San Francisco Street Food Festival 2012

Posted on Aug 20, 2012

IA was happy to assist La Cocina in preparing for the San Francisco Street Food Festival which took place this past Saturday in the Mission! We helped the festival with the design and construction of over 120 platform benches made from almost 500 locally sourced recycled wooden palettes. We hope you had a chance to visit the festival, and click the link above to take a look at our Flickr set of photos from the event. We would like to thank all the food vendors, volunteers, and especially La Cocina for organizing another successful food festival!

Bay Remediation Site: 1 Published in Landscape Architecture Magazine

Posted on Jul 12, 2012

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.

Planning a Food Festival

Posted on Jun 20, 2012

IA was happy to play host to La Cocina’s kick off meeting to help organize this years annual San Francisco Street Food Festival, which will be held Saturday August 18th.  The meeting brought together La Cocina, IA, and more than 30 planning and logistical volunteers made up of event planners, chefs, bar + restaurant owners, social media specialists, designers, and food enthusiasts.  Here are a few images from the meeting, and if you’re interested, click here to get involved!

IA hosts AIA Design Week

Posted on Jun 14, 2012

IA was happy to play host to everyone who participated in last night’s “Open Studio” as a part of AIA’s Design Week.  We thank everyone who stopped by our office as well as the Mission:House, and we enjoyed answering all your questions about its 10 year construction.  We hope you had a great time and have the opportunity to participate in the rest of the events scheduled for Design Week!

Spring Party 2012 – Thanks for coming!

Posted on Jun 1, 2012

Spring Party 2012, a set on Flickr.

We would like to extend a heartfelt thank you to everyone that stopped by our office on May 17th for our annual spring party! The event was a great success – we had a great time and we sincerely hope you did too. We’ve uploaded some select photos to our Flickr photostream, so be sure to check out the gallery – and if you have any photos you would like to share with us, you can post those on our facebook page. 

587 Shotwell Office Photography

Posted on Jan 23, 2012

We’re excited to share new finish photography taken of our our office renovations at 587 Shotwell, begun back in 2009.  Since moving in, we’ve improved the former warehouse space, most notably with the addition of the “Cube,” our conference room built with a rigid wood frame clad with a glass skin made of panels sourced from local salvage yards.  The full set of photographs and full description can be found on our website.

Photography credits go to Cesar Rubio (http://www.cesarrubio.com/).

Parking Day 2011 Photos

Posted on Sep 23, 2011

Parking Day 2011, a set on Flickr.

We’re happy to share photos from our  successful Park(ing) Day 2011 Parklet, which was installed in front of 826 Valencia.  This year’s installation, titled the “paARRRrk-let!” was a temporary tree nursery and social space, which illustrated how the volume of one parking space (800 cubic feet) is the necessary volume for one urban tree to establish its roots and thrive.  We had many visitors to the parklet throughout the day, and for those of you that stopped by, we thoroughly enjoyed sharing our installation and the great weather with you!  For those that weren’t able to join us, there is a link above to our Flickr photostream, so you can see the process behind the paARRRrk-let and some images of its install.

For more information on 826 Valencia, be sure to visit their website.

Park(ing) Day 2011: paARRRRrk-let!

Posted on Sep 15, 2011

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!

SF Street Food Festival 2011

Posted on Sep 9, 2011
San Francisco Street Food Festival 2011 282The masses at Cesar Chavez Elementary SchoolSan Francisco Street Food Festival 2011 212

SF Street Food Festival 2011, a gallery on Flickr.

Recently, IA was pleased to get involved and help La Cocina with their 3rd Annual San Francisco Street Food Festival — an event that showcases some of San Francisco’s best food from restaurants from across the Bay Area. Held in the lively Mission neighborhood, the festival features stalls from over 60 local restaurants and chefs, live music, drinks, and local vendors. The IA office helped La Cocina with the planning, organization, and assembly of temporary dining furniture made from easily sourced waste-stream materials, using items such as milk crates, plywood, and recycled wood palettes to construct tables and seating pods.  Check out our Flikr Gallery, linked above, for photos of the festival and some of the furniture in action, and make sure to visit La Cocina’s website for more information on the Festival and their own incubator kitchen programs.