Designing San Francisco

 (from the Art, Music and Recreation Center's Newspaper Clipping file)

Since the book's arrival a year ago, all of our copies of Designing San Francisco: Art, Land, and Urban Renewal in the City by the Bay have been checked out nearly continuously.  Alison Isenberg's account of how our City was shaped by new visions of landscape, architecture and urban planning resonates in current San Francisco because of the massive changes taking place today.

For the most part Designing San Francisco does not discuss actual architectural and landscape features at length and instead focuses on creative, political and financial forces that shaped each project.  The book looks at specific projects like Ghirardelli Square, Sea Ranch, the Golden Gateway, the Embarcadero Center and the un-built San Francisco International Market Center.  Isenberg also explores issues like historic preservation, adaptive reuse and renovation, public versus private space and ownership, urban renewal, and height limits within the collective effort to design the City.

(from the San Francisco Historical Photograph Collection)

Isenberg also hones in on particular figures who helped to guide and shape the City's built landscape like Karl and Jean Kortum, Lawrence Halprin, Ruth Asawa, Stuart and Caree Rose, Marion Conrad, Barbara Stauffacher and Virginia Green.

Those who have read and enjoyed this book can delve further into that time and place by using the Newspaper Clipping files in the Art, Music and Recreation Center.  We have contemporaneous files of newspaper clippings, flyers, and brochures for the following topics:

Bank of America
Buildings - Highrises
Embarcadero Center
Embarcadero Plaza
Ghirardelli Square
Golden Gate
Maritime Museum
Hyatt Regency
San Francisco Maritime National Historical ParkSan Francisco Urban Design Plan
Transamerica Spire

We also files for the following people on our Artists File:

Asawa, Ruth (artist)
Esherick, Joseph (architect)Halprin, Lawrence
Temko, Allan
Wurster, William Wilson (architect)

Designing San Francisco: Art, Land, and Urban Renewal in the City by the Bay by Alison Isenberg (Princeton University Press, 2017).

 (from the Art, Music and Recreation Center's Newspaper Clipping file)