PARK(ing) Day 2017 – Mirror Mylar Forest-Field
PARK(ing) Day 2017 – Mirror Mylar Forest-Field: Pedestrian Safety Along the Polk Corridor
For Park(ing) day 2017, INTERSTICE Architects created an interactive Park(ing) Day installation on Polk Street at Hemlock Alley. Visitors experienced the wind-activated Mirrored Mylar Forest to explore questions of pedestrian safety and share their experiences of being a San Francisco pedestrian. Which spaces are prioritized for pedestrians? Where is there room for improvement?
Recording individual experiences as a pedestrian, cyclist or driver, the public was asked to register their information directly onto the installation surface. An enlarged a map of the Polk Street Corridor [built from data collected from the California Highway Patrol & highlighting pedestrian-related traffic incidents] created the “ground” for discussion. This interactive pedestrian Park(ing) map evolved throughout the day as a palimpsest that visitors could walk through – orienting themselves within the parking space, the neighborhood, and the city streets.
The installation was inspired by the Polk Streetscape Improvements recently underway and INTERSTICE’s collaboration as part of an initiative to enrich The Lower Polk Alleyways District. The new Lower Polk Alleyways Vision Plan (LPADVP) recently adopted by the Lower Polk Neighbors, proposes a future vision for the 12 blocks of alleyways located within the boundaries of the Lower Polk Neighborhood. INTERSTICE Architects guided this community-driven process which has resulted in a unique community-initiated set of strategies and guidelines designed to understand these alleyways, not as singular back-streets or isolated funding opportunities, but instead to consider them as a whole – as a District.
ASLA NCC 2014 Professional Awards
IA wins 3 Merit Awards at 2013 ASLA NCC Awards
We’re pleased to share that IA received 3 awards in this year’s ASLA Northern California Chapter Design Awards! We were awarded 3 Merit Awards for our work on the 555 Bartlett Courtyard, Bay Area Remediation Site: 1, and the San Francisco Botanical Garden Pathway Improvements. You can see our award winning projects on the ASLA NCC website.
INTERSTICE Architects in arcCA
INTERSTICE Architects’ project ‘Bay Remediation Site: 1″ has been published in arcCA’s Winter 2012 Design Awards Issue! BRS:1 won an AIACC Urban Design Merit Award earlier last year, and the issue features our project as well as all the other AIACC award winners. This is BRS:1’s fourth award in the last 3 years, having previously received awards from the California Architectural Foundation, AIA San Francisco, and an international Green Dot Award for sustainability. You can check out the project on page 46.
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.
IA Wins AIACC Merit Award
We’re pleased to share that IA has received a Urban Design Merit Award from the AIA California Chapter for its project “Bay Remediation Site: 1” sited in Horseshoe Cove. This honor comes on the heels of the project’s recent AIASF award for Unbuilt Design earlier this year. The project will be published in ArcCA and AIArchitect later this fall, so keep an eye out!
We would also like to extend a heartfelt congratulations to all of our fellow Urban Design and Architecture award winners!
IA WINS AIASF CITATION AWARD
Interstice Architects has won a Citation Award from the AIASF in its 2012 Design Awards. IA’s winning entry “Bay Remediation Site:1” was the only landscape architecture entry to win in the Unbuilt Architectural Design category.