It is Wisteria season in Berkeley and this is a very good thing
Follow
John King
@JohnKingSFChron
Chronicling built aspects of the way we live now, as the S.F. Chronicle's urban design critic should do.
John King’s posts
Full disclosure: I’m a big fan of vernacular use of concrete brise soleil in the 1960s. Here are four examples from Berkeley apartment buildings— sometimes striking, always a saving grace
In other news, I'm starting a three-month leave from to write a book on our Ferry Building, and what its rise and fall and rebirth says about the ongoing evolution of urban waterfronts. Watch this space!
For a few weeks every spring, this is my favorite house in Berkeley
Typical crowd this morning on Market Street, two dozen or so cyclists per (light) cycle. Busier than a typical (already busy) commute
Just when you think all new infill housing looks alike — Berkeley’s Telegraph Avenue now has a Moorish-Tudor fever dream
Mission Creek is an engineered channel in S.F.'s newest neighborhood -- and harrowing proof of the complexities of preparing for sea level rise. First installment in a four-part series looking at our fragile bay shoreline
These three residential buildings all front Alamo Square. They all exceed the current 40-foot height limit. Somehow, though, the neighborhood has survived
So I'm leafing through a 1961 travel magazine + what should I come across but --?a full-page color rendering of BART on the Golden Gate Bridge!?!?! In a GE ad? Crazy! (trivia for readers: rendering #2 is the original plan for what now is Ohlone Park)
One of the many attributes of the raking winter light is how it highlights the idiosyncratic stucco patterns from an era long- gone. Some aims to evoke plasterwork. Some is just ....
Amid everything, good news — tomorrow marks the debut of S.F.’s new Crane Cove Park, complete with ample lawns and a rare sandy beach along the bay. It’s 7 acres in Dogpatch along Illinois Street at Pier 70, a welcome addition in this constricted year
"Few commercial landlords or office tenants have the technological capacity to perform the simplest and most effective anti-viral intervention: open the windows," JDavidsonNYC points out. "The ability to let in fresh air is a lost art" nymag.com/intelligencer/ via
Take a look at this sign in Berkeley, and you’ll get an idea of why affordable housing takes so long to build. Construction is the easy part ...
The opening is still a few months away, but Studio Gang’s Mira already is putting on a show
Speaking of central Oakland, this city’s Cathedral Building measures up to any flatiron in SF or NYC
Vernacular PoMo shows up where you least expect it — in this case, an apartment building on Oakland’s MacArthur Boulevard
My look back at the car-free road not taken: SF planners in 1963 wanted to reserve Market Street for buses + people because “If one form of traffic movement should be deprived of some of the advantages it presently enjoys, it is the private vehicle”
Your eyes don’t deceive you —buildings are popping up next to BART stations at unprecedented rates. Here’s my look at how transit-oriented development in the Bay Area has finally come to be sfchronicle.com/bayarea/articl via
San Francisco looking downright Hitchcock-esque yesterday at dusk
Two years after up w/, I’m nervously thrilled to say my book Portal: San Francisco’s Ferry Building and the Reinvention of American Cities has a Nov. 7 publication date. It’s one landmark's history but also much more… (1/3)
Just back from a quick exploration of SF transit center’s rooftop park. Still a work in progress but — really feels like a realm apart
The S.F. project this fall I’m most intrigued by? The floating fire station on the Embarcadero. Full completion still a month or so off, I’m told, including public waterfront access
For sheer graphic design ingenuity, this may be my favorite reader letter ever. Re: my Salesforce Tower review
SF’s Mira tower by is really starting to hit its stride and show its moves. Not more than 5/7 stories to go, I’d guess
I’m sure they’re non-structural, but it doesn’t look good that the strapping 800-foot tower comes down to ... six wood-block shimmies????
San Francisco’s Mira by Studio Gang does not take a bad photo, at least not from nearby
Don’t know the landscape architect, but the pairing of a thunderous fountain and a single sculpted tree at 77 Beale is a sublime intervention in the urban grid. And it gets better as it ages
Among the things I’ve learned on recent neighborhood walks: the black-building craze has settled into Berkeley deeper than I realized. Sigh
Taking the double-decker AC Transit bus to work today absolutely was the right thing to do
At least from up high, the transit center’s rooftop park is looking good. Should be open to public by mid-August
Always nice to see my favorite towerette in the Financial District - 130 Montgomery, proudly defying its petite contextual reality
The leaning tower of Millennium gets all the attention, but the sinking sidewalk of Mission Bay puts on a more dramatic visual show
I'm not one for on-line teasers, but can't resist showing you all this 1944 vision for Market Street -- from the priceless archives, natch -- that I came across while researching a riff to run later this week
Attention, fans of Brutalism: I visited the reborn Berkeley Art Museum, and Mario Ciampi’s gravity-defying wonder has been resurrected in a way you won’t expect. Watch this space!
Wanted to lose myself in nature today but had to be at work at noon. So .... off to Telegraph Hill. Up the Filbert steps, down the Greenwich steps. San Francisco, you still have you charms.
Unbelievable. This sign is not satirical....
Quote
10 apartments on a double lot in Berkeley-- and visual proof that density is not inherently oppressive, no matter what opponents say
My review of a new low-income apartment complex that's socially affirmative and architecturally engaging. It's also a case study, sadly, in how difficult it is to make such places come to be
Horrible news, local edition twitter.com/terrapin_sf/st
This post is unavailable.
My majors being history and journalism, I often fear I’m an poseur as rarified architecture critic. Then I encounter buildings like this concrete block house in El Cerrito— and swoon
As far as green walls go, this one in Dogpatch has got it going (architect is Woods Bagot, btw, and wall is by Habitat Horticulture)
Strange but true: tonight, Salesforce Tower is putting on a pretty good imitation of the Empire State Building
I love that the entrance to S.F.
via the transbay bus includes a great new(ish) abstract mural
The simple truth is this: to a degree that's rare in San Francisco politics, Mayor Lee had a good heart and an open mind
Quote
We mourn the loss of Mayor Ed Lee. He cared deeply for the people of San Francisco and championed civil rights. May his soul rest in peace.
The relationship between Hotaling Place and the Transamerica Pyramid is one of the best arguments for urban juxtapositions that I know
What are you doing this weekend? In a parallel universe, I'm taking BART to Napa. Or maybe Livermore. Or Campbell or Brentwood or Fairfield....
Nice to be back on top of the world— or at least back in the 5.4-acre rooftop park above San Francisco’s Transbay Transit Center. After 10 months off limits, the landscape is varied and lush
An absolute embarrassment that's all too typical of S.F.'s corrosive political culture -- too many players indulge in self-righteous superiority, and if they don't get their way 100 percent then they'll rather torpedo "the other side"
I still am surprised to be reminded that in Berkeley— long a self-righteous citadel of next-to-no growth— you can stand in one spot and see four large construction projects under way. Including, the fenced site in front, with 100 percent very-low-income housing
The majestic Glen Park BART station, SF's best Brutalist building by far, could be declared a state landmark by the California Historical Resources Commission. Vote is on August 1; my 2009 Cityscape in praise of Ernest Born's triumph is below:
Hello from Pier 39 in San Francisco, where high rents have driven the sea lions to Oakland.
I cannot help but smile at the Transamerica Pyramid’s cameo appearances on the SF skyline
Is this Berkeley apartment building the result of any discernible design intent? If so, I don’t know what it is
While excels at humanizing the larger problems that plague San Francisco, she never loses sight of the beauties and strengths of an enduringly seductive city. This honor is SO well-deserved. Congrats! sfchronicle.com/about/newsroom via
Berkeley talks a good talk about its bicycle boulevards. Actually navigating them on two thin tires? Not nearly so inviting. These shots from recent errand on Ninth, King and Milvia
Slowly but surely! A full 16 years after it opened, is starting to get widespread hints of the green patina promised long ago for the copper skin
Went by one of my favorite Berkeley buildings this weekend while bicycling — a fire station by the architecture firm Ratcliff from the early 1960s. And how!
I rediscovered one of SF's odder #popos today: the "snippet" at 600 California, a PoMo fever dream tucked behind a staid historicist tower
How cool is Transbay’s new rooftop park? I’ll put it this way: people read books there! And on a Friday, no less ....
Here’s how I want to remember 2021 — with the potential of better times in a place with so many wonders close at hand
It’s not the main attraction, but the board-formed concrete at the west end of the transit center’s rooftop park is a thing of rugged beauty
I would not mind this room with a view (and a balcony to savor it all the more)
Doing a piece for tomorrow on the architectural reasons why Oracle Arena is such a good venue for basketball. And a venue that has changed quite a bit visually since it debuted as Oakland Arena in 1966....
In which I launch an occasional series just because... #SalesforceTowerEverywhere
I love this hint of tenacious nature amid the dense-packed Transbay district
Check this out: at least for one day, Vaillancourt Fountain is back in action
And for something completely different: I've helped put together one of 's first audio walking tours -- an exploration of the highpoints + hidden gems of downtown's masonry canyons. So much to see, so close at hand! (1/3) sfchronicle.com/bayarea/articl via
Replying to
A perk of the book gig -- yesterday I got to ascend the Ferry Building's clock tower with its steep stairs, storage nooks, unexpected perspectives and the occasional jaw-dropping view you will get nowhere else
One of the things I love about 's Mira -- you happen to look up and pow, there it is on a cloud-altered day
Muni is a mixed blessing and then some, but a historic streetcar playing host to a half-dozen Ferlinghetti poems is a serendipitous mid-day treat
And now for something completely different: my review of Telegraph Avenue's Moorish-Tudor fever dream
The implacable concrete grandeur of Harry Weese’s Dupont Circle Metro Station gets me every time #PostcardFromDC
