Photo Credit: Scott Hess via Engineered Artworks
2010 has not been a good year for new buildings in San Francisco, the partial collapse of the global economy having stifled new projects in their cribs and putting architects and developers out in the cold. And so for 2010, our choice for the Curbed SF Best Building is the Five Ton Crane's Raygun Gothic Rocketship. Installed on the Embarcadero via the Black Rock Arts Foundation, this late-period Steampunk erection is sleek, it's shiny, and it embodies the best hopes and dreams of San Franciscans, conjuring the future and looking back to the past. And like any great work of art, we can all interpret it to match our aspirations for 2011:
1. At forty feet high, it meets local height limits.
2. Shockingly, it did not require an EIR. Or a Discretionary Review.
3. Occupancy? enough room to send your nemesis-of-choice into orbit: NIMBYs, homeless people, developers, planners. Hipsters.
4. It's not modern, it's Gothic. Which is close enough to Victorian for some people, although we've already heard grumbling from those who would have preferred more Jules Verne and less Buck Rogers.
5. Tourists will gather 'round, slack-jawed
6. A new venue for wedding photos.
7. Unlike Cupid's Arrow a few hundred yards to the south, it's temporary.
Fear not, Santa has some new buildings in the pipeline- the elves at Legorreta+Legorreta, Snøhetta and SOM are all working away furiously.
· Five Ton Crane [Five Ton Crane]
· Raygun Gothic Rocketship [Black Rock Arts Foundation]
· Mayor Unveils Monumental Raygun Gothic Rocketship [SFGov]