“The competition to build a new transit center and skyscraper on Mission Street isn’t a beauty contest. It’s a gamble in city-making that could redefine San Francisco in the sky and on the ground. How fitting, then, that the tower best suited to replace the Transamerica Pyramid as the Bay Area’s tallest building is every bit as startling as that 35-year-old icon once was – and, at first glance to many eyes, every bit as harsh. The design comes from the firm of England’s Lord Richard Rogers, and it hums with surprising life.”