One Kearny Lobby
One Kearny Street
San Francisco
Tel: 415-561-7768
Designer: IwamotoScott

San Francisco’s IwamotoScott is known for their conceptual designs, but an office building on One Kearny and 710 Market streets offers a tantalizing glimpse of their fully realized work. The team designed the lobby of One Kearny—a tripartite unit that consists of a 1902 building sandwiched between a 1964 Charles Moore addition and a contemporary office by Charles Blozsies—creating a permanent installation that is a modern riff on the traditional coffered ceiling. Here, the coffers have metamorphosed into lights made from sheets of paper-thin wood veneer, and the traditional square form is skewed into diamonds that reflect the angles of the lobby hallway. Lightfold was able to qualify as art for the city’s “two percent for art” funding requirement for projects—and is something you can catch without braving the lines at SFMOMA.