Dakin Building
Coordinates: 37°40′36″N 122°23′03″W / 37.676667°N 122.384167°W
The Dakin Building is an architectural award-winning class A office building on the San Francisco Bay in Brisbane, California. Serving as a corporate headquarters building for several companies of national prominence, it was built from the profits of the Garfield character whose licensed products of the R. Dakin Company soared in sales in the late 1980s. Located on Sierra Point, it became a landmark in the San Francisco Bay Area for its distinctive design and was nicknamed the Luke Skywalker building for its dramatic posture overlooking the bay, in contrast to its ominous looking neighbor office building that was nicknamed the Darth Vader building.
The Dakin building has won a number of architectural awards including an American Institute of Architects Design Excellence Award in 1992. According to the San Francisco Examiner the jury awarded this distinction to the Dakin building because "Its chief strength is the atrium, with its views of the San Francisco Bay and asymmetrical skylight". The same newspaper article noted that the building "houses executive offices, research and development facilities and product showrooms". Further in the same newspaper article, it is noted that the Dakin building was built over thick bay mud formations that are expected to subside up to ten feet by the year 2006; therefore, the main entrance ramp was built on a giant hinge to allow the earth to settle, while the building, resting on driven piles, remains stationary. The year 2006 has arrived, and indeed the flexibility in the ramp allowed the building to effectively "rise" above the land around it. However, the subsidence undermined the safety of the ramps causing structural damage to the concrete and opening up small crevice-like cracks in its connective fabric. Their angle eventually violated city regulations for disabled-person access and in October, 2006 the ramps were replaced with a composite design of stairs, disabled-access lift, and switchback ramps.
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