The Incubator
A seven-story freestanding egg-shaped structure proposed for insertion within the vast interior of San Francisco's Armory Building, creating 270,000 square feet of office space with public amenities — basketball courts, a swimming pool, a library, and a restaurant — organized around a central light trap using fresnel lens technology.
In order to accommodate burgeoning multimedia and e-commerce ventures, the existing Armory Building in San Francisco’s Mission District was selected as a development site. The building contains one of the largest open interior spaces in the United States. The building proposal called for inserting within the existing interior a new seven-story-high, freestanding structure. An egg-shaped structure maximizes the available volume to create 270,000 square feet (25,000 square meters) of rentable office space with additional public amenities including basketball courts, a swimming pool, a library, and a restaurant on the lower level. Located at the core of the scheme is a light trap, a void in the center of the building that draws light from a large skylight down through the building interior using fresnel lens technology.
