The hook
Frank Lloyd Wright's last great building, a long pink-and-blue arcade draped across three hills, that Hollywood keeps casting as the future.
01Why it's worth it
Wright's largest public project, finished after his death, is a county government complex, which sounds dull until you see it: a low, sinuous building of pink stucco under a blue roof, arches marching along its length, slung across three hilltops over a lagoon and park, a spaceship of a civic center that looks like nothing else. That otherworldliness is why films like Gattaca used it to play the future. It's a working courthouse and library, so during business hours you can walk right in, under the skylit atria and along the arched galleries. For a building you'd normally visit to renew a permit, it's a genuine architectural pilgrimage, Wright's ideas about organic architecture at full civic scale.
02How to experience it
It's off Highway 101 in San Rafael, open during business hours and free to walk through (it's a working government building). Docent tours run some days. Go on a weekday to see it in use; the interior atria and the long exterior sweep both deserve time.