Uber HQ, immersive spaces and expressive yet functional landscape systems
Surfacedesign
Landscape
/
Completed
The concept is rooted in neighborhood and community and is inspired by the area beyond the project boundary as much as by the site within it. Situated at a historical San Francisco Bay shoreline and adjacent to the current SF Bay seawall, Pierpoint Lane has formal elements that embrace irregular and organic arrangements. Landscape transformation is inherently dynamic due to a multitude of factors including environmental and cultural. The design aims to reveal these histories through immersive spaces and expressive yet functional landscape systems. Since its conception the project embraced material richness and textural layering in pavements, site elements, and vegetation.
Located along a developing stretch of Mission Bay, Uber HQ’s public amenities are a catalyst to transform the district into a dynamic and pedestrian-friendly neighborhood with Pierpoint Park as the centerpiece. Streetscapes and road frontages seamlessly connect the active adjacent streets to the Park, enticing passersby to interrupt their walk along 3rd Street to experience this new typology of greenspace in Mission Bay. The site includes seismic and geotechnical complexities as well as saline landscape conditions, all of which are addressed proactively in the landscape. Setting beds for materials and planting were engineered to address differential settlement.
The building and site-wide environmental strategy includes water collection, solar harvesting, and green space on the roof and ground level. Stormwater management is integrated into the park seamlessly, with a series of bioretention planters featuring exuberant and seasonally changing planting that frames spaces for people to gather within the site. The project achieved LEED Gold, and won at the 2022 Chicago Athenaeum, American Architecture Awards.
Pierpoint Lane introduces a public park and mews to San Francisco’s Mission Bay neighborhood as part of Uber’s new headquarters. Gathering spaces on Pierpoint Lane include seating nooks, stone outcroppings, and a lawn amphitheater are interspersed throughout the site providing the Uber workforce, Mission Bay community, and visitors alike places of respite amid the energetic urban context. A strategic selection of materials and layout promotes intuitive circulation while planting provides for a varied, immersive experience. Diagonal bands of linear stone cobbles break down pavement areas and define space. Playful bronze sculptures provide seating and visual interest. A rich material palette of stone, concrete, and monolithic stone features weave through the site creating a sense of exploration and excitement that celebrates the tectonic regional context.
Through a sequential procession through the landscape, colorful groundcover plants harmonize with the spatial arrangement of trees and shrubs. The open-space planting is the people’s garden, a public park that provides space to pause from the surrounding urban pressures. With the seasonal transformation and floriferous display of the upland slopes and the lawn bowl framing the sky through the ring of Cajeput Paperbark trees, this portion of the campus includes the most diverse palette of trees, shrubs, groundcovers, grasses, and perennials in the project.
"The overall design is focused on movement both vertically, via stairs in an open atrium, and horizontally from building to building. Mission Bay buildings 1 & 2 feature an operable facade that allows natural light and air into the building’s atrium."
/23
Seating nooks & stone outcroppings are interspersed throughout the site creating areas of respite for the Mission Bay workforce and local inhabitants.
Marion Brenner
Two bridges cross over Pierpoint Lane, energizing the space below and merging public and private uses.
Jason O'Rear
Lush stormwater planting softens the edge of the linear plaza.
Marion Brenner
The bridges mirrored bottoms reflect the plaza's landscape and provide an interactive element.
Jason O'Rear
Diagonal bands of linear stone cobbles break down pavement areas and define space. Playful bronze sculptures provide seating and visual interest.
Marion Brenner
Large areas of stacked stone blocks create sculptural areas for sitting and climbing. Verdant, mounded shrubs soften and ground the stones.
Marion Brenner
Pierpoint Lane terminates at 3rd St, a major corridor for the city's urban transit.
Jason O'Rear
Looking from the lane towards the open space garden - a grouping of stone blocks erupts from the ground
Marion Brenner
White salvia, eryingium & scabiosa create soft garden areas adjacent to groupings of stone.
Marion Brenner
Red lips sit at the edge of a stormwater basin.
Marion Brenner
Oakleaf hydrangea is seen in the foreground. A moon sculpture sits at the top of the lawn bowl within the meadow garden.
Marion Brenner
Within the open space garden, drifts of meadow planting surround stacked stone slabs.
Marion Brenner
Rendered plan
Surfacedesign, Inc.
rendering of Uber HQ buildings
SHoP Architects
rendering of street level entry
SHoP Architects
Pierpoint Lane rendering
Surfacedesign, Inc.
Pierpoint Lane rendering
Surfacedesign, Inc.
Pierpoint Lane rendering
Surfacedesign, Inc.
Uber HQ rendering
SHoP Architects
Historical site context images
Surfacedesign, Inc.
Landscape design inspiration from Robert Motherwell
San Francisco
California, USA
Alexandria Real Estate Equities, Uber
Campus, Public Park
01/2021
9040 mq
Confidential
SHoP Architects, Quezada Architecture
Architecture: SHoP Architects ; Landscape Architecture: Surfacedesign, Inc. ; MEP Engineer: Alfatech ; Structural Engineer: Thornton Tomasetti ; Civil Engineer: Freyer & Laureta, Inc. ; Lighting: Niteo
Truebeck Construction
Landscape Contractor: Brightview Landscape Development, Inc.
Marion Brenner
Curriculum
Surfacedesign is a landscape architecture and urban design firm based in San Francisco, California. This internationally award-winning practice focuses on creating dynamic parks, campuses, plazas, waterfronts, civic landscapes and private gardens. Under the leadership of James A. Lord, Roderick Wyllie and Geoff di Girolamo, a multidisciplinary staff of landscape architects, urban designers and architects provide clients with a wide range of services.
Integral to the ideology of the practice, Surfacedesign focuses on cultivating a sense of connection to the built and natural world, pushing people to engage with the landscape in new ways. Our approach emphasizes and celebrates the unique context and imaginative potential of each project. The studio’s design process is rooted in asking novel questions and listening to a site and its users — a process that has led to engaging and inspiring landscapes that are rugged, contemporary and crafted.
