IA Sunset Parklet Wins AIASF Urban Design Award

We are extremely excited to be a winner this year at the SFAIA Architectural Awards Gala. INTERSTICE receives the Urban Design Award for 2015 for its Sunset Parklet, which was featured in the NACTO International Design of Cities conference last fall. The Sunset Parklet challenges the stereotypical “café patio” to leverage a complex program into a singular and synthetic sculptural expression that prioritizes functionality over the figural. The pro-bono design project is a monolithic “riff” on the diversity of SF’s street sections – by which four adjacent “streets” undulate and double back to create a rich interplay of ground, seats, lounge chairs, tables, benches, and planters.

From east to west, the design incorporates a bike parking deck, which divides into individual strips that rise and fall creating complex adjacencies as they pass each other, enfolding a wide variety of program opportunities and a rich diversity of formal “readings.” Constructed of sustainable and reclaimed materials in compliance with DPW’s Guidelines, the Sunset Parklet is now a new public amenity designed for two local community oriented businesses in San Francisco’s Outer Sunset district on the Judah light-rail transit line. INTERSTICE Architects took on the controversial 50ft-long site (2.5 parking spaces) to help Other Avenues Whole Food Co-op Market and the popular Sea Breeze Café develop and realize a simple, well detailed and synthetic solution to their multi-headed program demands and complex public process hurdles. We are proud to have helped this enthusiastic community both politically to galvanize support, and in its funding efforts over a grueling two-year process to become a point of local pride.
As one local observed, “it’s not like the other parklets … It’s more like a big sculpture … kids just can’t stop climbing all over it.”