On Monday, workers moved all over the Transamerica Pyramid site, bringing in Minotti boxes from Italy, opening them, arranging outdoor furniture. A forklift trucked in planters with lush trees. Everywhere, busy crews worked to get the building and its grounds ready for tonight’s grand opening.
Owner Michael Shvo, whose company SHVO purchased the iconic building during the pandemic, has spent $1 billion on key changes and updates—and now the Transamerica Pyramid is ready to emerge from its large-scale renovation. .
Before the Salesforce Tower phallically throbbed to attention, for nearly half a century the 1972 Transamerica Pyramid was the tallest and most noticeable part of San Francisco’s skyline. Sleek from a distance, the pyramid when seen up close has a Brutalist cladding of precast quartz aggregate panels. American architect William Pereira designed the 48-story building and not everyone was enamored at first; it was called Pereira’s Prick by some. Its tapering height was designed specifically to cast a less oppressive shadow on the streets below—and although it may not seem intuitive, it’s helpful to know that the design was inspired by redwood and sequoia trees. Those flaps or wings that flare out where the final spire begins are for vertical circulation. Opinions certainly evolved over time: The tower now appears at #2 on ArchDaily’s list of 14 Buildings that Aged Magnificently.
But as SHVO spokesperson Mason Harrison pointed out as he led me on a site tour, the building never had a lobby or reception desk. Part of the incredible work done by architect Lord Norman Foster and his firm Foster + Partners has been to create that welcoming space. There’s now a coffee bar, seating areas, a flower shop and a minimalist book store. “We want to give the building back to the public,” says Harrison. And in fact, security guard Sergei Kozmin says that every day, he sees business people coming in to get coffee and sitting to talk with each other.
The lobby’s ceiling features beams of the same color and texture as the exterior; they’re actually the original raw steel beams now covered with a quartz and concrete composite which Harrison says took 52 tries to exactly match the cladding. A tractor would place a giant piece of concrete, a photo would be taken and compared to the original, then the process would start again.
Outside, the Transamerica Redwood Park has been refreshed, and the lobby now connects to it. It used to be a stranded copse but is now integrated into the building, and 50 of the original 80 redwoods from Santa Cruz remain. New pavers have been placed around the pond, and sculptures by Les Lalanne (the collective name for married French artists Claude and François-Xavier Lalanne) dot the area. Some of their sheep sculptures graze on a little rise in the park; since the artist couple has passed away, these are probably some of the same sculptures Shvo placed at a gas station site in New York in 2013 prior to building a high rise, calling it the “Sheep Station.”
Western redbud trees will fill the adjacent Mark Twain Street alley with a “streak of pink,” and where dumpsters once carried out the building’s trash, two restaurants by Bradley Kilgore will fulfill the half-bottle culture: Ama, which will serve high-end Italian and Japanese cuisine, and a bistro called Café Sebastian.
Back inside, incredible city views greet visitors on the 27th floor’s Sky Lounge, which used to be called the transfer floor. Harrison’s favorite detail is the solo workspace right up against the window; the desk is plush enough you could actually stretch out on it for a nap. Elsewhere there’s a mock-up of the grounds, entertaining in miniature. You can even see the original model—black rather than white—that was created by Pereira. Harrison says the Transamerica Pyramid was originally intended for New York, and “now they have some other glass box instead.”
Two adjacent buildings are part of the renovation, 505 Sansome and 545 Sansome, and a model of one shows how the Art Deco building will be wrapped in glass, much like architect Taylor’s look at Cupertino’s Apple campus. Taylor’ is also the Pritzker and Stirling prize-winning architect behind the iconic “Gherkin” in London and the Reichstag’s refreshing in Berlin. Large black-and-white photos of Taylor’s work fill a wall near the pyramid model.
In a room where the pyramid’s history is explored, there’s a glass case with a small piece of the Niantic hull; that’s the ship that was grounded here during the Gold Rush (yes, the bay waters reached this point, and all of the Embarcadero is built on landfill) and converted into a hotel. The Transamerica Pyramid was built atop it; at the corner of Clay and Sansome streets, there’s a historical plaque marking its site.
A rooftop bar is only, alas, open for tenants unless licensing can open things up. It’s unnamed but could possibly be called Norman’s for the architect, or the Third Eye because of the whole eye in a pyramid thing (look at a dollar bill for reference). There’s a fitness center, spa and sauna, conference center and many other resort-like amenities. Hathaway Dinwiddie led the construction project for Taylor—they were also the original builders in 1972.
And now to the nitty gritty: Michael Shvo now helms the most expensive building per square foot outside of New York City. Harrison sidesteps the question of who the major tenants are, explaining that “the rents doubled, so we lost some tenants.” The fact is, most of us aren’t going to be setting up shop in the pyramid, but it’s great to know we’re welcome to poke around the lobby and the redwood park and partake in this gorgeous architectural gem.