Developers in San Francisco are loath to take architectural risks because the city’s approval process for new development is long and rigorous, perhaps the most onerous in the country, architects say.
It’s hard to fault their caution when you consider how small San Francisco really is — 47 square miles (Manhattan alone is 23 square miles) — with much of the area consumed by neighborhoods zoned for single-family homes.
— The New York Times
8 Comments
I prepare a lot of 3D views and renderings to submit to the planning dept. for approval.
projects that have a floor addition involved are particular problematic - if your design blocks someone's view corridor of the Bay or Golden Gate as one project I was on - there can be legal consequences.
That is a pretty shortsighted view of the process ... technically, since views are not protected by the planning code, the only objection anyone can really have are to blocking light, air, and the massing and scale relative to other properties nearby. The view is often what they are often protecting, and will use all the reasons above, along with historic or other environmental reasons, to block and delay your project until they wear you out. I don't know how lawsuits for blocking views play out in real estate law, this is one I haven't heard.
Odd, that shape was popular 20 years ago, I did a tower "submarine" inspired for a graduate school competition when building shaped like boat hulls, sterns, bows, and submarine towers were all the rage!
There are a lot of new construction projects down the street near Twitter - possible including micro units 250SF for high paid tech workers - this tower that Meier proposes can only be afforded by the very rich, the upper 1% - meanwhile, I live over on the "Jersey side"
Trying to protect view is pointless. The beauty of being able to look out a window is that it is a living picture constantly under change. If you really just want to see the same thing all the time then you might as well just hang a picture.
Yo!
So, putting a big, white, static curved wall in front of your window qualifies as a living picture? Yes, The NIMBYism and protection over views and land in SF is outrageous, but that's not to say that neighbors shouldn't have a say when a 37-floor building goes in next door.
people come here and expect to be on the set of "Vertigo" and it's changing into a typical city - it's not 1958 here - welcome to TwitterBurgh
Seattle has the same problem: huge areas of single-family homes close in to the city (creating a very anti-development and anti-density political constituency), plus an onerous design review process. Combined with Seattle's highly-conservative attitudes toward architectural design, you get lots and lots of mediocrity as a result.
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