page_title: San Jose City Hall
section_title: Architecture
hierarchical_section_title: San Jose City Hall / Architecture
caption_attribution_description: English: A look at San Jose's City Hall.
context_page_description: San José City Hall is the seat of the municipal government of San Jose, California. Located in Downtown San Jose, it was designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Richard Meier in a Postmodern style. It consists of an 18-story tower, an iconic glass rotunda, and a city council chamber wing, laid out within a two-block-long public square known as San José Civic Plaza. The tower rises 285 feet above the plaza, making it the second tallest building in San Jose.
  San Jose has had six seats of government in its history. City officials met in Downtown San Jose from before the city's incorporation in 1850 until the 1950s, when a modern City Hall was built at Civic Center to the north. The current City Hall's construction capped a period of rapid growth for the city during the dot-com bubble. Its opening in 2005 marked the municipal government's return downtown after half a century in an office park setting.
context_section_description: City Hall was designed by Richard Meier, who also designed the Getty Center in Los Angeles, the Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art in Barcelona, The Hague City Hall, and numerous other buildings around the world. San Jose–based Steinberg Architects was the associate architect. Meier's Postmodern design is most influenced by that of Le Corbusier and contrasts with the Beaux-Arts city halls in San Francisco and Oakland.
  City Hall consists of three wings totaling 530,000 square feet (49,000 m²) within a 32-acre (13 ha) Civic Plaza complex:
  An 18-story secretariat tower houses various city offices. At 285 feet (87 m), it was the tallest building in San Jose until Tower 88 surpassed it by 1 foot (0.30 m) in 2008. The tower has a thin footprint of 68 by 255 feet (21 m × 78 m). The mayor's office is located on the top floor of the tower.
  The freestanding rotunda rises 110 feet (34 m) above the center of the plaza, resembling a planetarium. It has a diameter of 100 feet (30 m), slightly wider than the United States Capitol rotunda. The entire exterior is a glass curtain wall, supported by tension cables and structural steel beams. Mayor Ron Gonzales and other city officials insisted on a rotunda to evoke classical civic buildings. It was originally conceived as a public entrance to symbolize open government. However, by 2015, the 9,427 square feet (875.8 m²) space had become a ceremonial entrance, usually closed off to the public but rented out for city and private events about 150 times a year.
  The three-story west wing or council wing contains the San Jose City Council chamber, public meeting rooms, and the western field office of the United States Patent and Trademark Office. The 7,000-square-foot (650 m²) council chamber seats 330. Unlike the previous city hall's council chamber, which featured a raised dais, the current chamber is shaped like a lecture hall, with audience seating rising above the dais. A grand staircase leads to the chambers and an elevated walkway that connects the west wing with the rotunda and tower. Like the rotunda, the grand staircase is no longer a public entrance; instead, the public enters from beneath the staircase, and an elevator provides access to the council chambers.
  City Hall has received LEED Platinum certification for its environmentally friendly design. It is the largest LEED-certified municipal building in San Jose. The tower employs daylighting techniques, including high ceilings, a thin floor plan, and side elevator shafts, to take advantage of an average 300 days of sun annually and reduce artificial lighting costs. A brise soleil on the tower's west side provide shade during the summer, reducing cooling costs.
  City Hall's tall, thin tower is designed to withstand significant shaking from nearby faults, which include the Silver Creek, Calaveras, Hayward, and San Andreas faults. The building is stabilized by full-height, concrete shear walls on the north and south sides of the building, which are likened to bookends. They are connected to a steel moment-resisting frame across the west and east sides.
caption: A closeup of the rotunda
exif: {"Image Make": "Canon", "Image Model": "Canon PowerShot G10", "Image XResolution": "240", "Image YResolution": "240", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image DateTime": "2009:10:24 01:00:19", "Image ExifOffset": "160", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "656", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "15098", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/500", "EXIF FNumber": "4", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "80", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2009:09:07 15:03:41", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2009:09:07 15:03:41", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "1120723/125000", "EXIF ApertureValue": "4", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "95/32", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "61/10", "EXIF FocalPlaneXResolution": "400000/73", "EXIF FocalPlaneYResolution": "400000/73", "EXIF FocalPlaneResolutionUnit": "2", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "1", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard"}