sacramento and Los Angeles. The design, which is in its concept stages, promises to be one of the great transportation buildings in North America and a dramatic element in the dense urban fabric of Downtown. It will be part of an ambitious redevelopment programme to build both new office buildings in the vicinity, but also to house as many as 15 000 people close to transit and all the amenities of this part of San Francisco.

At San Francisco International Airport, the new International Terminal has recently opened, completing almost forty years of airport construction. A newly opened museum at the airport shows a photograph of the original 1954 terminal with three DC-3 airplanes and a dozen taxis parked outside. The new terminal will permit the airport to handle 35 million passengers a year, more than California's entire population. The new building designed by Craig Hartman of the San Francisco office of Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill/Del Campo Maru/ Michael Willis reads as an elegant gateway to the world, its soaring gull-winged roof covering the great departure hall and bridging over the roadways leading in and out of the airport. Sun-shading screens and fitted glass protect the great west-facing window wall from excessive heat and sun. Next year the long-awaited BART rail extension from Downtown will be complete, connecting the airport with the rest of the Bay Area.