222 Second Street is a office

skyscraper A skyscraper is a tall continuously habitable building having multiple floors. Modern sources currently define skyscrapers as being at least or in height, though there is no universally accepted definition. Skyscrapers are very tall high-ris ...

in the South of Market District of

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

. It is under lease by social networking company

LinkedIn LinkedIn () is an American business and employment-oriented online service that operates via websites and mobile apps. Launched on May 5, 2003, the platform is primarily used for professional networking and career development, and allows job se ...

(headquartered in nearby

Sunnyvale Sunnyvale () is a city located in the Santa Clara Valley in northwest Santa Clara County in the U.S. state of California. Sunnyvale lies along the historic El Camino Real and Highway 101 and is bordered by portions of San Jose to the north ...

). Developed by

Tishman Speyer Tishman Speyer Properties is an American company that invests in real estate. History The firm was founded in 1978 by Robert Tishman and Jerry Speyer. In March 1988, the company announced its first project in Europe, the construction of a 70-s ...

and designed by

Thomas Phifer Thomas Phifer (born 1953 in South Carolina) is an American architect based in New York City. He is perhaps best known for his design of the Glenstone Museum expansion in Potomac, Maryland, the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh, North Caro ...

, the high rise was planned to provide of office space, of ground floor retail, and of open space accessible to the public, at the southern corner of Second and

Howard Howard is an English-language given name originating from Old French Huard (or Houard) from a Germanic source similar to Old High German ''*Hugihard'' "heart-brave", or ''*Hoh-ward'', literally "high defender; chief guardian". It is also probabl ...

Streets. Construction began in August 2013, still without a tenant on hand. In April 2014, LinkedIn announced it was leasing the building for an undisclosed sum, to accommodate up to 2,500 of its employees, with the lease covering 10 years. The goal was to join all of its San Francisco based staff (1,250 as of January 2016) in one building, bring sales and marketing employees together with the

research and development Research and development (R&D or R+D), known in Europe as research and technological development (RTD), is the set of innovative activities undertaken by corporations or governments in developing new services or products, and improving existi ...

team. The building was topped-out in August 2014 and opened in March 2016, with LinkedIn staff moving in in stages until 2017. As of mid-2022, LinkedIn was still leasing the building's entire 450,000 square feet, notwithstanding a rise in remote work during the COVID-19 pandemic. The ground floor is open to the public during work hours, as a

privately owned public space Privately owned public space (POPS), or alternatively, privately owned public open spaces (POPOS), are terms used to describe a type of public space that, although privately owned, is legally required to be open to the public under a city's zoni ...

. It features three large artworks by

Frank Stella Frank Philip Stella (born May 12, 1936) is an American painter, sculptor and printmaker, noted for his work in the areas of minimalism and post-painterly abstraction. Stella lives and works in New York City. Biography Frank Stella was born in M ...

, in accordance with the developers'

public art Public art is art in any Media (arts), media whose form, function and meaning are created for the general public through a public process. It is a specific art genre with its own professional and critical discourse. Public art is visually and phy ...

proposal to the city Planning Commission, with the purchase price of $1 million matching 1% of the total "construction hard costs". The

San Francisco Chronicle The ''San Francisco Chronicle'' is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of Northern California. It was founded in 1865 as ''The Daily Dramatic Chronicle'' by teenage brothers Charles de Young and M. H. de Young, Michael H. de ...

's architecture critic John King characterized the building as "severe yet sleek" and expressed appreciation for the arrangement of the "panes of overlapping glass 6 feet wide and 13 feet high

hat A hat is a head covering which is worn for various reasons, including protection against weather conditions, ceremonial reasons such as university graduation, religious reasons, safety, or as a fashion accessory. Hats which incorporate mecha ...

cover a form that begins as a squat 16-story rectangle and concludes as a 10-story square. On the lower four stories the shingled pattern fans to the right; the fifth floor panels are flat, side by side, and then the shingles resume in reverse, flipping tightly to the left. The upper floors reverse the pattern yet again." However, while acknowledging their appeal in certain light situations ("a large-scale shuffle of vivid reflections"), King criticized their dark color (evoking a "dull gloom" on cloudy days). And he chastised the building - "designed and built by New Yorkers" - as being aesthetically out of place on Second Street, "an alien presence in a well-established setting where other recent buildings have done their best to add to the ambiance". As of May 2023, in contrast to what the

described as "Downtown San Francisco sworst office vacancy crisis on record" at the time, 222 Second Street retained a 0% vacancy rate.

References

External links

*
The First-rate Charms Of Second Street
(video commentary by John King) {{Buildings in San Francisco, state=collapsed Skyscraper office buildings in San Francisco South of Market, San Francisco LinkedIn Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certified buildings

See also

References

External links