Tishman Speyer approached us with the challenge of re-envisioning and repositioning 160 Spear Street, including the public lobby, public plaza and two entrances. The existing building is a commercial highrise from the 1980s that houses UC Extension on upper floors, in Downtown San Francisco. The building has a through-block lobby connecting Main Street to the south and Spear Street to the north via a landscaped plaza that is one of the city's POPOS spaces (Privately Owned Public Outdoor Space). Our design re-shapes and re-clads the existing lobby walls and floors with new forms, surfaces and finishes. The decidedly dated looking lobby walls were finished in pink granite, capped by a visually busy looking stepped gyp board ceiling, and housed an incidental reception desk . The new design elements we developed include a series of wood paneled niches, one of which houses a welcoming new reception desk, and a series of faceted ceiling planes with integrated LED lighting. The new configuration of the lobby transforms the space to form a passage with an hourglass shape that tapers inwardly from the two entrances facing Main Street and the plaza at Spear Street toward the central reception desk and elevator lobby.

The new ceiling form is made up of a series of knife-edged floating white planes. The faceted planes develop a directionality that presents two different lighting aspects along the planes' edges, depending which direction one is moving through the space. The polished white concrete floor has stainless expansion strips mirroring the ceiling geometry. A new entrance canopy on Main Street, clad in white powder-coated aluminum panels, restates on the exterior the faceted geometry of the lobby interior. The plaza is refreshed with newly honed concrete walls and benches clad with wood boards wrapping a more vibrant collection of planters and seating areas

Photography: Joern Blohm, Craig Scott