Public Art Proposal Display
1500 Mission Street Atrium Lobby Public Art Project Artist Proposals
The San Francisco Arts Commission is supporting the 1500 Mission Street Capital Improvement Project with the commission of a signature public artwork. 1500 Mission Street is being developed by the City as a permit center and office building that will be occupied by several City departments including Building Inspection, Planning, and Public Works. The new City building will be a 16-story tower on 11th Street between Market and Mission Streets, and the newly commissioned large-scale artwork will be suspended in the three-story atrium lobby of the building. The artwork is intended to create a sense of place, as well as delight and visual engagement for the building’s users. Four artists were chosen as finalists by a Public Art Selection Panel to create site-specific proposals for the 1500 Mission Street Atrium Lobby opportunity: Sanaz Mazinani, Tomás Saraceno, Ranjani Shettar, and Sarah Sze.
Home of the Planning Department, Building Inspection, and Public works, the 1500 Mission Building will be a significant hub for the growth, development, and sustainability of San Francisco. These departments work tirelessly together to create a better life for the City's citizens. Surface explores the ways in which these departments reflect the needs of the public through a transparent generative process where ideas and actions commingle, innovate and move the city forward.
Studio Tomás Saraceno’s proposal for San Francisco Arts Commission’s ‘1500 Mission Street Public Art Project’, is an intervention informed by Tomás Saraceno’s two decade long artistic research into natural phenomena, architectural avant-garde ideas of 60’s and 70’s, and speculative thoughts on urbanism, social and environmental utopias.
The 1500 Mission Lobby is a very calm, monochromatic and sophisticated interior. I propose to create a multicomponent installation that infuses a playful aesthetic dynamism into the space. The central column will be where the energy is situated and other components will appear to radiate from its center. I am considering the bridges, the reception and the mezzanines while placing components strategically. One would be able to see the artwork as a whole from a distance, but also appreciate the material, texture and colors up close from the bridges and staircases, although the components will be hung beyond reach. I want to represent energy, an essential force behind everything living and nonliving that is holding the world together. The central column is inspired by the structure of DNA, the building block for life that links all living forms. The artwork represents the energy of the building, with its open architectural spaces, multipurpose functions and the diversity of people working and passing through, as an animated, positive force to create and sustain a civic organization. 
For the new 1500 Mission Street Atrium lobby, Sarah Sze will create a site-specific aerial sculpture that will occupy and activate the building’s atrium. Emerging from the architecture of the atrium the work will spin down
from the ceiling with a centrifugal force as if it were a swirling metropolis. Gestures emanating from the upper reaches of the space will flow dynamically down towards the central lobby of the building as if drawn by natural forces or air currents. As the piece cascades downward it will multiply and develop into a complex floating city of objects and structures. Expanding outward exponentially it will create an immersive world with an altered sense of gravity, scale and time. Energetic and complex, the sculpture will seem caught in a state of growth and flux. As visitors approach the sculpture it will immerse them in a micro scale at its interior, while simultaneously gesturing to a macro scale as it advances over the larger space of the atrium.
Opportunity For Public Comment
Arts Commission staff presented the qualifications of 21 artists selected from the 2017/2018 Prequalified Artist Pool and the San Francisco International Airport: Terminal 1 Large-scale Suspended Artwork Pool to a Public Art Selection Panel. The panel consisted of an Arts Commissioner, a member of the design team, two representatives of the client agency and three arts professionals. The Panel reviewed and scored the artists on the short list and selected the four highest scoring artists to create proposals for the site: Sanaz Mazinani, Tomás Saraceno, Ranjani Shettar, and Sarah Sze. The finalists then developed their proposals that are on display at Public Works or Planning Department and on the Arts Commission website for public comment from September 5 to 14, 2017. Comments will be summarized and shared with the Panel prior to the final selection. Please note that comments by interested members of the public do not constitute a vote.
The proposals presented in this exhibition are the finalists' preliminary concepts. The selected proposal will be further developed and refined to determine the fabrication technique, and meet all feasibility, maintenance, safety and other requirements, as needed. All final designs are subject to approval by the Arts Commission prior to implementation.
Please take a few minutes to review the proposals on display here and complete a comment form. You may also email your comments to sfacpublicartcomment@sfgov.org, or hand deliver/mail comments to 401 Van Ness Avenue, Room 325 by September 14, 2017, 5 p.m.
The Final Selection Panel meeting will take place on September 18, 2017, 9 a.m. – 1 p.m. at 401 Van Ness Avenue, Room 302. All Artist Selection Panel meetings are open to the public. An agenda for the meeting will be posted 72-hour in advance of the meeting on Arts Commission’s website under the Public Meeting section: www.sfartscommission.org/calendar.