During any given week, I’m told, 100 or more design buffs take self-guided tours of the San Francisco Federal Building (SFFB) by Pritzker Prize'winning architect Thom Mayne.

Nerd Alert: A new wave of developments in San Francisco show the danger of betting the urban future on high-tech. Every decade or so, an economic boom roils San Francisco. Self-appointed arbiters of cultural taste in this progressive and parochial city declare that gentrification is the most insidious urban danger of all. News flash! Our City will be trampled by newcomers who don't share Our Values. Photo © Shae Rocco San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee (foreground, center), Forest City Vice President Jack Sylvan (foreground, right), and others bike through Pier 70. Plans for the site call for food trucks, farmers'

When architect John Galen Howard mapped a Beaux-Arts plan for the University of California, Berkeley campus in the early 20th century, one of the first buildings erected in its spirit was Durant Hall—a two-story steel-framed structure completed in 1911 and wrapped in granite along classical lines.

A fritted-Glass wall conceals a scarred facade and makes an old gem glow.

Bay Area architects see their affordable housing work as part of a long tradition of progressive culture and urbanism. That concern can spawn buildings where the aesthetic goal is to fade into the background—as is the case with many San Francisco affordable-housing projects from the 1980s and ’90s. Now, especially in more transitional districts, there’s a desire to make a splash, not just among bureaucrats or architects, but nonprofit developers who often represent a new generation of decision-makers. Photo ''Brian Rose One of Baker’s frequent clients is Citizens Housing Corporation, a 16-year-old company that has 23 complexes in the Bay