Hallidie Plaza: Re-visioning Access for All
Hallidie Plaza, located at the intersection of Market and Powell Streets in downtown San Francisco -adjacent to the Powell Street BART station and the historic Powell Street Cable Car Turntable – is one of the city’s most heavily travelled urban portals. Yet since its completion in 1973, the plaza sunken 20 feet below the city around it has been widely criticized as a “desolate” urban space. This concept design proposes to revitalize Hallidie Plaza as a vibrant place of passage that celebrates our unique City and welcomes everyone.
When San Francisco’s Hallidie Plaza was designed in the mid-1960’s by the distinguished team of Lawrence Halprin, John Carl Warnecke, and Mario Campi, it was conceived as a lively urban plaza - both a dramatic threshold from the Powell Street BART station to the downtown and the nearby cable car, and an inviting gathering space for the city. Over 60 years later cultural conditions have changed, and the plaza has proven to be problematic on both counts. As a threshold, it has only been periodically accessible to people with disabilities, with a notoriously malfunctioning 1997 elevator addition now deemed beyond repair. As a plaza sunken two stories below street level, Hallidie Plaza has struggled to thrive as a viable urban gathering space.
Our concept proposal for Hallidie Plaza re-envisions it as an inviting threshold to the City that welcomes everyone, celebrating the rich diversity of the human condition, the vibrant activity of the urban setting, and the iconic ecologies of Northern California. It focuses on creating a memorable visitor experience of passage. The original design is largely preserved to minimize cost, construction disruption, and embodied carbon emissions. The existing steel elevator tower is removed and replaced by a spiraling ramp nestled into the tiered northern side of the plaza. The ramp - designed as an urban sculpture hovering lightly in the space - encircles a “natural tower” of Pacific Coast redwood trees which join the nearby Powell Street Cable Car as another emblematic element of Northern California. Existing deciduous trees are retained as are the existing landscaped tiers, which would be replanted with native, drought tolerant species characteristic of our regional grassland ecologies. The revitalized Hallidie Plaza will celebrate both our unique City and the diversity of all people - residents and visitors alike – at the heart of our historic downtown.
