San Francisco Public Utilities Commission Headquarters Designed by KMD Architects & Stevens Architects Opens as Poster …

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--

The San Francisco Public Utilities Commissions new environmentally sustainable headquarters building at 525 Golden Gate Avenue, designed in joint venture by KMD Architects and Stevens Architects, provides a poster-child of sustainability innovation for urban office buildings, and reflects the mission of the PUC as a provider and manager of water and energy for San Francisco. All told, 525 Golden Gate in comparison to similarly-sized office buildings features 50% less of a carbon footprint, uses 32% less energy, and consumes 60% less water.

The 13-level, 277,511 gross-square-foot, $190 million SFPUC headquarters building is one of the greenest urban office buildings of its kind, bringing together in a modern, contextually-designed office tower some of the most innovative new technologies at the forefront of building design.

What better organization than a major municipal power and water agency to create one of the most advanced buildings in green design in the U.S., said David Hobstetter, Principal of KMD.

Our intent from the beginning was to create the most energy-efficient office building developed in an urban setting in the United States to date, said Ryan Stevens, KMDs Director of Design (not related to Stevens Architects). Many of these features are uncommon in buildings today, but will be commonplace in years to come.

Given the SFPUCs objective to create a physical demonstration of resource-conservation and sustainability, KMD set out to design a sleek, memorable structure that also responded to functional components inside and outside this next-step advancement of green design.

Among the SFPUC headquarters design and performance attributes are:

-- Design.

The buildings architecture tells two stories in response to the buildings mission and to its surroundings: On the south side, the design reflects an intent to complement the surrounding historic Civic Center setting including San Francisco City Hall and the Beaux-Arts character; on the north side which faces a more commercial office district, 525 Golden Gate has an elegant, modern design of a distinctive Class-A office highrise that responds to the natural forces at play, including the curved shape of the faade that focuses wind into the wind-turbine tower.

The KMD/Stevens team took a number of innovative turns in the design evolution of the building, including the wind-turbine tower. With the increased interest in incorporating wind-technology, the design team changed what had been a set of stacked conference rooms to become the housing for wind-turbines and also modified that north-side of the building to heighten the wind-turbine generation.

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San Francisco Public Utilities Commission Headquarters Designed by KMD Architects & Stevens Architects Opens as Poster ...