Millennium Tower

The Millennium Tower is a Contemporary skyscraper designed by Handel Architects, and built between 2005 and 2009, for a reported $350 million dollars, in San Francisco, CA.

Its precise street address is 301 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA. You can also find it on the map here.

The Millennium Tower has received multiple architecture awards for its architectural design since 2009. The following is a list of such prizes and awards:

• Award of Merit - Concrete industry Board, Design Excellence Award, Green Design - Multi-Housing news in 2008
• Top 10 Skyscrapers of the Year - Emporis in 2009
• Best Market-Rate Residential Project - San Francisco Business Journal in 2010

The Millennium is comprised of two towers connected by a glass atrium: The taller tower has 58 floors and one basement, and houses luxury residences (Grand Residences) and semi-luxury residences (The Residences). The second tower has 12 floors above ground and a 5 story subterranean garage, and houses loft-style condominiums (City Residences) .

The building underwent a major restoration between 2020 and 2022. The architect commissioned to undertake this restoration was Treadwell & Rollo.

Handel Architects was the architecture firm in charge of the architectural design.

That being said, architecture is a complex discipline involving many professionals from different fields, without whom this building would have not been possible. We will surely be leaving out a lot of names here, but here is a list of the people we do know also played their part in making the Millennium Tower a reality:

• DeSimone Consulting Engineers in charge of Structural Engineering
• Webcor Builders as the Main Contractor
• Mission Street Development, LLC as the Main Developer

The Millennium Tower can be categorized as a Contemporary building.

The Millennium Tower uses a frame structure made of concrete columns and beams.

A frame structure uses a combination of beams and columns to sustain the building's weight. The walls in this case are non-load bearing, which allows for more flexibility when distributing the interior spaces.

The facade uses a non-load bearing curtain wall system. This means the curtain wall modules are anchored to the building's structural frame, typically by being attached to the edge of the floor slabs. The curtain wall system connects to the slabs using brackets, anchors, and mullions, which transfer the loads imposed by wind and temperature changes, to the building's primary structural elements.

This setup allows the curtain wall to accommodate differential movement between the facade and the structural frame, such as thermal expansion, floor deflection, or sway from wind forces. This system's integration with the slab edges also allows for continuous insulation and weatherproofing layers.

From an aesthetic point of view, the facade features a continuous glass and aluminum curtain wall. Each module of the curtain wall is divided into 3 panes: a fixed glass spandrel, a large glass pane which can be slightly opened for ventilation, and a short aluminum pane marking the position of each concrete slab behind it.

A series of vertical setbacks with beveled corners cause the building's silhouette to change as the daylight shifts.