Bjarke Ingels Group Arrives in San Francisco’s Mid-Market

High-profile Danish design firm Bjarke Ingels Group has been tapped to design an arts-friendly space amid downtown San Francisco’s tech boomlet.

BIG’s designs for the new 950-974 Market complex. Credit: BIG/Group I

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High-profile Copenhagen architectural firm Bjarke Ingels Group, or BIG, has been chosen to design a complex at 950-974 Market in San Francisco’s Mid-Market neighborhood.

Encouraged by 2011’s so-called “Twitter Tax Break,” Mid-Market has been attracting technology firms like Twitter, ZenDesk and One Kings Lane. But there have been worries that any artistic culture the area has held onto since its heyday in the ’50s will end up priced out of the neighborhood. BIG and Group I, the local firm that has been working with the city to develop the property, say that they have a plan to “secure a permanent home for some of the City’s most beloved and beleaguered arts organizations.”

“Group I and its team are attempting to answer the question: How do you bridge the gap between real estate development, urban design, technology, arts and nonprofits, and community space in a dense and evolving urban environment?,” Group I president Joy Ou said in a release.

The plan calls for a mixed-use complex that includes a hotel, retail space and 300 mid-priced apartments on a lot shaped, perhaps a bit ironically, like the bottom half of an arrow cursor. The futuristic design features “two urban peaks interlocking at the ground to form a generous public space at their base — thereby maximizing sunlight in the space and creating a shared lobby which brings all of the site’s users together.” It’s not entirely clear how arts groups slot into the mix, but the resulting atrium, they say, will create a backdrop for “every form of performing art imaginable.”

The 950-974 Market project will be BIG’s first West Coast endeavor, but the firm has been in the news recently for designing a platform for Brooklyn Bridge Park that New York Times architectural critic Michael Kimmelman said resembled “a humongous Tostito.”

Have a look at the renderings for Mid-Market:

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Nancy Scola is a Washington, DC-based journalist whose work tends to focus on the intersections of technology, politics, and public policy. Shortly after returning from Havana she started as a tech reporter at POLITICO.

Tags: san franciscogentrificationshared citysocial media

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