Adaptive Reuse: Rightsize This Project & Preserve Our Heritage!
Docomomo US/Northern California is a non-profit organization dedicated to documenting and conserving the Modern Movement's buildings, sites, and neighborhoods. Our position: better balance new development with the rehabilitation of Embarcadero Plaza and Vaillancourt Fountain. This more thoughtfully spends $15-30+ million in public and private funds, more effectively reflects the needs of residents, businesses, and visitors, supports downtown’s economic recovery, and retains our history and culture. Iconic, centuries-old public plazas, parks, and fountains worldwide have successfully evolved to reflect the modern world. Let adaptive reuse guide new development.
Preserve Cultural Heritage: Historical public spaces and art, like Embarcadero Plaza and Vaillancourt Fountain, are vital to our city’s cultural heritage, especially amid erasure of history, defunding of the arts, and erosion of public space.
Strengthen Social Fabric: Plazas for large-scale public events are essential for a city's social backbone, especially at critical junctures like the Embarcadero and Market Street, to support residents, businesses, and tourism.
Maximize Thoughtful Reuse: Evolving existing public spaces and art, rather than fully demolishing and rebuilding, strengthens this social fabric, preserves heritage, and resists corporate privatization.
Historic and Maintainable: The reports and experts are clear: Vaillancourt Fountain is not beyond repair. The Fountain and Plaza are historically significant, within and beyond the Market Street Cultural Landscape District.
Fiscal Responsibility via Adaptive Reuse: In economically uncertain times, adaptively reusing Embarcadero Plaza and Vaillancourt Fountain rightsizes the project, better spending $15-30+ million in public and private funds. Use funds for maintaining public spaces and art instead of one-time upgrades.
Global Inspiration: This approach has succeeded internationally and across the U.S., including SF’s own U.N. Plaza, Minneapolis’ Peavey Plaza, Boston’s City Hall Plaza and Christian Science Plaza, Portland’s Open Space Sequence, and Paris’ Place de la République.
Leverage adaptive reuse to balance history with reinvention
Artistic depictions of reinvention through adaptive reuse combined with partial new development.
Reinvention through adaptive reuse could include:
Add ramps and sloped walkways to increase the Plaza’s accessibility.
Make the Fountain more water and energy efficient, for example, by making the pool shallower.
Install pedestrian lighting in the plaza that minimizes light pollution and aligns with DarkSky initiatives.
Follow best practices for keeping historic landmarks safe, even those with common unsafe materials.
Historic Embarcadero Plaza and Vaillancourt Fountain
Fountain lights glowed at night, water flowed at oscillating volumes, interactive stairs and stepping stones invited freedom and play to downtown San Francisco, and concerts gathered the masses at Embarcadero Plaza and Vaillancourt Fountain.
Image credits. Top left: Newsweek, December 1973; Top right: U2 concert, 1987 - United Press International; Bottom: San Francisco Public Library.