Democrats, beware. You could be impeachingyour own credibility with these secret impeachmenthearings into President Trump’s dealings withUkraine.

Americans inherently distrust any kind of govern­ment action that takes place out of public view,whether it’s a city council closed session or a closed­door congressional hearing.

For years, Democrats have led the charge fortransparency in government, be it foreign policy orinvestigations into police shootings. Now these sameDemocrats are going behind closed doors to get thegoods on Trump.

They can point to Republicans’ private interviewsduring their endless Benghazi investigations as justi­

Brown continues on B9

Demsmust open doorsto impeaching Trump

WILLIE’SWORLDBy Willie Brown

San Francisco Chronicle and SFChronicle.com | Sunday, October 27, 2019 | Section B xxxxx

BayArea InsideObituary: Mary Margaret ‘Moo’ Anderson,modern art collector and benefactor B12

New BART General Manager Robert Pow­ers is on listening tour of the embattled com­muter system.

And, boy, is he getting an earful.“I was coming in on a Richmond train last

week,” rider Bill Brown told him the otherday. “There was a homeless guy sprawled outon the seat who has s— himself. It was a won­derful odor and it cleared out everybody inthe car,” said Brown, who commutes into SanFrancisco daily from El Cerrito del NorteStation.

“We need cleaner trains and fewer farejumpers,” said another commuter standing inline with Brown at Civic Center Station.

PHIL MATIER

BART riders sound offto new general manager

Matier continues on B11

In Mayor London Breed’s vision, a mobiletrailer sits outside a health facility in San Fran­cisco. Inside the safe injection site on wheels arecase managers and health workers armed withclean syringes, cotton balls and tourniquets.

Users can walk inside with their own heroinor other illegaldrug and injectwith staffers onhand to help en­sure they don’toverdose. Theycan ride out theirhigh in the adjacenthealth facility andlearn about drugtreatment servicesthere, too.

A nonprofit created solely to run the trailermanages it and maintains no other assets. Itowns no building. That way, if federal author­ities seize the illegal enterprise, all they get are atrailer and drug paraphernalia.

The best part of this sensible idea? Fewer peo­

Huge hurdleto bold planfor safe druginjection site

Knight continues on B2

HEATHERKNIGHTOn SanFrancisco

There’s a reason they call it “speed.”It can be smoked, snorted, swallowed or

pushed through a needle into a waiting vein.And as methamphetamine saws its way intothe bloodstream, flooding the brain’s pleasurecenters with dopamine, it induces a rush ofeuphoria, heightened energy and acute alert­ness.

The high can last for up to 16 hours andoften comes with agitation, hallucinations andparanoia, sometimes causing users to becomeaggressive or violent. Then comes the crash asthe sensation fades, leaving a hole that onlymore meth can fill. For people already sufferingfrom mental illness, the effects can be all themore debilitating.

“In the beginning, everything seems supergood. Things are falling apart, but you don’t seeit right away. It’s a fantasy,” said Isaac Jackson,who struggled with meth for years before get­ting clean and is now president of the San

Sobering continues on B3

City seekslifeline formeth usersSobering center proposedto offer refuge, treatment

ByDominic Fracassa

To understand whyJeanne Gang is a deeplyimportant architect, notjust a spinner of eye­catching forms, check outher four Bay Area proj­ects.

There’s Mira, the shim­mering condominiumtower near the Embarca­dero that swirls upwardlike a blunt corkscrew. AtChina Basin, a bayfrontparking lot will be trans­formed into offices andhousing by a team ofarchitects that Ganghelped assemble.

But the Chicago archi­tect and her firm, StudioGang, also have designeda new campus for Califor­nia College of the Arts

that will emphasize envi­ronmental sustainability.She’s even tackling one ofthe least glamorous build­ing types of all, a govern­ment office building forSan Mateo County.

The eclectic mix ofprojects is a timely re­minder that architectureshould engage broadercultural needs. It alsoreflects the engaged curi­osity of a designer whosework has earned her aspot on the Time 100 anda MacArthur Fellowship,as well as architecturalawards and developercommissions.

“I’m lucky enough towork on projects I’mfascinated by,” Gang, 55,said in a phone interviewthis month. “And I lovemy work, so I’m workingall the time.”

Studio Gang opened anoffice last year in SanFrancisco, a light­filledspace in Dogpatch that

Architect going farpast twisting towers

Liz Hafalia / The Chronicle

Above: Mira, thefirst building ontheWest Coastdesigned byChicago architectJeanne Gang, is a39­storyresidential towernear completionat Folsom andSpear streets.

Left: Gang, whoopened an S.F.office in 2018, isworking onseveral other BayArea projects.

By John King

Mira SFGang continues on B10

“The shape hasa lot to do withtrying to besustainable.”Jeanne Gang, architectand founder of Studio Gang

B10 | Sunday, October 27, 2019 | SFChronicle.com XXXXX

BAY AREA

now holds six architects.There are 89 staffers inChicago and another 38in New York. But unlikefirms where branchoffices operate withnear­autonomy, or whereheadquarters calls theshots, Studio Gangdraws on various staffersas needed.

“Things are prettyfluid,” said SteveWie­senthal, who heads theSan Francisco office. “Wereally do operate as asingle design studio.”

All three offices areengaged in the MissionRock project, where theSan Francisco Giants anddeveloper Tishman Spey­er will start site workthis winter to turn theteam’s parking lot atChina Basin into a com­pact realm of housingtowers, office buildingsand public space.

Gang conceived thecenterpiece of the 10.5­acre first phase, a 23­story residential towerwith floors stacked casu­ally like books on theirside. She also drew upthe list of potential archi­tects that the developerused to decide who tohire. Beside Studio Gangthere is Workac of NewYork, MVRDV from theNetherlands and Hen­ning Larsen of Denmark.Another New York firm,Scape, is landscape ar­chitect for the 5­acrewaterside park.

It’s an ongoing collab­oration of people whoshared walking tours ofSan Francisco and fash­ioned a set of sharedprinciples — “make podi­ums into ‘mesas’ thatenliven their surround­ings” is one — beforedesign work started.

“The outcome hasbeen really satisfying butI must admit, there was adeep pit in my stomach,”when Gang proposed theongoing back­and­forth,said Carl Shannon, man­aging director of Tish­man Speyer’s San Fran­cisco office. “There aresome great firms outthere that would notcollaborate (well) thisway.”

The egalitarian ap­proach by five firms —four of which are led bywomen — is one that theparticipants savor.

“There’s been a genu­ine philosophy of radicalsharing, and that’s liber­ating,” said Kate Orff, thefounder of Scape and,like Gang, the recipientof a MacArthur Fellow­ship, often called a “ge­nius grant.” “It’s theanti­‘master planner’master plan.”

The project for SanMateo County, in its ownway, is equally adventur­ous.

It’s an administrationbuilding coupled with aremake of the county’sgovernment campus onthe edge of downtownRedwood City. Four sto­ries of offices — shapedfrom above like an an­gled elongated doughnut— will sit atop six sculpt­ed columns rising 32 feetto clear room for a free­standing, glass­enclosedBoard of Supervisors’chamber and a ground­floor plaza that flows intosurrounding spaces.

The project, whichbreaks ground in Decem­ber, is designed to gener­ate as much energy on­site as the county needsto operate the building.As for the upper floors,which overlap one anoth­er, they’re laid out in partto reduce heat gain bydeflecting direct sunlightduring the day.

“The shape has a lot todo with trying to be sus­tainable — we’ve beenworking on the conceptof solar carving in all ourbuildings,” including

Mission Rock’s off­kiltertower, Gang said.“Tweaking and pinchingcan help optimize itsperformance.”

Another aspect of theproject that attractedGang is the idea of usingarchitecture to showcaselocal government — tomake it enticing to citi­zens who might bedrawn to a new gather­ing space in RedwoodCity’s temperate climate.Or to potential hireswho, in Silicon Valley,have no shortage of em­ployment options aroundthem.

“I like that San Mateois thinking about how, ina democracy, you canmake the best workerswant to join governmentrather than a tech firm,”Gang said. “We want tohonor that.”

That approach reso­nates with county offi­cials, who selected thefirm after a competitionthat began with 18 con­tenders.

“The creativity fromStudio Gang fit with thevision of the county su­pervisors,” said AdamEly, director of the coun­

ty’s Project DevelopmentUnit. “We want to be ableto attract and retainhigh­quality employeesand let them feel they’reworking in a high­qual­ity environment.”

What materializes inSanMateo won’t attractthe attention generatedby Aqua, Chicago’s en­thralling 89­story cliff­like concrete slab from2009 that put Gang onthe architectural map. OrMira, with its tightlytwisted metal form thatGang likens to “migrat­ing bays.”

The county buildingfits within what the firmcalls “actionable ide­alism” — efforts that takein everything from smallpublic and culturalbuildings to researchefforts on how inner­citypolice stations might berecast from symbols ofofficial power by addingsuch community servicesas health facilities andbasketball courts.

Then there’s the ex­pansion of the CaliforniaCollege of the Arts,which should begin con­struction next spring.

Studio Gang has fash­ioned a project that, aswith SanMateo, aims tobe carbon­neutral. But italso will pull all of theschool’s craft spaces andindustrial labs together.The classroom struc­tures around them willbe built of structuraltimber.

“Firms like Jeanne’sare few and far be­tween,” said David Meck­el, director of campusplanning for the college.“She’s got these devel­oper projects that are soinventive, and then thesemore public projectswhere they’re asking,‘how do we do somethingthat matters.’ ”

Gang puts it anotherway.

“I ammotivated by thethrill of discovery, so Ilike thinking about diffi­cult and complex issues,”she said this month. “Butthen I don’t just want tothink about them. I wantto do something.”

John King is The SanFrancisco Chronicle’surban design critic. Email:jking@sfchronicle.comTwitter: @johnkingsfchron

Architect goes beyond twisting towers

Tishman Speyer

Studio Gang

Studio Gang

Top: A rendering of the proposed first phase of the Mission Rock project, in development by TishmanSpeyer and the San Francisco Giants, with a residential tower designed by Studio Gang (right). Middle: Arendering of the expansion being designed by Studio Gang for the California College of the Arts in SanFrancisco set to begin construction in 2020. Above: A rendering of the sustainable energy administrationbuilding for San Mateo County in downtown Redwood City scheduled to start construction in December.

Gang from page B1

Liz Hafalia / The Chronicle

Mira, the head­turning residential tower created by Chicago architect Jeanne Gang, rises in San Francisco.

“There’s been agenuine philoso­phy of radicalsharing, and that’sliberating.”Kate Orff, founder of Scape