Oceanwide Center by Foster + Partners
Location: San Francisco, USA
Status: Ongoing

Situated in the rapidly changing Transbay Area of San Francisco, close to Market St and the financial district, the Oceanwide Center development comprises two mixed-use towers, along with impressive new public spaces and important new pedestrian connections.

The design will also restore and revitalise two historic buildings on site and together, the development provides a  significant amount of new hotel, office and residential spaces in this downtown neighbourhood. This development forms part of a rezoning plan, which was put in place to encourage density around the Transbay Terminal, and the project represents the last mixed-use development of this scale in the area. The 605-foot mixed-use residential and hotel tower reflects the scale of San  Francisco’s existing tall buildings and has frontage on Mission Street, while the 850-foot tall residential and office tower rises above a new public square as a symbol of this new vertical city quarter.

Responsive in urban and environmental terms, the development brings together places to live and work with the city’s most important new transport hub, further evolving a sustainable model of high-density, mixed-use development that the practice has always promoted.

At ground level, the buildings are open, accessible and transparent – and have been ‘lifted up’ to provide a new ‘urban room’ for the region, with pedestrian routes through the site that will knit the new scheme with the urban grain of the city. The project will have a wide-ranging programme of art installations throughout the public spaces, along with landscaping by Kathryn Gustafson.  

With an offset service core, the innovative office floor plates are designed to allow tenants a high degree of flexibility. Their open layout is supported by an emblematic orthogonal structural system developed for seismic stability, resulting in a structurally rigid, but lightweight structure. The tower on Mission Street targets LEED Gold, while the office and the residential tower have been designed to attain a LEED Platinum rating. 

more. www.fosterandpartners.com