One Embarcadero Center

The One Embarcadero Center is a Brutalist skyscraper designed by John Portman & Associates, and built between 1969 and 1971 in San Francisco, CA.

One Embarcadero Center is not the only name you might know this building by though. The building is, or has also been known as Security Pacific Tower.

Its precise street address is 355 Clay Street, San Francisco, CA. You can also find it on the map here.

The 45 floors of the building are distributed as follows: floors 1 to 3 are high-end retail stores, floors 4 to 41 are Class A office spaces, and floors 42 to 45 are engineering and mechanical spaces.

The building underwent a major restoration in 2020. The architect commissioned to undertake this restoration was Gensler.

John Portman & Associates 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 One Embarcadero Center a reality:

• Dillingham Construction as the Main Contractor
• Trammell Crow Company, and David Rockefeller as the Main Developer

The One Embarcadero Center can be categorized as a Brutalist building.

The One Embarcadero Center uses a frame structure made of steel columns and concrete slabs.

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 modular, or panelized system. This type of facade can function as either a window wall or a curtain wall, depending on the design. Unlike traditional glass curtain walls or window walls though, the modular facade is not primarily composed of glass. Instead, it often features more opaque panels that mimic masonry or stone-clad finishes, with smaller windows cut into the panels.

This type of facade allows the building to benefit from the modern qualities of a curtain wall while giving the design team flexibility to achieve visual aesthetics beyond the all-glass modern skyscraper.

From an aesthetic point of view, the facade features a repetition of concrete and glass panels that organize the facade in narrow and tall windows and vertical concrete stripes that protrude slightly from the window plane.