Here it goes today! :)

Yesss, too bad I couldnt go today, I wanted to say a few words. Anywho, cant wait to find out the news!

The competition begins Wednesday, November 1, 2006!

http://sfgov.org/site/frame.asp?u=ht...sbaycenter.org

From this page, go to "Project Overview\Design Competion\Announcement of upcoming release of Design and Development Competition RFQ"


Also from this page you may also see a Community Meeting Presentation from October 11, 2006. Go to "Documents\Other Documents\October 2006 Transit Program Community Presentation"

Of particular interest may be the schedule:
http://i102.photobucket.com/albums/m...yschedule1.jpg

SWEET!

From 'Lord of the Rings':

"The board is set... the pieces are moving"

(Followed by a really good home theater test scene).

So, I guess by this we still have more or less another 2 years before the design of the Transbay Tower itself. Hopefully they'll grow more along the way. As for the design, I want to see what people have come up with :)

2 years is nothing - just the simple fact the ball is rolling is shocking. No mass protects in the streets, money seems to work out. As long as it happens, that will be cool.

Yeah, according to the report, they seem to be doing a good job at allocating the funds. Of course, November 7 remains an important day, theres some measures that need to pass to keep the momentum going.

My birthday! Now there's a nice present;)

I can't wait to see some of the designs people come up with. Too bad it'll be quite a while..

That is a nice gift, happy birthday :5:

Now, what a coincidence it would be if they choose the final design on November 1, 2008. :haha:

Haha, two years will go by in a flash, especially with other projects going on.

Thats right, we have other projects to take out attention, for the mean time :)

- SAN FRANCISCO -

Search starts for team to design tower

John King

Tuesday, October 31, 2006


An ambitious international competition to find an architect and developer for what could be San Francisco's tallest building was launched yesterday by the Transbay Joint Powers Authority.

The authority's board, which consists primarily of local elected officials, voted unanimously to begin the competition as part of its effort to build a new transit center for buses and commuter trains near First and Mission streets. The competition seeks a designer for the transit center and the tower, as well as a developer to build the tower.

The schedule calls for interested teams to submit their qualifications in January. Finalists would submit detailed proposals and a design-development team would be selected in August. The authority hopes to begin construction in 2010.

Meanwhile, San Francisco's Planning Department will soon seek a consultant to study how to raise building-height limits around the terminal. Two skyscrapers in addition to the transit terminal tower could be allowed to exceed the 853-foot Transamerica Pyramid, now the city's tallest building. Money generated by land sales and new property taxes would help fund construction of the transit center.

I wonder if the same designer who wins the transit center competition also wins the right to the tower?

- SAN FRANCISCO -

Only 'starchitects' need apply to do transit hub design

John King

Tuesday, October 31, 2006

The Bay Area could be "starchitect" central next year.

The reason? The quest for a new Transbay Terminal -- one of those ongoing San Francisco sagas that, wonder of wonders, is beginning to look as if it will happen. Wednesday the competition begins to select an architect to design a new transit hub at First and Mission streets, and a skyscraping tower to help pay for it. The competition also seeks a deep-pocket developer to build the tower.

And with a project of this scale and complexity, only heavyweights need apply.

One celebrity architect expected to surface is Santiago Calatrava, a Spanish master renowned for sculptural imagery; his major American project right now is a soaring train station being built at the World Trade Center site. Other rumored big names include England's Norman Foster (whose firm has two sleek academic buildings at Stanford University) and Cesar Pelli, whose 560 Mission St. is one of San Francisco's best office towers.

At this point, the only players we know for sure are the seven jury members approved Friday by the Transbay Joint Power Authority. The group includes local architect Alison Williams, real estate economist Jerry Keyser and UC Davis Professor Susan Handy, an expert on transportation and land use.

The jury's architects stress that what will unfold over the next 10 months isn't a beauty contest.

"I'm glad design is paramount, because the program is extremely complicated," says Williams, a principal in the San Francisco office of Perkins + Will. She refers to the technical demands of a terminal that folds in bus routes, commuter trains from San Mateo County and, possibly, high-speed rail -- as well as a smooth fit with a tower next door that could exceed 1,000 feet in height, on a narrow site crowded by other towers.

"This is so structurally driven, it's not strictly an architectural pursuit," Williams says. "The design has to be tethered to the other disciplines."

The same point is made by Hsin-Ming Fung, whose firm Hodgetts + Fung is one of Los Angeles' top design houses.

"The station is really an engineering feat," Fung says. "It's not just wrapping a skin around a project. It's about solving a problem and working with other concerns."

Competing teams must submit their qualifications on Jan. 11; the jury will then select finalists who will present design proposals and financial offers in July. The schedule calls for selection of a design and development team in mid-August.

So if you see a dapper archi-type standing around First and Mission, elegant sketchbook in hand, you'll know why.

In an age where "edgy" and "ironic" are all the rage, a word like "beautiful" might seem quaint. But when the group San Francisco Beautiful handed out its annual awards this month, we were reminded that beauty can be civil and creative as well.

Friedel Klussmann, immortalized in countless Herb Caen columns as the woman who saved San Francisco's cable car system from extinction after World War II, founded the group in 1947. This year's awards focused on open space -- and the ingenuous passion of the city's residents.

The top award went to Octavia Boulevard, where a freeway was replaced last year by a landscaped thoroughfare after years of neighborhood activism. That change is still in progress -- lots alongside it will be filled by housing, for instance -- but it's already ignited the revival of Hayes Valley.

On a much smaller sale, the Robert C. Friese Award for Neighborhood Conservation went to the Quesada Gardens Initiative: one block of the crime-plagued Bayview neighborhood where residents turned a dumping ground for debris into a riot of flowers and vegetables and trees.

Other beautification awards went to Yerba Buena Gardens, the tile steps on 16th Avenue in Golden Gate Heights, the restoration of Mission Creek, the Newsom administration's street-greening initiatives and recent landscaping improvements at Candlestick Point. All are deserved.

Finally, a pre-election plug for a worthy cause: the proposed quarter-cent sales tax in Marin and Sonoma to turn long-empty train routes into a 70-mile commuter rail system between Larkspur and Cloverdale.

Yes, it would cost nearly $500 million to launch the line, its 14 stations and a parallel pedestrian-bike trail. No, highway congestion won't magically dissolve. But Measure R absolutely deserves support because it will help preserve the North Bay's cultural heritage.

What exists along the Highway 101 corridor today isn't the sort of undifferentiated sprawl that smears the South Bay. Rather, a string of unique communities have preserved their roots despite the pressure of growth. And a new thread of passenger rail would strengthen the fabric that still exists -- by underlying the importance of town centers, of low-key urbanity, of cities that grow in instead of out (development sites are adjacent to several potential stations, the perfect spot for new housing).

As for the sniping of opponents that the projected ridership of 5,300 passengers a day isn't worth the cost, consider this. When a light-rail service opened in the southwest Denver region in 2000, first-year ridership topped projections by 70 percent.

If you build it, they will ride.

Measure R translates to a transportation alternative and an investment in local communities. Not bad for a quarter-cent.

Awesome articles - thanks!

Looks like things are rolling (no pun intended).

Glad to see that this buildings won't be an ego-boosting temple to some lame ass architect - this needs to be a very functional and practical building before it does anything else.

Design & Development Competition

November 1, 2006
RFQ for Transbay Transit Center & Tower Design & Development Competition Released


http://www.transbaycenter.org/transb...nt.aspx?id=323

http://www.transbaycenter.org/TransB...nt.aspx?id=573

i really hope that this idea comes possible. i think this city needs a new iconic structure. i mean SF is really late in the game. look at Dubai, its skline is doubling in size practically every month. with new towers it will make SF look like a place of business. and then we dont have to depend on tourism. i hope the city dosent turn to touristy look what happened to venice.

I havent heard any news from the meetings yet, have there been any advances made since the last meeting?

Sigh, I wish I could enter the competition. I even made some building designs myself and I'm no architect, but I think they look good, hehe. :ack: :ack:

Don't forget, Dubai has uber-rich princes financing its development. The US doesn't have that.

^ not to mention extremely cheap labor from south asia.