Uber’s new headquarters is located in the Mission Bay neighborhood of San Francisco. The project is situated along a transit corridor and adjacent to the recently completed Chase Center arena. In collaboration with SHoP Architects, the project includes an eleven-story tower and a six-story structure with an almost fully transparent façade. The project’s key goal is to bring this developing area into step with the successful, human-scaled environments for which San Francisco is so famous, providing a catalyst to transform the district into a dynamic and pedestrian-friendly neighborhood.

The project includes a public park, a major streetscape (3rd Street) and a public amenity roof level terrace. The site is organized around a linear park that connects 3rd Street to Bridgeview Way. What was originally intended to be solely an EVA route, the project team came up with a strategy to utilize this infrastructural space as a vibrant park amenity for the public.

A variety of paving types meander through the landscape, each carefully considered to compliment the use of the affiliated space. A strategic selection of materials and layout promote intuitive circulation while planting provides for a varied, immersive experience. Gathering spaces such as seating nooks, stone outcroppings, and a lawn amphitheater are interspersed throughout the site providing the Mission Bay workforce, community, and visitors alike places of respite amid the energetic context. Streetscapes and road frontages seamlessly connect the active adjacent streets to the park, enticing passersby to interrupt their walk along 3rd Street to experience this new typology of greenspace in Mission Bay.

Location: San Francisco, CA

Status: Completed 2020

Project Type: Public Park, Office Campus

Client: Alexandria Real Estate Equities, Uber

Collaborators: SHoP Architects, Freyer & Laureta

Photography: Marion Brenner, Jason O'Rear

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