From a post by Lynette Evans   about our Port of San Francisco Proposal

“Brent Bucknum of Oakland’s Hyphae Design Laboratory gave a rapid-fire account of the engineering firm’s answer to the challenge: “How can changes coming to Pier 27 for the 2013 America’s Cup improve the waterfront in a way that it becomes an asset for the city?”

“According to Dan Hodapp, senior waterfront planner for the Port of San Francisco, the triangular, 15.5-acre Pier 27 that will house a new cruise ship terminal sticks out farther than any other into the Bay. The wind-whipped 2.5-acre tip of the pier will only be available for public use when cruise ships aren’t in port — about half the year — but that didn’t daunt Bucknum and others at the civil and economic engineering firm.
Hyphae designers quickly looked beyond the 2.5 acres, realizing the entire pier could be an opportunity to do what they like most to do: “designing a green infrastructure for sites that are contaminating the most.”
Anyone who’s read the signs along San Francisco’s waterfront warning fishermen not to consume much, if any, of their catch knows that the old piers hover above a century-and-a-half of toxic industrial deposits and other crud. Not to worry, Hyphae’s Park A-Peel plan that would create a wind-calming landscaped bowl for public use at the end of the pier would also tackle “remediation on a Bay scale” by floating plant-filled waste-treatment barges beside the pier to clean up runoff from the parking lot and creating a water-filtering oyster and mussel habitat below. Redirecting truck traffic flow would allow year-round public access to the park.
Bucknum’s enthusiasm for creating a working pier/public park that would actually clean up after itself was infectious in a crowd used to questioning conventional thinking and reconfiguring design parameters. As for city fathers and nearby Telegraph Hill dwellers, I imagine the proposed hot tubs might prove too much of “a hangout,” and Hodapp seemed skeptical that money would be found for all the bells and whistles Bucknum described.
So don’t be surprised if the America’s Cup boats are viewed by a few hundred people lucky enough to score a pass to the still wind-blasted end of Pier 27 — that is, if their access isn’t cut off by trucks delivering supplies to a cruise ship docked at the pier.”
–Lynette Evans

http://blog.afriendlyhouse.com/2011/10/05/architecture-and-the-city-winds-up.aspx