jellyfish season in lake merritt?

vacation.  i highly recommend it.

SOMA condos : know your audience

In a previous studio, I was given the 525 Brannan Building in the SOMA neighborhood of the city as my site and asked to carve the building into nine premium condos.  I really had to delve into who I thought my target market would be and tailor my condos to suit them.   My design strategy focused on open plans with as much storage and access to outdoor space as possible. The model unit materialized as a warm, spacious two bedroom with a downtown view terrace, warm cherry wood built-ins so that everything had a place and an office with a separate entrance allowing the owner to work from home.

nestled ideas, nestled office culture:

office design for cp+b in uptown oakland

At first I wondered how "Big Advertising" would fit in Uptown Oakland at all.  As an Oakland resident, I view my city as a place that doesn't really want to be told what to buy or who to be.  We protest; we Occupy; we have independent businesses we covet to buy local wares, local food, local identity, really. Honestly, I may have made myself a victim of my own advertising, thinking that just because I value those things, I can can speak for my entire neighborhood, let alone my entire city.  So, when given this design prompt to place CP+B, an agency that represents large corporate advertising, in a neighborhood that is having a huge growth spurt in the local artist and food scene and within a site consisting of two buildings separated by a BART station entrance and a public walkway, I decided that all of those factors just needed to communicate and maybe even try to hug it out.

proposed - view from Broadway

The big idea was to create a creative office environment that felt non-hierarchical, open and flexible in use and allowed for quiet creative time as well as collaborative workspaces.

The interior environment had to allow for programming where people in all departments could interact, form and split off from quick meetings and generally offer for an unhindered flow of ideas through the office like the "factory" of creativity that CP+B holds as their office culture.

collaborative workstation - print production department with high tables for standing meetings and pinup walls

creatives have a large collaborative workstation as well as private workstations

In addition to being an effective environment for CP+B to work effectively, the office had to appear open to the community around it.  They needed to join in without blending in to the Uptown Oakland scene that includes nightlife, Art Murmur and gallery spaces and a general pride for being Oakland.  This can be accomplished by making the main activities of the office transparent and viewable from the street.  From the Broadway side, a street that houses mainly business and banks, CP+B would show meetings and collaborative work.  From the Telegraph side, hosting mainly bars, galleries, venues and restaurants, CP+B would greet the neighborhood with a public cafe, an auditorium that can be used for public events and an outdoor terrace for events and parties.

framing the scene:
the photography of oscar fernando gomez

four images at the MOMA

Yesterday I spent a glorious sunny day half outside in the sunshine with friends and half inside the MOMA making friends with undiscovered exhibits.  I was really struck by four photos taken from a Monterrey cab window.  They are frank representations of the life Oscar Fernando Gomez drives by.  When asked why he started capturing these moments, he replied "When my wife and I decided to have a child, I started taking photos from the window of my taxi, to make an album to show our child what dad sees when he is out all day. Our daughter died at birth, but I carried on taking pictures: of poor people, people who have nothing. For me, the important thing is not technique or composition. It's about trying to show that the people who live the most humble lives are often the most worthy of respect"  (interview - the guardian uk)

It strikes me as so sad but rather beautiful; to make a scrapbook of experience for a baby that ended up never seeing his world.

images from no blah blah blog

new concept for BART....

What if, instead of BART being something that happens between life and destination, BART was the destination?

Taking the Civic Center BART station as my site, I designed an underground streetscape within the mezzanine level.  The city gently folds down into the station from 3 entrances on the north side of Market street including the main cafe entrance.

Once inside...the mezzanine level is lined on the south side with event spaces, flexible spaces for meetings and gatherings and a gallery.  The north side has flexible retail spaces to service both commuters and the event spaces and there are niches to feature local artists along the main circulation path.

The circulation paths are designed so that people commuting to BART event spaces primarily use the south side of the mezzanine and the commuters through BART use the north side and central core of the station to catch trains on the MUNI and BART levels.

"Lightstreams" illuminate trails of light along the main circulation paths, guiding people through the station.

flexible event spaces can be used as office and meeting rooms, allowing freelancers and small businesses a place to work whenever they need it

A large kitchen space can be used for caterers during events as well as host cooking classes

The gallery can host events and showcase local artists

The winding "ribbon" path from the mezzanine down to the MUNI level has landing pad flex spaces for impromptu meetings and waiting for trains

Overall, the design utilizes off-peak commuter hours and allows for life to happen within the station, tying it to the vibrant city above.

today this goes with this:
sky blue sky - wilco live

breezy serious : liz diller on the hirshorn bubble

liz diller presenting her ted talk on the hirshorn bubble - image from ted blog

All blossoming designers do case studies on projects in order to understand what makes for good design.  Humor me for a bit as I want to do case studies on how great design is presented and discussed.

In the case of Diller Scofidio + Renfro, sometimes that design is meant to be both reverent and irreverent at the same time.  Their often playful, but always genius projects are presented boldly and without apologies for any possible veiled innuendo.  For example, this was the opening slide when Charles Renfro came to speak at CCA.  Just saying.

"light sock" - DSF+R

On to the TED talk....

  Liz Diller crafts an introduction to the Hirshorn Bubble that is an intricate tennis match between the serious and the sassy, allowing for complete audience buy in on the project.   Their projects are hardly boring.  Diller has a  very sincere desire to create a space where "art inserts itself" on the "cultural diplomacy" and fosters "a public forum, a place for discourse around art, politics and public policy". It will “have the reach of the World Economic Forum, the interdisciplinarity of TED, and the informality of Times Square" (TED Blog).  She accomplishes that by keeping true to the jovial and often tongue in cheek spirit of her firm.

Marting Luther King Jr.'s "I have a dream" speech at the National Mall

She starts with a series of slides depicting the National Mall as "the most revered public space in America", drawing on the sentimental to show how disconnected the "concrete doughnut" shape of the existing Hirshorn is in comparison.

Hirshorm Museum (Smithsonian Images)

The design intervention has to be "air" in contrast to the rigid and formal architecture it will engage with.  The Bubble will activate the hole of the doughnut by "inhaling the democratic air of the mall".  Inspiring, right?  Then the undercurrent of jokes come in as she chuckles, switches to this slide and says "I blush whenever I show this...it is yours to interpret". 

(inhabitat)

(inhabitat)

She balances references to the shape of the structure and the "bondage" techniques used to corral it into the center of the Hirshorn with a smattering of talk about maintaining the dignity of the ever so revered National Mall.  The overall effect on the audience is a jovial acceptance that a project looking to bring so much life and cultural engagement can be a little silly in its architectural language.  Great design does not have to be such a serious business.  Apparently, you can throw in an "erection" joke if your design strategy is sound.

(inhabitat)

(inhabitat)

Link to the TED talk

sunshine and charm.  stay a while.

keep the materials humble and let the light do the talking.  i love this place.

pinks and dappled green

"the counted"

a reflection on san francisco's chinatown after the earthquake and fire of 1906.

For a class called "localities and global discourses", I looked closely at San Francisco's Chinatown to capture the essence of the place.  I had no idea I would discover the story of racism, misfortune and inhumanity that is hidden in such a vibrant community.   

As a group, we introduced our district:

Packed into 24 square blocks, San Francisco’s Chinatown is nearly a self-governed enclave of generations of Chinese immigrants.  The people living there could potentially shop, eat, pray, and socialize without ever leaving the district.  Locals swarm the sidewalks going about their daily lives in this densely populated part of the city as tourists crowd in, intrigued by the colors, architecture and sights.

Nestled between the Financial District and North Beach, Chinatown stands out as a distinctly different architectural language of pagoda roofs and bright red accents.  It is a place with two distinct personalities:  the authentic, real-life mixing of inhabitants honoring the place and culture they all have in common and the somewhat ticky-tacky version they sell to the tourists.  This duality of spirit makes the place mysterious with the hidden histories and often hard times the district has weathered without the tourists ever seeming to notice.

entrance to today's chinatown

But personally, I was interested in how this part of the city had evolved. 

 

Chinatown survived the actual earthquake somewhat well, but was almost entirely consumed by the firebreak explosions set off in the attempt to save the adjacent Financial District.  Firefighters ran out of dynamite to level the buildings near Kearny.  When they used black gunpowder instead, the wind carried the flames into the previously spared Chinatown, decimating the neighborhood and forcing the residents into makeshift camps.  When the smoke cleared, they were blocked by the National Guard from returning to collect their belongings.  If they returned, they would be shot as looters.

 The official death count never even included the Chinese in San Francisco.  If you look through the typed lists, the Japanese specifically noted, but there isn't a single Chinese name to be found  (sf museum "who perished" ). It was only estimated much later that 3,000 residents of Chinatown were killed.  Even that number gets muddy as some articles claim that there were 3,000 deaths citywide.  At the time, city officials tried to claim only 400 deaths, in order to avoid panic.  For my piece, I represented all possible 3,000 Chinese, flooding the streets and alleys as simple flags of paper.  Each one glued in individually, with painstaking care take not to lose a single one.  Everyone would be counted.

lasercutting the 3,000 flags

When the rebuilding began, there was talk amongst city officials that Chinatown should be moved to a less valuable and prominent location in the city.  Residents argued and won that if a rebuilt Chinatown was redesigned to attract more tourists, it could be a vital part of the city’s economy.  Before the fire, Chinatown was comprised of cultural veneers on standard San Francisco architecture; after, the buildings took on the decorative style of China, the vibrance of the San Francisco residents and the showy character of a district capitalizing on tourists’ fascination with Orientalism.  

pre-1906 storefronts image from SF public library archives

1930's rebuilt storefronts image from SF public library archives

sculpted "buildings" of chinatown

The architecture of Chinatown tells a story about perseverance, rebuilding within constraints and creating a newer, stronger identity.  It would be dismissive to only focus on 1906, so I sculpted the neighborhood to represent the changing architectural identity that emerged afterwards amongst the ghosts of the past residents as so much of Chinese culture is about remembering and retelling.  

laying out the streets

overhead detail of finished piece

street view detail of finished piece