Greening the Port of San Francisco’s Backlands

The latest master plan for the Port of San Francisco’s 47 acres Backlands, Piers 90 and 94, identifies potential tenants with both the means to build and operate within a sustainability program.

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Book Review: The Designer’s Atlas by Ann Thorpe

The Designer’s Atlas of Sustainability is about how design in all fields can move toward the goals of sustainability; the integration of information about design and sustainability rewards users with a rich range of ideas, concepts, and facts presented in a sophisticated format that is itself thought-provoking. As with other kinds of atlases, the varied text does not converge on one conclusion. Rather, readers take what they need to make their own.

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Oakland’s Luminous New Cathedral

The inclusion of the word, light, in the name of Oakland ’s new Roman Catholic cathedral inspired the architects at the San Francisco office of SOM to design the cathedral as the embodiment of light. Thus, the building now nearing completion on the west shore of Lake Merritt is wrapped in translucent walls that convey the impression of layered light.

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UC Berkeley’s new East Asian Library

The C. V. Starr East Asian Library on the University of California’s Berkeley campus opened in March 2008. Designed by Billie Tsien and Tod Williams, the building occupies a site on the north edge of the Memorial Glade that is part of the campus’s landmarked Classical Core. Yet, while honoring its context, the architects have created a building that has more in common with the tenets of Modernism than those of Classicism.

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The de Young Museum Revisited

Herzog & de Meuron’s de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park is nearly three years old. It’s time to review its design, construction, and landscaped setting. A tour of the building and grounds follows.

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