Bay City Studies

SAN FRANSISCO, CA, USA,1997

This plan supposes the minimum of zoning by use in order to promote the maximum of both mix and flexibility. As cities move beyond class- and race-based planning and as urban industry-particularly in places like San Francisco-becomes increasingly focused on “clean” services and technologies, planning by use becomes increasingly unnecessary Urban design will increasingly devolve instead on compatibilities of size, on the reinforcement and elaboration of public space, and on tactics of sustainability. Indeed,  the growth of the areas south of Market, in the legal establishment of live-work” building, and in the initial reuse of areas like Hunters Point, the city has pioneered a new and vital style of urbanity. The new mix should appear at both the urban and architectural scales, and our plan assumes that the generic type (at least conceptually) is a loft: a day lit, walk-up structure that might become housing, laboratories, offices, commercial space, or any of a variety of mixtures of all of these.

Scales would vary with context, but the likes of t he Bradbury Building in Los Angles or the reused industrial buildings of Soho in Manhattan are suggestive types. Such malleable architecture-adapted to modern standards and carefully reworked environmentally - would be very suitable to the largely industrial contexts of both Mission Bay and Hunters Point. Lofts would as well, help to avoid a problem that has plagued every plan for Mission Bay to date: complete collapse with the disappearance of their momentary market rationales. A more adaptable process of both planning and building would assure potential viability indefinitley.

Credits: Michael Sorkin, Andrei Vovk, Mitchell Joachim