San Francisco Public Safety Building

Situated in San Francisco’s Mission Bay Development Area, the new San Francisco Public Safety Building houses several civic offices including the SFPD Police Command Center and a SFFD Fire Station. Designed by HOK in collaboration with Mark Cavagrero Associates, the plan wrapped two entire buildings in a screen wall comprised of over 14,000 folded zinc slats.

The design documents called for field-applied fasteners, attaching each slat onto individual aluminum clips. ELEMENT simplified this by designing a unitized cassette frame system allowing complete frames to be hung on the structure via pre-set pins and then secured with a snap clip. The zinc slats were redesigned to snap onto the ladders, allowing the slats and frames to be shipped and installed separately, and simplifying sequencing requirements.

With all attachments made via snap clips and locating pins, the new design eliminated over 63,000 field fasteners, greatly reducing field labor and installation time. This design met all architectural and engineering requirements, as well as strict budget constraints. Final pricing was less than outsourcing to Asia and allowed the entire shade system to be fabricated domestically on the west coast of the U.S. Production in the U.S. also facilitated rapid replacement of parts to suit unexpected field conditions discovered on site during installation.

• Built to Achieve Gold Certification