Raising Expectations.

ADAPTIVE reuse of buildings; BUILDING envelopes; STRUCTURAL engineering; HISTORIC buildings; EXPECTATION (Psychology)

BUILDING TYPE STUDY 1,050 RENOVATION, RESTORATION, & ADAPTIVE REUSE BUILDING 12 I SAN FRANCISCO I PERKINS&WILL EVEN IF you didn't know the backstory, the gaunt steel hulk of Building 12 at San Francisco's Pier 70 would resonate as a triumph of historic preservation - one that forges an enticing amalgam of new makerspaces and offices from a vast monolith built to fabricate ship hulls during World War II. This flavorful role - adding patina and blue-collar grit to what otherwise will be a 21st-century development - explains why such care was put into an 82-year-old rusty relic that consisted of little beyond a corrugated steel skin punctured by banks of steel sash windows, held up by 66 structural columns deployed in four rows. A new mezzanine and catwalks animate the sprawling ground floor (top). [Extracted from the article]

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