In San Francisco, the latest tech office has the cultural prominence a lavish restaurant or fancy boutique would elsewhere. As the battle to entice technical talent continues, designers strive to outdo the competition with their imaginative environments.
Atlanta-based developer Jamestown wanted its Pacific Place office building, at 22 Fourth Street in downtown San Francisco, to appeal to young tech workers with a lobby similar to that of a hip hotel.
On the site of an 850-square-foot cottage from the early 1900s, the architects sought to create two new compact, modern, single-family homes in an architecturally conservative area.
A new condominium building in an old waterfront section of San Francisco sparks up the neighborhood with its serrated facade. 'When I was looking for an apartment, I saw the facade and immediately called my real-estate agent,' says Mark Chila, a resident of 616 20th Street in San Francisco. 'I was lucky: the condominiums were almost sold out.'
The reimagining of two city blocks is helping to shape a new identity for one of San Francisco's bleakest neighborhoods. Mention “the projects” to San Francisco residents and they are likely to think of long rows of low-rise apartment buildings, painted pink and other pastel hues, terraced along the hills on the southern edge of the city.
Many San Francisco startups inhabit industrial warehouse spaces: the lofty, open structures readily adapt to become modern workshops for artisanal software development.
Bucking the Trend: An affordable-housing complex on a long-vacant site preserves part of San Francisco's rapidly gentrifying South of Market neighborhood.