West 8 wins Fort Mason ideas competition Marina Green link among Dutch firm's ideas for enclave

The design competition to improve San Francisco's Fort Mason Center was won by a team led by the landscape architecture firm West 8. The winning scheme emphasizes better connection of the center to its surroundings, including ramps down from adjacent Fort Mason, a footbridge to Marina Green and stepped platforms leading into the bay. less The design competition to improve San Francisco's Fort Mason Center was won by a team led by the landscape architecture firm West 8. The winning scheme emphasizes better connection of the center to its ... more Photo: West 8 Photo: West 8 Image 1 of / 8 Caption Close West 8 wins Fort Mason ideas competition 1 / 8 Back to Gallery

The design competition to bring fresh life to San Francisco's Fort Mason Center has been won by a team that proposes such twists as a floating pool and a pedestrian bridge to Marina Green.

Larger aspects include the conversion of an empty pier building into an art-themed hotel. But what set apart the team led by Holland's West 8 was its varied and often fine-grained approach to the 13-acre enclave, which is thronged on some days and all but empty on others.

"They instinctively grasped that what's needed isn't one big idea, but a series of interventions," said Rich Hillis, executive director of the nonprofit center that manages the collection of nine aged military buildings amid parking lots against a bluff. "They embraced what is great about Fort Mason while recognizing that it needs to change."

This is the latest high-profile American commission awarded to West 8, a landscape architecture firm that has won awards for its works on Toronto's riverfront and Governors Island off the tip of Lower Manhattan.

Here, the Rotterdam firm has teamed with a half-dozen local designers and planning specialists. They include Jensen Architects, which did the rooftop sculpture garden at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Ila Berman, director of architecture at California College of Arts; and Architectural Resources Group, which specializes in historic preservation.

The team's proposal laid out seven strategies to tie the former Army port of embarkation into its surroundings to help people naturally find their way there - and once on the scene find new aspects to explore.

The connection to Marina Green via a floating footbridge is one example (yes, it would include a drawbridge section so as not to close off entrance to an existing marina). Another is a set of pedestrian ramps that would cascade down from the more bucolic green landscape above. Within the center, stepped platforms would lead to the water while a trio of movable pontoons would provide a variety of perspectives and experiences, including a heated pool.

Team members stress that none of this would displace such tenants as the dozen-plus arts groups, or Greens restaurant and the bookstore operated by the Friends of the Public Library.

"There is a culture that has established itself there through time, and art organizations that need a place to be and to grow," said Marcel Wilson of San Francisco's Bionic Landscape Architects. "We absolutely need to nurture that."

West 8 defeated two other firms in the competition, Bruner/Cott of Massachusetts and Spain's AMP Arquitectos. Each team was given $20,000 to hone its ideas, funds provided by local art patron Ann Hatch and the Tin Man Fund. The three proposals were then reviewed this month by a jury that included Superintendent Frank Dean of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, which includes Fort Mason.

The West 8 team will not be awarded a cash prize. Nor will its scheme be treated as a final product. Instead, after the team signs a planning and design contract with the center, specific revisions will go through a public review process likely to include everyone from neighborhood groups and the National Park Service to the donors needed for such big-ticket items as the upgrade to long-vacant Pier One.

"We're going to work with them on two fronts," Hillis said. "We want to develop a larger master plan for the site, but also start implementing some of the ideas."