The Scariest Guardrail Detail Known to Man
One Rincon Tower
San Francisco from 60 Floors Up
The Guardrail of Peril
My coworkers and I got an exclusive look at One Rincon Hill here in San Francisco a couple of weeks ago. One Rincon is the new 60 story residential tower in the heart of SOMA and adjacent to the Bay Bridge. The Tower is tall and thin, and for residents who own a penthouse unit, they will be nearly 800 feet above the level of the bay. The views are breathtaking.
One detail in the building that is downright scary is the guardrail for the patio on each unit. As you can see in the picture above, the guardrail consists of a stainless steel frame that cups a piece of laminated glass. That’s all there is to it. From what I understand, there is no top to the guardrail and there are no corner pieces to the guardrail. I know for a fact that this is completely safe and condo owners have nothing to worry about, however, when you are up at the 60th floor, the patios begin to lose their appeal. I personally don’t see myself ever using the patios. The picture I show above in red shows a patio that is near completed on the 14th floor a mere 160 feet above the ground. Now imagine being on one of these at four times the height shown in the picture. It begins to make these details seem much more unreasonable.
And we all know why the designers have chosen to do this detail: 1. the clean glass detail allows for unbroken views of the horizon, 2. because they can, and their egos told them to. Now that I really know what it feels like to experience this detail (because lord knows I’ve been tempted to do the same detail myself) , I would possibly consider not only a visual barrier of solid material on the top rail, but also a glass guardrail that is maybe 4 feet tall rather than the required 3 feet-six.
November 13th, 2007 at 5:00 pm
the guardrail design might be less a function of the ego of the architect than the architect’s anticipation of the boldness of the future occupants. you’re not going to have mom and pop with their little rugrats living in a unit with a price threshold near or at a million while cluttered with plastic toys. you’ll have brash, young or old captains of industry, risktaker-types testing their friends mettle by jokingly locking them out there for 10 minutes in the wind.