Plans for rising Mid-Market threaten to create aesthetic tangle

The largest proposed Mid-Market project, nearly a full block at 950 Market, would include a hotel, more than 300 residential units and a center “arts bar” for cultural organizations. The largest proposed Mid-Market project, nearly a full block at 950 Market, would include a hotel, more than 300 residential units and a center “arts bar” for cultural organizations. Photo: Big, BIG Photo: Big, BIG Image 1 of / 22 Caption Close Plans for rising Mid-Market threaten to create aesthetic tangle 1 / 22 Back to Gallery

It’s a sign of progress for San Francisco’s Market Street that a half-dozen developers want to build housing and hotels on the long-troubled blocks between Fifth and Eighth streets.

Too bad that in terms of the architecture, what’s been proposed so far says more about the city’s current identity crisis than the unique potential of this stretch of the city’s most important thoroughfare.

Too many of the proposals try too hard to be everything at once — flashy but familiar, hip but neighborly, timeless and trendy. None of them comes close to measuring up alongside the best of the street’s assertive and self-assured architecture from the past. The good news is that there’s time to make things better, and add a sense of relaxed urbanity to the mix.

Of the six would-be additions to the landscape between Hallidie Plaza and United Nations Plaza, the three most dramatic are on the north side of the 120-foot-wide boulevard that rolls grandly from the Ferry Building past the Civic Center toward Twin Peaks. They’re also, for now, the most problematic.

The biggest is at 950 Market, where nearly the entire triangular block bounded by Market, Turk and Taylor streets would be filled by a complex with a pair of 16- and 20-story residential and hotel buildings framing a lower central “arts bar” holding cultural spaces. On the block to the west, 13 stories of housing would fan up. Next door would be another newcomer, this one 14 stories, which begins at a sliver-thin Market Street lot and then fills a large surface parking lot at the corner of Jones Street and Golden Gate Avenue.

The 950 Market design is by Denmark’s Bjarke Ingels, who specializes in architecture that aims to make a visual splash. Here, that would translate to a narrow front prow that leans forward as it rises. Molded white skin would add depth and shadows around the windows deployed in apparently jostled patterns would add more pizazz. The arts bar between the two towers is conceived with screen-like walls of glass that extend 80 feet above the sidewalks on Market and Turk streets, each end draped in a bronze-colored metal scrim that would open and close like the curtains of a movie screen.

Extreme energy

A different sort of energy kicks in at 1028 Market, a residential building that would pop up behind the four-story flatiron at Market and Taylor where the popular diner Show Dogs is located. The design concept is likened by its architects to a pairing of anvil and cloud — a dark six-story base with black tile-framed arches beneath an all-glass summit where windows snap out in sawtooth lines.

The only proposal of the three with right angles is at 1066 Market, but this doesn’t mean the show is sedate. The skin would be a concrete collage — multistory stacks of black, gray and white — inset with strips of windows that read like Morse code signals. According to architect Bernardo Fort-Brescia of Arquitectonica, the design is a riff on the dark-and-white rhythms of the neighbor to the west, a three-story department store from 1911.

Any one of these might be an energetic exception to the Market Street rule of strong but steady traditional forms. Pack in three within two blocks, and they trip over each other — 21st century product that doesn’t know when to stop.

Another muddle is the tension between Market Street’s ceremonial scale and the more intimate neighborhood grid of the Tenderloin to the north. Both Ingels and Arquitectonica are wrestling with how to take a bold stance on Market and then downshift at their northwest corners, but the segues are awkward at best — especially since the developers likely aren’t keen on opening up to blocks where street crime is still all too common.

New kids on the block

The design issues are simpler on the south side of Market, where the challenge is to fill gaps between the settled procession of masonry buildings, most completed before 1930. At both 1075 Market and 1125 Market, new apartment buildings would face the street with flat vertical bays alternating with vertical bands of recessed mullions and glass. The former uses red tile and stops at 90 feet, the block’s height limit. The latter has perforated metal panels and steps back at the rear to 120 feet, again in response to zoning.

One fills an empty lot. The other would replace a much-altered theater from 1912 that specialized in X-rated entertainment until it closed last year.

The third proposal is a 10-story hotel that would replace the building that housed Kaplan’s Army-Navy surplus store for 74 years at 1055 Market. It’s also the only one of the three that dares to suggest breaking the rules: There’d be a 19-foot high cafe space and lobby along the sidewalk, but the upper eight floors would be pulled back 12 feet from its neighbor on the west to allow in light and air, then widen again at the back along Stevenson Street.

This goes against planning wisdom that the Market Street wall should be solid, filled by buildings each step of the way. But with a building this small and a site this narrow, the sliver could add a glimpsed reminder to passersby that this is dense urban terrain.

City officials make the case that what’s most important with this round of buildings is how they contribute to the larger sense of an active public realm along the street.

“We’re not just looking at stylistic or material beauty, but what the building does and how it improves the environment,” said Maia Small, an urban designer at the city’s Planning Department. “I’m hoping the buildings do more than just look like something.”

This is a smart starting point, and some projects take the cue and run with it. At 1028 Market, for instance, the “anvil and cloud” for now includes the concept of an overscaled lobby with an elevated bike storage area as the sculptural centerpiece.

Lacking a bold move

What we really need is for one of these proposals to snap into focus. None of them come close yet to radiating the you-are-here confidence found in the best Market Street buildings, whether the grand flatirons such as the Flood Building at Powell Street or the mid-block buildings that make one good move really well.

Two of the latter cases can be seen on mid-Market, anchors to the ever-changing scene.

One is 1019 Market from 1909, with a single broad glass bay above the base between two five-story Corinthian columns. Even when garment makers were upstairs and tattered storefronts on either side, the former department store retained its dignity. Now it has been restored to house a software firm, a commanding presence that goes far beyond architectural nostalgia.

The other is 973 Market, a seven-story loft structure from 1908. It stands out not for any structural gyrations — no tilting prows or zippered silhouettes here — but for the intricate and freshly cleaned tile work that covers the facade, a cloak of ornamentation at once flamboyant and prim.

Looking at these two buildings, you can imagine the long-ago architects sizing up their sites and filling them with focused joy. If only today’s architects and planners had the same rooted confidence, and the same understanding that creative understatement often is the best way to go.

John King is the urban design critic of The San Francisco Chronicle. E-mail: jking@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @johnkingsfchron