Lost in Translation

At Roundhouse One Gallery: Lost in Translation: How prototyping is reshaping architecture, an exhibit (12 June – 9 August) and panel (27 June). > Read More

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Bay Lights Ignite: One Part Business, Two Parts Pleasure

Photo by Lucas Saugen, courtesy thebaylights.org

 

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

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WHY? WHY NOT?…& 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.

 

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SANAA’s Anti-Louvre

Delacroix’s “Liberty Leading the People” at the terminus of the Louvre-Lens’ grand gallery. (Photo by Richard Ingersoll.)

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

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Did Muji take a wrong turn in San Francisco?

Where’s Muji? The Japanese chain opened its first West Coast store on a challenging block of Ninth Street last fall.

 

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

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ACADIA 2012: Synthetic Digital Ecologies

 

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

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Contributor Profile: Thérèse Tierney

 

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

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Kengo Kuma – on Scale and Pattern

Kengo Kuma

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

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Under The Surface, Past The Image, and Towards a Conversation: An Interview With TRACESF’s Editors

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

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The New Urban Opera House

The future of opera may soon arrive at the 16th Street Station in Oakland. Photo by Christopher Hall.

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

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Paul Crabtree

Contributor Profile: Paul Crabtree

 

Paul Crabtree is a composer and social commentator based in Oakland, California.

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Nothing to See Here

Joshua Band, Enter House Left. Photo by Janice Suhji.

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

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Contributor Profile: Amy Ress

 

Amy Ress is a designer and writer in the fields of public interest design and the arts. > Read More

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Urban Prototyping Festival Rethinks SoMa’s Streets

 

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

On Making Documentaries

Woodward’s Gardens, photo from California State Library.

 

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

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Contributor Profile: Glenn Lym

 

Glenn Lym grew up in the Berkeley flatlands next to the house his grandfather built in the 1910’s. > Read More

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STREET VIEW: A TALE OF TWO HOUSES

House 1 in 1961.

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

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Manifest Destiny!

Photo by Cesar Rubio Photography.

 

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

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Contributor Profile: Donna Schumacher

 

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

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Under her Watchful Gaze: Installing the Cindy Sherman Mural at SFMOMA

Cindy Sherman mural, SFMOMA 4th floor. Photo by Sabrina Brennan.

 

I recently had an opportunity to install a mural for the Cindy Sherman exhibition at SFMOMA, currently on view through October 8, 2012. > Read More

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