Archinect - News

Heatherwick Studio shares the latest visual for their new residential tower proposal for Vancouver

2021-01-25T15:12:00-05:00

Heatherwick Studio continues to expand its residential project portfolio as they share their latest high-rise residential project in Vancouver, Canada. In partnership with Kingswood Properties and commissioned by Bosa Properties, the design aims to "bring a new level of global design excellence to Vancouver, featuring two curvaceous, light-filled towers and a publicly-accessible ground level plaza for community engagement" shares the studio.

While more details of the project have yet to unfold, previous Heatherwick residential projects offer glimpses of what can be expected for the studio's latest Vancouver venture.

Lantern House in New York

Image © Heatherwick Studio

EDEN in Singapore

Image © Swire Properties

Revisit Archinect Sessions #29 to listen to Archinect's conversation with Heatherwick: Problem-solving with Thomas Heatherwick.

Archinect · Session 29: Problem-solving with Thomas Heatherwick

Two new mixed-use towers in Mumbai to begin construction this summer

2020-02-04T11:50:00-05:00

Mumbai-based White Red Architects have been selected to design and deliver two new mixed-use towers located on the Western Express Highway in Mumbai, India. The new development will include residential, commercial space, offices, four cinema screens, and a roof-top cafe. One tower will contain the commercial components of the program and sit facing the Western Express Highway, shielding the separate residential tower from the busyness of the highway.

Study models.

Jesus Jimenez, director at White Red Architects, said in a statement: “The team at White Red Architects is excited to see our proposals for this challenging redevelopment project reach the next stage. We have been working closely with key stakeholders to create a scheme which is attractive and playful – a striking addition along one of the main transport routes through the city – and which is also practical and most importantly, enjoyed by the people who will be living and working in the buildings.”

...

Seattle's F5 Tower is a case study for improving employee satisfaction

2019-11-14T18:00:00-05:00

Tall buildings do more than just help shape skylines. The architects who design these buildings, for example, often strive to create the most "alluring" structures using sometimes mind-boggling structural feats. The corporations and developers who commission these towers, on the other hand, seek the expertise of architects and their teams of engineers and construction experts to create office buildings that can help establish physical representations of their businesses within the built environment.

And what about the employees, the actual users of these towers?

When the Seattle-based technology company F5 Networks relocated their headquarters to what was formerly called "The Mark tower," their goal became to create a new space that places these users at the center of the design. Kurt Schlosser of Geek Wire reports that F5 executives wanted to find ways to improve their employees' commutes and work experiences, for one.

F5 Tower interior stairwell connecting 28 floors of office spa...

Pelli Clarke Pelli, Gensler projects reshape Austin's skyline

2019-09-29T15:00:00-04:00

We’ve got downtown Austin condos, apartments, offices, and hotels rising all around us in shiny new tower form these days, to the point where it’s kinda hard to keep the projects around the city straight even if you’re paying attention.

Forthcoming projects include a 35-story office building designed by Pelli Clarke Pelli for developers Trammell Crow Company that will serve as a regional headquarters for Google, as well as Gensler's 6 X Guadalupe tower, a 66-story, 848-foot residential and office tower that would become the city's tallest structure when completed.

Our dependence on concrete is exhausting global sand supplies

2019-08-26T14:00:00-04:00

China may be the biggest consumer of sand right now, but the issue is a global one. A UN report published earlier this year showed that sand extraction is far outstripping the rates at which it is replenished. According to a team of scientists who recently wrote about the topic in Science Magazine ($) and The Conversation, “Sand and gravel are now the most-extracted materials in the world”–measured by weight, they surpass fossil fuels and biomass.

Writing in Forbes, Laurie Winkless probes the far-reaching and destructive impacts of skyrocketing global sand consumption as the world's urbanizing cities demand more and more of the substance to fuel new construction.

What do you know about "Skinny Scrapers?"

2019-08-08T16:09:00-04:00

Rising high in the skies over New York City, Chicago, Hong Kong, and other great metropolises are tall towers that appear impossibly slender. Fueled mostly by market demand from wealthy clients who desire spectacular views, the design and construction of these superslim, generally residential skyscrapers also depend on engineering advances over recent decades in building materials and damping technologies as well as careful coordination by the design teams.

"Slender" towers are beginning to pop up all over the world, notably, in cities like New York, where real estate is scarce, but the desire to maximize ROI is strong. "The limited space for new buildings in places like New York City generally involves small parcels of land, which means that these new structures tend to be both tall and slender," explains WSP director of building structures, Silvian Marcus, in a recent story by Civil Engineering, the official magazine of the American Society of Civil Engineers.

The structural acrobatics required for such structures, when coupled with the soaring real estate costs for a place like Manhattan, means that these slim buildings cater almost exclusively to the ultra-luxury market. These buildings often have "just a single apartment or condominium per floor," for example, with some penthouses selling "for as much as $90 million," according to the article.

What constitutes a bonafide "slender" building designation, exactly? According to New Y...

OMA completes first residential tower for Norra Tornen project in Stockholm

2018-11-08T15:49:00-05:00

The Innovation Tower in Stockholm designed by OMA/Reinier de Graaf has opened this morning. It is the first of two residential towers designed by the Dutch firm that will comprise the Norra Tornen project. Rising 30 and 35 stories high, the twin towers will become the tallest residential project in inner Stockholm.

Photograph by Laurian Ghinitoiu, Courtesy of OMA

The design of the towers is based on a modular system of prefabricated elements made from exposed concrete. In a tribute to brutalist architecture, the towers are characterized by bay windows (a precious asset in a country with scarce daylight for half of the year) and recessed terraces laid out to create a rising zigzag pattern reminiscent of Moshe Safdie's Habitat 67 in Montreal.

Photograph by Laurian Ghinitoiu, Courtesy of OMA

Norra Tornen represents a milestone achievement for the firm, who wanted to introduce a new way of living in a city center with a housing stock large...

Record setting 12-story timber tower slated for downtown Portland gets the axe

2018-07-17T19:52:00-04:00

In 2015, the U.S. Department of Agriculture decided to run a pilot program to support two tall wood demonstration projects in order to test the potential of the increasingly popular building material. The first was a 10-story residential tower in Chelsea designed by SHoP. The second, a 12-story high rise slated for downtown Portland's Pearl District that would've been the tallest building in the country to use cross-laminated timber.

The New York project was scrapped last year, made unfeasible by a cooled-off real estate market and regulations prohibiting wooden towers over six stories that would've required onerous finagling. The deal to build Oregon's record-setting wooden tower, though, was still moving forward.

Designed by the Portland-based firm LEVER Architecture, the project had received a promising amount of support and pledge of public dollars. Money from the USDA's Tall Wood Building award helped fund testing and research; the Portland Housing Bureau had promised $6 milli...

William Kaven unveil full proposal for Portland's Broadway Corridor

2018-02-15T13:42:00-05:00

William Kaven Architecture have just released additional renderings of the firm's redevelopment proposal for Portland's Broadway Corridor, giving a more complete picture of their broader scheme.

In addition to the initial release of Portland's tallest towers last November, the firm has now fleshed out what the rest of the 5 million square foot development will entail.

Portland Broadway Corridor conceptual plan by William Kaven Architecture. Image: William Kaven Architecture.

Their concept of reconnecting Union Station to the Pearl District involves removing the Broadway ramp and creating a pedestrian-centric district organized around an extension of the North Park Blocks.

The firm also plans major shifts to public transportation, integrating a central hub for a high-speed rail and underground mass public transit next to Amtrack's Union Station.

Portland Broadway Corridor conceptual plan by William Kaven Architecture. Image: William Kaven Architecture.

This pedestrian friendly pla...

The world's tallest wooden tower is being built in Norway

2017-08-31T12:24:00-04:00

With an expected completion date of March 2019, the 18-story, 80-meter-tall-plus building in Brumunddal, Norway known as the Mjøsa Tower will soon become the world's tallest wooden structure, a coveted title among those designers who favor wood over more traditional tall building materials. Designed by Voll Arkitekter, the Mjøsa Tower is on track to supersede the previous wooden record holder, the Brock Commons Student Housing building at the University of British Columbia, which topped out at a stately 53 meters in height.

Image: Metsä Wood / Voll Arkitekter

Wood has numerous advantages over oft-used concrete and steel: for one, the construction time can be cut approximately in half due to easy prefabrication and the overall lighter weight of the materials. Surprisingly, one of wood's advantages as a tall building material lies in its ability to withstand fires, at least when compared with the tendency of steel to melt down during an all-consuming blaze. As the site's general contr...

Steinberg Architects proposes wavy white 40-story residential tower for historic Downtown L.A.

2017-08-03T15:13:00-04:00

Longtime DTLA developer and landowner Joseph Hellen has released a revised design for a proposed 40-story, 420-foot tall apartment tower at 525 South Spring Street.

What would downtown Los Angeles' historic core look like with a 40-story apartment building with a wavy white exterior? Probably a great deal like the rendering above, which was created by TSK Architects working with Steinberg Architects (who are carrying through to produce the design in an executive capacity), to demonstrate their concept of the proposed tower. The tower has gone through a few iterations with different design firms already, but according to Urbanize.LA, this new version also includes a plan to renovate adjacent structures, including "the three adjacent Broadway theaters also owned by [developer] Hellen - the Roxie, Cameo and Arcade."

Image: TSK Architects

What ants can teach us about the Eiffel Tower

2017-07-18T17:36:00-04:00

Scientists at Georgia Tech were trying to figure out how ants built themselves into towers to escape confinement or danger. They put a small pole in the middle of a dishful of ants and filmed what happened. The ants, they found, climb upwards, on top of each other, until they find an empty spot. Then they stop. The next one does the same, and so on.

Alexander McQueen, rebel of the fashion world renowned for his wildly imaginative designs, always said that there is no better designer than nature. Through billions of years of evolution, life's products, so to speak, have been extensively prototyped, market tested, upgraded and refined. So, it is no wonder then why creative minds increasingly turn to nature to look for innovative design solutions.

Often referred to as biomimicry, the discipline has had a growing presence in the field of architectural design. With a recent study from Georgia Institute of Technology on how fire ants form towers, the architectural world has a new potential take away from nature. Done simply through trial-and-error, the fire ants create bell shaped structures by climbing on top of each other until they find an empty spot, at which point they stop. Each ant supports only three others above them, creating a structure where each ant bears the same load and the results look a lot like the famed Eiffel To...

The many faces of MVRDV's shape-shifting Baltyk Tower

2017-06-22T15:27:00-04:00

Turning iconicity on its head, MVRDV have designed a striking building that purposefully refuses easy categorization. Depending on the angle from which it is viewed, the Baltyk Tower seems to assume different forms, a look that is achieved by a series of scenic terraces and a rippling glass-fronted concrete facade.

Image: MVRDV

From one angle, the tower appears to be svelte, a compact wedge on Poznan, Poland's streets. However, from another perspective the tower broadens and becomes a kind of gigantic civic staircase. Regardless of where one views the building, the inventive facade gives the structure a dynamic, shifting quality.

Image: MVRDV

As MVRDV co-founder Nathalie de Vries explains, “When we came to Poznań for the first time, the goal was clear: we were to realize an office building with public functions on the first two layers and at the top. But also that offered a range of amenities for the community and general public. We realised if we could control...

Daniel Libeskind to design spiraling garden tower and new East Thiers Station in France

2017-03-23T18:36:00-04:00

It's a double-win for Studio Daniel Libeskind, who was recently selected to design two mixed-use projects in France: the Occitanie Tower in Toulouse and the East Thiers Train Station in Nice. The projects unveil a new development strategy for both cities that was set forth by commercial real estate firm Compagnie de Phalsbourg.

As Toulouse's first skyscraper, the Occitanie Tower will take over the former site of the Gare Matabiau postal sorting center in the city's evolving business district. The “curvaceous” tower will be a 150-meter-tall glass structure wrapped in a spiraling “ribbon” of vertical gardens (designed by landscape architect Nicolas Gilsoul) that will start from street level up to the 40th floor — a reference to the Canal du Midi that winds through the city, according to the architects.

Occitanie Tower, Toulouse. Rendering by MORPH.

Occitanie Tower, Toulouse. Rendering by LUXIGON.

The scheme includes 11,000 square meters of office space, a Hilton hotel, 120 apartment units...

Woods Bagot to design Australia's AUD $1.85 billion World Trade Center

2017-01-19T18:35:00-05:00

World Trade Centers aren't just for the northern hemisphere anymore: Perth, Australia will become the recipient of a two-towered, $1.85 Australian dollar World Trade Center designed by Woods Bagot. The uneven towers (one tops out at 36 stories, the other 75) still need official approval by the State Government, which plans to thoroughly vet both the proposal and the backers themselves in the more severe sounding Stage Two section of the process. However, by virtue of clearing Stage One, things are looking good for the buildings (and, let's face it, for Woods Bagot).

Deborah Berke-designed stylish, sustainable tower opens in Indianapolis

2017-01-17T17:13:00-05:00

Nine glassed-in, metal-fin bearing stories make up the new Deborah Berke Partners-designed Cummins Indy Tower, which officially opens this month. With its "projections and inflections," the building simultaneously juts and struts through the metropolis, creating a slender and ecologically conscious corporate HQ.

Referring to Cummins' past collaborations with architects like Eero Saarinen and Kevin Roche, Deborah Berke notes that “over the decades, Cummins has demonstrated a commitment to great design that benefits its employees, its customers, and the community. This building carries that legacy forward with an environmentally sustainable design that dignifies the work going on inside while enhancing the urban realm.

The building’s articulated facades and distinctive form serve a purpose—to create a comfortable, light-filled work environment for employees that adds to the vitality on Market Street. Adding some muscle to the great bones of downtown Indianapolis, the park is a public am...

Inside BIG's twisted, twin-towered Grove at Grand Bay

2016-12-14T13:53:00-05:00

At each elevation from the third through 17th floors, the floor plates in Bjarke Ingels Group's new Grove at Grand Bay rotate three feet, creating a twisting set of luxury residential towers that from the ground resemble the splayed bellows of dueling concrete accordions. Indeed, these 20-story sustainable towers, which are expected to attain LEED Gold status, seem to be designed as much for the entertainment value of sweeping aerial flyover shots as actual inhabitation.

The interiors do possess a kind of upbeat brutalist vibe; slanted concrete pillars face off against vibrant murals and landscape architect Raymond Jungles' gardens in the common areas, while the residences themselves take in views of the arts community in which it is sited, Coconut Grove.

“Coconut Grove is a special place with a well-defined soul, so it was important that Grove at Grand Bay respond to its community through a design that was respectful and distinctive,” Bjarke Ingels is quoted as saying in a press rel...

"Great brutalist buildings, it turns out, have soul"

2016-09-29T13:27:00-04:00

In this thoughtful ode to the unexpected charms of brutalism, Felix Salmon explores why the formerly nightmarish architectural style is experiencing a renaissance, or at least a renewed appreciation. Salmon's observation that ubiquitous, unimaginative glass towers have replaced brutalism as the new hated icon of class strife is ace:

"The international style evolved, and not well. What used to be aspirational started becoming an in-your-face statement of conspicuous consumption. The gauche gaudiness of was embraced not only where you might expect it (the Wynn towers of Las Vegas, say), but also in places with real history, such as New York City. Go to Columbus Circle today, for instance, and you’ll see Christian de Portzamparc’s billionaire condos at One57 face off against 'a 1950s international style glass skyscraper in a 1980s gold lame party dress,' as Muschamp described the Trump International Hotel. Such erections generate almost as much hatred today as the worst mistakes of brut...

Almost half of Londoners support limits on building height

2016-08-29T19:24:00-04:00

Most Londoners think tall buildings should only be built in areas like the City and Canary Wharf, and that there should be limits on how high they can be, according to a survey for the Skyline Campaign published today. The findings come after Westminster Council controversially gave the green light for a 30 storey tower to be built in Paddington, and show stark differences in the views of Londoners in the inner and outer boroughs...

While 49% of those living in inner London think that the 270 proposed, planned, or under construction towers set to go up in London is too many, only 34% of people from the outer boroughs agree. Additionally, the study found that Londoners are, by and large, skeptical that tall buildings will solve the city's housing shortage.

For more on housing in London, follow these links:

800 feet high and rising

2016-06-08T13:14:00-04:00

By living above 800 feet, Estis and Enkin are two members of an unexpectedly exclusive group in Manhattan. In my estimation, no more than 40 people currently live above that line, scattered among just three buildings... As my elevator descended and my ears popped, it occurred to me that I would almost certainly never take in such a view again. And in fact, maybe nobody will, if these apartments wind up becoming empty investments.

In this elegantly observed and exquisitely written piece, Jon Ronson not only takes in the view of Manhattan at 800+ feet with visits to Trump World Tower, One57, and 8 Spruce Street but looks toward the future of a nation divided by an increasingly intractable wealth gap.

Real estate of the priciest kind:

Santiago Calatrava to design a seemingly supertall observation tower in Dubai

2016-02-09T18:52:00-05:00

Santiago Calatrava won the competition to design an observation tower for the Dubai Creek Harbor development in the city...Calatrava's winning design was met with approval this past weekend from Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the Vice President and Prime Minister of the [UAE] and Ruler of Dubai. 'This architectural wonder will be as great as the Burj Khalifa and the Eiffel Tower,' he commented on Calatrava's proposal.

Thoughts?

You can also find more images of the project on Bustler.

BIG's concept for a spiraling-landscape tower in NYC's Hudson Yards

2016-02-08T18:56:00-05:00

The New York cityscape might get another tower from Bjarke Ingels. At 1,005 feet, "The Spiral" is a new office building proposed to fill up an entire block on 66 Hudson Boulevard in Manhattan's West Side. The concept was unveiled today.

The 65-story Spiral is set to be the fourth tallest tower in the rapidly redeveloping Hudson Yards neighborhood. The 2.85 million square-foot structure shows off a glass exterior and, most notably, cascading landscaped terraces and hanging gardens, akin to BIG's affinity for incorporating slopes and spirals into their designs. As its name describes, the Spiral's terraces will wrap around the tower in an ascending motion to create a continuous green pathway and give easy access to outdoor space on each floor.

Located at the intersection of the four-acre Hudson Boulevard Park and The High Line, the Spire "will punctuate the northern end of...the linear park [and it] will appear to carry through into the tower, forming an ascending ribbon of lively gr...

Meet Hossein Amanat, the architect who designed Iran's most famous monument

2016-01-14T15:31:00-05:00

For 45 years, Iran's most famous modern monument, the Azadi (Freedom) Tower in Tehran, has been the backdrop to every major news story coming out of the country...Hossein Amanat was a rising star in Iran's architectural scene when, in 1966, he won a national competition to design the monument...Its historical pull, he believes, lies in the tower's evolution as a 'symbol of Iran'...that is both intensely Iranian and Islamic at the same time.

Will tall towers and sky walks populate the Stockholm of the future?

2016-01-12T13:34:00-05:00

Could roof-straddling “sky walks” soon be coming to Stockholm? A new plan proposed for the Swedish capital would see a large slice of its city center built over with densely packed towers, joined at their peaks by a dramatic zigzag of tree-lined, open air gangways... Sweden’s capital is one of the fastest growing cities in Europe... If it isn’t going to sprawl unmanageably or become overcrowded, it’s going to have to find somewhere to put everyone...

Proposed by Anders Berensson Architects, the "Klarastaden," or "clear city" plan, was commissioned by the Swedish Center Party, a center-right party with an environmental focus and neoliberal bent. The Swedish capital is poised to grow 17 percent in the next nine years, putting pressure on its historic infrastructure and architecture.

If you want to avoid sprawling out, you're best options are to go in and up, increasing urban density and height. The Klarastaden proposal does just that, weaving together a matrix of towers of different heights and widths with a series of pathways. Following what is increasingly becoming the go-to trend for marking a project as "green," the building roofs would support a fragmented park.

But, as is noted by CityLab, the Center Party isn't in power at the moment. So Anders Berensson Architects have also crafted a diagram for how their strategy could be retooled as a retrofit instead of a massive development.

Related:

Left to rot: abandoned Swedish mid-cen...

Mark Foster Gage wants to propose this Game of Thrones-like skyscraper for NYC

2015-12-15T14:06:00-05:00

No, these images aren't for an upcoming Lego kit design or a fantasy-genre video game, although they might as well be. They're Mark Foster Gage's concept for a 102-story ornamental skyscraper nicknamed "The Khaleesi", proposed for 41 West 57th Street in NYC's Billionaire's Row.

Interestingly enough, the luxury residential tower has garnered enthusiasm that's as amusing as its Gargoyle statue-like exterior, which has been described as "regal", "visionary", and "futuristic". According to a press release from the architect, Robert A.M. Stern commented with a "WOW" in a recent email to Gage. (Interpret that as you wish.)

An undisclosed developer commissioned Gage to design the tower to envision the possibilities of ultra-luxury designs for the site. Built with a concrete frame, the 1,492-foot structure is "draped in a façade of limestone-tinted Taktl concrete panels with hydroformed sheet-bronze details and brass-tinted alloy structural extrusion enclosures," Gage writes on his website. T...

Scroll through the "new New York Skyline" with this interactive infographic

2015-11-17T19:20:00-05:00

Evidently, the Big Apple is packed with big buildings, and several more are on the way. National Geographic created a spiffy interactive infographic called "The New New York Skyline" that envisions which towers are sprouting up along the Manhattan skyline in the next few years. Scroll sideways and hover your cursor over the color-coded towers to read some factoids about these newcomers. You can also switch from "Skyline View" to 3-D view for spots like the One World Trade Center Complex, Hudson Yards, and "Billionaires' Row" at 57th Street Corridor.

Screenshots via National Geographic.

Check out the graphic here.

More infographics on Archinect:

Infographic: the cheapest and most expensive countries to live in

Budget Busters: ranking the world's most overbudget monuments

Where are the women? Measuring progress on gender in architecture

35 of the world's palaces gathered into one quaint, interactive infographic

First rendering revealed for Brooklyn's first skyscraper

2015-11-10T12:57:00-05:00

[The tower proposed for 340 Flatbush Ave Ext.] will rise 1,000 feet tall, claiming the title of New York City’s tallest building outside of Manhattan, and giving Brooklyn its first legitimate supertall skyscraper...The residential component will span 466,000 square feet, and be divided amongst 550 units, with approximately 90 floors in total. There will also be 140,000 square feet of commercial development...

According to New York Yimby, "SHoP’s tower will be a dramatic improvement for both the cityscape and the skyline. With slender proportions capped in pointed, Deco-tinged accents, the building will have a notable presence without overwhelming its surrounds..."

Thoughts?

More about towers on Archinect:

As hammers clang and views vanish

Proposed Seattle Tower, designed by LMN Architects, could become the West Coast's tallest

Construction stalled on 'world's tallest building', so locals made its foundation into a fish farm

Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill selected to design Burj 2020, the world's tallest commercial tower

Work finally resumes at Brooklyn's modular prefab tower

Proposed Seattle Tower, designed by LMN Architects, could become the West Coast's tallest

2015-09-23T15:20:00-04:00

Seattle's tallest skyscraper is about to get a much taller neighbor. New information submitted to the city shows that the skyscraper planned for Fourth Avenue and Columbia Street will be 101 stories tall.

Move over LA, Seattle is reaching for the skies: the US Bank Tower may just get knocked off its throne as a proposed tower for Seattle is set to claim its spot as the tallest building on the West Coast.

The 1.2-million-square-foot building is slated for the west-side of 4th Ave, directly across from Seattle's current tallest building, Columbia Tower.

While the expected height in feet has not been released, the floor count exceeds the US Bank Tower's 73 floors, and comes close to that of the nation's tallest building, the 104-story One World Trade Center.

Plans for the building were filed earlier this year by Miami-based developer Crescent Heights. According to a statement, their aim is to create "an iconic building that redefines the skyline and changes the way we live, work and play downtown."

ThyssenKrupp's cable-free elevator test tower tops out in less than 10 months

2015-07-31T15:35:00-04:00

ThyssenKrupp's MULTI elevator test tower is happening, indeed — and at a seemingly impressive rate. Less than 10 months after starting construction, the currently 232-meter structure in the German city of Rottweil recently celebrated its topping out. ThyssenKrupp is aiming to have the tower fully built and go into operation by the end of 2016. Once complete, the company will begin testing the first units of their cable-free MULTI elevator system, which they unveiled late last year.

ThyssenKrupp credits the tower's smooth construction progress through the use of "an innovative slipforming technique — all on time and on budget", and they obviously won't be slowing down anytime soon. The final glass story and the top of the elevator shafts will be added to the tower over the next two weeks, bringing the structure up to 244 meters. The tower will then reach its 246 height when the facade is complete.

Interior work for the tower is scheduled for mid-August. Building services and elevat...

Jeanne Gang's proposed 160 Folsom tower in S.F. faces sudden local opposition

2015-06-26T13:58:00-04:00

These are strange days in San Francisco, where the clamor to build needed housing — especially at affordable levels — is matched only by the self-righteous vigor with which actual proposals for that housing tend to be opposed...But if we want a well-planned city with distinctive new buildings for all its citizens, projects like this show that good design and good policy can go hand in hand.

Developer Tishman Speyer's nearly one-year-old proposal for a 400-foot-tall residential tower, which Jeanne Gang designed, at 160 Folsom St. is suddenly facing opposition from local groups. With former mayor Art Agnos at the forefront of the opposition, the groups argue that the building promotes "economic segregation" and is yet another example of "developers wreaking vengeance" on the city, as S.F. Chronicle's urban design critic John King states in the article.

Opponents claim the 400-foot tower would overshadow the nearby Rincon Park and the Embarcadero waterfront, although that area is already developed with large structures like the Gap HQ, the Hills Plaza complex, and the Infinity luxury condo complex — where Agnos and other opponents recently held their kickoff meeting, interestingly enough.

In terms of exterior design, King writes that Gang's corkscrew tower would be "a great addition" to San Francisco's skyline, and that the tower's visual distinction has the potential to "g...