I recently visited San Francisco and found that the city has many faces. But one of the most interesting one might be the one that was not realized.
If San Franciscans like to describe their city as “49 square miles surrounded by reality,” the visionary ideas that were too grandiose for even San Franciscans to consider remain some of the most fantastic designs for any city in the world. Imagine a grand casino on Alcatraz, the city wrapped in freeways and a subdivision covering flattened hills north of the Golden Gate Bridge.
The San Francisco Public Library’s San Francisco History Center is presenting original architectural renderings and other images which give an inkling of a city very different from the one we know today.
This exhibition focuses on “what never was” in the public spaces of San Francisco.
6th Floor, Main Library, 100 Larkin Street, San Francisco
On view August 24 – November 27, 2013
AIA San Francisco / Center for Architecture + Design
130 Sutter Street, Suite 600, San Francisco
On view August 15 – October 25, 2013
Vincent Raney’s drawings of a United Nations at the foot of Twin Peaks