Gensler’s ambitious new full-floor office in San Francisco is a balancing act between future and past, with a healthy dollop of marketing thrown in.
The past is obvious to anyone stepping through a cherub-adorned stone arch into the lobby of a building originally designed by legendary Chicago architect Daniel Burnham in 1892. Or the steel structural column that stands incongruously off-center toward one end of a polished, white barrel-vaulted passage inserted by Gensler to connect two portions of the 45,000-square-foot second-floor space. The present is marked by elements such as the passage, embedded with speakers providing ambient noise and illuminated by a sinuous neon tube overhead. As for the marketing, the choreographed overlap of materials, eras, and moods aims to conjure up a comfortable vibe attuned to the post-pandemic landscape, yet rooted in a sense of place.
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