INTERSTICE Architects Installs the SF SFF / La Cocina Night Market

Posted on Aug 16, 2013

INTERSTICE Architects is thrilled to support La Cocina and participate in our 4th annual Street Food Festival!

This year we designed and installed a 300-foot-long sinuous bench, called the INTERSTICE banqu(ette), which meanders down the center of the San Francisco Street Food Festival’s second annual Night Market.

Over 500 pallets were zip-tied together to form an interlocking, modular lounge furnishing  and bar-table kiosks with heat-lamps for people to gather, eat and celebrate the Market.

With 6 different global regions of foods represented, the Night Market is an opportunity for San Franciscans to taste the best the world has to offer, all prepared and sold by local vendors. The benches are color coded by global region and display way-finding signage also by INTERSTICE. Local artists painted the coverings for the seats.

This is the launch party for the San Francisco Street Food Festival, which spans 6 blocks along Folsom Street between 20th and 26th Streets.

Check out the team at work!

INTERSTICE's design in action

INTERSTICE's design in action

IA wins 3 Merit Awards at 2013 ASLA NCC Awards

Posted on Apr 26, 2013

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.

INTERSTICE Architects in arcCA

Posted on Jan 18, 2013

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.

Parking Day 2012 – Lighter than Air

Posted on Sep 28, 2012

We’d like to thank everyone that joined us this past Friday for Parking Day 2012! We had a great time meeting all of you, and we hope you enjoyed our “Lighter than Air” installation and the tasty Malaysian food courtesy of mamakSF! If you have any photos that you’d like to share (maybe you and your friends riding Public Bike’s Whimcycle, or lounging on our yoga ball furniture?) please post them here!

A big thanks for to Harrington Galleries and Public Bikes for helping us make this a great Parking Day!

Also, be sure to check out our Flickr photo album!

Lighter than Air! Parking Day 2012

Posted on Sep 20, 2012

Join Interstice Architects for PARK(ing) Day 2012 this Friday, September 21st in front of Public Bikes and Harrington Galleries at our installation: “Lighter than Air!”  This year, we’re going light-weight and “floating” new ideas for our Parking Day installation, such as inflatable furniture, a floating balloon lawn, and an Icarus Bike courtesy of Public Bikes.  We’ll also have delicious Malaysian Street food by mamakSF!  We’d love for you to stop by and say hello to the IA team, and of course, make sure to check out all the great PARK(ing) Day installations that are sure to be going on in the Mission District this Friday.

We would also like to extend a heartfelt thank you to Rebar for their organization of PARK(ing) Day – what is now a worldwide event!

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!

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!