San Francisco

California Academy of Sciences designed by Renzo Piano.

Back entrance.

The de Young by Herzog and Demuron.

Copper facade.

Entrance courtyard.

A cathedral made of...

... bullets, gun parts, casings, and buck shot.

Interior courtyards in the de Young.

View from the observation tower.

This is the inside of the California Academy of Sciences.

Walk under aquarium...

The green roof made of native CA plants.

I'm not a fan of ceiling tiles, but in this case - sans the metal rack they usually sit on and replaced by an undulating pattern formed by hanging them from metal wire they both perform and please.

The Golden Gate Botanical Garden.

Rafael Viñoly's Ray and Dagmar Dolby Regeneration Medicine Building for UCSF.

It abuts a beautiful nature preserve with quite the elevation.

A view to the green roof which is open to staff (and by the looks of it actually gets used).

These are a collection along of homes along Laidley Street that I found interesting for one reason or another.

Morphosis designed San Francisco Federal Building... it's like contemporary brutalism. Looks oddly similar to his Cooper Union building.

The back was the best part. It reminded me of the buildings in Germany.

San Francisco MOMA by Mario Botta.

The brickwork was nice but I'm not thrilled by the building.

Frank Lloyd Wright's V.C. Morris Gift Shop (now Xanadu Gallery).

Easily the best building I saw. Cathedral of Saint Mary of the Assumption designed by Nervi plus some other people.

Notice the size of the people where the concrete touches the floor.

The scale is hard to capture in photos. The roof is 190' tall.

Frank Lloyd Wright's Hanna House - tours booked months in advance.

Ritual Coffeehouse.

Artesa Winery in Napa by Domingo Triay.

French Oak barrels. They were playing Gregorian chants...

Looking out from the entrance.

The Painted Ladies.

This is Buena Vista Park. It made me realize that Chicago doesn't have any parks that are, in some sense of the word, native/natural or even really picturesque landscapes. Maybe North Pond/the Alfred Caldwell Lilly Pool or maybe even Washington Park if Chicago weren't a segregated city.