Park(ing) Day 2009

Today is Parking Day!

Architecture + The City 2009

It is nearly half over, but September is the Architecture + The City festival sponsored by the American Institute of Architects San Francisco chapter. The most intriguing event is the symposium California and The Netherlands: A New Alliance for Climate Change Adaptation , which unfortunately is already on a wait list. But there are still plenty of tours, lectures, and exhibitions to attend.

The most interesting among them was canceled. Gardens are for People: The Innovative Landscapes of Thomas Church at Park Merced was to explore the some of the gardens and courtyards of the site, as well as the larger, shared open spaces. Hopefully Docomomo, who would have lead the tour, will try again next year.

The Americans

Though today I will be doing the typical 4th of July BBQ, if you are looking for something different and yet still uniquely patriotic, I highly recommend going to see the exhibit at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art on Robert Franks' book The Americans entitled Looking In. Though I've seen many of these photographs before, I've never seen the book itself, and this exhibit displays all 83 photographs in the order they appeared, along with artifacts from its development and examples of his earlier and later work.

Another reason to go today, or at least very soon, are two smaller exhibits that close on Tuesday. Patterns of Speculation shows the work of Berlin-based architecture studio J. Mayer H. using images of their work along with a site-built installation. Though the exhibit somewhat falsely claims the firm's unique approach (or at least doesn't explain enough what makes it so unique), it does provide an interesting example of one of the foremost trajectories in architectural thinking over the last decade, that of turning the invisible fields of information and data that surround us into built form.

Also closing Tuesday is Otl Aicher: Munchen 1972. This exhibit highlights the incredible graphic program of the '72 Olympic games. As someone who spends a lot of time complaining generally about signage in California, and specifically about the terrible graphics and design program of AC Transit, this exhibition is like a cool bay breeze on a hot summer day.

SFMoMA also has the newly-opened rooftop sculpture garden. It is summer in San Francisco though, so be sure to bring your winter jacket.

NorCalMod Lecture

Thursday night, co-sponsored by the American Institute of Architects East Bay and the Oakland Heritgage Alliance, Pierluigi Serraino will give a lecture entitled Mid-Century Modern in your Backyard. Serraino comes highly recommended by a friend who had him as a studio instructor at UC-Berkeley. He is the author of NorCalMod: Icons of Northern California Modernism. The lecture is $10 for OHA or AIA members, $20 for non-members, and requires pre-registration. It begins at 5:30 at the AIA East Bay offices at 1405 Clay Street in beautiful downtown Oakland.

Idaho Stop

Bicycles, Rolling Stops, and the Idaho Stop from Spencer Boomhower on Vimeo.

In a midday open thread earlier this week at dailyKos, I learned about the above video advocating adoption of the Idaho bicycle model, which allows bike riders to treat stop signs as yield signs. The video itself, in addition to being informative and instructive on the topic, is a nice piece of graphic design.

When I first began using my bike for transport in college, I was a fairly rigid follower of traffic laws. The theory being that the only way for cyclists to gain respect on the road was to follow the same laws as automobiles. So at 4-way stops in residential neighborhoods without a car in sight, I would actually come to nearly a complete stop. And that sucked!

A trip to Amsterdam several years ago where I experienced their amazing cycling culture began to change my views. I knew our transportation system was organized around the car, but there I saw how it might be different. The trip was lead by an architecture professor whose research interests included how people negotiate for urban space, and how certain types of negotiation make for a richer urban experience. And what the Idaho stop law does is essentially legalize greater negotiation between cyclists and others.

These days I am much less concerned with following all traffic laws while on my bike, though I still believe there is truth to the theory that drivers would give cyclists more respect if they better followed the rules of the road. Which is why it is so important to have good laws, and the Idaho stop law is one of them.

So I agree with Kos that all states should adopt the Idaho bicyle model. Besides being more efficient for cyclists, it makes for a more interesting city - one that fosters greater interaction and communication among us, even if only in the glance of recognition at a stop sign.

Oakonomist

Sharing a page in The Economist with an article on a Prairie in the City of St. Louis is Killing for Respect, concerning crime in Oakland. It is always interesting to see how Oakland is portrayed in the national and international media. And while this article is fairly balanced, also pointing out a "flourishing urbanism", interesting architecture, a beautiful downtown, Lake Merritt and Oakland's amazing diversity, it has me considering canceling my (expensive) subscription, for two main reasons.

The first is the last paragraph, in which the correspondent tries to lay some blame for crime in Oakland at the feet of "liberal politicians" who don't even know how to talk about crime. The example they cite is that Mayor Dellums "had nothing to say at all" at the recent funeral of the four officers killed in the pursuit of Lovelle Mixon. Whatever you think about what happened (me: that Dellums handled it well and the fallen officers and their families demonstrated a lack of respect for the office of the Mayor), that is just not what happened. It may be technically true, but The Economist severely misled its readers in that last paragraph.

The second is that The Economist wrote nearly 2/3 of a page on crime in Oakland without once mentioning the size of the police force. The article simplistically dismisses poverty and racial tensions as factors, while suggesting a theory of a culture of chaos exacerbated by the large numbers of released prisoners, and the inability of our leaders to speak (and thus act) effectively about crime. I happen to think all of these are contributing factors, to a greater or lesser degree. But how can you write a column about crime in Oakland without even mentioning the size of the police force?

Design Lectures 20090406

Although I haven't yet made it to one as a result, I have really appreciated Becks putting together a weekly list of upcoming political and community events at Living in the O. In that spirit, I thought I'd point you to several interesting design lectures this week.

On Monday night, as part of the UC-Berkeley Department of Landscape Architecture lecture series, Kevin Congers of CMG Landscape Architecture will present a lecture entitled LOCALS: A Regional Practice Engages Communities in Conceptually-based Projects. Congers was project manager with Hargreaves Associates on Crissy Field (image above) in San Francisco. The lecture is at 7:00 pm in 112 Wurster Hall on campus.

At the same time and place on Wednesday night, another local landscape architect, Walter Hood, will speak as part of the UC-B Department of Architecture lecture series. Oakland residents may know his work on Splash Pad Park or Lafayette Square. If you haven't experienced his work, don't be too put off by the clunky website, his landscape work has much more finesse than is exhibited there, and the lecture is sure to be interesting and illuminating.

Finally on Thursday night, the Oakland Heritage Alliance continues its second Thursday lecture series with Chandler McCoy who is Associate Director of Planning at the Presidio Trust. McCoy will lecture on "Moderism Inside and Out," providing examples in and around Oakland that break down barries between architecture and landscape, inside and out. Note this is a change from the orignially scheduled lecture by Pierluigi Serraino, author of NorCal Mod: Icons of Northern California Modern Architecture, which has been rescheduled for June 11. The McCoy lecture is $8 for OHA members and $10 for the general public, and will be at 7:30 at the Julia Morgan-designed Chapel of the Chimes at 4499 Piedmont Avenue in Oakland.