37.7879°N / 122.4075°W · United States
Two grids that refuse to speak to each other, and a diagonal between them. The north-south streets do not meet from one side to the other, and that is the signature of this map.
You choose the framing, the palette and the words of the caption. The work is drawn from real data, then printed to order in the workshop closest to you.
North-west of Market, streets at nine degrees from the cardinal points and blocks of one hundred and twenty-six metres by eighty-four. South-east, blocks of one hundred and eighty by one hundred and twenty, aligned on Mission Street. Two surveys, two periods, and no wish to join them: it is that offset you read at a glance, and it holds the whole eastern half of the drawing. The earthquake of 1906 changed nothing there: it is the grid that survived, not the buildings.
To the west, a perfectly regular grid laid over old dunes, cut clean by the long rectangle of Golden Gate Park. It was drawn before it was lived in: a map of 1868 fixed the street grid of today’s Sunset over what some period plans called the Great Sand Waste. The district stayed almost empty until the twentieth century, was built up mostly in the 1920s and 1930s, and shortly after the war the dunes had vanished under the houses. All around, water on three sides, and beneath the grid, hills the plan never took into account.
A light overall value and two clear accents: an off-white ground for a fabric of stucco and painted wood, a crisp blue green water on three sides, a dark green kept for the Presidio and Golden Gate Park. The city has no dominant brick or tile; what colours it is the hard light and the ochre of the dune sand. The palette should stay cool, with a single warm breath.
The three figures that make the map all unfold from west to east: the rectangle of Golden Gate Park, the mass of the Presidio, and the diagonal of Market running up to the north-east and the water. The frame has to hold the whole park, all of Market from end to end, and the northern coastline as far as the Golden Gate strait, without which the peninsula loses its reason for being. That is why the opening frame steps back a notch rather than tightening. One point in passing: “Golden Gate” means first the strait, not the bridge. Landscape will give you the three figures larger.
The title, a line beneath it, the coordinates. The name of a street, a date, the name of a hill: that line is what turns a plan of San Francisco into your plan of San Francisco.
Sixteen inks, in the configurator’s order. It is not in the catalogue, but you will find it in the palette library, filed under its material.
Opens the colour workshop with these 16 inks in place: change one, keep the rest.
It will wait in your account, ready for any piece.
Market Street is the border between two surveys. The streets on its south-eastern side run parallel or perpendicular to it; those to the north-west sit at nine degrees from the cardinal points, inherited from the Vioget plan of 1839, with blocks of four hundred and twelve feet by two hundred and seventy-five. Those to the south, imposed by the landowners and aligned on Mission Street, are six hundred feet by four hundred. The 1847 survey by the engineer Jasper O’Farrell confirmed both. The street runs four point eight kilometres, from the Embarcadero in front of the Ferry Building to Portola Drive.
Golden Gate Park covers one thousand and seventeen acres, four hundred and twelve hectares, and forms a rectangle more than four point eight kilometres from east to west by about eight hundred metres north to south. It opened in 1870 and was created from nothing on seaside dunes, in the then unincorporated district known as the Outside Lands, to a plan by the engineer William Hammond Hall.
It stands on the old Yerba Buena cove, filled in during the gold rush, and wooden ships lie buried in it. They turn up during foundation digs: the General Harrison in 2001 under 425 Battery Street, the Candace in 2005 at the corner of Spear and Folsom. The straight eastern shoreline is therefore not a shore, it is fill laid over a fleet.
Yes. The search covers the whole world, from a capital to a hamlet. For the Sky collection, any date works, past or future: the sky is calculated.
From 21 × 29.7 cm to 84.1 × 118.9 cm, that is A4 to A0, portrait or landscape depending on the material. Every size is shown with its price in the editor.
Four, from the barest to the most dressed.
Allow 1 to 4 working days for making, up to 7 for hand-assembled frames and canvases, then 1 to 6 working days in transit with standard delivery.
Digital editions are available immediately: the file of your piece is emailed to you as soon as you order.
The street you walked up for want of anything better, the end of the park you went to, the junction where the two grids slip. The seam is the same for everyone. What you keep on either side of it is not.
Compose my San Francisco poster
