After a global competition to entitle and purchase the site in 2007, Argentine American architect César Pelli was selected to design the tower. In the early 2000s it was decided that a 16-block neglected area of SoMa known as the Transbay District should be updated to improve the transit systems and surroundings. These days it's more normal to donate enough money to get your name on a hospital instead, but the Salesforce Tower isn't normal. It was even considered gauche when newspaper and sugar magnates tried to outbuild each other in San Francisco in the 1890s, and it took an earthquake to end that ego-off.

Zing.īuilding the tallest building in a city to show your success was a common 20th century pissing match, fought by men with egos the size of their blueprints. Here’s another funny joke - put your name on the most obtrusive and expensive thing San Francisco has ever seen, as the biggest private employer in the city … then three years later announce that the majority of your workforce will no longer be working in S.F. It felt like a dirty wink from the tech giant to the little people - hey, we’re funny too. When you’ve built a corporate monolith that forever changes how the city looks and feels, in the name of big tech, are you allowed to be in on the joke? A joke about an evil soulless monstrosity sucking the life out of all those in its viewshed?

Salesforce building park