San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, designed by Mario Botta. Photo courtesy Wikipedia.

Story by Lamar Clarkson Anderson

Now that San Francisco’s Architecture and the City Festival is in full swing, September is proving to be the month of the #Architecture hashtag here. (To be honest, so is every every other month in this design-obsessed city but, hey, we’re just going with it.)

The festival, now in its ninth year, offers professionals and enthusiasts alike a panoply of events, from full-on wonkfests to kid-friendly outings. Build giant architectural sandcastles or learn about humans’ physiological response to light. Peek inside some of the city’s best-designed houses or get tips on how to talk about money with clients. Or don’t pick and do it all! Here’s a taste of what’s to come before the event venues—and the martini glasses—empty out on September 30. Read more!

Photo courtesy Wikipedia.

Design: It’s About Time (panel discussion)

September 18, 6:00 p.m. at AIA San Francisco

The theme of this year’s festival, “Design: It’s About Time,” addresses the city’s evolution from a 19th-century industrial hub to a 21st-century city populated by information workers and artisans, with all the attendant discussions of adaptations and retrofits, layers of uses, and populist-tinged interventions like food trucks and pop-up parks. The Center for Architecture + Design will host a discussion (with panelists from Hood Design, Shift Design Studio, and the San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department) on how these provisional spaces might be useful as permanent fixtures of city life.

Folsom Street Residence, by Gary Gee Architects. Photo © Mark Luthringer

Blue Truck Studio’s Bernal Tower, one of the stops on Home Tours. Photo © Eduardo Navarro Photography.

San Francisco Living: Home Tours

September 15–16

Architects from local firms like David Baker + Partners, Blue Truck Studio, and Fougeron Architecture will be on call for open-house-style tours of their home and apartment designs. Tickets to see these modern takes on classic San Francisco typologies may be in short supply, but skylights, cantilevering, and reinterpretations of the bay window are sure to abound.

Photo courtesy Wikipedia.

Evolution of Our Perception of Light (lecture)

September 20, 6:00 p.m. at Arup

Why do we react to some colors more than others? Why do we respond to light differently at night? How has human evolution shaped our physiological response to light? And how does all this relate to architecture? Arup’s lecture will address these questions and more to encourage designers to reevaluate their thinking on light.

Sightglass Coffee, a revamped warehouse in San Francisco’s South of Market district. Photo © Boor Bridges Architecture.

Boor Bridges Architecture turned a former machine shop in San Francisco’s Mission District into a full-scale brewery and restaurant. Photo © Boor Bridges Architecture.

Sightglass Coffee Tour, September 23, 10:00 a.m.

Southern Pacific Brewing Tour, September 25, 2:00 p.m.

The architects at Boor Bridges have a knack for transforming cavernous warehouses into meccas of brewing. Coffee aficionados and beer nerds can take their pick of two tours of recent Boor Bridges projects—Sightglass Coffee, a dual-purpose coffeeshop and roastery in a former sign-manufacturing warehouse, and Southern Pacific Brewing, an industrial-scale brewpub housed in an old Mission District machine shop. According to the firm, the brewery design is “a combination of inspirations ranging from classic train car interiors, giant old world stations and Mexican covered markets.” Architect Seth Boor will explain his process and, we hope, tell us how he made the bar’s I-beam beer tap.

For more information about the Architecture and the City Festival, visit http://www.archandcity.org/.

by Lamar Anderson

posted in Events Uncategorized

tagged AIA San Francisco, architecture and the city festival, Arup, Blue Truck Studio, Boor Bridges, Gary Gee Architects, house tours, San Francisco

more articles by Lamar Anderson