Mission Bay – Where did good architecture go?

Mission Bay

What happened to architecture? This is not architecture, this is value engineering. These buildings were cliches before they were finished. No one is going to fly hundreds of miles to the great city of San Francisco and snap pictures of these monstrosities, unless of course they are urban planners. I would like to leave the more technical aspects of why this is off the mark to an architect blogger, you can read his succinct points on architecture and then you can contemplate why these building miss in so many ways.

The above photo was taken in the newest area of San Francisco called Mission Bay. This area sat virtually empty until 1998. It is over 300 acres and was owned by a development company in Canada. When they went broke the quagmire began. There were developers that came in and demanded, politicians that were bought and sold, and social entities that muddled up the issues. Out of that we have the most ugly 300 acres ever created. It is a city within a city of no use save for developers to make large quantities of money, and politicians to fill their election coffers. The buildings far exceed the height limit originally told the general public, they are so close together that it is not a nice place to be unless you are on your lunch out of your office. There is housing, with promised “urban living” amenities, that I doubt will ever live up to the hype. There will never be anything but large corporate stores and restaurants, because the leases all stipulate that you must use union labor for all your build outs, and small individual, and unique companies can’t afford those labor rates. This began before the great recession, so the desire for tax dollars from payroll to income, while a factor, was not the overriding reason to sell out. What happened San Francisco?