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As if its radical design wasn't enough, workers in San Francisco's new federal office building now under construction at Seventh and Mission will actually be able to open their windows.
Those not-so-stodgy bureaucrats at the General Services Administration are rejecting the boring, hermetic world of the nondescript modern highrise, to build the most avant-garde building in San Francisco since the Transamerica Pyramid.
Architect Thom Mayne's concept of a "workers' palace" seeks to become the city's most energy efficient and healthy building as well as the most state of the art in San Francisco.
It's a $141 million Class A federal building experiment and if it works should reduce Uncle Sam's office energy consumption here by 50 percent and set an example for private-sector developers.
The 600,000-square-foot project includes two distinct buildings separ by a plaza cafeteria. Its several lofty goals go well beyond consolidating federal workers who are now spread out between five leased buildings. These goals include serving as the catalyst for redevelopment of the downtrodden midMarket area that has been dominated by porn theaters and drug dealers for decades.
Although still in the excavation stage the building has already been controversial.
Skin that breathes
Mayne's Santa Monica-based architectural firm, Morphosis, was chosen by the GSA and its chief architect Ed Feiner after a 1999 competition partially because of its energy efficient projects overseas.
Morphosis has combined themes of energy efficiency and cuttingedge design in buildings in...