Last night, the AIA SF launched a new exhibition, Architecture of Consequence: San Francisco, kicking off a whole slew of events in its annual Architecture in the City Festival, the country’s biggest such celebration of the built environment. The exhibit explores important social needs that architects can address and features the work of four San Francisco firms—Iwamoto Scott Architecture, Fletcher Studio, SOM, and Envelope A+D—side-by-side with four Dutch firms—Van Bergen Kolpa Architecten, 2012 Architecten, ZUS (Zones Humaines Sensibles), and OMA.
Originally conceived by the Netherlands Architecture Institute in 2009, this spin-off of the internationally touring exhibit shows that similar preoccupations are on the minds of architects everywhere—whether it’s renewable energy, adaptive reuse, local food production, or thoughtful urban infill.
David Fletcher gave the whole exhibit a major boost of local flava with Beta-Bridge (above), “a radical reinvention and reuse of the soon-to-be-demolished eastern span of the existing Bay Bridge.” He proposed to load the upper deck of the bridge with medical cannabis greenhouses and the lower deck with a data farm; the water used to irrigate the cannabis plants would circulate down and cool off the chugging servers.
On the other end of the scale, OMA revisualized the world in terms of energy. In lieu of standard geopolitical boundaries, it divided the European continent into areas such as Biomassburg, Carbon Capture and Storage Republic (CCSR), and Solaria.
The exhibition continues through October 21, and each of the San Francisco firms has been paired up with a Dutch firm to give a discussion about their shared interest over the course of the month (see schedule of talks). The Architecture and the City Festival runs through the end of the month, with in-depth tours of new projects such as Bar Agricole (September 10), the ever-popular Home Tours (September 17-18), and a unique opportunity to experience what it’s like to navigate the city without sight (“Acoustic Wayfinding for the Blind,” (September 20) led by architect Chris Downey, who talked about losing his sight in a 2010 issue of AN). Check out the full calendar of events.