Greening San Francisco's Old Mint

Here's a picture of the Old Mint from 1889. It still stands at the corner of Mission St. and Fifth St. in large part thanks to it's foundation, which rests of loose gravel and soil, allowing the building to roll and shift during the 1906 earthquake instead of cracking and splitting apart.

+ View Full Sized Image

By reopening windows that were long sealed, and embracing the courtyard as a natural lung for the building, the Old Mint can return to the very progressive natural ventilation system that Mullet devised back in 1874.

+ View Full Sized Image

This rendering shows how Alfred Mullet's building--he also did the executive building next to the White House--will look when the renovation is complete. At present San Francisco is one of only two major cities without a museum dedicated to its history. Staggeringly, history-obsessed Boston is the other.

+ View Full Sized Image

Here's a view of the Old Mint today. You can see the San Francisco Chronicle building to the south (just across Mission St.) and to the north is a recently-renovated outdoor space called Mint Plaza. An interior courtyard in the Old Mint will be open to the public free of cost, and serve as an internal lung for the building's ventilation system.

+ View Full Sized Image

This diagram shows how the Old Mint will capture rainwater through a canopy system that funnels run-off into a drainage system that can be treated and stored onsite. A green roof will use up some of the water, but other functions, such as use in the plumbing system, will help ease reliance on city water.

+ View Full Sized Image

The building is already quite advanced in terms of passive ventilation and temperature control, but by dividing it into various occupational zones, and permitting localized climactic zones, the building can address particular heating and cooling needs without taking the whole of the structure along with it.

+ View Full Sized Image

The central courtyard in the building was designed to allow daylight to penetrate to the ground floors of the building. In 1914 a new floor was built higher up, cutting off the bottom floors from daylight. Modifying that addition will permit Mullet's ideas to come back into play.

+ View Full Sized Image