Martin Filler

The stunning new Federal Building in San Francisco leaves little doubt that its principal designer, Thom Mayne, of the Santa Monica based firm Morphosis, is now preeminent among his 60- something generation of American architects and that he must also be numbered among a tiny fraternity of contemporary international masters, including Rem Koolhaas, Jacques Herzog, Pierre de Meuron, and Jean Nouvel. Mayne’s high-profile, noncommercial commissions (mainly for governmental and educational institutions) have kept him from becoming another brandable marketing shill. He in turn has been creating buildings consistent in their seriousness, ambition, and social purpose. Mayne’s new masterpiece, latest in his exhilarating run of commissions from the United States government, is his most impressive work to date. The mid-rise urban office slab, adjacent to San Francisco’s Beaux-Arts Civic Center, retains all the brash power that first brought him (and his former partner, Michael Rotondi) praise during the early 1980s, but it confirms an important artist now at the top of his game. There has been nothing of comparable daring built in America under the auspices of the federal government in living memory... [+]