One Sansome Street Building vs One Montgomery Tower

Comparing the One Sansome Street Building and the One Montgomery Tower is interesting because they both stand in San Francisco, CA, and were completed within 2 years of each other, but they were designed by different architects.

This offers a unique glimpse at how rival designers approached projects in the same city during the same era.

The One Sansome Street Building is clearly the larger tower of the two, both in terms of height and number of floors. It rises to 551ft (168m) with 42 floors above ground, while the One Montgomery Tower reaches 499ft (152m) with 38 floors above ground.

Despite being taller and having more floors, One Sansome Street Building has less total built-up area than One Montgomery Tower.

Of course, each project may have faced different briefs or regulatory constraints, which we don't really know about and could also explain the outcome.

Both the One Sansome Street Building and the One Montgomery Tower were designed in line with the aesthetic conventions of the Postmodernism style.

At the time, this style was at the height of its popularity. So both William L. Pereira and Skidmore, Owings & Merrill followed what was in many ways expected of them, producing designs that fit comfortably within contemporary architectural norms, rather than breaking with convention.

Both the One Sansome Street Building and the One Montgomery Tower were designed to serve as commercial towers, and that has remained their main use since their completion, serving similar roles in the urban fabric.

These two towers illustrate the many possible ways to combine structure and enclosure in skyscraper design.