Bay Remediation Site: 1 Published in Landscape Architecture Magazine
We’re pleased to share that our project “Bay Remediation Site: 1” has been published in on page 38 of this month’s issue of Landscape Architecture Magazine! The article features an interview with IA’s Andrew Dunbar and Zoee Astrakhan, and illustrates how the project investigates our office’s critical interest in blurring the lines between landscape, architecture, and infrastructure in order to create smarter systems that both rehabilitate our environment and create positive public spaces.
As discussed in the article, we believe there could be potential for projects such as BRS:1 to transition from the realm of theory to reality by gaining traction with local and state governments After the introduction of New York’s High Line, the collective interest of cities across the country to invest in green, urban, public spaces has been piqued. San Francisco is no stranger to this phenomenon – with the renovation of the SF/Oakland Bay Bridge being the city’s primary focus of a plethora of design proposals. As interesting as many of these ideas are, we believe that the project of “Green-Space-as-Destination-Infrastructure” could move beyond purely reclaiming derelict infrastructure for the purposes of tourism and urban revitalization.
Spanning hundreds of miles of coast line, “The Bay” is easily San Francisco’s most significant geographical characteristic – one that is deteriorating due to factors such as water pollution, environmental loss, and global climate change. We hope that BRS:1 can function as an in-road to discussing the potential benefit landscape infrastructure can have to creating destination green spaces that not only draw people and prestige to the city, but rebuild our coastal environment and foster community involvement and educational opportunities as well.
587 Shotwell Office Photography
We’re excited to share new finish photography taken of our our office renovations at 587 Shotwell, begun back in 2009. Since moving in, we’ve improved the former warehouse space, most notably with the addition of the “Cube,” our conference room built with a rigid wood frame clad with a glass skin made of panels sourced from local salvage yards. The full set of photographs and full description can be found on our website.
Photography credits go to Cesar Rubio (http://www.cesarrubio.com/).
SF Street Food Festival 2011
SF Street Food Festival 2011, a gallery on Flickr.
Recently, IA was pleased to get involved and help La Cocina with their 3rd Annual San Francisco Street Food Festival — an event that showcases some of San Francisco’s best food from restaurants from across the Bay Area. Held in the lively Mission neighborhood, the festival features stalls from over 60 local restaurants and chefs, live music, drinks, and local vendors. The IA office helped La Cocina with the planning, organization, and assembly of temporary dining furniture made from easily sourced waste-stream materials, using items such as milk crates, plywood, and recycled wood palettes to construct tables and seating pods. Check out our Flikr Gallery, linked above, for photos of the festival and some of the furniture in action, and make sure to visit La Cocina’s website for more information on the Festival and their own incubator kitchen programs.
The Summit Visits the Mission House
Last month, we were pleased to play host to the Summit Tour, a group of Dutch Architects and Designers touring Northern California, visiting various famous architectural landmarks and homes by architects such as Frank Lloyd Wright and Joseph Eichler, as well as newer works by local San Francisco Architects. We were honored to show them around the Mission House, answer their questions, and treat them to lunch. We are especially happy to be featured in their publication, “The Summit,” which both showcases the many places they visited as well as narrates the rich design history of San Francisco and the Bay Area.
Recap – Home Tours Weekend/GREENskin in arcCA
Photo: Mathew Millman
The Home Tours weekend and inaugural gallery installation went extremely well, and concluded a very busy month of September in the office. Now that we’ve had a bit a chance to catch our breath, we wanted to express our appreciation to everyone who participated in the Home Tours, and we were equally proud to share the Mission:House with all of you that took the time to drop by and see our work up close.
For those of you who weren’t able to make it to the Home Tours, you can read up on what some of our visitors had to say (Inhabitat / Architect’s Newspaper). Special thanks to Mike Chino (Inhabitat) and Lydia Lee (Architect’s Newspaper) for sharing their impressions!
On the topic of the Mission:House, we’re happy to share that our recently awarded GREENskin Facade System was featured in the 10.3 issue of arcCA, in its AIACC Design Awards Section. Flip to page 40 to see the project and other winning projects in the Small Design Category.
Mission:House Featured in 2010 San Francisco Home Tours + Urban Interstice Gallery Opening
photo: Cesar Rubio
The San Francisco Architecture and the City Festival commences next week and we’re pleased to invite participants to both take a tour of our Mission:House, as well as view our newly completed Urban Interstice Gallery’s inaugural exhibit.
As a part of the San Francisco Living: Home Tours weekend event, guests will be able to tour some of the city’s most architecturally distinctive residences. The Mission:House will be one of the homes included on the tour, open for viewing on Saturday, September 12th.
The Mission:House is an 1100 sqft. “hybridizing” residence and living laboratory for a family of four (architect, landscape architect, and two daughters), who have made it their personal trial grounds for materials, light and unorthodox construction techniques. Experiments range from floors of expansive steel plates, walls of thermal plastics, and magnetic closet/display walls, to integrated passive energy strategies, ingenious waste-stream material reclamation, and high-tech thermal & solar power collection.
On the street a façade of shingled glass, built entirely of reclaimed material, creates an unusual “Greenskin” of refracted light through superimposed frames. Inside a 50-foot long wall of sliding doors reconfigure the ground floor studio while upstairs an operable skylight stretches across the house to let in the sky (and rain). A 30-foot rear façade of sliding corrugated thermal plastic, looks into the timber bamboo canopy. Translucent & luminous materials imbue the small home with a sense of volume and openness. Green magnetic walls slide and swing to absorb program, while the roof integrates an organic vegetable garden, hot tub, and a 4 kilowatt photo-voltaic array into a terraced topography of modular wood tiles.
If you are interested in learning more about the Mission:House, you can find more images and descriptions on our website. You can obtain more information regarding the Home Tours and reserve your spot by visiting www.aiasf.org/hometours.
Downstairs from the living spaces of the Mission:House will be the inaugural exhibit of our newly completed Urban Interstice Gallery, Public Networks of Urban Access. Relating to the Festival’s theme of “Investigating Urban Metabolisms,” the exhibit showcases the emerging network of pedestrian access and pedestrian-centered environments that have been designed, built and improved upon in the last two decades in San Francisco.
The emerging pedestrian network is one that highlights the changing priorities of urban dwellers. Priorities that are increasingly calling for the design of artifacts and architectural elements that bring us in contact with lost ecological systems, habitats and wilderness, and shelter us from the effects of the automobile. Through Design we are reclaiming sidewalks, streets and parking areas. Designers are finding creative ways to gain universal access to more wild landscapes, sensitive areas and the surrounding bay. The exploration of these projects will be presented in photographs, drawings and narrative falling into the following topical areas: Topographic Access, Pedestrian Streets, Water Access, Access to Sensitive Habitats.
We will be curating this exhibit which will showcase a number of public space projects in San Francisco. The opening reception will be Tuesday, September 14th at 5:00 pm, with the exhibit open through September 25th.
The Urban Interstice Gallery is located at 3443 26th Street, between Bartlett and Mission Streets (Google Map Link). Hours are from 2-6 pm Thursday – Saturday.
Current Project: Comox House
The Comox House, located on Vancouver Island, BC, is nearing completion, and we thought we’d share some progress photos with you as its construction winds down to the finish. If you’re curious to learn more about the house’s design, take a look at our website to see more photos and drawings.
The existing site was chosen for its remarkable and dense cluster of mature Douglas Fir trees which traverse the beach frontage. These trees are an exceptional environmental resource and critical to the coastal riparian habitat which has suffered significant depletion at the hands of insensitive development. The preservation of these trees became the departure point for the critical approach and formal language of the house. The proposed residence is sited to pass between them, maintaining and protecting them. As the house squeezes between the trees searching for the oceanfront, it elevates seven feet into the air onto a series of piloti placed on an irregular grid to avoid the critical network of roots of the mature trees. The pier foundations avoid imposition on the tree’s root systems and minimize the surface area of associated soil disturbance. The ecology of the site was prioritized and the impact of the house was consciously offset to maintain equilibrium and habitat.
IA Office — Our "New" Space
We thought we’d share our “new” office with everyone – “new” being a relative term as we’ve been working in our renovated warehouse space at 587 Shotwell Street for about a year now. Aside from a new kitchen, new lighting fixtures, and some custom furniture, our biggest improvement to the space has been the conference room, a.k.a. “The Cube.” The Cube’s clouded glass shell is 100% reclaimed material, sourced from local reclamation yards. The glass is mounted to a simple exposed wood structure, held in place by custom mounting brackets we fabricated in our shop.
Before the Renovation
Featured Project: 3443 26th Street Facade
We’re pleased to share some photos of one of our projects completed earlier this year – our facade renovation at 3443 26th Street. Located in the Mission District, this two-story house’s first floor facade was completely redone using reclaimed sealed glazing units, sourced locally from area reclamation yards. The steel framing structure that houses the glass is built to accept a wide range of unit sizes, and the random assortment of units results in a facade with unique qualities of depth and reflection. IA looks at this project as a case study in researching how we might better re-incorporate waste-stream materials into new construction, and the detailing and construction know-how required to ensure the quality performance of the resulting structure.
You can see more photos of the project on our website.
Featured Project: Noel Barnhurst Studios
photo credit: Cesar Rubio
We’re happy to share some finished photography of our most recently completed project: the studios of Noel Barnhurst. We were asked to renovate a 1930’s era concrete warehouse located in San Francisco’s SOMA district to accommodate the client’s food photography studio as well as other associated program including test + preparation kitchens, as well as office + conference spaces. We appreciated the raw material character of the existing building and worked to preserve these elements while making sure new construction complemented the building’s existing material palette. Hand in hand with this strategy, we avoided creating hard partitions and opted instead for a series of heavy velour curtains to divide space — ensuring the spatial organization remained open-ended and keeping the physical presence of the building in focus.
You can see more images of the project on our website.
photo credit: Cesar Rubio
photo credit: Cesar Rubio
photo credit: Cesar Rubio