San Francisco Federal Building
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The San Francisco Federal Building, formally the Speaker Nancy Pelosi Federal Building, is an 18-story, building at 90 7th Street on the corner of Mission and 7th streets in the South of Market neighborhood 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 ...
. The
federal building A federal building is a building housing local offices of various government departments and agencies in countries with a federal system, especially when the central government is referred to as the "federal government". Federal buildings in ...
was designed by the
Morphosis Morphosis Architects is an interdisciplinary architectural and design practice based in Los Angeles and New York City. History The firm was informally founded in 1972 by Michael Brickler, Thom Mayne, Livio Santini and James Stafford. Michael Rot ...
architectural firm, as a supplement to the
Phillip Burton Federal Building The Phillip Burton Federal Building & United States Courthouse is a massive 21 floor, federal office building located at 450 Golden Gate Avenue near San Francisco's Civic Center and the San Francisco City Hall. The building occupies an entire c ...
several blocks away.
Thom Mayne Thom Mayne (born January 19, 1944) is an American architect. He is based in Los Angeles. In 1972, Mayne helped found the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc), where he is a trustee and the coordinator of the Design of Cities po ...
of Morphosis designed the building using a juxtaposition of gray concrete walls, perforated metal panels, and custom, faceted wood ceilings. The building was expected to be completed in 2005, but construction issues and delays pushed the project completion to 2007. The building was designed to be a 'green' building consuming less than half the power of a standard office tower. Utilizing natural light to illuminate 80 percent of the building helped it achieve worldwide recognition as the first Federal Building to be certified under the
USGBC The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), co-founded by Mike Italiano, David Gottfried and Rick Fedrizzi in 1993, is a private 501(c)3, membership-based non-profit organization that promotes sustainability in building design, construction, and op ...
's ''Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design'' (LEED) criteria. Its southern wall is draped with translucent panels of perforated stainless steel (3 by 8 feet in size), intended to accumulate solar heat and thereby create an upward air flow, which in turn causes cooler air to enter the building through sensor-controlled windows, achieving an
air conditioning Air conditioning, often abbreviated as A/C or AC, is the process of removing heat from an enclosed space to achieve a more comfortable interior environment (sometimes referred to as 'comfort cooling') and in some cases also strictly controlling ...
effect. The result has been criticized as unsatisfactory by employees working in the building, which has received low workplace satisfaction ratings. The building features some elevators which stop on every third floor to promote employee interaction and health. Users of the building exit the elevators and walk either up or down one floor via stairs. There are, however, also elevators which stop on every floor for users unable or unwilling to negotiate stairs. As of 2019, there were concerns that the courtyard had become a large marketplace for illegal drugs at nighttime.


Reception

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 called the building "both daunting and dazzling, up to and including the stainless steel panels that fold over the broad concrete frame like some immense origami whim. Like it or not, this is architecture at its provocative best. The 18-story structure and its four-story annex show how buildings fit together. They demonstrate that simple materials can be used in fresh ways, and they prod you to think about how design and the environment are linked." According to his colleague at the ''
Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the Un ...
'', Christopher Hawthorne, the building "shows what happens when a celebrated American architect is compelled ..to embrace sustainability. And it dramatizes a clash between the prerogatives of architectural creativity and the basics of sustainable design". He called the result a "hulking, aggressive tower .. andperhaps the most ambitious of the federal government’s effort, through the General Services Administration’s 'design excellence' program, to make new courthouses and office buildings models of forward-looking design." The San Francisco Federal Building has been called an example of the "innovative public building projects that embrace contemporary design strategies and material approaches" that were enabled by the 1962 "Guiding Principles for
Federal Architecture Federal-style architecture is the name for the classicizing architecture built in the newly founded United States between 1780 and 1830, and particularly from 1785 to 1815, which was heavily based on the works of Andrea Palladio with several inn ...
" directive. The construction budget and cost for the building was $144 million. The architect's decision to eliminate the usual
HVAC Heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) is the use of various technologies to control the temperature, humidity, and purity of the air in an enclosed space. Its goal is to provide thermal comfort and acceptable indoor air quality. HV ...
system saved $11 million in construction costs. At the same time, the design's nonfunctional use of extended, folded metal sunshading at ground level, which in the opinion of some are purely for aesthetic effect, and require extensive galvanized steel bracing, added millions in materials and fabrication costs back into the project. Morphosis' design was selected at least partly because of its projected energy efficiency; a requirement of the GSA's brief. At the time of design, the GSA did not mandate LEED certification, and the building was not evaluated for it until after construction; it failed. Mayne said "I wasn't arrogant, but I was confident — I just assumed we had the platinum (the highest LEED) rating. All of a sudden we went through LEED and it wasn't working." Ultimately, the building received only silver LEED qualifications; two steps below platinum. The building has been criticized as being dysfunctional for its employees. According to an employee interviewed by BeyondChron.com, "Workers seek to relieve the heat by opening windows, which not only sends papers flying, but, depending on their proximity to the opening, makes creating a stable temperature for all workers near impossible ... some employees must use umbrellas to keep the sun out of their cubicles." Mayne believed that the federal government should be a model in the promotion of worker health and exercise. This led Morphosis to specify passenger elevators that stop only at every third floor, requiring many employees and visitors to then walk up or down one or two flights of stairs to reach their destinations. There are also elevators for the disabled that stop at each floor, but they have become commonly used by the able-bodied as well, causing overcrowding. Unlike most large government office buildings, the Federal Building does not have its own cafeteria inside the building. The cafeteria function was instead placed just outside the building on the public plaza, and was again due to the architect's belief that this would encourage employees to walk, interact, and increase worker health; a situation that seems to not be appreciated by some of the 2400 employees who work in the building. In 2010 the GSA commissioned a survey of employees in 22 federal buildings nationwide, to determine employee satisfaction with their workplaces. The San Francisco Federal Building was included in this study even though commissioning was still underway, and tenant improvements of some floors were not complete. The buildings included in the study scored between a low of 13 and a high of 98 percent employee satisfaction; seventeen of the 22 buildings scored above 50 percent employee satisfaction. While incorporating many green concepts more aggressively than other buildings, the lowest ranked building for employee satisfaction was the San Francisco Federal Building, with a rating of just 13 percent; the next-lowest was considered twice as satisfactory, at 26 percent. The San Francisco building scored well below the median in the categories of thermal comfort, lighting and acoustics. In 2020, then-President
Donald Trump Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021. Trump graduated from the Wharton School of the University of Pe ...
issued an Executive Order on Promoting Beautiful Federal Civic Architecture. The order mentioned the building as an unsatisfactory design, saying, "GSA selected an architect to design the San Francisco Federal Building who describes his designs as 'art-for-art’s-sake' architecture, intended primarily for architects to appreciate. While elite architects praised the resulting building, many San Franciscans consider it one of the ugliest structures in their city." This executive order was revoked by President Joe Biden in February 2021.President Biden Revokes Trump's Controversial Classical Architecture Order
National Public Radio News National may refer to: Common uses * Nation or country ** Nationality – a ''national'' is a person who is subject to a nation, regardless of whether the person has full rights as a citizen Places in the United States * National, Maryland, c ...
, February 25, 2021
The building was named after Speaker of the House
Nancy Pelosi Nancy Patricia Pelosi (; ; born March 26, 1940) is an American politician who has served as Speaker of the United States House of Representatives since 2019 and previously from 2007 to 2011. She has represented in the United States House of ...
in the
Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2023 The Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2023 is a $1.7 trillion omnibus spending bill funding the U.S. federal government for the 2023 fiscal year. It includes funding for a range of domestic and foreign policy priorities, including support for ...
.


Awards

The San Francisco Federal Building won a Design Award from the AIA San Francisco chapter in 2008. The award praised the buildings open spaces and environmentally friendly design. The building earned LEED Silver certification from
USGBC The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), co-founded by Mike Italiano, David Gottfried and Rick Fedrizzi in 1993, is a private 501(c)3, membership-based non-profit organization that promotes sustainability in building design, construction, and op ...
. In June 2012, the San Francisco Federal Building was named the International The Outstanding Building of the Year (TOBY) in the government category. GSA was recognized by the commercial real estate industry for quality in commercial buildings and excellence in building management and operations.


See also

*
List of tallest buildings in San Francisco San Francisco, California, in the United States, has at least 482 high-rises, 58 of which are at least tall. The tallest building is Salesforce Tower, which rises and is the 17th-tallest building in the United States. The city's second- ...


References


External links


San Francisco Federal Building
at USGSA
San Francisco Federal Building
at
Morphosis Morphosis Architects is an interdisciplinary architectural and design practice based in Los Angeles and New York City. History The firm was informally founded in 1972 by Michael Brickler, Thom Mayne, Livio Santini and James Stafford. Michael Rot ...
{{Authority control Federal buildings in the United States Government buildings completed in 2007 Deconstructivism Skyscraper office buildings in San Francisco Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design basic silver certified buildings