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This book explores the unique and vast styles of architecture San Francisco. Juxtaposed is the writing that takes a dark satirical look at the aspects that make up this city.
Citation preview
THE MANY FACES OF
SAN FRANCISCO’S ARCHITECTURE
layout and photography by ANTHONY STIMOlA
written content by bRIAN AlTANO experimental type GR613academy of art university
© 2010
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.
FOREWORD
Foot Bridge to Japan Tow
n
||
Intersection of Geary and W
ebster
||
4//25//2010
||
6.20 PM
Saint Patricks Church || 756 Mission Street || 4//19//2010 || 2.18 PM
CONTENTSCulture //5
Homes//14
Buildings //22
Bridges //31
//4
Sain
t Pat
rick
s C
hurc
h
||
756
Mis
sion
Str
eet
||
4/
/19/
/201
0
||
2.20
PM“Without culture, and the relative
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
YET AMIdST ITS dECAY, lIFE pERSISTS.
Cathedral of St. Mary of the Assumption || 1111 Gough Street || 4//25//2010 || 6.43 PM
“”
//10
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.
Peac
e Pa
goda
||
1737
Pos
t Str
eet
||
4/
/25/
/201
0
||
6.32
PM
Victoria H
ouse
||
102 Central A
venue
||
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
“”
lOST ARE THE SMATTERINgS OF COlOR HApHAzARdlY SlAppEd UpON THE ExTERIORS OF SAN FRANCISCO’S MOST ICONIC wHORES.
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
//20
Apartm
ent Building
||
310 B
ryant Street
||
4//24//2010
||
5.40 PM
The
Hya
tt R
egen
cy H
otel
||
5 E
mba
rcad
ero
Cen
ter
||
4/
/25/
/201
0
||
3.45
PM“The loftier the building, the
deeper must the foundation
be laid.”
// Thomas Kempis
Dow
ntown O
ffice Building
||
770 M
arket Street
||
4//19//2010
||
1.21 PM
//24
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.
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 R
incon Hill
||
425 1st Street
||
4//25//2010
||
5.33 P
M
//30
The
Gol
den
Gat
e B
ridg
e N
orth
Tow
er
||
U
S R
oute
101
/Cal
ifor
nia
Stat
e R
oute
1
||
3/
/26/
/201
0
||
1.30
PM
“The hardest thing in life is to
know which bridge to cross and
which to burn.”
// David Russell
//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
Gol
den
Gat
e B
ridg
e N
orth
Tow
er
||
U
S R
oute
101
/Cal
ifor
nia
Stat
e R
oute
1
||
3/
/26/
/201
0
||
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.