The hotel is a part of the Embarcadero Center development by Trammell Crow, David Rockefeller, and John Portman.

The San Francisco Chronicle's architecture critic John King has described the 1973 building as a "temple of hermetic urbanism" in a "self-contained sci-fi" style that by 2016 had become "dated", albeit remaining "still visually dazzling, in a futuristic sort of way.

[5] The hotel has a large modernist sculpture Eclipse, by Charles O Perry that sits in the lobby.

Replicas of John Portman's trademark pill-shaped elevators were built for use in the film and are featured throughout, including in an extended sequence where one is lifted from the stricken tower by helicopter.

Architect John Portman has stated that its design was suggested to him by viewing the 1935 science fiction film Things to Come.