Paolo Polledri is an architect and a writer. He worked at the Getty Center and was the founding Curator of Architecture and Design at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. He studied architecture and design in Italy and architectural history at U.C. Berkeley. He currently lectures about museum architecture at the San Francisco Art Institute.
“Get out at the Sakuragaoka post office. Turn around and you’ll see a Lawson’s. Walk to it and then turn left. Walk up that street and you’ll see the Dog House on the right.” Typical Tokyo directions from the art impresario and entrepreneur Joni Waka. > Read More
At Roundhouse One Gallery: Lost in Translation: How prototyping is reshaping architecture, an exhibit (12 June – 9 August) and panel (27 June). > Read More
Perched on a bar stool at Sinbad’s Pier 2 Restaurant with a friend, I sipped a glass of white wine on a warm spring night. Sinbad’s is definitely a touristy establishment with its wonderful view of the Bay Bridge. And that is why I was there—to take in the recently ignited “Bay Lights” project on the Bridge’s Western span. > Read More
Join San Francisco design doyenne (and TraceSF fan) Barbara Stauffacher Solomon at the launch party for her autobiographical book, Why? Why Not?: 80 Years of Art & Design in Pix & Prose, and her experimental Utopia Myopia: 36 Plays on a Page, May 3, 2013, 7–9 p.m., McRoskey Mattress Co., 1687 Market @ Gough, third floor. $5 or free with book purchase.
Just before Christmas a superb new museum—a subsidiary of the Louvre in Paris—opened in the ex-coal mining city of Lens in northern France. To promote this breakthrough in museology, the curators chose the familiar icon of revolution, Eugène Delacroix’s “Liberty Leading the People,” one of some 200 artworks on loan from the parent institution, the world’s most popular museum. Richard Ingersoll paid a visit. > Read More
Muji finally opened in San Francisco late last year, ending a low-grade yearning that has nagged local devotees since the Japanese chain landed in New York in 2007. But unlike the fanfare that greeted Uniqlo, another Japanese brand that debuted here last fall, Muji’s arrival was more akin to sneaking in the back door—literally. > Read More
The Association for Computer Aided Design in Architecture (ACADIA) convened late last fall at California College of the Arts (CCA) in San Francisco for its annual four-day conference, organized this year by CCA’s Jason Kelly Johnson.[1] It headlined an impressive list of international speakers, including Manuel DeLanda, Saul Griffith of otherlab, Greg Lynn, and Achim Menges. > Read More
Thérèse Tierney is the Director of the URL: Urban Research Lab, a research group exploring networked technologies and the built environment at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign. > Read More
Kengo Kuma splits his time between professional practice and academia. He began his practice in the early 90‘s with a small office in Tokyo; his practice is now over 150 employees with offices in Tokyo and Paris, and projects in Europe, the US, and China. Kuma balances the demands of his global practice with his academic pursuits, heading the Kuma Lab at Tokyo University where he tests his theoretical speculations before applying them in real-world scenarios. > Read More
This past fall, the four founding editors of TraceSF (Yosh Asato, Yuki Bowman, John Parman, and I) sat down with Sarah Peck of Landscape Urbanism to discuss our vision for the role of TraceSF as a locally-focused, independent space for dialogue exploring Bay Area design, culture, and urbanism. Check out the interview here. > Read More
Opera is a child of the city. It was born in 1600 in Florence, the cradle of civic humanism, in the homes of a wealthy group of intellectuals who were investigating Greek drama. With its agglomeration of poetry, drama, music, costume, sets and stagecraft, opera became a popular entertainment that spread to other urban centers with a supply of musicians and artisans large enough to create and articulate the spectacle. > Read More
Paul Crabtree is a composer and social commentator based in Oakland, California.
Tom DeCaigny, Director of Cultural Affairs at the City and County of San Francisco says he knows this place. He and I are standing in front of a life size mural photograph on canvas depicting a forested and theatrically lit night scene. In the image, a small sign stands at the base of a dirt path that leads into a dense and naturalistic planting of camellia and pines. > Read More
Amy Ress is a designer and writer in the fields of public interest design and the arts. > Read More
For the past few decades, Market Street has been an illogical disconnect in San Francisco, where the confluence of its not-quite-intersecting streets and abrupt diagonal grid shifts have evolved radically different but adjacent streetscapes. > Read More
I like projects that teach me things I never expected to learn.
When the economy melted in 2008, I realized that I could take a rest from my practice’s residential focus. The downturn called for something different. I had time to look at what was happening around me. I had done movie projects before, so I found myself with an impulse to make documentaries on architectural subjects. > Read More
Glenn Lym grew up in the Berkeley flatlands next to the house his grandfather built in the 1910′s. > Read More
As an architect, it is impossible to predict what the future holds for one’s projects and sometimes it is better not to try. > Read More
The view walking along Bush Street towards downtown San Francisco recalls the exaggerated perspective of a Wayne Thiebaud painting. The sharp crest of the hill forces the gaze forward and down, revealing the urban fabric below where Manifest Destiny! — a19th-century, smaller than life-size cabin—adheres like a barnacle to the blank façade of 453 Bush Street, three and one half stories up. > Read More
Donna Schumacher is the founder and creative director of Donna Schumacher Architecture, which specializes in creative commercial and residential spaces in San Francisco. > Read More