When William Pereira drew this thing up in 1969, San Francisco lost its mind. Too tall. Too weird. Too much. Which is exactly what great art does, it pisses off everyone who thought they had the world figured out. The pyramid slouched toward completion in ’72, all brutal concrete and aluminum skin, a monument to the very idea that cities are supposed to make you uncomfortable, supposed to jar you awake from your architectural stupor.
Stand at its base and crane your neck back. Feel that vertigo? That’s the point. This isn’t some gentle Victorian lady painted in pastels. This is architecture as a punch to the solar plexus, a building that refuses to apologize for existing. Twenty-seven thousand windows catching the light like scales on some ancient beast. Wings jutting out at the 29th floor like it might just take flight and leave this whole city behind.
The beauty, and make no mistake, it’s beautiful in the way a shark is beautiful, lies in its absolute refusal to blend. While the rest of downtown played nice, the Pyramid said: I’m here, deal with it. And 40+ years later, you can’t imagine the skyline without it. That’s the thing about genuine audacity: eventually, the world catches up.