Five years after seeing this design for the first time, it's grown on me. The complex was designed by Richard Meier, one of today's most well-known starchitects. Meier has lopped the traditional dome off its granite pedestal, and plunked one of glass and steel down in the middle of a sweeping public plaza.
rotunda004-sm.jpgThat rotunda is primarily a ceremonial space--a grand entry point to the office tower behind it, and to another building off to the right (called "the wing") where the city council chambers are located. The rotunda is where mayors are expected to deliver state of the city addresses, and where, for a price, you can host a wedding or corporate banquet. With front doors that are almost always open to the breeze, the rotunda is also the Grand Central clock of the whole place. "If you want to meet someone at city hall the rotunda is the natural place to meet," says Tom Mannheim, San Jose's public information officer.
rotunda010-sm.jpg The 18-story office tower is where 1,700 employees work. The bottom four floors are laid out for customer service functions. Need to pay your water bill or get that building permit: that's where you go. Agencies who get less face-time with the public work out of upper floors; the mayor and city councilors are in the penthouse. The tower also features numerous conference rooms that are open after business hours to neighborhood groups who need places to meet.council-chamber.jpg
Technology in the city council chambers allows any pre-sentation, from Power Point to old-fashioned transparencies, to be projected onto large screens that are easy for the public to see. Public seating is stadium-style. Unlike the old council chambers, where members sat high above the audience, here the public sits in the high chair. Citizens speaking at the podium stand exactly at eye level with the council.
The civic center has many "green" features. The tower is onlyrotunda009-sm.jpg 70 feet wide, which allows natural light to come in to offices so that less artificial lighting is needed. A com-bination of sunscreens in the west-facing windows and open-air vents allow natural heating and cooling. San Jose didn't bother to try and get the building "certified" green, however. ("In order to get certified you have to document what you did to the building," Mannheim says. "Documenting that can be expensive.")
rotunda005-sm-1.jpg My favorite feature of this building, though, is that it has no cafeteria. Why do I care about this? Because self-contained cafeterias suck pedestrian life away from city streets and local bus-inesses: you never have to leave the building, so most people don't. San Jose's City Hall resolves that problem in a satisfying way.The building comes with space for street-level retail. The plan is to have three restaurants fill the space: a sit-down restaurant, a deli and a bakery/coffee place. "One of the goals of building a city hall downtown was to revitalize the economy in this part of San Jose," Mannheim says. "Four new restaurants have just opened up, and there are easily another six or seven in the area. And suddenly 1,700 employees have plopped down right in the middle of them."
But then again, all I've seen are pictures. We must have some 13th Floor readers working in this place. What's it like? What's your favorite thing about working there? What are the flaws that the architect's press releases and the design magazines forget to mention?
Photos: City of San Jose
