Archinect - News

CAW Architects completes Oakland urban farm project to deliver 30,000 school meals

2024-02-16T12:05:00-05:00

Palo Alto-based CAW Architects has completed a food-orientated educational project in Oakland, California. Named 'The Center,' the scheme comprises a central kitchen, culinary arts education center, and an urban farm, all designed to provide 30,000 fresh-cooked meals each day to 77 schools across Oakland.

Image credit: Bruce Damonte Photography

The project is anchored by a large outdoor court, shaded under an expansive wood trellis. Designed as a central hub to connect the kitchen, classrooms, and instructional garden, the courtyard is accessed from the classrooms by large glass roll-up doors, creating a natural circulation flow from the classrooms to the courtyard to the gardens and greenhouse.

Image credit: Bruce Damonte Photography

The classrooms include a full-service demonstration and teaching kitchen, in addition to a student education space, with intended users spanning early childhood to young adults...

Featured architecture and design jobs in the San Francisco Bay Area

2023-10-26T14:07:00-04:00

This newest edition of our curated job picks from Archinect Jobs features 13 employers with exciting job openings in the greater San Francisco area, including Berkeley, Oakland, and Emeryville. If you're an experienced professional seeking architecture and design jobs in this region, this list is just for you.

To explore specific job titles from the architectural profession, consult Archinect's Guide to Job Titles series. Also, follow our Archinect Tips series to improve your portfolio, resume, and interviewing skills, to increase your overall chances of getting that next job.

Walker Warner seeks a Project Director in San Francisco
"The Project Director role is critical in helping us continue to deliver exceptional results and help lead and develop our staff. This role reports directly to the Principal-in-Charge and provides proactive direction, oversight and project management on a single large project of 100,000 sq. ft. or more and/or across multiple smaller projects running concu...

Featured architecture job opportunities in the San Francisco Bay Area

2022-12-08T17:32:00-05:00

The Bay Area may be home to Silicon Valley, notable sports teams, and the Golden Gate Bridge, but it's also home to amazing architecture firms. Whether you're looking to live within San Francisco's bustling downtown scene or be a part of Oakland's developmental progress, the bay area offers various architecture job opportunities.

Below are eight firms that are searching for the right candidate to join their team.

Bartos Architecture, Inc. seeks an Architect
Location: San Francisco, CA

Details: "Bartos Architecture is a small firm focused on public K-12 School facilities and other public work. Experience in public work/schools is not necessary. We will provide you with the training you need to thrive. We are building a diverse team. If you left Architecture for Tech but want to come back. We will welcome you with open arms. If you are tired of working in a corporate environment and want to work with people who really care about you - please contact us If you are retired and want to ...

Plans for new San Francisco Bay rail tunnels inch closer to realization

2022-09-26T17:35:00-04:00

The effort to engineer new train tunnels across the San Francisco Bay is gaining traction after the planning body responsible for overseeing the massive proposed Link21 infrastructure project unveiled conceptual maps detailing a key segment of the rail network on September 21.

The maps offer a look at two separate plans that would either divide the tunnel along regional/local service lines or combine them both into one corridor that connects Oakland and Alameda County to the Salesforce Transit Center and Mission Bay. They also included references to a "possible extension" of the BART system leading away from downtown to the west.

Image: Link21 courtesy sanfranciscoexaminer.com

The details released last week hint at a number of key future projects that have made headlines in the region for a number of years. Other than enhancing links to the larger regional Caltrans system, plans show an addition of new BART service routes along the contested I-980 corridor, along with four added stat...

15 featured architecture jobs in Oakland and the East Bay

2022-08-25T17:09:00-04:00

An economic and cultural powerhouse, the San Francisco Bay Area is bustling with exciting architecture and design firms — and they're hiring! While the majority of career opportunities posted on Archinect Jobs are located within the big western and southern urban centers of the region, there are plenty of recent openings in the East Bay waiting to be filled with qualified candidates.

For this week's curated job picks, we have selected a number of standout positions at hiring architecture firms in Oakland, Pleasanton, and Emeryville.

To look up specific job titles from the architectural profession, consult Archinect's Guide to Job Titles series. Also, follow our Archinect Tips series to improve your portfolio, resume, interviewing skills, and increase your overall chances of getting that next job.

Willis Tower Repositioning by Gensler. Photo: Garrett Rowland.

Gensler seeks a Design Director - Interiors and Senior Interior Designer in Oakland
"Gensler’s Oakland studio, an award-winning...

Decommissioned BART cars to be transformed into a variety of venues across the Bay Area

2022-04-04T14:18:00-04:00

Eight lucky winners have been awarded decommissioned BART cars, as BART announced these retired cars will be transformed into a retro video game arcade, a bike repair shop, and a beer garden at The Oakland A’s stadium.

In 2020, BART issued a request for proposals for the creative reuse of old train cars as they are taken out of service and replaced by their “Fleet of the Future” cars. The first of the BART’s 775 new train cars went into service in January 2018. The fate of the decommissioned cars, some dating to the original fleet in the early 1970s, is being stripped and recycled into scrap heap.

The eight recipients were selected after submitting a proposal to BART describing what they intended to do with the vehicle, including their plans for the cars’ retrieval and disposal once they’ve served their purpose. The remaining decommissioned cars, with approximately 531 still in service, will be mainly recycled over time.

The "Residence and short-term rental" proposal by Hernandez-Eli Architecture.

The winning proposals for the repurposed BART cars include the creation of a retro video game arcade, a craft beer garden at The Oakland A’s stadium, a bike repair shop, a multi-use social space, a muse...

20 featured architecture jobs in the San Francisco Bay Area

2022-03-03T18:09:00-05:00

World famous as the center of the tech industry, the San Francisco Bay Area is also home to a myriad of exciting architecture and design firms. And they're in need of creative talent right now as the huge number of listings in the region on Archinect Jobs shows.

If you're searching for architectural career opportunities in San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley, Sausalito, San Mateo, Emeryville, and surroundings, take a look at this week's curated job picks below and visit the Archinect job board for even more.

Snøhetta seeks a Project Leader – Interior Design/Interior Architecture
"Snøhetta is seeking a Project Leader for our Interior Architecture team who is committed to the creation and development of exemplary design fro...

Remembering Prescott Reavis: A champion of Black excellence and mentorship within architecture

2022-02-10T17:57:00-05:00

Within the architecture industry, there are individuals who work tirelessly to not only design impactful buildings but who aim to represent the people, places, and community that their work serves. Prescott Reavis was more than just a Black architect. He was an advocate, a mentor, and a formidable force for equitable design practices. On February 8, 2022, Reavis sadly passed away.

The Oakland-based practitioner was a man of many talents and specialties. For over 20 years, his works as a spatial activist, architect, planner, and educator could be seen throughout his involvement with organizations across the nation, specifically in the Oakland/San Francisco area.

Image of Prescott Reavis as a student at Howard University. Image courtesy of Prescott Reavis' Facebook page.

Reavis was a graduate of Howard University where he received a Bachelor's degree in Architecture with a minor in Education. He also attended San Jose State University where he completed Master's Certificates in Appli...

COVID-19-inspired open streets take root in American cities

2020-04-14T17:50:00-04:00

Around the country, as the COVID-19 shut down enters its second month, cities have demonstrated a variety of responses with regards to access to open space as shelter-in-place initiatives have taken hold.

Some cities, like Los Angeles, have opted to shut down parks and hiking trails for fear of facilitating large groups of people gathering in a single place. Others, like Denver, Minneapolis, and Oakland, have embraced the crisis as an opportunity to make more of the city available to pedestrians. With chronically under-sized sidewalks existing as a norm in many cities, some municipalities are moving to close existing vehicle lanes and entire streets to most vehicle use.

Shot of one of the streets in Oakland that is being temporarily closed to cars. Image courtesy of Oakland Department of Transportation.

In Denver, for example, more than 16 miles of city streets have been optimized for pedestrian use, Denverite reports. In Minneapolis, the figure runs upward of 18 miles of formerly ...

Oakland Councilwoman wants to house 1,000 homeless people on a cruise ship

2019-12-20T11:28:00-05:00

An Oakland City Council member’s plan to house up to 1,000 homeless people on a cruise ship in the bay could actually set sail. Because the International Maritime Organization is imposing more stringent emissions regulations in 2020, and some ships won’t be able to upgrade their engines to the new standards in time...Instead, they could dock them at the Port of Oakland or a private dock and plug into electricity...

Led by City Council president Rebecca Kaplan, the plan seeks to create affordable housing through a creative approach grounded in history. According to the East Bay Times, ships were used to house relief workers responding to Hurricane Dorian in the Bahamas this past September; FEMA chartered cruise ships to house people in 2017 during the hurricanes in the U.S. Virgin Islands; and in 2005 during Katrina.

Port officials have expressed doubt regarding the proposal, reports . the East Bay Times, but Kaplan still believes "the idea is worth at least exploring."

In defense of Oakland's "charmless" Brutalist baseball stadium

2019-10-03T07:00:00-04:00

When the Oakland Coliseum opened in 1966, it was hailed as a Brutalist gem that could house two sports in an elegantly simple, circular design. A half-century later, it is perhaps America’s most hated sports stadium. Players and coaches deride it. The Oakland Raiders are fleeing it. [...] Even these pages have called it “a bland, charmless concrete monstrosity” that “isn’t worthy of preservation.”

Writing in The New York Times, Jack Nicas embarks on a spirited defense of the Oakland Coliseum, warts and all.

Nicas writes, "Yes, the Coliseum is ugly, but it is cheap, gritty and fun. The spacious confines allow fans to roam around, spread out and enjoy a comprehensive view of the game. And the park’s dinginess fosters a freewheeling atmosphere, where bleacher die-hards bang drums and heckle outfielders, while upper-deck denizens pack picnics and pass joints," adding, "It all adds up to a baseball experience that stands out in the increasingly homogeneous ballpark landscape."

View of the proposed Oakland As stadium. Image: Bjarke Ingels Group

The 53-year old stadium is due to be replaced by a new facility designed by Bjarke Ingels Group, Gensler, and James Corner Field Operations on a different site. The existing stadium, under the plan, will be scraped to create a sunken amphitheater that would serve as the heart of a new housing and park complex planned for the site.

Listen to ...

Oakland Athletics present BIG's circular redesign of proposed Howard Terminal Ballpark

2019-02-27T13:50:00-05:00

The Oakland Athletics have released updated renderings of the proposed ballpark at Howard Terminal. The team said it tweaked the design of the original boxy structure to provide better views of the bay and Oakland and after getting feedback from fans and public officials.

When plans for the Bjarke Ingels-designed new 34,000-seat baseball stadium at Howard Terminal (complete with gondola and publicly accessible rooftop park, among other features) were unveiled to much fanfare last November by the Oakland Athletics, the public reception was mixed.

This week, renderings of a revised design were released that seek to incorporate some of the feedback—most notably, a more circular stadium shape.

Image: Bjarke Ingels Group

Oakland A's President, Dave Kaval, describes the merits of the redesign in a statement released this week:

[...] Back in November, we were thrilled and humbled by the initial positive response to our preliminary concepts for the ballpark design. Fans and community members alike expressed excitement about the design. Since then, we've continued to meet with public officials, fans, and community members to gather more input and refine our designs.

Image: Bjarke Ingels Group

One key update to our design: a more circular shape. This geometry ...

Oakland A's release plans by BIG for new ballpark at Howard Terminal

2018-11-28T19:56:00-05:00

The Oakland Athletics have unveiled plans for their new highly-anticipated stadium. Leaving their longtime home at the current Coliseum, which will be transformed into a tech and housing hub, the A's will be moving to a mega-ballpark designed by Bjarke Ingels that will be located at the Howard Terminal waterfront.

Renderings for the new ballpark, described by A's president Dave Kaval as "nothing you have ever seen," show a futuristic facility with nods to the jewel box design popularized by Philadelphia's Shibe Park at the turn-of-the century. Shibe Park, known later as Connie Mack Staidum, also happens to be the team's old home from when they were the Philadelphia Athletics.

Image courtesy of Bjarke Ingels Group

The ambitious stadium will seat 34,000 and feature a publicly accessible rooftop park with views of the waterfront. Surrounding the ballpark, a series of wedge-shaped high-rises will further bring cafes, shops, co-working spaces and apartments to the area. Important to Kava...

3D printed Oakland cabin proves the architectural (and aesthetic) possibilities of additive manufacturing

2018-03-14T13:30:00-04:00

Emerging Objects is a self-described 3D Printing MAKE-tank founded by Ronald Rael, an Associate Professor of Architecture at University of California Berkeley, and Virginia San Fratello, an Assistant Professor of Design at San José State University. They are trailblazers in the 3D printing industry, specializing in cutting-edge architecture and building components. Their innovations include a porous ceramic brick that passively cools interiors, a teapot printed from actual tea, furniture made from recycled tires, and now, a fully-livable cabin.

Courtesy of Emerging Objects.

The Cabin of Curiosities is a culmination of the work the Bay Area start-up has been perfecting since its founding and proves the architectural potential of additive manufacturing on a weathertight, structurally sound building. Made from more than 4,500 3D printed ceramic tiles, the structure demonstrates 3D printing's potential for making highly designed building components from unlikely materials.

Courtesy of...

Infrastructure is not neutral; case studies of communities decimated by highways

2018-02-22T15:06:00-05:00

Making the case that infrastructure itself can be exclusionary is hardly straightforward. Many of the worst decisions in US planning were made decades ago to intentionally disenfranchise, marginalise and separate communities; policies such as redlining and “blight clearing” are well-documented embarrassments. But many decisions that segregated communities were unintentional. The stop sign and one-way street might seem benign, but they shape our lives in ways we sometimes don’t even realise.

Through focusing in on 5 case studies where communities have been obliterated by infrastructure decisions, the direct impact of highways and walls take on greater levels of meaning and urgency. The power of city planning also comes into greater consideration presently as the US takes on a massive infrastructure revitalization project.

"Too big to replace, too expensive to tear down", Miller emphasizes the importance of digging into the history of our country's development in order to understand past injustices, prevent future abuse, and address current issues as they stand right now.

An in depth look focuses on Detroit’s 8 Mile and historical Black Bottom neighborhoods, West Oakland in California, West Baltimore, and Jackson Ward in Richmond, Virginia. Arresting images of overlapping interstates where communities used to be reveal a truth many of us drive on in our everyday lives.

Please read Johnny Miller's full piece on how infrastructure decisions impact communities and are dir...

Fougeron Architecture transforms 1920s office building in Oakland into the Kapor Center's new HQ

2017-11-27T18:57:00-05:00

Fougeron Architecture, who recently completed the 400 Grove mixed-use in Hayes Valley, has left their mark again in the Bay Area in designing the new Kapor Center for Social Impact headquarters in downtown Oakland. The Kapor Center needed a new collaborative workspace to carry out their mission, which is to improve access to opportunity and stronger influence for historically underrepresented communities through investing in information technology and partnerships with like-minded nonprofits.

Photo: Bruce Damonte.

Fougeron transformed the existing 1920s office building into a new workspace for the Center and its partner organizations. “The new headquarters had to be an architectural manifestation of the Kapor Center’s core values: connectivity, openness, and democracy,” the architects describe. Based on those values, the new Center's design is modern and harmonious, featuring open, flexible workspaces that are fit for collaboration.

Photo: Bruce Damonte.

Photo: B...

Plans submitted for tower to be Oakland's tallest

2017-11-01T23:38:00-04:00

"We’re trying for one tower that seems like two from some angles...to create a much more vertical expression, and not just be another slab," said Mark Donahue of Lowney Architecture

Pinnacle RED Group announced today submittal of plans to the City of Oakland for a high-rise mixed-use building, 1261 Harrison, with a dual-tower look in a single structure. At 440 feet to the roof-deck (460 when adding the architectural screening element) and 36 stories in height, it would be Oakland’s tallest building. The striking, gently curved structure will be half residential and half commercial space, offering 185 units of market-rate and affordable housing, 120,000 square feet of Class A office space, and 12,000 square feet of commercial/retail space including an innovative ‘locavore’ market hall with regionally-sourced food and maker entrepreneurs. 1261 Harrison is one of Oakland’s only mixed-use vertical communities to include commercial space as well as market-rate housing and affordable housing onsite.

Perceived dual-tower of 1261 Harrison is a single structure. Credit www.RobertBecker.com and Lowney Architecture

“1261 Harrison Street will be a transformational live/work...

Two arrested in Oakland Ghost Ship case

2017-06-05T20:50:00-04:00

Leaseholder Derick Almena and tenant Max Harris each were charged with 36 counts of involuntary manslaughter in the December fire at Oakland's Ghost Ship warehouse, said Alameda County District Attorney Nancy O'Malley.

Back in December, tragedy struck as a blaze broke out during a show at Oakland's Ghost Ship—a DIY-venue located in a two-story warehouse. One of the two exits had been blocked, leading to chaos as party-goers attempted to exit to safety. The incident lead to the devastating loss of 36 young men and woman.

The leaseholder, Derick Almena, and the tenant, Max Harris, received much criticism for the incident, having endangered both the concert-goers and those living in the warehouse by not ensuring the site was up to code. Assistant District Attorney Teresa Drenick said the two men "knowingly created a fire trap with inadequate means of escape. They then filled that area with human beings and are now facing the consequences of their action." The two were arrested earlier today and each faces up to 39 years in prison if convicted of all charges.

Back when the incident happened, it prompted discussions of the safety and vitality of DIY venues such as Ghost Ship, and focused attention on t...

Following Ghost Ship tragedy, city authorities and artists clash over DIY venues

2016-12-15T13:35:00-05:00

“If you don’t understand anything about this world, or what that space was, or who these people were, your first reaction is going to be: ‘Why don’t you just bring this place up to code?’ And it’s a very quaint notion, and it would be good if that’s how the world worked [...]” “There are so many interlocking problems that are fundamental, it’s hard to know where to begin. In almost every case, there are existing code violations to the building before they even move in.”

DIY Space, After Ghost Ship: Safety, community and informal venues after Oakland's tragic fire, ft. S. Surface and David Keenan on Archinect Sessions #91

2016-12-08T19:22:00-05:00

Last Friday night, a fire broke out during a concert at the Ghost Ship warehouse in Oakland, California, killing (at present count) 36 people. While the precise cause of the fire is still unknown, the building was rife with code violations that accelerated the fire's damage, many related to its adapted use for living and work-spaces. While criminal investigations are just beginning, local artists worry that the city will use the tragedy to crack down on other adaptive and DIY venues in the Bay Area, restricting access even further to affordable spaces in an already tight housing market.

Within the architecture community, the tragedy has prompted discussions surrounding the safety and vitality of DIY venues, and the long-term effects of such building code violations for gentrification and zoning. To discuss on the podcast, we're joined by two guests who have personal and professional experience with forming community spaces: designer, curator and organizer S. Surface, and David Keenan...

Can Silicon Valley save the Bay Area?

2015-11-17T19:09:00-05:00

The subject of a thousand think pieces and endless dinner table conversations, the considerable changes unleashed on the Bay Area by the tech industry over the past few decades are pretty undeniable. An influx of money – and its attendant culture – has remade San Francisco and the valley to its south largely in its own image, and has touched just about every other city in the Bay in some way.

But even bigger changes for the Bay Area are on the horizon, as is made clear in a new "interactive documentary" entitled The Water at Bay. Comprising a map, videos, and text, the website highlights the risks posed to region by rising sea levels, and waCs created in part by a coalition of Silicon Valley business leaders.

Can the same forces blamed for ruining the Bay Area now come to its rescue?

In order to educate local people about the dangers and challenges posed by rising sea levels, the Silicon Valley Leadership Group teamed up with the Bay Area Council and Save the Bay under the banner Our B...

Shipping container village crops up in Oakland, offering alternative to sky-high SF rents

2015-08-03T16:07:00-04:00

Luke Iseman, 31, leases a 17,000-square-foot warehouse in Oakland in which he has built 11 micro residences out of cargo containers, Bloomberg reports. He charges $1,000 per months for each of the makeshift homes, which aren’t legal, strictly speaking. [...] “We have an opportunity here to create a new model for urban development that’s more sustainable, more affordable and more enjoyable.”

More news on shipping containers and the Bay Area's residential market:

What's causing the Bay Bridge's steel to corrode so rapidly?

2015-06-15T14:45:00-04:00

This relatively low-tech method is among a battery of tests that materials scientists are using to determine why several anchor rods securing the newest portion of the San Francisco Bay Bridge, the region’s busiest, failed their earthquake inspections. The first alarms sounded in 2013, when seismic tests found 32 faulty rods. They’d been sitting in a large pool of water, corroding.

Previously:

No room for affordable housing in SF? Build it in Oakland

2015-03-30T13:06:00-04:00

Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf tossed out an idea that she admitted might sound a bit crazy: What if San Francisco housing developers could fulfill their affordable housing requirements by building some of that housing in Oakland? [...] The idea is for San Francisco residents who qualify for below-market-rate housing to live in affordable units that would be built in Oakland. [...] The foundation for the partnership is already being prepped in Oakland

FARM-X shares its modular vertical farming approach, pilot project nears completion

2015-03-18T19:44:00-04:00

The vertical-farming movement continues to grow with the recent unveiling of FARM-X's modular vertical-farming concept, which the Oakland, CA-based organization developed with Zurich-based Conceptual Devices founder Antonio Scarponi and an agronomy team led by University of Bologna Professor Giorgio GianquintoI. In the most idealistic sense, the FARM-X model would maximize production of fresh food up to 5 tons per day, can be applied anywhere as one means to sustainably revive unused urban spaces, and would create more jobs to develop a "green collar workforce" of urban agricultural farmers.

FARM-X aims to construct 10,000 sq.m. (approx.110,000 sq.ft.) of total vertical farm space throughout Oakland over the next decade. For starters, a pilot run of the project is near completion nearby in Richmond, CA.

Read on for more project details that we received:

"Food has historically been grown in areas of low real-estate interest, far from densely populated settlements normally described as '...

Weekly News Round-Up for August 11, 2014: Monumental politics, smart homes and GSAPP's new dean

2014-08-18T12:53:00-04:00

Friday, August 15

Farewell to the Old Okura: The famous Hotel Okura, built in the 1960s in a distinctive fusion of modern and traditional Japanese styles, is closing in response to prohibitive earthquake retrofits and larger, newer hotels in the area.
Samsung Acquires SmartThings, A Fast-Growing Home Automation Startup: SmartThings, an aggregator for all "smart" internet-connected devices in the home, cost Samsung an estimated $200 million —chump change in comparison to Google's $3.2 billion acquisition of Nest.

Thursday, August 14

One ridesharing app to rule them all: Ridescout moves into the competitive world of rideshare: Ridescout aggregates hundreds of ridesharing services to compare trips, and will now include "carpool" options that can help users share trips. The announcement comes after last week's news that Uber and Lyft are now both offering carpooling services.
Revisiting the American Folk Art Museum controversy, through comics: A thoughtful and diplomatic look at AFAM's his...

Oakland Hires Its First “Chief Resilience Officer”

2014-08-12T13:50:00-04:00

Oakland has earthquakes, droughts and a host of other resilience problems to tackle. Now it has a Chief Resilience Officer to lead the charge. Today, Oakland Mayor Jean Quan and Michael Berkowitz, president of The Rockefeller Foundation’s 100 Resilient Cities initiative, will jointly announce that Victoria Salinas has been tapped as the city’s first Chief Resilience Officer, a position being created in other cities across the world, as well.

Artists pine for pieces of old Bay Bridge

2014-02-26T14:14:00-05:00

For 76 years, the gray steel eastern span of the Bay Bridge was cursed and reviled but mostly just taken for granted. [...] At least two groups of artists and architects have mounted campaigns to spare some of the steel from the recyclers so that they can transform it into artworks that might include a home, a public gathering space and an Airbnb rental space - with a view of the new Bay Bridge.

Winners of the Bay Bridge House Student Design Competition

2013-10-31T19:58:00-04:00

With a total of 73 entries from 37 schools around the world, the winners have finally been revealed for the Bay Bridge House Student Design Competition. Architecture and design students had to develop a modern, self-sustainable house made from the scraps of the soon-to-be-demolished eastern span of the historic Oakland Bay Bridge in the California Bay Area.

The winners are:

Overall: "Hanging House" by Lee Ka Chun and Ngan Ching Ying (The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture)
Board Members winner: "An Invisible Triangle" by Qazi Shamsud Tamzeed (Chittagong University of Engineering & Technology)
Community Vote: "The Bay Bridge House” by Romain Caba (University of Kansas / National superior school of architecture of Paris Val de Seine, France)
Honorable Mention: "Reclaimed Lookout" by Chris Bennett (Harvard GSD)
Honorable Mention: "Pier House" by Kateřina Krupičková and Gabriela Králová (AAAD)

After $6.4 Billion, San Francisco Bridge Remains a Mess

2013-08-19T17:05:00-04:00

The eastern span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge was supposed to be the crowning glory of the bridge-builder’s art, gracefully echoing the rolling hills surrounding San Francisco Bay. Yet as the project heads for a Labor Day opening after $6.4 billion and 15 years, the country’s most daringly iconic highway bridge stands as a poster child for those who think major infrastructure projects are wasteful.

Previously: Bolts along Bay Bridge bike path fail