Gems of the City - Architecture at its Best

A sampling of San Francisco's Gems of the City, a list of the top 25 buildings in the City By the Bay, compiled by the American Institute of Architects' San Francisco Chapter, reported by SFGATE.com.

Here is the list:

Religious

Grace Cathedral, 1051 Taylor St., 1928, Lewis Hobart

St. Mary's Cathedral, 1111 Gough St., 1971, Pietro Belluschi, Pier Luigi Nervi and McSweeney, Ryan & Lee

Temple Emanu-el, 2 Lake St., 1926, Arthur Page Brown

Swedenborgian Church, 2107 Lyon St., 1894, Arthur Page Brown

First Unitarian Church, 1187 Franklin St., 1888, George Percy/1970, Callister Payne & Rosse

Residential

Plaza Apartments, Sixth and Howard streets, 2006, Leddy Maytum Stacy Architects and Paulett Taggart Architects

Curran House, 145 Taylor St., 2005, David Baker + Partners, Architects

3200 block of Pacific Avenue, houses from 1900 to 1913 designed by architects including Ernest Coxhead, Bernard Maybeck, Willis Polk and William Knowles

Russell House, 3778 Washington St., 1952, Erich Mendelsohn

Haas-Lilienthal House, 2007 Franklin St., 1886, Peter R. Schmidt

Commercial

San Francisco Federal Building, 90 Seventh St., 2007, Morphosis/SmithGroup

1 Bush St. (former Crown-Zellerbach Building), 1959, Skidmore Owings & Merrill and Hertzka & Knowles

Hallidie Building, 130 Sutter St., 1917, Willis Polk

Transamerica Pyramid, 600 Montgomery St., 1972, William Pereira

JPMorgan Chase Building, 560 Mission St., 2002, Cesar Pelli

Historic

Palace Hotel, 2 New Montgomery St., 1909, Trowbridge and Livingston

Circle Gallery, 140 Maiden Lane, 1948, Frank Lloyd Wright

Palace of Fine Arts, 3301 Lyon St., 1915, Bernard Maybeck

War Memorial Opera House and Veterans Building, Civic Center, 1932, Arthur Brown Jr. and G. Albert Lansburgh

Conservatory of Flowers, Golden Gate Park, 1878 (restoration architects, 2003: Architectural Resources Group)

Civic

M.H. de Young Memorial Museum, Golden Gate Park, 2005, Herzog & de Meuron and Fong & Chan Architects

City Hall, Civic Center, 1915, Bakewell & Brown

Yerba Buena Gardens: Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 1994, Fumihiko Maki; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater, 1994, James Stewart Polshek; Metreon, 1999, SMWM, Gary Handel + Associates

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 151 Third St., 1995, Mario Botta, Hellmuth, Obata + Kassabaum

Palace of the Legion of Honor, Lincoln Park, 1916, George Applegarth

Source: American Institute of Architects

The Guesthouse

C! Just returned late last night from my trip to the Orient, it was WAY too short, actioned-packed, and alot of fun.

(Yes, I brought stuff for you, I will bring it on my next visit to NYC this month!)

These pics illustrate the guest house on our compound in Tagaytay. We're happily hidden about a quarter of a mile away from the edge of the Taal Volcano, and the weather is cool and crisp and very clean. I had to wear a thick cable knit sweater the entire time I was in the mountains, can you believe it? (Most of the rest of the Philippines is about 100 degrees in the shade.)

For the guest house, my father chose a gleaming parquet floor in a filipino basket weave pattern. The floor is whisked every day with a wide grass broom. This house, and the main house at the bottom of the hill, have concrete walls and thatched grass roofs, tightly woven and tied together grass sheets lying atop gleaming mahogany beams. The first floor is studio-style, where rooms flow into each other without walls, and he used a few different levels and steps on the floor to delineate a dining area and a mid-story tea room, plus a platform for the boats my father built. My mother hung red Chinese lanterns from the beams, to celebrate Chinese New Year, and the rest of the home gives some nods to our spanish colonial heritage (mostly in the wrought iron lanterns above the breakfast table) and some Frank Lloyd Wright-style windows and seating areas.

We ate breakfast and dinner here at the guest house, currently hosting my Tito Butch, who is visiting from New Jersey. My favorite place to sit is the front parlor at the corner of the cottage, where we raised bamboo sunshades and took in a fantastic wrap-around view of the hills and valleys surrounding the compound, dotted with banana trees, pine, and vineyards.

Changing the San Francisco Skyline

USA Today reported that several city officials and planners were interested in modernizing San Francisco's skyline to favor taller skyscrapers. Dean Macris, the city's planning director, was quoted, "What you're struck by is how flat our skyline is. So we think it could be visibly enhanced if we had some peaking."

The article reported that developers submitted a proposal to build four connected towers in San Francisco's SoMa district, two of which would be 1,200 feet tall. Only two other buildings in the USA are taller: New York City's Empire State Building and Chicago's Sears Tower. The four towers, designed by Italian architect Renzo Piano, would be positioned across from another proposed development project in SoMa, a $1 billion transit center, itself bearing a nearly 900-foot tower above a train station. The proposal submitted on Dec. 21 is a mix of residential, office and retail space.

When I polled my officemates about whether SF's skyline should be changed, they were aghast. "One of the most beautiful sights when you're on the ferry (heading from Embarcadero Center for North Bay communities like Tiburon or Sausalito) is the San Francisco skyline at dusk."

Why change it in favor of taller skyscrapers? The 'City on the Bay' has a cityscape that is already one of the most beautiful and recognizable in the world, the subject of romantic movie trailers and professional photographers for decades. The article in USA Today argues that there is a persistent shortage of residential dwellings in the city, but I would disagree (coming from New York City). I feel like this is an empty city, sometimes I am the only person on 3 or 4 city blocks on my walk to and from the office before I encounter another pedestrian. Many apartment buildings here have vacancies or are only half occupied, including condominiums in premium areas like SoMa. There is an attitude among some San Franciscans that they are in competition with cities like New York, Chicago, Atlanta, and Los Angeles. I would hate to see San Francisco change its landscape because other cities have taller buildings.

For public safety, I would argue that taller is not better. A taller building in earthquake-prone San Francisco means more glass and debris and brick and metal can come crashing downwards from the sky if there are more and more floors above street level. *Also, in a disaster like an earthquake, imagine trying to get out of the building from a skyscraper's top floors? (Yes, I was in NYC September 11, 2001.)

Take a look at these views, what do you think?