San Francisco, California, USA

The new Moscone Center, created by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) and Mark Cavagnero Associates, located in the heart of San Francisco’s bustling South of Market neighborhood, is an expansive collection of light-filled spaces that accommodate a variety of convention-related activities.

Part of a 25-year master plan designed by the same team, the project is one of San Francisco’s key economic drivers and serves as a jewel box for the city.

Moscone Center Expansion and Improvement was recently awarded with a 2020 American Architecture Award from The Chicago Athenaeum and The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies.

Moscone Center is located in San Francisco’s cultural hub, home to many significant arts organizations and business developments, including the new Transbay residential and commercial development, anchored by Salesforce Tower.

The design teamed expanded on this position by examining historical studies of the neighborhood and current developments in the surrounding area.

The project spans close to 20 acres across two sweeping blocks on either side of Howard Street, sited between the well-known Yerba Buena Gardens and the Children’s Garden. The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is just a block away, and the Museum of the African Diaspora and Contemporary Jewish Museum only a few steps further.

Since its start in 1981, Moscone Center’—named after the late San Francisco Mayor George Moscone’—has grown from one main hall to three. The recent expansion vastly improves the Center and its campus, allowing it to meet the evolving needs of a modern city.

The project enhances its lively neighborhood and attracts both residents and visitors alike with its pedestrian-friendly design that connects Yerba Buena’s new and existing open spaces, parks, and cultural facilities.

To remain competitive with other U.S. convention and exhibition venues, Moscone Center needed more contiguous exhibition space’—a challenging design task for the architects, given most available square footage was below grade and bounded by city streets and adjacent properties.

To increase the usable area, SOM and MCA essentially turned the classic convention facility model inside-out.

Now open and inviting, the expanded Center provides architectural interest with wide spans of transparent glazing that form a distinct relationship between convention-goers and the general public.

Internal circulation is pushed to the periphery in an urban gesture, and corridors that run alongside the buildings are envisioned as an extension of the community.

Moscone Center’s civic presence along Howard Street is a composition of translucent materials that bring natural light into the interior spaces and reveal the activity within.

The facade oscillates between opaque and transparent, offering a sense of clarity through its outward expression. Its interlocking volumes break up the mass of the project, connecting the Center to the varied scale of the city.

On Moscone South’s top floor, a balcony follows the length of Howard Street, facing north toward downtown.

On the second floor, just off the 50,000 sqft column-free ballroom, is another balcony that hugs the corner of Third and Howard Streets, anchoring the Center to the neighborhood with a more intimate street view.

A wide terrace on the south-facing elevation, adjacent to the Children’s Garden, is lightly planted and flexible to suit a diverse range of programs.

Landscaping is prioritized around the periphery, so the soft edge of greenery can further break up the building’s mass, tying it visually to the playground below.

A pre-existing pedestrian bridge, which connects Yerba Buena Gardens and the Children’s Garden, has been transformed into a sculptural, open-air walkway that passes over the southwest end of Howard Street.

The publicly accessible crossing is matched by a new glass-enclosed bridge on the northeast end of the street that links Moscone North and South, allowing convention-goers to move between the two buildings easily.

The passage appears nearly weightless, suspended from a structural roof by only a series of steel rods. A light-based art piece by Leo Villareal, the designer of the Bay Bridge light show, hangs within the expanse and is visible from the street below.

In addition to being linked by the pedestrian bridge, Moscone North and South are connected underground by a grand exhibition hall that runs the length and width of both buildings.

Exhibitors have the option of utilizing the entire underground space or reserving distinct zones to keep the space feeling intimate.

Moscone Center is one of the most compact, efficient, and sustainable convention centers in the U.S. It has the lowest carbon footprint per visitor in the world and is the only convention space in the nation to achieve LEED Platinum. It also has the largest rooftop solar panel array in San Francisco, which provides nearly 20 percent of the Center’s power, helping the building to attain zero-emissions electricity.

The inclusion of a district-scale, onsite water system offsets more than 15 million gallons of potable water annually, allowing the expansion to achieve net-positive water usage.-

Architects: Skidmore, Owings, & Merrill (SOM) and Mark Cavagnero Associates (MCA)
Design Team: Design Principal – Mark Cavagnero, Principal In Charge – Kang Kiang, Project Manager- Brandon Joo, Charlotte Hofstetter, Ellen Leuenberger, Anna Swistoska, Paul Matys, Travis Howe, Ricardo Moreno, Mercedes Ha, Vera Shur, Francesco Borghini, Kenneth Avery, Nicola McElroy
Client: San Francisco Tourism Improvement, District Management Corporation
Landscape Architects: Conger Moss Guillard
MEP: WSP
Structural: Tipping Structural
Civil: Sherwood Design Engineering
Photographer: Henrik Kam, Tim Griffith, Cesar Rubio