Architectural guilty pleasures: Eyesore or icon?

We all have guilty pleasures, the reality show or fat-laden treat that brings a glow despite our better instincts. Guess what: Architectural devotees feel the same way about buildings.

That's what I found in an informal survey of local architects and people who keep an eye on the field. Nearly everyone had a favorite indulgence, some obvious and some not.

What follows is a list of 10 guilty pleasures of the architectural kind. It isn't definite. It isn't ranked. Consider it a hint of our bounty - and the subjective way our buildings can be viewed.

1. Transamerica Pyramid. No surprise at this choice! After all, in San Francisco one 853-foot lightning rod from 1972 stands above the rest.

"At the start I thought it was laughable with the ears and I still do," shrugs Ellen Newman, a longtime design aficionado. "I love it now because it's iconic, even though I still think it's bad architecture."

Another onetime opponent, architect Bob Herman, explains his conversion this way: "Decades later, I realized that Transamerica's pyramid, though structurally 'dishonest,' benefited the city's urban design by creating a landmark, an urban design trail marker. ...What I've learned in the intervening years is that form does NOT necessarily follow function, even for truth-in-architecture guys like me."

2. One Maritime Plaza. Architecturally, Cathy Simon of Perkins + Will feels "total pleasure" for Maritime Plaza, a 25-story slab from 1964 that summons chilly elegance from dark glass in an X-braced metal frame.

So what's the problem with the tower between Clay and Washington streets? Stand on the sidewalk and you'll find out. "There it sits on a parking garage podium, the walls of the podium are blank and once you're up there, the space is completely devoid of anything to like," Simon sighs. "It's completely anti-urban."

3. M.H. de Young Memorial Museum. "I started with such strong convictions that this thing landed from Mars," Edgar Lopez, an architect with the city, says of the Herzog and de Meuron-designed home for this Golden Gate Park institution. "It didn't seem very friendly to the park, and I was never convinced that the copper cladding made sense ... but once it opened? I think it works wonderfully as a museum. I have to admit I like it."

4. 1881 Bush St. This is a 115-year-old synagogue recently restored as part of a senior living center. It also has a wooden facade that's a cross between a Moorish temple and a Venetian palace - exactly the sort of freewheeling fakery that runs counter to the ethos of Anne Fougeron, a much-acclaimed modernist architect.

Except: "It's got great attitude," Fougeron says. "The whimsy is appealing, and self-assurance atones for many sins."

5. Sutro Tower. "You can argue whether you like the look of it - but it's a beacon, an orientation point," EHDD's Marc L'Italien says of the 977-foot three-pronged communications tower completed in 1973 despite an outcry from neighborhood groups. "It's also well-proportioned, a bit futuristic. ... Whoever designed it (A.C. Martin Partners) exercised quite a bit of care."

6. AT&T Park. This popular favorite from 2000 wouldn't seem the stuff of shamed affection, but the faux-historic exterior still disappoints such architects as Cary Bernstein, a self-described advocate of "progressive design."

But even if "I find it depressing for its defeatist design aspirations," Bernstein gives in to the experience of rooting for the home team in a perch between city and bay, a blend of setting and spectacle as sublime as can be.

7. 101 California St. Some buildings dazzle the eye even as they disregard their surroundings. That's why Glenn Rescalvo of Handel Architects hesitates in describing his admiration for this 48-story silo of granite and glass that celebrity architect Philip Johnson placed atop a thicket of stone-clad stilts in a large triangular plaza.