Ten years after it opened, the San Francisco Federal Building stands as a dynamic but troubled testament to the fact that in the real world, visionary architecture can only accomplish so much.

The 18-story tower, with its jagged cloak of perforated steel, remains the most aggressive high-rise on the skyline. But the long-troubled block at street level is as squalid as ever. And while the building’s eco-friendly extras have helped reduce energy use, they haven’t been copied by the architects and developers of other towers.

It’s a big building in a big city — one actor in a cast of thousands, not the catalyst that turned things around.

If this sounds like an unfair benchmark by which to measure a swashbuckling design — I still enjoy the show, whatever its flaws — then you missed the hype that preceded the arrival in 2007 of the three-acre, 605,000-square-foot complex at Seventh and Mission streets.

After the project was approved in 2001, the U.S. General Services Administration released a booklet describing it as a future landmark “that will stimulate critical interest for years to come.” The official opening in July 2007 was accompanied by a second publication celebrating “an innovative model of sustainable design” with a plaza that serves as “a welcome civic space ... truly a part of its neighborhood.”

The design is by Thom Mayne, 2005 recipient of the coveted Pritzker Architecture Prize, which includes the complex on its website as one of Mayne’s 10 “selected works.” In the lobby, a video on the building includes a quote from the 2007 New York Times review that extols how “formal experimentation serves a heartfelt social agenda.”

But when we view the complex in hindsight, it didn’t transform the local architectural scene. It’s a flash of isolated drama. Look no further than the three residential slabs that have been built on the block since then, each a box with no higher aspiration than to satisfy the developer’s bottom line.

As for the social agenda — to create a neighborhood haven — the plaza and its corner cafe have come up short on all fronts.

The odds of success were long, to be sure: This stretch of Seventh Street has been the turf of derelicts and the dispossessed for generations, despite the presence across the way of the wondrous 1905 U.S. Court of Appeals. With skid row Sixth Street to the east and seedy UN Plaza to the north, that wasn’t going to change simply because 1,800 federal employees started showing up for work — especially since there has been no effort to fill the plaza with the concerts and markets that were promised back in 2001.

Yet in some ways the corner is even worse than when it housed a Greyhound bus station. The edges are defined by stark concrete “benches” and circles that in fact are bollards and security walls. The decomposed granite surface has sunk below the paved paths that pass through it, with uneven patches where water runs off. It’s a sad-looking void.

The squat single-level cafe compounds the problem. Supposedly intended to liven things up, its real purpose seems to be to support the final clattering leap of the angled steel cloak. Solid concrete walls cut off the the sidewalks of Seventh and Mission streets; inside, the metal mesh ceiling is oppressively low. (The current operators, bless them, have added cozy chairs and bookshelves to try and make it feel homey, as well as wood trim below the muscular skylight.)

Neighbors have complained about the plaza for years, calling it an unsafe blight. The frustration is shared by Maria Ciprazo, the federal architect who oversaw the process that in 1999 awarded the project to Mayne and his Southern California firm, Morphosis.

“I’ll eat outside at the cafe, and two guys will be yelling at each other nearby. People don’t want that,” said Ciprazo, chief architect for the General Services Administration’s Pacific Rim Region. This fall, she hopes to hold a competition where design students from several local colleges will be invited to submit ideas for how the plaza might be improved.

The gap between good intentions and real life is on display throughout the complex.

Back to Gallery 10 years later, flashy Federal Building falls short of hype 11 1 of 11 Photo: Leah Millis, The Chronicle 2 of 11 Photo: Leah Millis, The Chronicle 3 of 11 Photo: Leah Millis / The Chronicle 2017 4 of 11 Photo: Leah Millis, The Chronicle 5 of 11 Photo: handout 6 of 11 Photo: Leah Millis, The Chronicle 7 of 11 Photo: Leah Millis, The Chronicle 8 of 11 Photo: Leah Millis, The Chronicle 9 of 11 Photo: Leah Millis, The Chronicle 10 of 11 Photo: John King, The Chronicle 11 of 11 Photo: John King, The Chronicle





















There’s no better example than the drape of steel facing Mission Street, which is separated by several feet from the tower slab and its 13-foot, floor-to-ceiling windows. The concept was that direct sunlight would be deflected but natural light would filter in. The gap between the two facades, meanwhile, would pull the sun’s heat up and out like a chimney, lowering the temperature inside.

The chimney effect has worked as intended, by all accounts, but the glare through the perforated panels was so harsh that some employees installed patio umbrellas at their cubicles. Building managers got the hint and within a year blinds were installed.

Morphosis has used the double-skin system since then. Other American architects pursuing large-scale sustainability are more likely to use conventional sunshades — or, if their client is willing to spend the extra money, glass developed the past few years that repels heat all on its own.

Along with the push for sustainability came the idea that the federal workplace could be revolutionized.

That’s why there’s a stack of four, three-story atriums within the slab, each served by elevators that only stop at every third floor as part of a larger strategy to “encourage chance meetings, encounters, and the exchange of ideas.” And the undeniably cool “skygarden,” a three-story cube cut into the upper half of the tower.

The atriums are almost always vacant, if several visits to the tower during the past few weeks are any indication. The skygarden is filled with employees at lunch, but empty at other times. And even though it’s a public space, visitors from outside are rare.

Ciprazo loves the complex, despite her disappointment in the plaza. But she also says that it has taught her the limits of thinking that architecture can inspire people to alter their daily lives.

“We thought that if we gave employees natural light and windows they could open and places where they could gather, everybody would be happy,” she said last week. “That’s not true, because everyone is different.”

The tower’s designer seems to take the setbacks in stride.

“We set out to make a building that’s sustainable, that represents the way government should be and how the workplace should be,” Mayne, 73, said in a phone interview last month. “We have to believe in the best-case scenario. Because of that, you are bound to fall short sometimes.”

Ultimately, in terms of lasting impact, the real value of the San Francisco Federal Building may have been as a rhetorical tool.

The design argued that eye-catching architecture can be coupled with environmental values. The plaza, for all its problems, suggests that government and diverse communities can co-exist.

Large-scale urban buildings often debut with high hopes. This one was no exception. The real test comes as they settle into the city. And as the mixed results at Seventh and Mission streets show, that is no easy task.

John King is The San Francisco Chronicle’s urban design critic. Email: jking@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @johnkingsfchron