American Institute of Architects San Francisco Chapter

EXHIBITIONS

Water for a Sustainable City: Hetch Hetchy and San Francisco
NEW DATE! September 2–October 29
AIA San Francisco | Center for Architecture + Design Gallery
130 Sutter Street, Suite 600, San Francisco

© Katherine Du Tiel

Although surrounded by water on three sides, San Francisco’s natural ecosystem offers limited drinking water. Over the last century, visionary engineers and politicians alongside San Francisco voters and conservationists have joined forces to support the creation of one of the most complex water systems in the world, the Hetch Hetchy Water and Power System. Delivering some of the highest quality water on the planet to our seven by seven-mile city and the surrounding Bay Area counties, the Hetch Hetchy Water and Power System also reveals an extraordinary facet of San Francisco’s history. The Gold Rush followed by earthquakes, devastating fires, political maneuvering, and the quest for sufficient water, culminated in the passage of the Raker Act in Congress in 1913, which granted rights-of-ways to the City to build one of the most efficient water and power systems in the world.

Water for a Sustainable City: Hetch Hetchy and San Francisco will tell the complicated story of San Francisco’s relationship to the Hetch Hetchy Water and Power System and further examine everything from the typical San Franciscan’s water usage, to the city’s growing dependence on alternative energy and water. Represented through maps and photographs, the exhibition will showcase how far the typical San Franciscan’s water travels-from glacier to watershed to faucet.

Rich with commentary from experts in the field, including architects, engineers and architectural historians familiar with the system, and sustainability experts focused on the future of recycling and conservation programs, Water for a Sustainable City: Hetch Hetchy and San Francisco will comprehensively investigate how the city’s water system has been organized to adapt to the larger urban fabric. Information on innovative sustainable initiatives and programs that have been created by the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission will also be presented. Presented in partnership with the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission.

RELATED PROGRAMMING

Opening Night Reception
September 2, 6:00-8:00 pm
Free. Registration required.
AIA SF and Center for Architecture + Design Gallery
130 Sutter Street, Suite 600, San Francisco

© Katherine Du Tiel

Join AIA San Francisco and the Center for Architecture + Design in welcoming San Francisco Public Utilities Commission representatives for opening remarks and insight into the Water for a Sustainable City Exhibition.

TOUR

Oceanside Treatment Plant and Master Plan Tour (2.5 LUs)
September 24, 1:00 pm
$30 AIA Members | $40 Nonmembers
Tour start point: 3500 Great Highway, San Francisco

© SFPUC

This comprehensive tour explores the various phases of wastewater treatment at this state-of-the-art facility located near the San Francisco Zoo. Following the tour, San Francisco Public Utilities Commission Engineer, Karen Kubick, will give a brief overview of the Wastewater Master Plan process used to upgrade the aging citywide facilities.

LECTURE SERIES

Historic Hetch Hetchy Water and Power System Presentation
September 23, 6:00-8:00 pm
$15 AIA Members | $25 Nonmembers
AIA San Francisco, 130 Sutter Street, Suite 600, San Francisco

© Lt. Col. Daniel DeYoung, U.S. Army (Ret.)

Join San Francisco City Attorney Josh Milstein for a historic overview of the Hetch Hetchy Water and Power System. The presentation will provide a intriguing overview of the building of the Hetch Hetchy Water and Power System, including the construction of the 67-mile long Hetch Hetchy Railroad and hydropower house developed to create the O’Shaughnessy Dam.

Overview of Hetch Hetchy System Operations and the Water System Improvement Program (WSIP)
October 14, 6:00-8:00 pm
$15 AIA Members | $25 Nonmembers
AIA San Francisco, 130 Sutter Street, Suite 600, San Francisco

© Katherine Du Tiel

This presentation will explore how water travels from “Snowfall to Outfall” from Mt. Lyell Glacier in Yosemite National Park to the Bay Area, utilizing sheer gravity to provide high quality drinking water to 2.4 million people in five Bay Area counties. Led by Steve Ritchie and Julie Labonte, the presentation will also provide an overview of the dozens of capital projects underway to rebuild parts of the Hetch Hetchy Water and Power System-considered the largest, publicly funded infrastructure capital projects underway in the country.

Conservation and Diversification of Water Presentation
October 21, 6:00-8:00 pm
$15 AIA Members | $25 Nonmembers
AIA San Francisco, 130 Sutter Street, Suite 600, San Francisco

© Katherine Du Tiel

This presentation led by Julie Ortiz and Paula Kehoe will focus on the steps being taken by the SFPUC to conserve water and will explore what each of us can do to protect our most precious natural resource. Information on how the City is creating partnerships and projects that utilize recycled water and groundwater will also be presented.

2010 AIA San Francisco Design Awards
September 1-30
Opening reception: September 8, 6:00 pm
3A Gallery, Mark Horton Architecture, 101 South Park, San Francisco

Showcasing the 2010 AIA San Francisco Design Awards winners, this exhibition recognizes each firm’s outstanding contributions to the built environment in the categories of Excellence in Architectural Design, Excellence in Interior Design, Energy + Sustainability Design, Integrated Practice, Unbuilt Design, Urban Design and the new category of Historic Preservation and Innovation in Rehabilitation. Special Achievement Award winners will also be on display.

OWA Women Architects: URBAN VITALITY
September 1–30
Opening reception: September 7, 6:00 pm
ARCH, 99 Missouri Street, San Francisco

© OWA Women Architects

OWA Women Architects: Urban Vitality showcases a range of work by women design professionals in the Bay Area, highlighting their urban design projects and demonstrating the impact on form, movement, growth, and environment in the city. The exhibition reveals specific sustainable design projects that reflect sensitive and elegant responses to a design problem. Furthermore, it reveals the community’s problem-solving challenges, highlighting the way creative designs are inspired responses in balance with nature and in harmony with the built environment. The exhibition features work by landscape architects, city planners, designers, and architects.

Blu Dot Collection
September 1-30
Opening reception:September 16, 6:00 pm
Zinc Details, 2410 California Street, San Francisco

Blu Dot designs and manufactures modern furniture and furnishings. Its founding partners, John Christakos, Maurice Blanks, and Charlie Lazor—whose backgrounds range from architecture and art to marketing—created the company in Minneapolis with the desire to make quality modern design available to everyday people. They have created and cultivated a brand that has merged humor and wit with products that balance form and function—without sacrificing one of the basic tenants of modernism: good design.

DIY Urbanism: Testing Grounds for Social Change
September 7-October 29
Opening reception: September 7, 6:00 pm
SPUR Urban Center, 654 Mission Street, San Francisco

© REBAR

Since the onset of the “great recession” in 2008, San Francisco, like many American cities, has struggled through a period of economic decline and drastically reduced public resources. Fortunately for San Francisco, a city with a long history of entrepreneurship and social activism, citizens have displayed great wherewithal and ingenuity in the face of budgetary stalemates, resulting in an outpouring of innovative “do-it-yourself” projects ranging from activating stalled construction sites, to constructing temporary public plazas and parks at street intersections, to designing pop-up storefronts. DIY Urbanism showcases some of these projects and a snapshot of this burgeoning and distinctively local movement, and explores the meeting grounds between the “bottom-up” approach of DIY urbanists and the traditional “top-down” planning process.

Eamon O’Kane “Der Glassraum”
September 9-October 16
Opening reception: September 9, 5:30 pm
Gregory Lind Gallery, 49 Geary Street, 5th Floor, San Francisco

Irish artist Eamon O’Kane explores the relationship between Philip Johnson’s Glass House and Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House through a series of oil paintings on canvas and works on paper. Using the two buildings and their histories as a starting point, the artist plays with time, space, color and light in the series of paintings. The title of the show also references the Booker Prize short listed novel by Simon Mawer, a fictional story about Mies van der Rohe’s Tugendhadt House in Brno, Czech Republic. O’Kane splices both buildings together, merging the seasons in alternating positive and negative colors. Along with the works on paper that depict furniture, objects, interiors and architectural plan drawings, the show looks at modernism’s ongoing legacy and the pursuit of a Utopian architectural space and its uneasy relationship with nature.

Public Networks of Urban Access
September 14-25
Open Thursday-Saturday 2:00-6:00 pm
Opening reception: September 14, 5:00 pm
Urban Interstice Gallery, 3443 26th Street, San Francisco

This exhibition showcases the emerging network of pedestrian access and pedestrian-centered environments that have been designed, built and improved upon in the last two decades in San Francisco. The emerging pedestrian network is one that highlights the changing priorities of urban dwellers. Priorities that are increasingly calling for the design of artifacts and architectural elements that bring us in contact with lost ecological systems, habitats and wilderness, and shelter us from the effects of the automobile. Through design we are reclaiming sidewalks, streets and parking areas. Designers are finding creative ways to gain universal access to more wild landscapes, sensitive areas and the surrounding bay. The exploration of these projects will be presented via photographs, drawings and narrative, with the projects falling into the following topical areas: Topographic Access, Pedestrian Streets, Water Access, Access to Sensitive Habitats.

CHANGED!
September 27 – October 1
Opening reception: September 29, 6:00 pm
Design Guild SF Gallery, 427 Bryant Street, San Francisco Visit
Visit www.vmwp.com/changed.php for exhibition details.

© VMWP

Offering a ‘behind the scenes’ and sometimes humorous look at the design process, this exhibition showcases the work of Bay Area architects, planners and developers and demonstrates how different initial design concepts are from the finished product. A jury of designers, press and development professionals selected the ‘most changed’ projects in a blind selection process. Winners were based on the most changed design, best narrative argument and biggest laugh.

Elegant Pit Stops: The Historicist Garages of San Francisco
September 27- November 24
Gallery Talk: September 30, 12:00 pm
Opening reception: September 30, 6:00 pm
EcoCenter, 11 Grove Street, San Francisco

Elegant Pit Stops: The Historicist Garages of San Francisco, an exhibit conceptualized by UC Davis Professor Mark Kessler, presents the early 20th century garage as a vital source of urban character and architectural diversity. Featuring the work of photographer Sharon Risedorph, the exhibit takes place at SF Environment’s EcoCenter, which serves as a link to the Bay Area’s wealth of sustainable resources.

Presidio Habitats
Through May 15, 2011
Start point: Exhibition Pavilion, located at corner of Storey and Ralston in the Presidio’s Fort Scott District, San Francisco
Visit www.for-site.org for more information.

This unique site-based exhibition was created by FOR-SITE Foundation, in partnership with the Presidio Trust, for the Presidio, San Francisco’s cherished 1,491-acre national park. Celebrating the wild Presidio, Presidio Habitats features an international group of artists, architects, and designers who were asked to create a temporary habitat sculpture serving a Presidio “animal client.” The projects—diverse in their approach, material, and purpose—are featured along trails, paths, and roadways around the Presidio’s Fort Scott District. An accompanying audio narrative, accessible by cell phone, an indoor Exhibition Pavilion, and an array of events invite the community to engage with the art and the park. The exhibition includes work by Ai Weiwei, Philippe Becker Design, CEBRA, Chadwick Studio, Mark Dion with Nitin Jayaswal, Jensen Architects, Amy Lambert, Fritz Haeg, Rigo 23, Surface Design, Inc., Taalman Koch Architecture, Ogrydziak/Prillinger Architects, among others.

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