PROPOSED CAMP MUSEUM CONTINUES TO DRAW CRITICISM
John Upton of the San Francisco Examiner reports that architects failed to quell organized opposition to the construction of a proposed gallery in the Presidio with their design of a low-rise art museum that burrows into a grassy slope in the most historic part of the national park. The original plans, released last year, called for a boxy fifty-foot-tall museum designed to house the contemporary art collection of Gap founder Don Fisher and his wife, Doris.
Opponents of the project argued that the proposed museum, part of a planned overhaul of the Main Post, would be inappropriate in a national park and out of character among aging brick and timber military buildings. The Presidio Trust, a federal agency, ruled in August that the proposed museum would hurt the historical surroundings of the Parade Ground, and Fisher, a former Trust board member, was ordered to move or scale back the project. The newly released plans reduce the prominence of the museum, dubbed the Contemporary Art Museum of the Presidio, or CAMP, by moving a portion of the building underground, with an undulating green roof to help the structure blend into its vegetated surroundings. Planners propose breaking the gallery into two new buildings with a maximum height of twenty-seven feet.
But despite the changes, the new plans have done little to placate the Presidio Historical Association, Marina Community Association, and other critics. At a public meeting Tuesday to discuss the Main Post overhaul, groups and critics rallied against the plans and voiced anger regarding the proposed museum. “We do not want that new construction in the Presidio,” Presidio Historical Association President Gary Widman said. The 250-person crowd in attendance politely applauded project architects and other supporters of the museum, but it was fiercest following criticisms by speakers of the Trust’s Main Post plans and of its public-consultation process.
