The Mission Bay area of San Francisco really was a bay once, before it was filled in during the 19th and early 20th centuries to make room for railyards and slaughterhouses. It’s still one of the lowest-lying areas in the city—and barring the construction of huge levees or dikes, it will likely be inundated once again by the year 2100, as sea levels rise in response to global warming. (That’s according to maps produced by the San Francisco Estuary Institute; see Rebecca Solnit’s Infinite City: A San Francisco Atlas.)
But none of that seems to bother Salesforce.com, which today unveiled detailed plans for the 14-acre headquarters campus it intends to build as part of the ongoing redevelopment of the Mission Bay area. Designed by Mexico City-based architecture firm Legoretta + Legoretta, the new campus will include eight buildings with roughly 2 million square feet of office space, along with space for parks, plazas, and retail businesses. Salesforce.com spent $278 million last year to acquire the parcels for the campus, which will take much of the decade to complete.
Salesforce.com chairman and CEO Marc Benioff said in an announcement today that the Legorreta + Legorreta design, which is distinguished by a Miami-bright color scheme, fountains and pools, and large outdoor art pieces, is intended to give “physical evidence of Salesforce.com’s philosophy of innovation.” The new campus “will be a place where our employees and the community can connect, collaborate and be inspired by the world around them,” Benioff said. (See the images below, which are from a Flickr album posted today by Salesforce.)
UCSF’s biomedical research campus is currently largest tenant in Mission Bay, which I pass through regularly on my way from Xconomy San Francisco’s Potrero Hill headquarters to meetings in SoMa or the Financial District. By 2014, the research campus will be joined by the new UCSF Medical Center, already under construction on a huge site between 16th Street and Mariposa Street. But the Salesforce campus will fill several blank spaces on the map between the UCSF facilities and the waterfront—blocks currently given over to dusty, windswept parking areas and a cement plant.
San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee said in a statement that “The new headquarters and its vibrant design are proof that San Francisco is the place where the next generation of technology leaders wants to work and live.” Salesforce said the plans call for the use of sustainable materials and technologies that reduce water and electricity use—strategies that it hopes will bring the buildings Platinum-level LEED certification from the US Green Building Council.
Click on the images below to see larger versions.
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
