10x10 Cities Exhibition Opens on April 17 in San Francisco

The American Institute of Architects, San Francisco chapter (AIA San Francisco) in partnership with California College of the Arts (CCA Architecture/URBANlab), HOK and Matarozzi/Pelsinger Builders present 10x10 Cities: Green Facts, Challenges, Futures on view April 17 – May 15, 2009 at 3A Gallery, San Francisco.

10x10 Cities: Green Facts, Challenges, Futures is a three-part exhibit: Datascapes focus on current challenges facing 10 major North American cities, including San Francisco (green facts). Project boards from the 10 cities show built and imagined projects (green challenges). A San Francisco wall addresses ten issues found in its Climate Action Plan by proposing ten future courses of action (green futures). Its companion bus shelter campaign, on view during the exhibit run, takes the message of “green futures” to the streets of San Francisco.

10x10 Cities: Green Facts, Challenges, Futures bookends the AIA 2009 National Convention and Exposition to be held for the first time since 1998 in San Francisco at Moscone Center from April 30 – May 2, 2009. The nine other featured cities, future convention hosts, include Atlanta, Chicago, Denver, Miami, New Orleans, New York, San Diego, Toronto and Washington, DC.

Jennifer Devlin, AIA, chair of the Legacy committee which produced the exhibit for AIA San Francisco, envisions 10x10 Cities as “a way to advance the conversation on sustainability and to engage current and future architects and designers as well as the public, to take action on their ability to impact the role of buildings in climate change.” Ms. Devlin, a principal at EHDD and 2008 AIA San Francisco chapter president, brought California College of the Arts (CCA) on board to help make this vision a reality; on the exhibit team are 12 students from its URBANlab.

Ila Berman, chair of the architecture department at CCA, founded CCA URBANlab as a vehicle to strengthen the link between academia and the design profession. “The future of our cities will be dependent on the capacity of the next generation of architects and urban designers to understand and creatively respond to vital urban and environmental issues. CCA Architecture is committed to actively engaging these matters and working collaboratively with our professional partners to generate innovative strategies to support this future,” she observes.

For URBANlab coordinator Mona El-Khafif, the opportunity to partner with AIA San Francisco and to draw these vital issues into the classroom was an exciting one. Ms. El-Khafif, who oversaw the students’ work on the datascapes, project boards and bus posters, believes that “urban sustainability must be part of our ongoing discussions and permanently integrated into the education of today’s architecture students so that they are able to not only learn about climate change and how it dramatically affects our environment, but also, to realize what they might do as future professionals to respond to it.”

Working with statistics on issues ranging from density, availability of green space, transit use, water use, energy consumption and waste generation to carbon footprint, quality of life and climate action plans, the CCA students created datascapes ranking the ten cities. For the San Francisco bus shelter campaign, students Rachael Yu and Mariah Hodge, working with graphic design student Leah Hickey, re-imagined current scenarios to come up with possible solutions. Miss Yu considers this portion of the exhibit exciting, “It helps us realize our current situation with regards to sustainable practices, so we can appreciate where we’ve been and what the next step forward may be, as we imagine a future city, reconstructed in a future vision of sustainability.”

Students Matthew Enering and Alvin Kong designed the undulating wood structure on which the exhibit will be shown. Working in collaboration with Matarozzi/Pelsinger Builders, the two designed a modular structure which, depending on the location, can either be inserted into a space or stand on its own. “Our goal was to come up with a structure which was portable, so the exhibit could travel to various locations; adjustable, so its components could either expand or contract depending on the venue size; and reusable so that the modular pieces could have after-lives as furniture pieces,” say the duo.

Business partners Dan Matarozzi and Dan Pelsinger welcomed the opportunity to support AIA and to work on a sustainable project. However, the two are all too familiar with the practicalities of working out construction details so the structure made sense physically and economically. For Mr. Matarozzi, “The challenge was in trying to achieve a design objective which tries to force a result counter to how a material, in this case wood, might naturally perform.” But, as Mr. Pelsigner observes, beyond this reality check lies the beauty of the design concept, “The design solution to the challenge of creating a modular, reusable exhibition space with multi-use furniture is an elegant one.”

For Paul Woolford, senior vice president and director of design for HOK, 10x10 Cities presents a more profound reality check. “As humans, we live with the hubris that we are in control, the dominant species on the planet. However, we are not alone in creating built environments. Nests, webs and coral reefs, a whole suite of nature’s creatures, have been creating inhabitations for millennia. All of these were dependent upon outside sources in the natural world,” he notes. By sponsoring 10x10 Cities, HOK is giving students, such as the ones at CCA, the opportunity to explore this conflict between man and nature once again. As Mr. Woolford observes, “In the students’ hands this exploration is exhilarating. Legacy is a portrait of struggle, and the results are a fascinating examination of the perils of global warming.”

On a more prosaic level, Ms. Devlin hopes that the conversation which began in San Francisco continues to the other nine cities, with the exhibit actually travelling to those locations. As she puts it, “Together, we can effect change.”

10x10 Cities: Green Facts, Challenges, Futures is on view April 17 – May 15, 2009 at 3A Gallery, located at 101 South Park Street, San Francisco. 3A Gallery is free and open to the public Monday – Friday, 9:00 am to 6:00 pm.