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.
INTERSTICE Participates in Construction Workforce Initiative Program (CIWI)
This summer, INTERSTICE Architects was proud to participate in the Construction Workforce Initiative (CIWI) Internship program. INTERSTICE participated in the CIWI program through our role as Landscape Architect on the Transbay Block 1 Project at 160 Folsom Street, being developed by Tishman Speyer and as the architectural team led by Studio Gang Architects.
CIWI is a non-profit initiative which is focused on the expansion of diversity within the Construction, Real Estate Development, Architecture and Engineering, Civic Engagement and Urban Design industries by providing career development opportunities for students interested in these fields. Visit the CIWI website to learn more about their initiative.
INTERSTICE’s CIWI intern, Alanna Johnson, now entering her sophomore year at San Francisco State University with an interest in marketing and communications, gained valuable insight into the sheer amount of planning and due diligence it requires to get a project built by attending meetings with Transbay project stakeholders including architects, developers, engineers, city agencies, and contractors. Alanna became integral to our team at IA, providing hands-on support and working side by side with our designers, collaborators, and the client.
“I would say that being able to be partnered with both the CIWI program and INTERSTICE Architects exposed me to a vast amount of opportunities. I no longer place my future outcomes in a box. I’ve learned to let them blossom.”
INTERSTICE Architects / CIWI Program Intern Alanna Johnson (Photo Credit: Karwanna Dyson)
INTERSTICE Architects Team at 1173 Sutter Street (Photo Credit: Karwanna Dyson)
INTERSTICE Architects Installs the SF SFF / La Cocina Night Market
INTERSTICE Architects is thrilled to support La Cocina and participate in our 4th annual Street Food Festival!
This year we designed and installed a 300-foot-long sinuous bench, called the INTERSTICE banqu(ette), which meanders down the center of the San Francisco Street Food Festival’s second annual Night Market.
Over 500 pallets were zip-tied together to form an interlocking, modular lounge furnishing and bar-table kiosks with heat-lamps for people to gather, eat and celebrate the Market.
With 6 different global regions of foods represented, the Night Market is an opportunity for San Franciscans to taste the best the world has to offer, all prepared and sold by local vendors. The benches are color coded by global region and display way-finding signage also by INTERSTICE. Local artists painted the coverings for the seats.
This is the launch party for the San Francisco Street Food Festival, which spans 6 blocks along Folsom Street between 20th and 26th Streets.
Check out the team at work!
INTERSTICE's design in action
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- INTERSTICE’s design in action
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 'Digs In' at the SF Botanical Garden
Check out the pictures from our volunteer day at the San Francisco Botanical Garden – IA spent a day helping SFBG Gardener Jason Martinez weed, aerate and plant a grove of Rhododendrons in a section of the Mediterranean Basin known as Heidelberg Hill. If you’re interested in volunteering your time to assist the SFBG, check out their website – the Garden relies heavily on volunteers like yourself to assist them in a variety of different ways, and no prior gardening experience is required!
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.
Parking Day 2012 – Lighter than Air
Parking Day 2012 – Lighter than Air, a set on Flickr.
We’d like to thank everyone that joined us this past Friday for Parking Day 2012! We had a great time meeting all of you, and we hope you enjoyed our “Lighter than Air” installation and the tasty Malaysian food courtesy of mamakSF! If you have any photos that you’d like to share (maybe you and your friends riding Public Bike’s Whimcycle, or lounging on our yoga ball furniture?) please post them here!
Also, be sure to check out our Flickr photo album!
Lighter than Air! Parking Day 2012
Join Interstice Architects for PARK(ing) Day 2012 this Friday, September 21st in front of Public Bikes and Harrington Galleries at our installation: “Lighter than Air!” This year, we’re going light-weight and “floating” new ideas for our Parking Day installation, such as inflatable furniture, a floating balloon lawn, and an Icarus Bike courtesy of Public Bikes. We’ll also have delicious Malaysian Street food by mamakSF! We’d love for you to stop by and say hello to the IA team, and of course, make sure to check out all the great PARK(ing) Day installations that are sure to be going on in the Mission District this Friday.
We would also like to extend a heartfelt thank you to Rebar for their organization of PARK(ing) Day – what is now a worldwide event!
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.
Park(ing) Day 2011: paARRRRrk-let!
Come join Interstice Architects in front of 826 Valencia in the Mission for Park(ing) Day San Francisco 2011!
The volume of just one parking space is 800 cubic feet – which is equivalent to the minimum soil required for an urban tree to thrive. Using recycled wood palettes, we are installing a temporary story space/nursery, and in deference to the corsair spirit of our friends at 826 Valencia, our paarrrrk-let prototype will proclaim our proclivity for parking-space piracy in proper privateer practice. The parklet re-uses a waste stream material to create a multi-tiered space for people to lounge ‘on deck’ in the shade of an urban tree. The space defined by the outer edge of the pallets represents the soil the tree needs to develop a healthy and stable root system.
Our parklet illustrates not only how a parking spot can be transformed into an urban nursery, but how a temporary nursery space for a tree can also become a community social space. Tapping into our interest discussed in former posts regarding our research into Public Green Networks, we envision a system of both permanent and temporary urban nursery spaces that add a new dimension of verdant social space to the evolving ‘green’ urban fabric of the city. More on this idea in posts to come.
So please, make sure to stop by our paarrrrk-let and check out our park(ing) day page on the Parking Day DIY Network, where you can find mapped locations for parking day installations across the city, and take a look at all the different people and organizations participating in Park(in) Day this year! We would like to extend a special thanks to Rebar for their excellent organization of the worldwide event, and for starting this great tradition 6 years ago!