[1977]

Interesting article and a rough timeline.

...the shower water in San Francisco’s newest ultra-luxe hotel will be heated by tall solar tubes embedded within the building’s glass walls.
Those tubes, which would also screen the bathroom interiors from outside eyes, would be part of a 37-story tower at 555 Howard St. being designed by Renzo Piano Building Workshop. The pairing of system and structure is novel and not by accident.
“The idea is to express in some ways how a building can be used, how it works,” said Elisabetta Trezzani, a partner in Piano’s firm, which is working on the tower with San Francisco’s Mark Cavagnero Associates. “We want people to wonder, ‘What is the story behind what we see?’”

Construction isn’t set to begin before next spring. But there’s a faux curtain wall test panel tucked in an Embarcadero pier, with 20 6-foot tubes lined up vertically, large acrylic panes on either side.

The acrylic is a stand-in for what would be double walls of clear glass, a cladding system that’s common in Europe but unusual here. There’s a sustainability advantage: The 12-inch void between the two layers would function like a chimney to pull hot air upward, keeping the rooms behind the walls a bit cooler. It’s also a space, potentially, to be creative.

Construction of the tower designed by Renzo Piano Building Workshop in collaboration with Mark Cavagnero Associates Architects is set to begin in the spring of 2018.

More: http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/p...photo-14279894