Fun House

It is as perilous to design a prominent building in the giddiness of a tech-fueled economy as it is to go grocery shopping when you’re hungry. You may find yourself with buyers remorse the morning after. This could easily be the case with the New Mission Theater condos – a carnival’s fun house aesthetic on both the Mission Street and Bartlett Street sides.
Today this may come across as a welcome respite to Mission Street’s past several decades of dereliction. But architecture has the unenviable role of having to support its inhabitants through all their meandering moods—joy, yearning, optimism, uncertainty, celebration, grief. A dour neo-brutilist ediface can be as much of a downer when life is going great as the sight of a carnival is when you’ve just lost your job.