urban constructs & works
Walking up Turk yesterday, early afternoon, I stopped at the Webster intersection and took some time to gaze at Fire Station No. 5 of the San Francisco Fire Department. It struck me as a beautiful building, in the institutional modernist architectural style. The tinted glass on the top half of the structure is an integrated art installation titled "FLOW," by Bernadette Jiyong Frank.
Yes, it is boxy and utilitarian — which is precisely as it should be; but the combination and contrast of the dark-maroon field of the lower half of the structure with the glassine field of squares, lines, planes, and rectangles of its upper half results in a pleasing aesthetic, to my eye. It stands out in the anodyne sea of apartment buildings and other civic and private edifices in this Western Addition neighborhood. Also, the huge SFFD title and name, set in a classic Gill Sans or Futura typeface, renders a feeling both subtle and authoritative.
Then I crossed the street and stopped again, this time to watch this concrete finishing crew setting down cement on the innermost lane of this stretch of Turk:
They were focused on their work, but did notice I was standing there watching them; and they did seem to appreciate that they had an audience of one, observing them at their utilitarian task. One of them even paused, turning around to say to me that I should put the picture in some local magazine. I would, if I could! ::chuckle::
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It was the guy whose broad back is to me, on the lower left quadrant of the image below. In this wide-angle tableau of hardhat city utility workers, one can see the Turk Street side of the SFFD in the background.
