INTERSTICE Architects

Recently, INTERSTICE switched up their usual routine by getting outside and getting involved. They headed due north to work with Golden Gate Parks National Conservancy on a habitat restoration project in The Presidio. The project was located at Wherry Corridor, a narrow section of natural habitat threading between man-made structures. For the past 15+ years, the Golden Gate Parks National Conservancy has been nurturing this area back to a healthy landscape filled with native flora and fauna. INTERSTICE assisted with watering and weeding new growth and removing invasive plant species. Not their first volunteering project in the Presidio, INTERSTICE once again enjoyed the opportunity to improve their local habitat.

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.

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.

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’ 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.

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!

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.

We’re pleased to announce that INTERSTICE Architects was the recipient of an Unbuilt Design Citation Award from the AIASF for its project, Bay Remediation Site: 1, last night at the AIASF Design Awards 2012 Gala!  We are honored to be recognized amongst such a field of talented designers and architects, and would like to extend a heartfelt congratulations to all of our fellow award recipients.  This comes on the tails of BRS:1′s recent First Prize Green Got Award, which we were humbled to receive 2 months ago.

We’re excited to announce that INTERSTICE Architects is the recipient of 2 first place prizes in this year’s Green Dot Awards!  IA claimed first place in the ‘Concept’ category for its entry “Bay Remediation Site: 1,” and first place in the ‘Product’ category for its entry “GREENskin Facade System.”  Both of these entries placed first amongst a field of thousands of entries in an international competition representing over 25 different countries, so we’re both humbled and very excited to be able to share this news.  We’re also pleased to say that the Mission:House received an Honorable Mention out of a field of more than 500 entries.

The Green Dot Awards is an annual design competition begun in 2008 with the intention of recognizing outstanding businesses, products, and services representing the very best in sustainable vision and design, and additionally represents a consumer guide to excellence in environmentally friendly products and services.

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!