SOMA – Federal Building

This post is about the art that is part of the new Federal Building in San Francisco, however, it is difficult to discuss art without introducing you to the building itself.  I abhor the building, and it is not because I have anything agains modern architecture, I just think this is classic cliche architecture, out of fashion the day it was built.  However, here is Wikipedia’s discussion so we keep my opinion to a minimum.

The San Francisco Federal Building is a building designed by the architectural firm Morphosis. Thom Mayne of Morphosis designed the building using a concept of “resistance,” juxtaposing gray concrete walls with custom, zig-zagged 9Wood wood ceilings. The building was expected to be completed in 2005, but construction issues and delays pushed the project completion to 2007. The building has 18 floors of office space and stands 234 feet tall.

The building was designed to be a ‘green’ building consuming less than half the power of a standard office tower — an indication of how building design can help slash emissions of greenhouse gases. It is the first naturally ventilated office building on the west coast since the advent of air conditioning.
The building features elevators which stop on every third floor to promote employee interaction and health. Users of the building exit the elevators and walk either up or down one floor via stairs. There are, however, also elevators which stop on every floor for users unable or unwilling to negotiate stairs.

The building has been criticized as being dysfunctional for its employees. According to an employee interviewed by BeyondChron.com, “Workers seek to relieve the heat by opening windows, which not only sends papers flying, but, depending on their proximity to the opening, makes creating a stable temperature for all workers near impossible… some employees must use umbrellas to keep the sun out of their cubicles.”

The art installation is titled Skygarden and is by James Turrell.  The official description reads:

Light and color are foundational aspects of nearly every work in the history of art.  For James Turrell however, these are not used to illuminate and articulate a subject – they are the subject.  In works like “sky garden”, Turrell makes viewers aware of the tremendous power of light and color to transform how we perform a process as habitual as sight.  On the interior of “Skygarden”, this is accomplished by saturating the space with colored light that seems almost palpable; its presence literally changes the way the structure of the room is perceived.  Additionally, when one looks out of the space, the color of the evening sky appears to change based on the present color of the work of art.  Outside the federal building, “Skygarden” creates a luminous, singular beacon.  As the colors change gradually, so too will the viewer’s experience of the building from locations throughout the city.

James Turrell was born in Los Angeles and currently works in Arizona.

This piece was commissioned by the USGS Art in Architecture Program.

 *

This is still part of the installation, it is in the public open space in front of the building.