The first Urban Symposium event, as a part of StoreFrontLab Season 2, kicked off with a full room of people, each with a party hat on and margarita in hand. > Read More
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TraceSF launches City Makers salonJohn Parman
This month TraceSF introduces City Makers, a new salon series at StoreFrontLab. Hosted by Amanda Loper of David Baker Architects and Emily Gosack of Jensen Architects, City Makers grew out of a desire to hear more from the women at the forefront of City Making. John Parman, a founding editor of TraceSF, spoke with Amanda and Emily about the series, which opens on October 28 with Laura Crescimano, a principal of SITELAB urban studio.
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Planned Growth or Unplanned Strife?Andrew Faulkner and Mark Hogan
Will San Francisco follow through on its carefully laid plans to accommodate a growing population, or will it continue to fight the same battles time and time again?
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When Cities Fall: Urban Histories and Political MemoryAlexandria Brown-Hejazi
Destroyed city of Mostar, Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1995. Photo by Thom Hoffman.
Our experience of the present is shaped by our understanding of the past. By ignoring the urban narratives of monuments, structures, city parks, memorials…what messages are we missing for the present? > Read More
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Urban Prototyping Festival Rethinks SoMa’s StreetsAndrew Faulkner
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
Global Design through Local HackingAndrew Faulkner
120+ attendees met at Intersection for the Arts on 8/14/2012 to brainstorm ideas for prototype interventions on 5th Street between Howard and Market.
Andrew Faulkner reports on a recent brainstorming session that anticipates the upcoming Urban Protoyping: San Francisco festival. > Read More
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Deja vu and SoMa’s second chanceYosh Asato
Salesforce leased space at 50 Fremont before abandoning plans for a new campus at Mission Bay.
Earlier this year, Salesforce’s seemingly sudden decision to abandon plans for a new 2-million-square-foot campus at Mission Bay raised immediate concerns about San Francisco’s already tightening office market—and some murmurs of relief. > Read More
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DIY GlobalLeah Marthinsen
Local artisans sell their wares near downtown Oakland. Photo: Leah Marthinsen.
Think local, buy local—we are currently experiencing a surge in assertions of independence from the global supply chain. > Read More
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Preserving Industry in the Eastern NeighborhoodsChristopher VerPlanck
Union Iron Works, photo by William Porter, 2004.
The Eastern Neighborhoods Plan, adopted in late December 2008, states that “San Francisco is a special place because of the way in which it has always balanced preservation with change.” It is true that despite generations of natural and manmade disasters, demographic shifts, and radical economic realignment, San Francisco has managed to hold on to its essence as a place that “doesn’t look or feel like anywhere else.” > Read More
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Ghost StoryBrad Leibin
Opening day at Pruitt Igoe. Photo via http://www.pruitt-igoe.com/urban-history/
It remains nearly impossible to escape architecture, urban design, or planning education in the United States without hearing the name Pruitt-Igoe, even forty years after the St. Louis housing project’s demolition in 1972. > Read More
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Lars Lerup at Wurster HallJohn Parman
Lars Lerup explaining his analysis of the Houston cityscape. Photo by John Parman.
Playing to a big, friendly crowd, Rice Professor Lars Lerup acknowledged his Berkeley roots in a lecture on Wednesday night, 7 March, centered on his new book on the Houston cityscape, One Million Acres & No Zoning (Architectural Association, 2011). > Read More
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Dreaming of HomeJonathan Lerner
Architectural model, plan view, for MOS’s "Thoughts on a Walking City" project for Orange, New Jersey. Photograph courtesy of James Ewing. © 2011 James Ewing.
It didn’t take the mortgage meltdown to make clear that residential patterns affect individual, societal and environmental health. And the crash only made the ruinous implications of conventional sprawl development harder to ignore. Now an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art asks how architecture and planning might ameliorate those consequences, proposing alternate ideals of home and imagining buildings and places to express them. > Read More
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Cities and Spacesuits: An Interview with Nicholas de MonchauxBrad Leibin and Nicholas de Monchaux
Under-utilized parcels of city-owned land in San Francisco, re-imagined by Nicholas de Monchaux as part of his Local Code / Real Estates project, 2009. Image: Courtesy Nicholas de Monchaux
Nicholas de Monchaux is an architect, urbanist, writer and Assistant Professor of Architecture and Urban Design at UC Berkeley. His recent book, Spacesuit: Fashioning Apollo, unearths the truly fascinating story behind the design of the Apollo spacesuit, which has surprising relevance to architectural and planning discourse, particularly in the Bay Area. > Read More
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