A fountain that challenged Apple

There was once a Levi's store in the Union Square of downtown San Franscisco which is now replaced by a large Apple store. The Levi's store had a famous bronze folk art fountain behind it, named Ruth Asawa Fountain after its creator, and the Levi's store had a triangular plan form, reducing its width in the rear, and thus providing a good setting for this fountain.

When Apple initially submitted plans for its new retail store in place of the Levis Stores, everybody thought it would be a welcome addition to the place. San Franciso’s Mayor Lee described the new Apple Store as “quite simply incredible” and that he could think of “no better location for the world’s most stunning Apple Store than right here in Union Square”.

But then people realized that this new proposal would eliminate the fountain, there was a huge public outcry. The mayor retracted his statement and admitted that he didn’t realize that the plans called for the elimination of the Ruth Asawa fountain.

The reason for this turnabout lies in the history of the fountain. It is designed by Ruth Asawa, a Japanese American sculptor, who was the driving force behind the creation of the San Francisco School of the Arts, which was renamed recently as the Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts in tribute to her.

The fountain was Installed in 1973 and was made of baker’s clay and cast in bronze. It is seven feet high and a focal point of a triangular-shaped public square behind the Levis outlet. According to Asawa herself, “The fountain depicts San Francisco, and approximately 250 friends and school children helped in its making by contributing self-portraits, cars, buildings, and various San Francisco landmarks.” The fountain is part of the public memory in SF for 40 years now.

Apple’s proposal therefore evoked strong resentment. Moreover, the initial proposal for the building was a characterless box of metal and glass that contributed nothing unique to the local landscape and had no identity except the Apple symbol in the center of the huge glass façade on Post Street.

San Francisco Chronicle urban design critic John King pointed out the absurdity of “a company renowned for design innovation hiring one of the world’s most acclaimed architecture firms, only to unload a box that would look at home in Anymall, U.S.A.”

This in fact is true of all the multinational companies and their views on architectural design at large: they are interested only in promotion of their brand and its image, and do not care about the context. But this is not the only issue: in trying to reflect the corporate brand identity we tend to convert architecture itself into a product, relinquishing its primary role in place-making in an urban setting. As a respondent on the article in arch.daily commented, ‘the world would be better off without the generic chain stores of drive throughs, gas stations, shopping malls etc that plague our cities.’

Fortunately, in this particular case, Apple bowed to the will of the people, and made a revised proposal, which incorporated the fountain, but reduced the size of the open plaza, as the apple building is rectangular (the existing Levis building is triangular) and covers a part of the existing triangular plaza. 

This gesture could not have come at a more appropriate time - Ruth Asawa died on 5^th August. So it became some kind of tribute to her. The news item in SFGate starts with the line - ‘Ruth Asawa fans can rest easy - the artist's beloved bronze fountain near Union Square is staying pretty much right where it is.’

The design of the building, however, has not changed, it remains a tall, taut cube of glass and steel from Post Street (South side). The only difference is that instead of being walled off by steel panels on the Stokton street, the design includes an 8-foot-wide glass "window" in the centre of the East wall, which continues over the roof, becoming a skylight. Both these changes – retention of the fountain & the opening up of the Stokton street façade have been appreciated by the mayor, as Christine Falvey, Lee's director of communications has been quoted in the news. And here the matter rests. As it happens, the last item on the SFGate online news is an announcement of the Public Memorial service for Ruth Asawa.

Public memory, so it is said, is short. But it seems that when public places in an urban setting have been retained in collective public memory for more than a generation, the sentiments attached to them do not fade. Architects, as creative professionals, need to be sensitive to this intangible aspect of our public spaces.