Visa’s Market Support Center by Henning Larsen is completeheadq
The 13-story tower is one of four buildings in Phase One of the multiphase Mission Rock neighborhood.
The Visa building is an architectural centerpiece, establishing the neighborhood as a new place to work, play, and live. Transforming 28 acres of San Francisco’s southern waterfront, Mission Rock is a new neighborhood for the city.
A public-private partnership between Tishman Speyer, the San Francisco Giants, and the Port of San Francisco, the mixed-use development is establishing a new framework for civic life.
Former industrial land is revived as home to a residential community, innovative workplaces, local producers, makers and creators, shops and cafes and social amenities.
The Visa Market Support Center features a white, ruggedly faceted façade, accented by terraces that ascend from the building’s base, visually extending nearby China Basin Park, a new 5-acre public park by SCAPE which opened in April 2024.
From street level, the carved massing creates a dynamic, varied appearance, reminiscent of San Francisco’s famous topography. Located on Toni Stone Crossing, the Visa campus appears as a detailed rock face, a dynamic mass of stacked blocks and vertical sheers.
The tower itself rises up from a fifth-floor mesa, crowned with wind-sheltered rooftop terraces. Visa’s employees have access to outdoor terraces which wrap around from the second to fifth floors and crown the building’s peak.
They offer a peek into the Giants’ Oracle Park as well as views of the San Francisco skyline and the Bay Bridge stretching across the waters of the San Francisco Bay. A shared vision, the main urban plan was collectively designed by Perkins and Will and CMG.
Henning Larsen, Studio Gang, WORKac, MVRDV and SCAPE were appointed to create the architectural vision for Phase One, supported by local teams.
At full completion, Mission Rock will consist of eight acres of parks and green space, over 1,000 new homes, with 40% reserved for moderate-income households, approximately 1.4 million square of office space and 200,000 square feet of retail and restaurant space.
“To create a space that integrates seamlessly into the fabric of San Francisco’s newest nieghborhood, our approach to Mission Rock was born out of meaningful collaboration and a shared understanding of the urban environment.
Through a series of workshops with clients and co-designers, we developed a scheme in which individual elements are conceptually united to create an architectural and social centerpiece for the city,” said Daniel Baumann, Design Director, Henning Larsen. Source by Henning Larsen.
Location: San Francisco, CA, USA
Architect: Henning Larsen
Architect of record: Adamson Associates Architects
Associate architect: Y.A. Studio
Landscape architect: GLS
Landscape architect (China Basin Park): SCAPE
Construction manager: Hathaway Dinwiddie Construction Company
Structural engineer: Thornton Tomasetti, OLMM
Civil engineer: BKF
Building enclosure consultant: Heintges
MEP design: Acco, AFP, PAE, Cupertino
LEED consultant: Brightworks
Waterproofing consultant: SGH
Lighting consultant: Pritchard Peck
Life safety/code consultant: The Fire Consultants
Acoustics consultant: Papadimos Group
Acessibility/ADA consultant: ZNA, Earthlink (ADA)
Transportation consultant: Nelson Nygaard
Wind tunnel consultant: RWDI
Vertical transportation consultant: EWCG
Geotechnical consultant: Langan
Client: San Francisco Giants, Tishman Speyer, Port of San Francisco
Size: 28,810 m2
Year: 2024
Photographs: Jason O’Rear, Courtesy of Henning Larsen
