Perhaps you’ve heard of Park(ing) Day? It started in San Francisco by Rebar (an art collective focusing on public space/urban design etc) and has now caught on around the world. In a nutshell, people get together and create temporary parks on city streets by renting a parking space for the day (i.e. paying the meter). I helped my office (David Baker & Partners Architects) put together an urban croquet park in front of our building on 2nd Street.
More photos of Parking Day available on my Flickr page!
Park(ing) Day was a big success, both in San Francisco and around the world. Make sure to check out the rest of those photos on Flickr so you don’t miss the Urban Chicken park!
Folsom Dore Apartments by David Baker & Partners Architects
On Sunday, I hosted tours at the Folsom Dore Apartments, a “green” (I hate that term) affordable housing project completed by my office in 2005. It was part of the “Build it Green” tour, which was a series of open houses at environmentally sustainable residential buildings ranging from some very small houses up to the Sunset Idea House (about four blocks from where I live) which bordered on grotesque in its lavish (and schizophrenic) furnishings and wasted space (Curbed had a great post yesterday about the Sunset house).
Most of the people on the tour were from outside San Francisco, were wearing fleece, and had a lot of money. At least as far as I could tell. It was quite amusing to see them touring an affordable apartment building as they struggled to figure out what to say about it. Many people raved about the carpeting, despite the fact that they drove to the tour in a car that probably cost significantly more than all the carpeting in the 98 unit building. One visitor told me about how she bought energy-saving fluorescent light bulbs “for all her Hispanic neighbors.”
In the end, most seemed impressed that it was affordable housing because it was much nicer than they expected it would be. It was also good to show people that “green” doesn’t have to mean expensive- which seems to be the impression many people have. While some of the other houses on the tour had more impressive displays of their sustainability (like the windmill at the Sunset Idea House or an entire forest’s worth of responsibly harvested wood at the Bole/Klingerstein Residence) the type of improvements at Folsom Dore are much more attainable to the average homeowner.
As for the rest of the them, each building was totally different- they represented the full spectrum of price levels and approaches to being sustainable. I was most amused by the giant banner hanging across 22nd Street from a condo building on the tour:
rough banner translation: “Enough with rich people and their condominiums”
Note that I took that photo through a rain screen made out of responsibly-harvested Ipe wood. For more photos of the home tour, visit my Flickr page (again!). There were also more urban chickens… who knew they were so popular?
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As if enough things aren’t going wrong in the world, it looks like the populations of many common types of birds are disappearing in North America. In an article titled 
On a lighter night, this image caught my eye today. 