Floor breaks on Herzog & de Meuron-designed San Francisco mixed-use mission

Vertical construction begins on a disused power station building that will reconnect the neighborhood with San Francisco Bay. The project is designed by Herzog & de Meuron.
Image © Herzog & de Meuron

Power Station, designed by Herzog & de Meuron (HdM), laid the foundation stone as an extension of the Dogpatch district in San Francisco. It will create new homes, honor the city’s industrial past, and reconnect the community to the San Francisco Bay waterfront.

The power plant will be a mixed-use and income residential area with a majority population and delivering around 2,600 new homes. Anchored by a historic 91 m (300 ft) high pile and a block-long former industrial workhorse called Station A, the built-up area will have 3 hectares of park and open space as well as a boutique hotel, which is made up of a former steam power plant, in addition to restaurants and cafes and shops. These elements are conquering an area of ​​the waterfront that was cut off from the public for almost 165 years.

Local development team Associate Capital is redesigning the 12 hectares (29 acres) of the post-industrial Central Waterfront, creating new places to live, work, visit and play. Less than 10 years after its shutdown, this former fossil fuel power plant, which served much of San Francisco for more than a century, will work with Pier 70, its immediate neighbor to the north, to create a bay extension to the Dogpatch neighborhood.

Power Station team leader Enrique Landa, a partner at Associate Capital, said the neighborhood will be built in phases over the next two decades. Landa announced that the phasing of the power plant has been redesigned to better meet three goals: accelerate the introduction of more housing, including 100 percent affordable housing; more space for life science applications; and the renovation of Station A, one of the historic buildings in the neighborhood.

Past meets future
Landa stated that the original phase plan in phase 1 included a single residential building with approximately 315 units. The revised first phase now includes three residential buildings with more than twice the number of apartments (735 units), including one affordable residential building. Two buildings will be designed by Fosters + Partners and the third by Leddy, Maytum, Stacy Architects.

“This is a unique opportunity to make the most of a neighborhood’s industrial past and connect it with what the community needs and wants in the 21st century,” said Armstrong Yakubu, Senior Partner at Foster + Partners.

“The reinvention of the Power Station will breathe new life into an important building from the city’s turbulent past and anchor this area as a travel destination on the San Francisco coast,” said Jason Frantzen, Senior Partner at HdM.

The mixed-use new neighborhood will also include 148,645 m2 (1.6 million sf) of office / life science and / or laboratory space; 9290 m2 (100,000 sf) retail; and community serving amenities. The record architect for all power plant buildings to date is Adamson Associates Architects.