THE MANY FACES OF SAN FRANCISCO’S ARCHITECTURE layout and photography by anthony stimola written content by brian altano experimental type GR613 academy of art university © 2010
Foot Bridge to Japan Town || Intersection of Geary and Webster || 4//25//2010 || 6.20 PM
FOREWORD Wake up to a weeping dystopia of sycophantic hordes, smiling at their own accord. To the armies sans command. To a landscape of communities immersed in gluttonous delight. We are but the structureless beams of buoyancy dwelling in the spotlight of our precursors, sojourned antecedents of calculated unbalance. Yet we beg to thrive in the pulchritude of San Francisco’s vulnerable motley of procurable paradise. We persist to best the apex of our surroundings, as resplendent as one can breathe whilst basking in the mesmeric wonder that this city can bestow. Beauty prospers here, markedly when chagrined by its manufactured spires of inspired defiance.
Saint Patricks Church || 756 Mission Street || 4//19//2010 || 2.18 PM
CONTENTS Culture // 5
Homes // 14
Buildings // 22
Bridges // 31
//4
freedom it implies, society, even when perfect, is but a jungle. This is why any authentic creation is a gift to the future.” //Albert Camus
Saint Patricks Church || 756 Mission Street || 4//19//2010 || 2.20 PM
“Without culture, and the relative
Cathedral of St. Mary of the Assumption || 1111 Gough Street || 4//25//2010 || 6.43 PM
“
Yet amidst its decay, life persists.
”
Alcazar Theater || 660 Geary Street || 4//19//2010 || 1.15 PM
From a city built on the debris of collapse and restructure thrives a framework of fabric, of plebeian ideology seething with life through variegation. Some pray, others prey. Shrines soar as demons scatter beneath. Multeity solicits deity. We live and wilt in fear of seismic shake, and the deathly trembles of sporadic expiration. Yet we scream defiance at the mere thought of what has collapsed our core before us. We exude resilience; it’s the only fragmented facade of entity from which we cull harmony. Churches spire over even the most dedicated agnostics. Dimly lit corner emporiums blink with the congeniality of the budding sin we sanguinely hand our eves to hope to salvage. Together we stand, for something, for however long it lasts, before it drags us all in to ruination, smiling at the synthesis we’ve so haphazardly envisaged.
//10
Peace Pagoda || 1737 Post Street || 4//25//2010 || 6.32 PM
Victoria House || 102 Central Avenue || 4//25//2010 || 7.40 PM
“There is a magic in that little world, home; it is a mystic circle that surrounds comforts and virtues never known beyond its hallowed limits.” // Robert Southey
Victoria House || 1407 Page Street || 4//25//2010 || 7.47 PM
“
Lost are the smatterings of color haphazardly slapped upon the exteriors of San Francisco’s most iconic whores.
Saint Francis Square Housing Co-op || Corner of Luguana Avenue and Geary Boulevard || 4//25//2010 || 6.59 PM
Apartment Building || 310 Bryant Street || 4//24//2010 || 5.40 PM
//20
deeper must the foundation
be laid.” // Thomas Kempis
The Hyatt Regency Hotel || 5 Embarcadero Center || 4//25//2010 || 3.45 PM
“The loftier the building, the
Downtown Office Building || 770 Market Street || 4//19//2010 || 1.21 PM
Restless and emaciated, jaded and dystopic; the Tenderloin’s sprawling framework is as calculated as its inhabitants. A collective of once promising plymouths of expectancy stand withered and rotting above a shuffled pack of denizens who opt to flicker in its dusk. Lost are the smatterings of color haphazardly slapped upon the exteriors of San Francisco’s most iconic whores. Painted ladies in the fog, dipping in and out of communal relevance. The Tanners would never drag their bubbled plights into this hood. No, this is where dreams go to starve, where progress shifts to madness as governmental beacons tower over in triumphant disregard. Yet amidst its decay, life persists. Structures of rubble and rock twist and shed amongst tourists and addicts who leer towards their apex with the same glimmer of wilted promise. Man is not inspired by his environment as he is humbled by its ability to belittle him, and in a sea of disparity, he finds hope in the pillars that look down upon him, begging to be conquered.
//24
Apartment Building || Geary Boulevard || 4//25//2010 || 6.59 PM
“
Cluster of Buildings Downtown || Post Street Between Montgomery Street and Kearny Street || 4//25//2010 || 2.50 PM
From a city built on the debris of collapse and restructure thrives a framework...
”
One Rincon Hill || 425 1st Street || 4//25//2010 || 5.33 PM
//30
know which bridge to cross and
which to burn.” // David Russell
The Golden Gate Bridge North Tower || US Route 101/California State Route 1 || 3//26//2010 || 1.30 PM
“The hardest thing in life is to
//24
The Trans Bay Bridge || 452 Beale Street || 4//24//2010 || 5.52 PM
The Trans Bay Bridge || 452 Beale Street || 4//24//2010 || 5.48 PM
“
Man is not inspired by his environment as he is humbled by its ability to belittle him, and in a sea of disparity, he finds hope in the pillars that look down upon him, begging to be conquered
The Golden Gate Bridge North Tower || US Route 101/California State Route 1 || 3//26//2010 || 1.36 PM
Enveloped in fog, swaying in wind and decomposing at the seams, San Francisco’s idyllic steel gangplanks reach out to diametric worlds. The Golden Gate beckons Sausalito’s lavish drunks and wine country’s diluted taste for decadence. The Bay Bridge extends to Oakland’s crime-riddled devastation like a hand filled with assurance and nourishment. The latter of the two prohibits the populace from traversing it, while the former has historically inspired them to jaunt towards its alluring median and leap into the hazy abyss beneath, never to live again. The Gate, an apricot tinted suicide string, stitched between two cities like a dazzlingly virulent tight rope act. The Bay, a sprawling gray and decrepit behemoth huddled between microcosms of chaos. Atlas’s arms extended in grotesque harmony, sweat, scars and slashes transparent to all.