Home » City Guide »

Unbuilt San Francisco

The SF that never was: See the city design plans that were never built.
By - posted 8/12/2013 No Comment

If San Franciscans like to describe their city as “49 square miles surrounded by reality,” the visionary ideas that were too grandiose for even San Franciscans to consider remain some of the most fantastic designs for any city in the world.

Imagine the Ferry Building surrounded by office towers, a grand casino on Alcatraz, the city wrapped in freeways and a subdivision covering flattened hills north of the Golden Gate Bridge.

>> Part of the 2013 Architecture in the City Festival.

Unbuilt San Francisco
AIA San Francisco / Center for Architecture + Design
Exhibition open August 15 – October 25 | Monday – Friday, 9 am to 5 pm
130 Sutter Street, Suite 600, San Francisco
Free admission

Unbuilt San Francisco will be the theme of the 10th anniversary celebration of the Architecture and the City festival. The focus of the exhibition will be On the Boards: ambitious ideas for a new stadium on the waterfront, renovations of Fort Mason and the new Transbay Terminal Center. The exhibition will also include grand visions that were never built, including an original sketch by William Perreira of a cylinder-shaped Transamerica building.