Ron Zuckerman has never once bought a painting to match a sofa. He has never hired a designer to tell him where a photograph should hang, and never acquired a piece because its value would appreciate. For 45 years, he simply stood in front of a photograph and if he felt some kind of a connection, he bought it. One at a time, on a fundraiser's salary.

The result is that his home – a flat in San Francisco's Castro district – feels more like an archive. Built in 1889, the flat's building announces itself with confident proportions, high ceilings, long corridors and a succession of small rooms that, when lined with art, highlight a seemingly vast amount of wall space. From the entry stairwell to the guest bedroom, from the kitchen to the den, just about every surface holds something that chronicles facets and moments of queer life across the 20th and early 21st centuries.

The collection ranges from the serious to the whimsical, encompassing everything from a 1950s physique card and icons painted by Zuckerman’s late partner Nick to a photogravure that turns out to be a sex ad and a plate with a man being given a wedgie (a work by Benjamin Fredrickson, a photographer known for shooting subject matter that is often considered taboo). The collection spans studios in Brooklyn and the Instagram era, Mapplethorpe and Mississippi, the AIDS epidemic, and whatever comes after that. It is not a survey; it is an assembled history, both personal and queer-specific, that announces itself from the first step.

‘The show starts at the door,' says Zuckerman. And he means it literally. As you enter, you encounter three photographs by Luke Smalley, known for capturing images of athletic young men, often with a 1920s prep-school aesthetic. This is followed by an introduction to photographer Danny Fitzgerald (who also worked under the moniker ‘Les Demi Dieux'), the artist most represented in Zuckerman's collection.

The first image he ever bought, he recounts, was by Marsha Burns, a Seattle photographer who caught an androgynous young man with his socks rolled to his ankles, the shadow falling in the most striking way. Zuckerman saw it in a local gallery in 1980, paid $200, and took it home. He fell in love with the image and had no plan for how and where he would display it. That instinct, and unbothered by the lack of a plan, has governed every purchase since.

Although the subjects of the art are invariably male, female artists can also be found at various waypoints across the space, seen, for example, in Lissa Rivera's Beautiful Boy series. The gaze in this collection is not monolithic. Further diving into the space, we come across Nan Goldin's photograph of her nephew, Simon on the Subway, acquired at a Gay Men's Health Crisis benefit for $500. It is worth considerably more now.

What followed, in the early years, are artefacts from the downtown New York post-Stonewall scene: those such as Robert Mapplethorpe, Peter Hujar and Stanley Stellar. Zuckerman had read about them before he could afford them and reading made him want to look, and looking made him want to own. In the years he has been collecting, his biggest regret was trading in a Mapplethorpe photograph of a man in an autoerotic act, which visitors found too explicit, for a print by Helen Levitt.

‘They'd be talking to me and they'd see it on the wall, and then they'd have this look of disgust on their face. I thought, maybe it's too much.' No disrespect to Levitt, though, whom he calls ‘a great street photographer'.

His first Peter Hujar, bought in 1986 from the Gracie Mansion Gallery during Hujar's first-ever solo exhibition, was paid off in instalments. He still has the typed invoices, with each payment recorded in ink. Last September, at a Fraenkel Gallery recreation of that same show, he reconnected with Gracie Mansion, who is now an art consultant, and showed her the invoice. To his surprise and delight, she pulled out her own copy. Her ledger also had the payments made out to Hujar directly, cheque numbers and all.

Then he discovered that, before Stonewall, there had been another world entirely, seen in the art of George Platt Lynes, Paul Cadmus and Jared French, physique photographers working out of Brooklyn and the Midwest. The prints are studies in a very specific masculine beauty. He began collecting those, too. The ‘collector gene', he calls it, without apology.

There are also the pieces that operate more as artefacts than decoration. Among the collection of portraits in the living room are two artworks that tell a story. Above the sofa hangs Icarian Angel, by the late San Francisco artist Daniel Goldstein. At first, it looks like an abstract photographic print, a spectral figure emerging from a tawny surface. As Zuckerman begins to explain, it takes a moment to absorb the context. The photograph features a leather bench cover from the Muscle System, the renowned gay gym on San Francisco's Market Street. The shot reveals the imprinted outlines of human figures left by the sweat of men who exercised there. A substantial proportion of them, Zuckerman estimates, possibly half, died during the AIDS epidemic. Goldstein called the series Reliquaries, which stems from the Latin word reliquiae, meaning ‘remains of a martyr'. Poignantly, the piece was a gift he gave himself the year after his partner died.

Across the room is a work by Kyle Meyer called Interwoven, a photograph of a gay man in Eswatini (where homosexuality is illegal) wearing a traditional woman's headdress. The photograph has been cut into strips and woven together with the actual headdress the subject wore during the portrait shoot. Meyer came to San Francisco for an art fair and visited Zuckerman's flat. Later, a specialist framer assembled it while on the phone with Meyer the entire time. The work has the effect of serving to conceal the wearer's identity while also revealing it at the same time. Both pieces work well in the space which, he says, is done ‘instinctively'. Both leave traces on materials and what the body inscribes, as well as what gets preserved when the body is gone or endangered.

Meanwhile, in the bedroom, there is a brief departure from the nearly endless array of male physique on display throughout the rest of the home – an enormous c.1740 map of Paris and its environs, which Zuckerman acquired from a former donor to the Quaker charity he fundraised for early in his career.

Zuckerman says he serves as a ‘yenta’, (Yiddish for ‘busy body') or connector, fostering a community by linking artists including JD Raenbeau, Bill Hayes and Stanley Stellar to galleries, most notably Clamp Art. His move from collecting black-and-white photography to contemporary painting was, in fact, inspired by his discovery of Raenbeau, a Long Island art teacher with a painterly approach, whose vibrant Jean-Honoré Fragonard-inflected canvases depict his husband in the garden with a raw, sexually charged explicitness that is somehow both tender and matter of fact. When the LA opening of one of Raenbeau's shows needed two more pieces to complete the exhibit at the last minute, Zuckerman flew over with the paintings in his carry-on luggage.

Today, he is a licensed psychotherapist, who, by his account, charges half the going rate because he would rather see ‘artists and dancers than tech workers who can afford the difference'. The two roles – of collector and therapist – are not as separate as they might seem. The artists he collects tend to become people he has lunch with and whose break-ups he talks them through. ‘They're my boys,' he says with the affection and tenderness of someone who has watched a community flourish, experience extended loss, bury its dead and persevere. The flat reflects all of it. The longing, the loss and the continuation of beauty. This is what it means to collect within a history you have also lived through.

This article appears in the August 2026 Issue of Wallpaper*, available now in print on newsstands, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today

Via Aurelia – its name a nod to the ancient consular road connecting Rome and Pisa – is an elegant gathering spot in San Francisco’s Mission Rock neighbourhood. Located on the ground floor of Visa’s global and North American headquarters, the dinner-only spot, which boasts views of Mission Bay and the Giants’ ballpark, is run by Back Home Hospitality, the team behind the buzzy trattoria franchise Che Fico and casual counter-service deli Bubbelah.

Wallpaper* dines at Via Aurelia, San Francisco

The mood: Italian whispers

Local design firm DLC-ID, a close collaborator of the hospitality group, has dreamt up a softly hued setting inspired by the textures and pigments of Tuscany. ‘My aim was to channel the ubiquitous touchstones of Italian style – pared back to their purest forms and hues – and then layer them with a soft, modern hand,’ says studio founder Jon de la Cruz.

Florentine sandstone, vaulted ceilings, frescoed plaster patinas, and muted lighting make for a richly layered, old-world-style interior. ‘It’s fine dining, but I wanted it to feel as if you’ve stepped into a casual coastal town – tranquil, sun-washed, and timeless,’ adds de la Cruz, who collaborated with paint shop Color Atelier to create tonal depth through the limewashed wall finishes in a custom palette of olive, terracotta, ochre, and blue juniper hues.

The food: Tuscany via San Francisco

Native chef David Nayfeld, who describes the evening menu as a love letter to Tuscany and San Francisco, meshes techniques from this coastal Italian region with season-led produce from neighbouring suppliers. Guests are invited to choose from a five-course ‘degustazione’ menu or à la carte, which comprises highlights such as the creamy orzo with San Francisco Bay Dungeness crab, chanterelle, preserved lemon, and chervil, or the perfectly seared Maine Diver sea scallop, accented by a silky, burnt pear purée, hazelnut and pear relish and finished with Golden Osetra caviar.

The wine list is equally as comprehensive, with 650 bottles from French and Italian regions. Nayfeld recommends relishing the decadent torta al cioccolato while sipping Fratelli Mossio ‘Le Margarite’, a Dolcetto, dessert wine from the Langhe region in Southern Piedmont.

Via Aurelia is located at 300 Toni Stone Xing Suite A, San Francisco, CA 94158, United States

For the Bay Area’s largest and most historic synagogue, everything old is new again – thanks to a modernisation that seamlessly connects 21st-century design with a century-old landmark.

Completed in 1925 by Bakewell & Brown – the prolific San Francisco architecture firm responsible for a number of notable buildings including San Francisco City Hall, the City of Paris department store and the San Francisco Art Institute – Temple Emanu-El was constructed in the Byzantine Revival style as an homage to the Second Temple of Jerusalem, an ancient place of Jewish worship. And, although the beloved synagogue has remained the centre of life and worship for one of California’s oldest congregations, accessibility issues and necessary seismic upgrades had significantly impacted its ability to serve the Jewish community for nearly four decades.

Finally, after nearly five years of research and planning, and almost two-and-a-half years of construction, the 100-year-old structure is welcoming its community as intended, thanks to the vision of Mark Cavagnero Associates, one of San Francisco’s preeminent architecture firms.

'It is humbling to have been given the opportunity to re-envision the building and advance the institution's mission,' says founding principal Mark Cavagnero, who was tasked with making the necessary updates while honouring the synagogue’s heritage.

The result is a landmarked structure that, with the addition of 19,000 sq ft of programming and gathering spaces, thoughtfully blends historic and contemporary materials while fulfilling the long overdue accessibility and seismic requirements.

'For me, bringing back that sensibility and restoring the historic grandeur of the temple’s original concept was really important,' Cavagnero says, 'but we also needed to make the building more secure in these modern times.'

To that end, Cavagnero and his team inserted a two-storey glass and bronze structure that wraps around the courtyard’s interior perimeter and houses new community and education spaces. 'The congregation wanted to add quite a bit of space in that area,' explains Cavagnero. 'It’s what senior Rabbi Jonathan Singer called "sticky space", where people could socialise and have more of a communal experience.'

Elsewhere, within the existing structure, a gently curved bridge was constructed to connect the two sides of the lobby (putting you at eye-level with rich architectural details that otherwise went unnoticed), and a monumental – albeit previously inaccessible – tower was carved out to add a floor in place of a stairway leading to the courtyard.

Another key area of focus was the children’s preschool and play area that were relocated from the courtyard and basement levels up to the fourth-floor rooftop. 'Before, you could look in the windows off Lake Street directly into the classrooms, so they had to put screening over the historic bronze gates [to the courtyard],' the architect explains, noting how seriously the synagogue takes safety.

But perhaps the most meaningful and significant change was the re-establishment and restoration of the temple’s original grand entry on Lake Street, which had been closed since 1990 due to accessibility laws. 'They’d lost probably the most important part of the architecture – the actual relationship that took you from the street into the sanctuary,’ notes Cavagnero. 'The majesty, the history, and sense of tradition dating back to the Second Temple were lost.'

Now, without a staircase impeding entry for mobility-challenged congregants, a new glazed entry lobby at street level means everyone can enter through building’s tremendous arch as initially envisioned by Bakewell & Brown. 'That which is new is very new, and that which is old is very respected, restored and revered,' Cavagnero reflects.

'The Houses Are Haunted by White Night-Gowns' by The Future Perfect is an exhibition whose very name invites exploration. Satellite to the 12th instalment of FOG Design+Art in San Francisco (until 25 January 2026), the show's title is taken from a Wallace Stevens poem critical of the conformity and diminishing imagination of modern life.

Curators Homan Rajai and Elena Dendiberia of local Studio Ahead gave 13 designers carte blanche to produce unique bowls and then displayed each vessel on a stacked assemblage of credenzas, armoires and side tables selected from the collections of Berkeley-based Scandinavian retailer Mid Century Møbler (1940s-1970s) and San Francisco's C. Mariani Antiques (17th-19th centuries).

In an era of digital shopping, virtual socialising and hyper-curation, these accumulations of furniture and objects recall the pre-internet days of IRL antique hunting and thrifting, which used to involve interacting with design stories and each other. It's a context that reminds us that we can get offline and still find community and creativity.

Studio Ahead for The Future Perfect: Scandinavian design and contemporary vessels

Each bowl's design is as distinctive as it is distinctively displayed. Tucked into a sculpted Danish sideboard, offset stripes reminiscent of a Bauhaus tapestry bedazzle a ceramic vessel by Cody Hoyt. Anna Karlin's centrepiece, atop an inlaid chest of drawers, has a knotted, blown-glass foot. John Hogan's thick vase, tattooed with dots and smudges, rests on an old sewing cabinet with a notions drawer woven from wicker.

'Bowls are deceptively simple,' says The Future Perfect’s founder David Alhadeff, who runs three other galleries in Brooklyn, Los Angeles and Miami. 'Their function, scale and history are well understood, which makes even the smallest formal decisions feel meaningful. Innovation often comes from deep engagement with familiar forms rather than from novelty.'

But beyond the bowls, the show is a collage of design, art and craft, historical eras and aesthetics, materials and artisanal techniques. The result encourages exploration with eyes and hands: touching finely worked, lived-on surfaces, pulling handles, sliding doors. The new and old frame each other. Historical layers give the show texture, inducing curiosity in a room already fully visible from the street.

Collaging, collecting and collaborating are the studio's superpowers. Ahead's work tends to draw other creatives, creative brands and created objects into itself whether that means partnering with an antiques dealer or the artist Jeffrey Sincich, who designed the mix of signage-inspired vinyl lettering announcing the show on the shop's broad storefront.

This way of working reminds us that curators are always part of a team that generates important context for design ideas. 'Context is central to how we think at The Future Perfect,' Alhadeff explains. 'The bowls weren’t meant to be isolated objects, but part of a layered, lived-in environment that resists a single reading. It echoes the way meaning accumulates through proximity, history and use.'

So, as the show asks: are we becoming less intrepid and less imaginative in the crush of cookies and caches, losing our ability to get inspired and engage with others offline? Events like those taking place this week suggest that the answer is up to us. 'I think the algorithm is messing with our universal algorithm,' Rajai says. 'When you find something interesting, dive into it. Go out and have the adventure. Connect with the people around you. It’s more real and more fascinating than anything you can possibly find by scrolling.'

A boisterous restaurant and vinyl bar has opened its doors in San Francisco’s Mission Creek neighbourhood, occupying the same space the beloved Universal Café once did. Aptly named Side A, the site seeks to turn up the volume on Midwestern hospitality, giving American crowd-pleasers an international spin.

Side A, San Francisco

Styled as a contemporary bistro, Side A exudes a retro-futurist aesthetic. The concept was brokered by Studio Ahead – a local design practice – which introduced husband-and-wife duo Parker and Caroline Brown, who now run Side A, to the venue’s owner Jim Skånberg. ‘We had recently met them at one of their pop-up events and were attracted to the energy they created by combining culinary and musical experiences, a spirit that would ultimately translate to the new venture,’ recall Studio Ahead’s co-founders, Elena Dendiberia and Homan Rajai.

The design team established Side A’s crisp, minimal character with concrete, stainless steel and marble, balanced by bespoke furnishings from 280 West. At the heart of the room, a sculptural, brushed-aluminium DJ booth fronts a vast record wall, announcing the restaurant’s other role as a listening bar. The audio pedigree is equally sharp: a system developed with Good Question Sound, anchored by Tub’s Audio speakers from New Zealand.

To offset the cool rigour of its industrial palette, Studio Ahead layered in warmth. Rounded acoustic panels clad in undyed sheep’s-wool felt from Sonoma and West Marin line the original banquette wall; bar stools in metal are softened with waxed-canvas cushions; bespoke candleholders add intimacy.

In the kitchen, Parker (formerly chef de cuisine at Michelin-starred Aphotic) has devised a menu of refined Americana with a playful twist: a Garbage Salad is laced with little gems, pork belly confit and dilly beans; a bone marrow burger is enriched with red onion jam. The wine list, curated by Paul Chung of La Ciccia, leans Italian with a local accent.

Meanwhile, Caroline presides over the musical programme, drawing on her own vinyl library: a polyphonic spread of soul, funk, disco, blues, rock, reggae, jazz and world. Guest DJs complete the line-up, with a morning rotation that pairs coffee and doughnuts with soul-stirring sets, weekdays from 8am to 2pm.

Side A is located at 2814 19th St, San Francisco, CA 94110, United States.

Ruth Asawa might be best known for her captivating, biomorphic looped wire sculptures and her legacy at Black Mountain college as a student – and then colleague – of Josef Albers, Merce Cunningham and R Buckminster Fuller. But many outside of Northern California don’t know that over the course of a six-decade career living, working and raising six children in San Francisco, Asawa also had a dynamic public art practice with more than a dozen pieces, including fountains, murals and memorials, that were intimately tied to her community and her arts activism.

The current ‘Ruth Asawa: Retrospective’ at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), on view through 2 September 2025, is a thrilling, poetic exhibition featuring more than 300 pieces, a testament to a prolific artist who worked in a variety of mediums.

The show, which will open at the Museum of Modern Art in New York this October, also features images and ephemera of a few public commissions. Asawa’s 1973 San Francisco Fountain, for instance, is an homage to the city she loved that was originally rendered in her favourite baker's clay, a dough made of flour, water, and salt, a recipe she often made with her own children. The final work includes baker's clay sculptural contributions from 250 residents aged three to 88 that were later cast in bronze.

Then there’s the 1968 Andrea fountain in Ghirardelli square, which at the time stirred controversy for its depiction of a nursing mermaid and an aesthetic that drew the ire of critics who called it 'corny' and 'high camp'.

Asawa responded, 'This is what I want to do.'

In their exhibition catalogue essay 'What Cannot Be Produced Alone: Ruth Asawa’s Public Art', Marci Kwon, an associate professor of art history at Stanford University, and Jennie Yoon, an art history PhD candidate at Stanford, recount this Andrea fountain anecdote and other histories as they examine the collaborative nature of Asawa’s public commissions.

'These works are extremely well known and beloved in San Francisco. People have childhood and shared memories of them. They’re part of the fabric of everyday life,' says Kwon. 'They are more than the product of an individual genius, but her presence and community advocacy are palpable.'

In 1990, Asawa began working on one of her most personal commissions, the Japanese American Internment Memorial, acknowledging the incarceration of 120,000 people of Japanese descent during the Second World War by the United States Government after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941. The city of San Jose, about an hour south of San Francisco, engaged her to create a series of bronze panels portraying universal narratives of immigration, community and agricultural life, as well as incarceration camps, barbed wire and armed soldiers. This was also the first time Asawa depicted her own incarceration history, one that even her children didn’t know completely.

Asawa’s daughter Addie Lanier points out that the Trump administration’s immigration policies are reminiscent of what her mother’s family suffered. 'She was very much part of her time in America,' Lanier says. 'With the rise of the civil rights movement and the anti-war movements, her ways of engaging with issues was through public art.'

Lanier collaborated with her mother on the San Jose memorial, conducting historical and personal family research. Asawa’s artist friend Nancy Thomspon, and son Paul Lanier, also an artist, worked with Asawa to sculpt the panels using her beloved baker's clay that were later cast in bronze.

Asawa was born outside Los Angeles in 1926 to a farming family. Two months after Pearl Harbor, her father was abducted and imprisoned by the FBI. Later, her mother, Asawa and five siblings were sent to a temporary detention site at the Santa Anita Racetrack, where they lived in two horse stalls. Eventually, they were sent to Rohwer War Relocation Center in Arkansas.

While Asawa’s artistic ethos is often associated with the experimental, Bauhaus-influenced Black Mountain College, she always credited the importance of the arts education she received at the Santa Anita detention centre, where Disney animation artists Tom Okamoto, Chris Ishii and James Tanaka taught the children art.

'She was very explicit about their impact on her and that she took art classes in the camps at age 16. It was there that she learned that being an artist might be a life that was possible for her,' says Yoon.

The best way to experience Asawa’s public commissions is to visit them for yourself. Fortunately, her family (Asawa died in 2013) has compiled a self-guided public art tour replete with maps, images and audio accompaniment from Asawa and other collaborators and friends

Janet Bishop, SFMOMA chief curator, who co-curated the Asawa retrospective with MoMA curator Cara Manes, says, 'When people ask me what impact San Francisco had on Ruth Asawa, I say the better question is, what impact did Ruth Asawa have on San Francisco?'

Wherever Stephanie-Dolores Henkle and Jordan Crane have lived, they’ve gone all in. In the once-industrial Jersey City, New Jersey, they shared a small warehouse. When they bought in the historic town of Hudson, New York, they purchased a property dating back to the 1840s.

Ten years ago, a job opportunity brought the couple westward to the San Francisco Bay. In order to part with their life on the East Coast, their home of more than two decades, the house had to be good.

Henkle and Crane found a front-runner in a three-bedroom, two-bathroom mid-century modern, perched on a sloped parcel in the Berkeley Hills. ‘When we walked into the house and saw the views, it was like, 100 per cent – we love this place,’ remembers Henkle, who works as a recruiter.

The couple had reason to fall head over heels: The home was designed in 1956 by Chinese-American architect Roger Lee for noted biochemist Clinton Ballou and his wife and professional collaborator, Dorothy. The two-level house, with its simple floor plan, warm timber-panelled walls, and stunning views across the bay, was virtually untouched; The Ballou’s cherished the house so much that they lived in it for more than 50 years.

‘Because there were so few owners, that meant fewer things we had to undo,’ says Crane, a designer and creative director.

They scored the house after beating out 13 other bidders. Before diving into a renovation, though, Henkle and Crane wanted to determine exactly what they needed. So they spent a few years living there to get acquainted with the landscape, the light and the building’s quirks. They loved its warmth, midcentury feel and architectural significance, but felt, with a few tweaks, it could feel contemporary. The ‘70s-era appliances also would have to go.

For help, they called Casper Mork-Ulnes, an award-winning, Norwegian-born architect with offices in both San Francisco and Oslo. Though Mork-Ulnes’s firm was well-versed in historic projects, particularly Victorian conversions, this would be his first time working in the shadow of a modernist. ‘I was immediately a little bit frightened, because it was such a great house,’ the architect admits.

Both Mork-Ulnes and the clients knew that any design intervention would need to be a light one. ‘We wanted to keep his original intent,’ says Crane. ‘We kept saying, if Roger Lee came in today, would he approve of the things we did?’

The solution, therefore, was an edit as opposed to a gut.

Mork-Ulnes found a kindred spirit in Lee, who died in 1981. ‘He made modernism approachable and not just for the rich, which is something we've also done with a lot of our projects,’ the architect explains.

Working with Lee’s original drawings for the home, Mork-Ulnes sought to bring the home even more in keeping with the architect’s original design intent. ‘We tried to distill the concept and make it more clear with some very simple, highly-surgical moves,’ Mork-Ulnes explains.

First, he wanted to improve legibility between interior and exterior. ‘The Modernists of that time were really about blurring the interior and the outside, in particular in California,’ explains Mork-Ulnes. So he carefully cut away some of the interior walls so that, from the front door, you can see through the house and out to the bay beyond.

The most significant design move came by way of a central rectilinear volume, to which the architect moved storage, the pantry and the house’s two bathrooms. Clad in meranti timber, it virtually disappears. But the bathrooms hide a fun surprise: open the door and you will find yourself surrounded by floor-to-ceiling tomato-red tiles, a hue inspired by fiery sunsets over the bay.

‘I think people are almost, like “What did they change here?”’ says Mork-Ulnes. ‘It was that surgical.’

The remainder of the project was in the details: outlets were concealed in the floor, dated trim was removed in favour of crisp shadow gaps, the original floors were sanded. Even the HVAC vents were designed to disappear. ‘So much of the project was what not to do,’ says Crane of the design brief. ‘Do less, hide things, take away.’

‘I think Roger Lee would have appreciated that,’ adds Mork-Ulnes.

A favourite space is the timber-clad, galley-style kitchen. Like the Ballous – who earned a reputation for cooking gourmet meals and serving hand-cranked ice cream to the biochemistry department at UC Berkeley – Henkle and Crane love to entertain. But instead of replacing the galley-style midcentury kitchen with an open-concept one, they decided to lean into the cosiness. A small dining room is tucked into a corner behind it, while a cocktail bar is hidden behind a door in the central storage volume.

Because of the pandemic, construction on the home got off to a slow start and wrapped up in 2022. In the years since, though, Henkle, Crane and their American pitbull terrier, Shotsi are enjoying everything the home has to offer. ‘It’s so warm and comfortable, especially in the evening when the fireplace is on and the sun is setting,’ Henkle says. ‘You can see the city lights and it’s really cool.’

‘It has this sexy, late-night Tokyo vibe,’ adds Crane.

Mork-Ulnes, for his part, hopes to have dinner with his clients soon. ‘I haven't had one of their cocktails yet,' he jokes.

So would the project earn Lee’s stamp of approval? Says Ulnes, ‘I think he would be very happy because we tried our absolute hardest to reinforce his concept and the aura of this place.’

The Vaillancourt Fountain may be demolished as part of a redevelopment of the Embarcadero Plaza in San Francisco, where it has stood for 54 years. The controversial public artwork, officially named Québec libre! and designed by Canadian artist Armand Vaillancourt, is missing from plans for the new plaza.

City officials maintain that renderings are merely illustrative and no decisions have been made regarding the fate of the fountain. Nonetheless, Vaillancourt, now 95, and his family are applying pressure to local politicians to preserve his work.

The artist has rallied the support of various groups, including modernist architecture preservation group Docomomo; The Cultural Landscape Foundation (TCLF); and proponents of public art and brutalism, as well as local skateboarders (the site has been a popular skateboarding spot since the 1990s).

Completed in 1971, the Vaillancourt Fountain is a modernist sculpture made of precast concrete tubes; members of the public can interact with the monument via bridges, walkways and stairs. It formed an important part of the Embarcadero Plaza, which was designed by landscape architect Lawrence Halprin, who described the fountain as a ‘modern-day Trevi Fountain’.

The outdoor art installation has, however, been a source of controversy. It is meant to have water flowing, but it was drained in June 2024, leading some to question its purpose.

The significance of the Vaillancourt Fountain also changed when the Embarcadero Freeway was demolished in 1991; the fountain’s concrete tubes were originally meant to obscure and echo the freeway. Additionally, not everyone is a fan of its brutalist architecture aesthetic; architecture critic Allan Temko compared the fountain to ‘something deposited by a concrete dog with square intestines’.

The redevelopment of the Embarcadero Plaza will create a five-acre park that integrates the waterfront with the financial district, and is estimated to cost $30 million. Restoring the fountain would cost an estimated $3 million, according to San Francisco’s Recreation and Park Department.

Is it worth it? The answer will depend on how you see the Vaillancourt Fountain: modernist gem or ailing monument, icon or eyesore.

William Stout Architectural Books is a San Francisco institution. Founded by Bill Stout in 1974, for over half a century the Jackson Square-based bookshop has been the go-to supplier of architectural monographs, biographies, material manuals, treatises and coffee table tomes. Beloved by the local design community and a regular stop-off for passing starchitects, Stout’s shop is also a favourite of one of their Jackson Square neighbours, creative collective LoveFrom.

When it became known that the store was changing hands and a new identity was required, LoveFrom stepped forwards to offer its services for free. ‘We love and cherish the store and want to support our neighbourhood,’ says the studio’s Chris Wilson, adding that ever since it was founded by Sir Jony Ive and Marc Newson in 2019, the London- and San Francisco-based design agency has ensured it runs side projects just ‘for the love of doing it’, alongside regular long-term collaborators like Ferrari and Airbnb.

The redoubtable William Stout set up his bookshop in 1974 to cater for his fascination with architecture, which he studied at the University of Idaho from 1960. After a spell working in firms on the East Coast, steeping himself in the architecture culture of Yale and its alumni, Stout headed West. Disillusioned by the practice of architecture but fascinated with the mechanics, influence and physical feel of architectural books, he started his own library.

This rapidly evolved into a modest store, catering to the many practices in the area, even though it was housed in the apartment he shared with the architect Steven Holl. After a few years, booming business allowed the shop to move to proper premises, first at Osgood Place, then to its current location at 804 Montgomery Street.

Stout officially retired in 2022. Throughout his career, he not only catered to seekers of the new and notable but built up a formidable inventory of historic books (although he claimed to always keep the best works for himself when acquiring a new collection). That personal library is now the property of the Eames Institute of Infinite Curiosity, along with the store itself.

Lauren Smith, chief experience officer at the Eames Institute, is now in the enviable position of running a world-class design bookshop. The charitable organisation was launched in 2022 and is dedicated to ‘advancing the dynamic legacy of 20th-century designers Ray and Charles Eames’.

Speaking to us from the basement stockroom of the bookshop, theatrically framed by looming piles of books, Smith explains how the acquisition came about. ‘We’d learned through a friend of the Institute that William was selling his personal library of architectural books.’ With a catalogue of over 40,000 objects from the Eames’s career, life and studio, Smith describes Stout’s archive as ‘a natural fit to add to the collection – we’re in the business of preserving legacies’.

In the process of arranging this sale, Stout let them know he was also selling the business. The Eames Institute stepped in, deciding it was a great opportunity to only preserve a vital creative hub in the city, but also to help it ‘move on to the next phase’.

‘We’re looking to the next 50 years,’ says Smith, adding that ‘one of our missions is to create communities of curious problem solvers.’ A bookshop dedicated to art and design fitted right in.

At this point, LoveFrom also joined the fray after hearing that the team from Eames wanted to refresh the look and feel of the venerable store. Over the decades, the design and identity had evolved, with the original signage joined by a jumbled accretion of different styles and approaches.

‘We took Bill out to lunch to pick his brain about all this [visual] material,’ says Wilson. The principal identity was always the vaguely art deco-style sign, with an elongated, stylised sans serif that recalls both Mackintosh and the monogram used extensively by Frank Lloyd Wright from the 1920s onwards.

LoveFrom’s Antonio Cavedoni – described by Wilson as the studio’s ‘type detective’ – was set to research its origins. ‘It used a font called Washington, designed in 1970 by the Australian-born designer Russell Bean,’ Cavedoni reports. ‘As it references art deco, it has a very strong voice. So we decided to keep some elements, but also do something different.’

As Wilson says, ‘part of the brief was to understand the DNA of Stout – to help them see what they actually had. The quirkiness was what we liked – it definitely felt architectural as well, so we didn’t want that to go away. We wanted to give them a strong typographic voice.’

‘Because the original typeface was contemporary to when the store was founded, we reckoned they clearly wanted to have something that was of its time,’ Cavedoni explains. Washington had strong elements of Futura, a font that tended to be used for subsequent communications over the years.

LoveFrom approached Bean and asked if they could modify the original, as long as it was kept for use for the bookshop. The designer agreed and the result, shown here, is ‘LF Washington’, a bespoke sans serif that serves as the basis of the new identity.

‘There was a lot of overshoot in the original,’ says Cavedoni. ‘We wanted to tame it down a bit as well as make it a little bolder.’ The studio also lowered the waist and redrew the numbers to follow the consistency of Futura – the originals were rather eccentric.

‘We needed to keep some of the history in there – it’s the Stout voice,’ he says. In addition, LoveFrom’s team developed a range of ligatures. ‘They add whimsy and personality to certain words,’ says Cavedoni, adding that these were inspired in part by the FLW monogram.

‘We’re trying to use typography in an architectural way,’ says Wilson. The primary expression of this is the sign, a beautifully crafted piece of product design that builds on the original but not only renders the type more cleanly and graphically but boils the identity down to a crisply delineated square. ‘We also wanted to help people understand that this store has been around since 1974 – that gave the red bar at the base of the original logo a reason to be there,’ says Wilson.

The finished object, with its enamelled finish and polished stainless steel dividers, stands proud of the wall, a neat distillation of half a century of history both graphic and architectural.’ It also references the store’s internal reorganisation, removing a lot of the clutter ‘without removing the soul or the spirit’. In addition to the core palette of black, white and accents of red, LoveFrom has also developed an extended palette based on Le Corbusier’s Architectural Polychromy.

The other key element of the new identity is illustration. ‘The physical store really is a destination for designers and architects when they come to the city,’ says Wilson, ‘but we also wanted people who discover the store online to go and check it out in real life.’

To that end, the team commissioned illustrator Satoshi Hashimoto, renowned for his hard-lined but whimsical approach to portraiture and places, to create a series of illustrations of the store itself, flanked by the signature gingko tree beside the front door. This serves as the online landing page, complete with a different illustration for each season – indicated by the presence or absence of leaves. There’s also a subtle Easter Egg, a rendition of the Eames House Bird sculpture that hops around various locations in the scene and provides a direct link to the Eames Institute.

Additionally, Hashimoto has also created some illustrations of William Stout himself, a familiar and friendly character with beard and signature glasses, to continue the bookseller’s legacy and presence. ‘The caricature of Bill becomes the mascot for the store,’ says Wilson, showing how it illustrates the tote bags.

The designers will definitely be continuing their association with the bookshop. Next up is the 'Stoutmobile', a mobile bookshop housed in a 1970 Volkswagen Type 2 van that will soon be graced with a LoveFrom livery.

‘We don’t just design guidelines and hand them off and hope for the best,’ Wilson says. As well as signage and templates, there’s talk of reviving the output of William Stout Publishers, a publishing arm that began with the Pamphlet Architecture series, as well as quarterly bulletins and even architectural maps of the area.

‘Just because we do something pro bono doesn’t mean we don’t do what it takes to do a proper job,’ Wilson says. ‘Our approach at LoveFrom is as a team that mixes graphic designers, product designers and architects. This project was a real intersection for us – it really played to our strengths.’

The new identity and wider recognition for William Stout Architectural Books should mitigate the steep learning curve of learning old systems, adopting new ones and navigating the inevitable eccentricities one might find in a half century-old business driven by passion.

With a knowledgeable staff – the majority of whom are recent architecture graduates – as well as the collective retail experience on the Eames Institute team (including Smith, who started her own store in a former career), William Stout Architectural Books is in safe hands. Events, signings, talks and panels have already happened following the acquisition, and the new identity will take things up another gear.

The shop now has a Stout Junior section and recent publishing history has seen more and more design- and architecture-focused books for children. ‘It’s been so interesting as we’ve seen the clientele get younger and younger over the last few years,’ says Smith, who recognises that there will also be a hungry audience for beautiful design books amongst students.

‘Jony told us that the first time he came to San Francisco in 1989, he visited Stout Books,’ says Smith. ‘I have such a deep affection for this bookshop and the extraordinary community that Bill lovingly created over five decades,’ Ive says. ‘It has been an honour to be able to make a contribution to an institution we love and value so profoundly.’

While Stout has now stepped back from the day-to-day running of the bookshop, his presence is still very much felt, and not just through Hashimoto’s deft pen portraits. According to Smith, ‘Bill says he started this store because he wanted to buy books for himself.’ Bibliophiles of all ages will find memories and creative magic within.

William Stout Architectural Books is at 804 Montgomery St., San Francisco, California 94133 and at StoutBooks.com, @StoutBooks

EamesInstitute.org, @EamesInsitute

LoveFrom.com

High up in the Los Altos Hills, this new California home by WOJR offers far-reaching views of the San Francisco Bay. Built atop the foundations for a ‘Spanish style’ house, the finished design by the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based architects, is anything but traditional. Dubbed the House of Horns, the 8,500 square foot residence is arranged across two floors but features a myriad of interlocking spaces, with architectural elements that reach out into the landscape.

Tour this unusual California home

House of Horns might conjure up something akin to a ranch, but the horns in question are influenced by musical instruments, not cattle. According to the architects, the house was intended to be ‘an assemblage of instruments tuned to capture the cycles of the day, and of the seasons - the changing light, the growth, decay, and growth of the foggy Bay landscape.’

The lower level is set deep into the hillside, thanks to substantial new excavations that give the structure the appearance of a single storey house. This level extends out into the landscape with three distinctive circular chambers that offer viewpoints and framing devices for the world beyond, shaping both the landscape and the sky.

These courtyard spaces are countersunk into the slope of the garden, marked out by swirling ribbons of railings. The courtyards create forms that are mirrored in the skylights and design elements scattered throughout the main house. These range from the elliptical roof vaults on the first floor, which curve upwards above the principal living spaces to scoop light from a series of high-level windows and roof-lights, to the dense physicality of sculptural stone elements found throughout the house.

The first floor is essential a large open plan living and dining area, with variations in the space created by the varying topography of the roof. From outside, this gives the house a distinct roofline and fenestration. Here you’ll also find the main entrance, with the living area punctuated by large windows onto the newly landscaped garden, bracketed by bedrooms.

On one side, are two identical ensuites, with the primary bedroom at the other end of the house, In addition to a generous closet, there’s also a palatial marble-lined bathroom, with a substantial tub carved from a dark seam of the stone.

Large marble elements are a key feature of the property, from the ovoid, menhir-like column in the ground floor pool space, to the fireplace that marks the centre point of the house. Carved from blocks of Danby marble from Vermont, the architects describe these elements as ‘projects within a project.’

Alongside the pool, the ground floor also houses a bedroom and office that share an external circular courtyard, as well as utility spaces and a media room. Bespoke furniture was made for the project by Kylle Sebree Studio, with a kitchen supplied by Henrybuilt. Quarra Stone provided the stone objects, with the bathroom terrazzo and stone provided by Marvelous Marble Design.

Of particular interest is the restoration of the surrounding gardens. Working with horticultural Jeff Kunkel of Greenstar, the landscape has been meticulously returned to a wild state, albeit one that’s been carefully curated to blend with the forms and masses of the house, the views from the windows and the vegetation surrounding the courtyards. ‘like the house, the landscape has many layers... It acts with the house as a synthetic whole, a precisely tuned instrument to experience the world around,’ says the architects.

WOJR.org

A narrow home showcases expansive potential among San Francisco's steep hills and colourful slanted houses. For architects, small plots can be difficult to navigate, especially in the dense, urban heart of a city. However, Dumican Mosey Architects has transformed one awkward site by working within smaller square footage for this narrow house project - Dolores Heights House, sat branching out behind the trees.

Dolores Heights House: an ingenious narrow home by Dumican Mosey Arhitects

The San Francisco-based studio began working on the project for a developer. The resulting house was bought by a couple with two young children, upon completion. The new clients were happy with the original design but continued to work closely with the firm to tailor details to their preferences, which included materials and finishes.

The transition of ownership was not seen as a hindrance to Dumican Mosey Architects, but rather a valuable opportunity to apply an intricate level of detailing into the residence and elevate the project to create an ideal custom home.

The contemporary residence comprises several cubic volumes, stacked on top of each other on a steeply sloped site. This geometric nature plays with depth and transparency through its materiality of glass, stone and steel. The front façade of the home further plays with transparency, allowing for openness yet balancing privacy for the client.

The rear façade is much more open and glass is at the core allowing for light to flow through the building. These large glass panels frame the anchor of the home, a large healthy tree which stands tall in the backyard and is carefully preserved.

The home’s interior layout is defined by the triple-height atrium at the core. Its placement, spanning the front and back of the house, allows for the gaze to be taken through the space, while also adding a sense of space throughout. A folded steel staircase adds to the visual interest, contrasting with the floor-to-ceiling wood slat wall behind it.

A skylight above welcomes in natural light that brightens the home while making shadows dance around the interior throughout the day. This openness and integration of the skies above breaks down a barrier between indoor and outdoor living.

The living room is located on the second floor and spills out to a decked terrace outside which overlooks the tree. A wide steel-framed glass sliding door opens to views of downtown. The wide-plank oak flooring allows for the house to serve as a very sophisticated treehouse, a playfully fun and nostalgic touch to contemporary living.

dumicanmosey.com

At FOG Design + Art 2025 in San Francisco last weekend (23-26 January), one of the gallerists greeted visitors from the comfort of a chair designed and handcrafted not by one of his artists, but by his wife. It was difficult to miss the metaphor presented by this couple, who embodied the show's greatest virtue: FOG marries art and design instead of divorcing them. Turns out, like some couples, the two are more interesting together.

During the fair's tenth anniversary in 2024, San Francisco’s first branded ‘Art Week’ took shape around FOG. In fact, creative critical mass has been forming around the Bay in recent years and, at the 2025 fair, a strong roster of satellites settled in. ‘Works In Progress’ was the latest in a series of design shows promoting dialogue within and around the Bay Area’s design and craft communities. Artists in the Sausalito Headlands opened their foggy coastal studios to visitors across the Golden Gate Bridge. And at the Point Reyes Blunk Space gallery, opened in 2021 by the JB Blunk Estate, a gem of an exhibition (‘Rio Kobayashi + Fritz Rauh’) paired painting with sculptural wood furniture.

Meanwhile, inside FOG's two pavilions at the historic Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture, 59 international galleries gathered, including 13 under the rubric of FOG Focus, a showcase of emerging artists and galleries. Straight-up art was still in the majority down the aisles but design – from furniture and flatware to food –was well-represented in booths and in the event's artful amenities. BOG was a shop of handmade books curated by publisher and SF Art Book Fair co-organiser Luca Antonucci. Park Life hosted a pop-up shop stocking the latest issue of Apartamento beside some brilliantly obscure book titles (including one exploring a language developed by construction workers using adhesive tape). FOG MARKT greeted visitors with ceramics by Len Carella, glassware by Jesse Schlesinger, and jewellery by Blunk Shop (shop the JB Blunk rings that won a Wallpaper* Design Award 2025). A bistro in the main pavilion even let visitors preview an upcoming restaurant, to be called Lucania, from the creator of the Marina District's beloved A16.

Here are just a few of the highlights we found at FOG.

Our highlights from FOG Design + Art 2025 in San Francisco

Peter Blum Gallery, New York

She's not one of the gallery's artists, but Kate Casey created the seating that adorned its booth. The ‘Jolene’ chair is made from locally sourced hardwood with a reeded frame. Casey weaves a single continuous cotton cord onto the chair, which becomes both a loom and a canvas. In the process, she draws on traditional tapestry techniques, inspired by the combination of this historically female craft with the historically male-dominated field of woodworking.

peterblumgallery.com

Sarah Myerscough Gallery, London

The Myerscough booth was a trove of exquisitely crafted pieces: ethereal glassware by George William Bell, based in Monterey, California, and massive, driftwood-like dome lights by British artist and maker Nic Webb. Two concepts – nature and nurture and the perfection that arises from imperfection – came together in the monumental split-log ‘Cleft’ cabinets by another Brit, Peter Marigold, in his continuing collaboration with Tadanori Tozawa's Japanese woodworking shop Hinoki Kougei. The ‘Sheets Credenza’ and the sculptural shelves that float above it, by American (and former Martin Puryear studio assistant) Christopher Kurtz, were as clever as they are exquisitely crafted. The stacked shelves appear to be merely sculptural shims until they open outward to reveal drawers. Equal parts art, artisanry and design, they float on the wall like magic.

sarahmyerscough.com

Superhouse, New York

Installed to resemble a parlour in a bourgeois, colonial-era Brussels home, Superhouse's booth points to the Congolese origins of the Belgian Art Nouveau movement. Belgian-Congolese architect and interior designer Kim Mupangilaï created sinuous furniture that explores how 19th-century Belgian creatives co-opted the Congo’s raw materials and cultural motifs. The accompanying collage-like tapestry by American fibre artist and painter Maris Van Vlack suggests a mesmerising arcade of stained-glass windows. Woven by hand, it is marked with stitches, drawing and painting and then built up with industrial jacquard techniques and stoll knitting to feel layered – and laden – with memory.

superhouse.us

Hostler Burrows, Los Angeles

‘Waves’ is a hand-tufted tapestry by Swedish graphic designer and artist Camilla Iliefski. She uses depth, gradients of colour and contrasting hues to joyful effect. If you've been looking for another star of rug-based wall art to add to the sculptural, collaged work of Jonathan Josefsson and the swank, shag-forward creativity of Dimorestudio, Iliefski delivers.

hostlerburrows.com/

Herald St, London

Detroit-born, Los Angeles-based Matt Paweski's work table and chairs blend Jean Prouvé with Mecanoo and a Motor City native's love of sheet metal. A sculptor and skilled colorist, Paweski's gratifyingly orthogonal pieces balanced out the mixed media canvases nearby. We just wish he'd turn more of his artwork into furniture.

heraldst.com

AGO Projects, Mexico City

Yet another talent emerging from Latin America, Mexican artist Federico Stefanovich handcrafted his ‘Folia’ floor lamps using carved solid wood, brass sheet, and cast bronze. His organic forms take their cues from plants, seeds, and fungi. The lights appear to rest in effortless balance because Stefanovich engineered each to carefully distribute its weight.

federicostefanovich.com

fogfair.com

It’s interesting to see where we’re at with EVs. Over the last 20 years, it’s been my experience that, once accessibility to previously closed manufacturing opens up, new challenger companies want to design products that defy the status quo. What’s different now is that engineers and entrepreneurs are determined to produce cars that people actually want, not just versions of the same vehicles driven by marketing.

I’m always excited by fields where access to the production tools have been democratised – it opens the door to new types of products and services. I see this revolution happening across multiple industries today. If we only relied on bigger players, things just wouldn’t move as fast, or even move at all. On the West Coast, I have always felt we live and work surrounded by inspiration. It’s a progressive market that industries want to tap into. I remember being a student at ArtCenter and realising that car companies from around the world had advanced studios in California because it was so rich with a lifestyle and new ideas that influence innovation.

With the world getting smaller, for me, the best export of Silicon Valley is the entrepreneurial spirit – a very contagious ideal. As I travel in Europe, Asia and Africa, I consistently experience the entrepreneurial spirit. Admittedly, the politics have been difficult in the US with the erosion of social cohesion and deep divisions created by demagoguery. From my experience, entrepreneurship and innovation really thrive in an open and inclusive world.

When I came to San Francisco in the mid-1990s, the teams I was working with were incredibly diverse in terms of geographical backgrounds and skills. I don’t think that has changed in California – an open market for ideas and people is the best way to get innovation, and I can see it happening every day. But there is a danger looming with the introduction of retrograde policies and ungenerous ideas, because new ideas require openness and generosity. I deeply believe that an open and diverse world benefits progress with innovation and design. This is something that fortunately I continue to experience with our teams at Fuseproject both in San Francisco and Lisbon.

I also subscribe to the idea that creativity and building new ideas is the best way to move forward.

In 2025, I’m very excited to be presenting the next stage of the electric vehicle company I co-founded, Telo. While we’ve seen a real transition towards electric vehicles, most of the products on the market are very conventional and are not taking advantage of the opportunities and efficiencies that batteries and electric motors represent.

I do believe that there is a new generation of EV start-ups that are exploring a fuller potential for the technology. When one looks at cities today, the trend to build cars that are ever larger is problematic. SUVs and trucks are just too big today and don’t deliver any new functionality. Their gluttonous size makes them very dangerous to pedestrians and cyclists, and just plain inefficient.

Telo is solving this issue, creating a full-feature pick-up truck with the same interior and exterior space as a Toyota Tacoma, but with the dimensions of a Mini Cooper. We are designing for functionality and practicality that matches the larger trucks’ interior and exterior volume, and with a dramatic increase in efficiency and overall experience. EV technology has tremendous potential benefits when designed from the ground up, so why not use them?

For 2025, we have made some significant forays into areas of major transformation: electrification, clean energy, transportation, the smart home, and healthcare. We recently presented the future of sea travel with the solar hybrid-electric superyacht Solsea, an advanced catamaran created in collaboration with the Italian shipyard Rossinavi. Integrated solar panels and batteries enable cruising for day trips using 100 per cent electric power and zero emissions as a result.

For longer voyages, such as an Atlantic or Pacific crossing, Solsea offers an 80 per cent reduction in fuel consumption and operating costs thanks to its hybrid-electric propulsion system. Every detail of the boat’s technology is designed with major reductions in cost of operation and carbon footprint. For example, we have replaced teak flooring, which comes from rainforests, with a new formulation of cork made specifically for boats. The material, made by Amorim in Portugal, is lighter, sound insulating and extremely durable.

In terms of how such efficiencies could be achieved in other industries, we’re currently working on a large robotic vehicle to accelerate solar panel installation. It’s an industrial piece of machinery that will automate large-scale solar infrastructure. I’m also working on a project in the domestic sphere with Laufen, with more carbon-neutral innovations and design in bathroom ceramics. These are all stories that bring together the latest technology in fields where carbon reduction hasn’t seen much progress. Everything needs to be transformed for a green industry transition – and with a will to change, I believe that we can create better experiences that eventually become the standard for entire industries.

Another area that we see starting to fulfil promises is the smart home. We have assembled the original team behind August Home, the smart lock company I co-founded with Jason Johnson in 2012 and which is still the leader in the category. We’re creating a new company to reimagine home access, security and control. Since Covid, there has been a new emphasis on our home lives, and 2025 will see the major tech companies and some start-ups bring new solutions for the domestic environment. With the use of AI, we can deliver a healthy, safe home more efficiently.

Where the smart home hasn’t caught the popular imagination, we have a vision for a cohesive solution. Some larger players, like Samsung, connected all their products together, from dishwashers to televisions. But for me, the internet of things is arriving to us so far as a kit of parts rather than an easy experiential ecosystem. It is common to use climate control, home security and baby cameras currently, and the next stage is to assemble disparate parts into a cohesive and useful experience. It’s all part of a drive to design and live in healthier homes.

AI is dominating the current conversation, and the possibilities it brings is a strong focus for Fuseproject, specifically in the areas of health and healthcare, ageing in place, mental well-being and education. These are all areas that lack efficiency, are understaffed, and where AI is at the service of the individual. I think these are relevant and important areas to put creative attention towards. On the other hand, the use of AI in social media marketing and targeting seems to be just another layer that reinforces the negative impacts of social media on individuals, society and democracy. We should leave the obsession with social media, and the businesses that exploit it, behind and focus on the greater good that technology can achieve.

As always, it’s a matter of intent: what do we want to apply the human spirit of innovation to? To me, the question isn’t whether climate change, health and safety or progress towards peace is achievable... of course it is.

But the larger roadblock that prevents progress and change is our lack of social cohesion. It doesn’t matter whether we try to gather five people, 500 or five billion towards change: without a basic human project we can agree on, it cannot proceed, and we are stuck. The absence of a shared vision at any scale of what is good for us and the planet means we are doomed to continue to be lost and aimless.

Our sense of citizenry, of belonging to a common plan, has been atomised by disinformation and division. The central challenge of our time is how to come together, work together, build together. Design and innovation needs to show us solutions for the everyday and for the future, solutions that accelerate the ideas of an enlightened 21st century. Human ingenuity can, and will, win.

But when? I believe it is when we rid ourselves of extreme tribal self-interest and build a humanistic and global vision of interconnectedness that we can join.

Fuseproject.com, @FuseprojectSF

TeloTrucks.com, @TeloTrucks

No new neighbourhood is complete without green space, but many developments have an unfortunate tendency to think a simple stretch of lawn and a couple of flowerbeds will do. Thankfully, it’s an entirely different story at the new waterfront park at China Basin in San Francisco’s new mixed-use district of Mission Rock, just across from the Giants’ Oracle Park.

Explore San Francisco's new waterfront park at China Basin

A waterfront public space on the site of a former parking lot, the new five-acre China Basin Park offers lush green spaces, diverse amenities and dramatic views. It was designed as the beating heart of the new neighbourhood, developed as a public-private partnership between the San Francisco Giants, developers Tishman Speyer, and the Port of San Francisco.

Along with existing Phase 1 buildings by the likes of MVRDV, Henning Larsen, Studio Gang and WORKac, the park showcases the development’s focus on fostering an inclusive community and building resiliently – an innovative approach that earned Scape and its founder Kate Orff the 2023 Obel Award for its Living Breakwaters project. The New York studio has also recently garnered plaudits for transforming the banks of the Mississippi in Memphis into a stunning new public park in collaboration with Studio Gang.

‘The park is a place for people to gather and feel the energy coming from really diverse contexts – from the ballpark on gameday, to the rhythms of daily life from the Mission Rock neighbourhood, to the majesty of the bay horizon beyond to the intimacy of China Basin’s watery edge. The park responds to all of these forces,’ said Orff.

It also connects Mission Rock with the rest of the city, as the San Francisco Bay Trail runs directly through the park, completing a key piece of a 350-mile system. Elevated approximately five feet above ground, the trail functions as a primary line of protection from coastal flooding for the new neighbourhood and its park. The site was also lifted to a resilient elevation by using lightweight fill and is now 10 per cent lighter than it was before.

‘We’ve designed a mosaic of destinations that are in dialogue with this context: sunny open plazas, shady lifted groves, active stadium seating, expansive community lawns, a massive immersive stormwater garden, and a beachfront ecosystem all within a modest five-acre footprint – and all supercharged by the Bay Trail that loops them altogether,’ says Orff.

From the central plaza, visitors can take in the views over the Bay Bridge and downtown skyline, with the baseball stadium providing the perfect backdrop to a statue of Willie McCovey, the Giants first baseman. There’s also a series of raised stadium seats that allow groups to gather and watch the bustle of Oracle Park across McCovey Cove, and a promenade lined with seating and a concrete floor references the patterns created by the tide washing up and down the beach.

The plaza is surrounded by a series of spaces inspired by the unique ecosystems of the Bay Area, and each magnifying a different local landscape. The adjoining Gathering Grove, for example, is sheltered from the wind by sculptural red-trunked Marina strawberry trees which over time will expand to form an undulating canopy. Lit up with catenary lights, the pink plaza is designed to welcome cultural events, classes and fairs.

Another event space is the Great Lawn, framed by Monterey cypress and a variety of oak trees. Sculpted to create the illusion of a natural amphitheatre and undulating green space spilling into the water, it slopes down towards the seafront and Shoreline Sands. By the water, seating and climbing elements made of reclaimed eucalyptus branches emerge from the sand, with an oyster shell strip marking the edge of the area.

Buffering the park’s edge along Pier 48, an 11,000-sq-ft stormwater garden helps treat, store, and convey runoff water from the new neighbourhood. A haven for birds and insects, it’s accessible through a series of elevated boardwalks, from which visitors can admire native plants that can endure intense periods of flooding and drought, such s sticky monkey-flower, giant wildrye and California fuchsia.

The only building in the park, an all-gender public restroom by local studio Min Design, is almost invisible. Tucked away under a lawn near the central plaza, it is located just across from the beach and Bay Trail, to provide a safer experience for all users.

Scape is currently designing the landscape for the Sustainability Commons at the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability, the Hayward Shoreline Master Plan, and the UCSF Parnassus Central Campus landscape.

scapestudio.com

missionrock.com

George Homsey, one of the architects behind Sea Ranch, was living in San Francisco when he started working on the now-legendary pioneering modernist architecture community in California. His home, set in Liberty Park, is an important example of The Third Bay Tradition; and now, for the first time since the architect's death in 2019, it has been rephotographed and its interiors seen by the public as it goes on the market.

Inside George Homsey's home in San Francisco

Built in 1961 on a sloped site, the house is made of organic shapes in natural materials – an indication of the explorations Homsey was delving into while working as an associate at the firm of famed Bay Area architect Joseph Esherick (more studios involved in making Sea Ranch were landscape architect Lawrence Halprin, and Charles Moore, Donlyn Lyndon, William Turnbull and Richard Whittaker – collectively MLTW).

The house, created for locally born Homsey and his family, is surrounded by trees, the site being a couple of blocks west of Dolores Park. Still belonging to the family, the structure is a remarkably preserved piece of modernist architecture - both externally and internally.

In tune with The Third Bay Tradition that guides the architecture at Sea Ranch too, the house features organic-inspired asymmetric forms. Inside, double heights and plenty of openings that bathe the interior in natural light define the atmosphere. Architect Charles Moore described the style as an 'instant tradition of shed-roofed, free-windows, sliced cubistic forms'.

Internally, rough-sawn Douglas fir wall cladding and framed views of San Francisco dominate. The ground floor includes the entrance hall, dining room, kitchen, garden room, and living room. A separate double-height volume connects these areas with Homsey's studio space upstairs.

Apart from this study, the upper level contains two bedrooms, a bathroom, a half bath, and the primary suite with dressing rooms and its own backyard access. A lower level floor hosts a flexible 'hobby' room.

suprstructur.com

A cross, a serpent, a Union Jack, a cross-backslash – each of these symbols has its own loaded history, but in 1977 the graphic designer David King transformed them into the new, unified emblem for an alternative future, one built on the precepts of anarchism, pacifism and community-living. King made this symbol for Crass, an English band that created some of the most vitriolic and uncompromisingly radical music of the punk movement with songs about animal rights, anti-facism, feminism, and environmentalism delivered in ferocious English accents.

If one marker of genius is an ability to make complicated things simple, then King’s design is just that. With a few lines he was able to reconstitute thousands of years of history into a powerful new emblem, one that was simple enough to scrawl on walls, flyers, leather jackets as it was throughout the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. A powerful and instantly legible marker that you not only supported the band, but the hard-line politics they promoted.

The Crass symbol was King’s best-known creation, and as it has become less well-known today, so too has King’s wider work. That, however, is something the San Francisco Center for the Book is hoping to change with its new exhibition, 'David King Publications 1977–2019', a retrospective of small press publishing projects, zines, and graphic design work that King produced throughout his lifetime. It is a showcase for the work of an underrated artist, as well as a visual history of alternative print media and a documentation of the bands and nightclubs that made up New York and San Francisco’s subculture in the later half of the 20th century, and a blueprint for how to live a creative life.

‘David King Publications 1977–2019’

King was born in Essex, UK, in 1948 and at 16 enrolled in art school in Dagenham to study graphic design. There he met Jeremy Ratter (aka Penny Rimbaud) and Gee Vaucher, who later went on to form Crass. After graduation, King spent ten years working for a succession of London advertising agencies, before abandoning the corporate world for Dial House, ‘a self-sustaining anarcho-pacifist open house’ founded by Rimbaud and Vaucher.

As Matt Borruso, the curator of the show writes of King’s radical reconstruction of his life, ‘it is not a stretch to compare King’s journey from advertising to punk, to that of the fictional character Don Draper from Mad Men – exiting Madison Avenue for the West Coast and Big Sur’s Esalen Institute.’ His suit in the garbage, King moved to New York in 1977, where he joined the punk band Arsenal and started making flyers for clubs like Danceteria, Pravda, and the Peppermint Lounge.

He also met his wife and future bandmate Dione King, who describes the creative ferment of the time as ‘a real downtown community – everyone lived within walking distance of each other and all of the shows were in the neighbourhood. The rent was super cheap (my loft was only $125 a month) and there was a lot of artists and musicians living there. It was a real boom time creatively – Philip Glass was performing in the streets, there were dance performances in empty lots – there was just a lot going on and it was before there were art galleries or much else commercially happening in SoHo.’

In 1980, King, his wife and the rest of the band moved to San Francisco, where he continued to live and work until the end of his life. There, he created collages and dozens of photocopied zines like Suburbs of Hell and Too Many Zombies. By the early 2000s, he started experimenting with new forms of desktop self-publishing and print-on-demand books through companies like Shutterfly, Blurb, and Apple.

Even though King continually changed the formats he worked in, the style of his work remained the same with its collages of advertisements, bold graphics and colourful drawings. Speaking about King’s influences, Dione says, ‘he grew up in England after the Second World War, playing in very grey and bleak bomb sites. He found inspiration in the colour of post-war culture, such as Carnaby Street, advertising, comics, serial films, and later in TV and movies. He loved shadows and I think it was reflective of the darkness of the time in England after the war and the idea of transformation or magic – of bringing colour and joy into that bleakness.’

Finding joy among bleakness and passion among adversity seem to be the defining themes of King’s oeuvre, and what make it so inspiring. ‘Dave had a playful approach to life that I think you can sense in his work,’ says Dione. ‘He was very politically motivated and believed in ethics and the importance of political change and activism but always sought to express that playfully instead of making speeches. He was very impassioned but not angry, which I think is pretty rare. I think you can really sense that passion in the show.’

davidanthonyking.com/

‘David King Publications 1977–2019’ is at the San Francisco Center for the Book, sfcb.org, until 22 December 2024

Calling the Transamerica Pyramid 'iconic' would not be an exaggeration. The distinctively shaped high rise (the clue is in the name) in the heart of San Francisco's Financial District has long been one of the city's more recognisable landmarks and its second tallest. Now, Lord Norman Foster and his firm, Foster + Partners, have remastered this West Coast classic for the 21st century, breathing new life into the structure.

The Transamerica Pyramid, revamped

The Transamerica Pyramid was built in 1972 to a design by Californian architecture practice William L Pereira & Associates – a studio renowned for its take on modernist architecture. The impressive quartz-studded concrete tower on 600 Montgomery Street has over 3,000 windows and stands at 853ft (260m) tall. It remains to this day one of the tallest pyramidal structures in the world.

Now, Foster + Partners worked with developers SHVO and Deutsche Finance, who injected some $1bn dollar worth of investment to redesign the building for the needs of today's workforce. 'We are delighted to see Transamerica Pyramid Center entering a new era,' says Foster. 'Our transformation honours the building's history while creating interior spaces that are world-class and outdoor public gardens that reconnect with the city.'

The revamp comprises a reworking of the interior with a luxury hospitality approach in mind, featuring expanded public areas and a wealth of new amenities for users and guests. A new series of public exhibitions within will establish a strong relationship with the creative world too – and the first installations are curated by Foster himself. These include ‘The Vertical City’, a selection of high-rise architecture by Foster + Partners; and ‘Les Lalanne at Transamerica Redwood Park’, an outdoor exhibition on the work of iconic French artists Claude and François-Xavier Lalanne.

Meanwhile, San Francisco mayor London Breed adds: 'The Transamerica Pyramid is more than just a building, it’s a symbol of San Francisco's spirit. This renovation ensures that it will continue to be a landmark for generations to come, while also creating a thriving hub for businesses and fostering a vibrant public space.'

fosterandpartners.com

San Francisco may be famous for its painted Victorian Ladies but less ostentatious, early 20th century Edwardian architecture lives here too. This Pacific Heights residence serves as a pied à terre for a couple with three young children whose primary home is in nearby Atherton, the poshest zip code in the nation.

Brought in together, MEMarchitecture and Studio Volpe interior design collaborated to reconfigure warrens of rooms and the patchwork renovations of previous owners to create a modern interior. It accommodates a tight-knit family, amps up the quality and coherence of finishes, and creates a canvas for the client's extensive collections of furniture and art, mixing old and new acquisitions.

Change began with MEM's reactivation of the central stair and the home's natural verticality by more than doubling the size of an existing skylight. It illuminates the core and emphasises the path upward to social spaces at the top. They also opened large portals across the top floor to create a luminous series of open rooms pointed toward magnificent views in four directions.

While making the house feel whole, consistent and connected, Volpe's office still gave rooms their own identities and mapped out functional zones within open spaces using vintage and custom furniture groupings. Volpe's team also united historical and modern elements, while inserting the office's own bespoke furniture and millwork, including sleek wood panelling. They created a sense of comfort and balance by creating a consistent imbalance - an ecosystem of eclecticism - that is applied with engaging texture throughout.

Inside Green Street Residence

The Entry

The entry at ground level is vertical and voluminous, with MEM's skylight drawing visitors quickly to the house's social spaces on the fourth floor. It unifies three volumes: private rooms at street level, the stairwell, and living space at the top. The entry once felt disconnected. Now it announces a new coherence and clarity of finishes and establishes the palette and tonality that appear throughout. 'It no longer feels like a space you want to move through quickly to get somewhere else,' Volpe says. Millwork unites three crowded doors to feel orderly instead of disjunctive. Today, says Design Director Ralph Dennis, 'It looks traditional from the street, but you walk in and you're struck by the clean, modern feeling inside.'

Pocket Office Abutting the Playroom

'It's a small space that feels cocoon-like, but is still very much part of the room,' Volpe says of the second floor alcove office, which is connected to the playroom by pocket doors. It can be closed off from the rest of the house and used for calls or privacy, however, it's usually open. The space is about togetherness, not disconnection.

It's also a studied composition framed by custom fumed oak flooring, built-in, bespoke panelling, and a hidden closet. A midcentury executive desk by Preben Fabricius & Jørgen Kastholm sits beside a chair from Milan's Dimore Gallery and a 2015 table light designed by Belgian Jos Devriendt. "It's a simple gesture but the brightly coloured lamp is unexpected," Dennis says. 'It makes the room.'

Playroom

The playroom is not overtly childlike, but is still playful. One overt nod to youth is the boxy Champion foosball table, a reproduction of a 1955 French model. More subtle but just as full of moxy: the Michael Boyer Tube lounge chairs, moved in from the living room, Dennis says: 'Recontextualizing them in a playroom emphasises how fun, low and louche they are.'

Usually 'we look for things that transcend the time they're made in,' he says. Other times, conspicuous (but enduring) style is a good thing, like Ettore Sottsass' 1970 Lampros 3 chandelier here. Picked pieces can speak across time to each other in dynamic ways.

Enfilade through the 4th floor

The fourth floor was originally a warren of rooms. 'The idea was to blow that up and make it more loft-like,’ Dennis explains. Honouring the client's habit of spending time en famille, MEMarchitecture and Studio Volpe simplified the plan and created a series of portals through the floor, leading from the kitchen through the dining and living rooms, where three sets of French casement doors open onto the southern terrace, inviting the outdoors inside. While the teams primarily subordinated Edwardian elements to make the house more modern, this enfilade of openings of the same size and proportion, says Sharif, was ‘a classical treatment of a very modern space'.

The Kitchen

MEM and Volpe's team opened the kitchen to the new, unimpeded flow of the fourth floor. The studio is known for its hands-on approach, designing its own millwork and developing its own finishes.

Volpe created a sculptural island that forms a subtle corridor, dividing the kitchen gently from the path of circulation. Instead of dropping pendant lights over the island, they kept fixtures close to the ceiling to preserve sightlines through the floor. Bleached oak cabinetry and limestone floors coordinate with finishes throughout the house, linking disparate spaces and creating a sense of calm.

Living Room West

On the east side of the living room, a built-in bar and game table lend order to the open room. The whitewashed cork table, by Paul Frankl (1960), is where the client works on his laptop, sitting in Ilmari Tapiovaara's Lulu chairs. The Arenzano floor lamp by Ignazio Gardella is from Nilufar in Milan. A second seating area features Milo Baughman chairs in goat leather and his drum side table. Floor-to-ceiling millwork sets a swank tone, giving the whole space a playful formality. Throughout the house, panels serve as a neutral canvas against which an almost eclectic display of design and art is unified.

The Primary Bedroom

The teams joined two rooms to create the main bedroom. A midcentury Swedish Bertil Fridhagen desk anchors a seating group and fireplace, with the bed on the other side. The desk looks at the Bay and Palace of Fine Arts, a 1915 World's Fair site. Framing views and letting light pour in connects the house, and those in it, with uniquely local vistas and history. Pale blue hues resonate with the colours of water and sky outside, a palette that recedes, says Dennis, 'so you have an opportunity, rather than noticing all the furnishings, to observe the view and just feel where you are.'

Kids' Room

'Our client likes to provide experiences for his family and that helped drive our inspiration for the bunk beds,' explains Volpe, who designed the oak beds with porthole cut-outs that open sightlines and brighten. 'We punched holes through the frame to create window-like elements, which felt interesting without feeling traditional or closed off.'

The room has playful details but feels grown-up: A vintage Swedish sofa by Kerstin Horlin-Holmquist sits beside a Pierre Chapo cocktail table and a Studio B.P.P.R Elettra chair. The client acquired Danish designer Poul Henningsen's midcentury PH5 pendant light at auction.

Dining Room

The design team used colour to animate the dining room. A purple glass cabinet by Roberto Rida and a Volpe-designed console were added on either side of the room. Placement of the scarlet sculpture by Donald Judd over the console was unplanned, a result of moving pieces between multiple homes to find a strong fit and to ‘reinvigorate’ the way the client views the art.

To do this deft remixing of old, new and custom design throughout the house, the team remains vigilant at all times. 'We're constantly weaving things together,' Volpe says. 'We're anti-formulaic, whether it starts with a single piece of furniture or an overarching concept.'

memarch.com

stevenvolpe.com

The arid Californian landscapes form a key part of the story behind High Desert House, a new home and studio by San Francisco based architect Ryan Leidner. The project’s clients, painter Heather Day and creative director Chase McBride, lived in San Francisco when they first approached Leidner, having purchased a lot in Joshua Tree and looking to build their forever home.  

High Desert House: inspired by Californian landscapes

‘I’ve designed houses throughout the Bay Area, in Los Angeles, and in Hawaii, but never before in the desert, which is a very different context,’ says Leidner, whose background combines architecture with classics and ancient history at Brown and Harvard. ‘I’ve always felt inspired by the desert, its openness and its sublime beauty. When I was in architecture school, I was first introduced to the work of the artists and sculptors working in the Land Art Movement of the 1960s and 70s, and found it so inspiring to see how the context of the desert landscape gave meaning to the works.’ 

The project’s empty site was located in an undeveloped part of the desert, and the desire to balance the compact, cosy feeling of a domestic space with the expansiveness of the surrounding landscape was key to the design development. ‘We wanted the house to both feel like a clear sculptural gesture while also being a warm and inviting home,’ Leidner stresses. 

The architect had the opportunity to work with several mid century Eichler homes over the years (the studio was founded in 2014). Those houses’ economical, ‘straightforward’ logic was a key influence in the design development of High Desert House. The aim was to create a building with a clear, minimalist simplicity and an exposed beam structure. Notable artist’s studios, from Georgia O'Keeffe and Willem and Elaine de Kooning, to the home Luis Barragan designed for himself, also provided valuable food for thought for the design team.

At the same time, ‘my background in studying classics and ancient art and architecture has had a big influence in terms of my respect for buildings that reflect clear design principles. When looking at ancient ruins, you think about how to read them, and how to draw inferences from what you see, and what elements and aspects of the architecture carry meaning. Of course houses are very different in their nature, but that feeling of honest space, I find so inspiring,’ Leidner adds.

The result is a contemporary, pared down ‘box’ - a wood frame construction covered in a off-white plaster stucco that contrasts the desert environment (‘[the stucco] was chosen because it can withstand the extreme fluctuations of the weather in the desert,’ Leidner explains).

The home feels distinctive, but also sensitive to its context. A sense of uniting outside and inside is also strong, expressed through the glazed walls, porch entrance and the terrace off the main living area. ‘Personally, I really enjoy being outside, and like the idea of imagining a home as a place where you can be both sheltered and free. I’ve found that being outdoors and in nature can be such a real reset, and I’m inspired by the idea of a house that can awaken that feeling,’ Leidner says. 

High Desert House is spread across a single level, featuring a generous, open plan living space in its heart. This is flanked by the private spaces on one end (two bedrooms, and two bathrooms), and the large, flexible studio space on the other. It’s exactly what the owners wanted.

‘The first thing you notice here is how eerily quiet it is. [...] When we met with Ryan initially, it felt like we had a shared architectural philosophy, something of a mix of Scandinavian and Japanese modernism,’ says Day. ‘We love how much emphasis there is on communal space in the design. The [studio space’s] natural light, ample floor space, big walls, and picture windows have changed the way I approach my painting practice. My latest body of work explores clouds, their scientific makeup, and their cultural significance throughout history. The big windows, vast desert outside and changing light have undoubtedly guided that.’ 

ryanleidner.com 

When planning celebrations for its 45th birthday this year, San Francisco gallery Fraenkel was keen to branch out from the exhibitions and publications that it had produced in the past. Enter the inaugural Fraenkel Film Festival, which runs from 9 – 20 July 2024.

‘We were trying to think of something that would celebrate the vibrant arts and cultural scene here,’ says director Christian Whitworth. A conversation with ‘friend of the gallery’ advertising legend Rich Silverstein put films in the frame. ‘He suggested the idea of having an artist choose a film that we then screen at a local cinema,’ relays Whitworth. ‘And all of us said, “Why stop with one artist? Why not ask ten of our artists to choose two films each?”’

Artists’ picks at the Fraenkel Film Festival

The calibre of talent on Fraenkels’ roster makes this a particularly enticing idea – as does the programme of films. Street photography icon Lee Friedlander chose Old Hollywood favourites The African Queen and Casablanca, while futuristic performance artist Martine Gutierrez (recently featured in Wallpaper* and Inez & Vinoodh’s photographic portfolio of American creatives) went for sci-fi classics Blade Runner and Ghost in the Shell. Sophie Calle, an artist who zooms in on the uncanny everyday, chose Agnes Varda’s 2000 scavenger documentary The Gleaners and I.

Crucially, the artists are not picking their favourite films here – rather the ones that had, and still have, notable impact on them and their work. Carrie Mae Weems describes her two films as ‘exist[ing] on opposite sides of the coin. [Ingmar Bergman’s 1957 drama] Wild Strawberries uses Northern light to inscribe the coolness of whiteness; [Barry Jenkins’ 2016 gay coming-of-age story] Moonlight uses Southern light to inscribe the emotional depth of blackness.’

The film screenings are taking place at the Roxie cinema – a San Francisco institution in operation since 1912 – and proceeds from the ticket sales will be donated to the venue. Whitworth says this is a crucial part of the project. ‘[The narrative recently] in San Francisco has been about the doom loop, which is the idea that the pandemic has given rise to working from home and has hollowed out downtown cores,’ he explains. ‘We're fighting against that by relishing the local.’

Whitworth says the response from the local community has been positive. ‘There are, and I mean this in the greatest of compliments, so many photo nerds in the Bay Area,’ he smiles. ‘They come out for our exhibitions, but it's great to see that they're also huge cinema enthusiasts… people are really excited by the relationship between photography and film.’

The communal experience of the cinema is something that can’t be replaced, he argues. ‘All of us can sit at home and stream any of these movies, but it’s the experience of getting out and seeing a movie in a theatre with a group of other people who are [also] reacting to it. That is really exciting.’

Fraenkel Film Festival 2024, until 20 July, at Roxie Theater, 3117 16th Street, San Francisco. Find the full programme at roxie.com. For more information, see fraenkelgallery.com

For life and creative partners Palaash Chaudhary and Utharaa Zacharias, the force behind Soft-Geometry (who appeared in the USA 300 list), a career-defining quest to infuse objects with ‘softness’ is as much a reflection of cross-cultural influence as it is place. Splitting time between their native India and adoptive United States, the duo live and work in a converted 1920s warehouse in San Francisco’s SoMa neighbourhood.

‘The studio is part of our home, so we have to be soft with how we treat it,’ says Zacharias. ‘And our home is part of the studio, so we can’t be too precious about it either. We have a photo by German artist Ole Witt of an Indian lawyer who set up his office on a scooter, and I think our space embodies that spirit. It’s a reminder of how much you can do with a little.’

Tour Soft-Geometry's San Francisco studio

Because of this spatial dynamic, there’s flexibility not only in experimenting with the shape and material properties of a new concept, but also in getting a sense of how these designs can be lived with. Having set up shop here two and half years ago, Chaudhary and Zacharias have developed collections such as the ‘Elio’ lamp and ‘Donut’ table.

At this year’s New York Design Week, the studio launches ‘Molecule’, a modular element with both solid and transparent characteristics that can be used as a support or function as a standalone object. The design was inspired by the practice of handmaking the intricately-patterned Athangudi tiles that have clad homes in the south Indian region of Chettinad for more than a century. Each ‘Molecule’ component is cast in resin and moulded by hand to form mortise and tenon joints. As with many of Soft-Geometry’s undertakings, there’s an intriguing tension between the use of contemporary industrial processes and age-old craft traditions.

‘Over the last nine months, our space has served as the testing ground for this delicate and complex process, guided as much by intuition as the technique that constructs them,’ says Chaudhary. ‘It feels as though our studio has once again expanded and transformed to make way for this collection. Each unit has been cast, lined up, assembled and clamped one by one slowly over the months. It has been rewarding to see our studio slowly be inhabited with the colourful architecture of ‘Molecule’, reminiscent of those in our hometowns.’ While he hails from Ghaziabad, just outside New Delhi, Zacharias is from Kochi.

One of the space’s best attributes is its large double-height windows that flood the interior with sunlight. ‘Golden light comes in during the evening and makes everything feel beautiful,’ says Zacharias. ‘It really begs for us to be creating. The window’s shadow moving along the wall has predictably become our favourite shoot backdrop.’

Along with zones with workbenches, supply storage and a packaging corner, the space also transforms into a photography studio from time to time. The lower levelis loosely organised as a workshop that changes based on the task at hand, and most of the furniture and equipment has been retrofitted with wheels so that the duo can quickly turn the studio into a dining room or entertainment space for games nights with friends. ‘The floors are concrete and can take it,’ adds Zacharias.

Meanwhile, the upper floor is allocated as the duo’s bedroom. Though mostly untouched by the activity below, even this room is sometimes used for photo shoots. ‘It’s our favourite spot to photograph a bird’s-eye view of the studio,’ says Zacharias.

The benefit of operating in a live-work space – especially when one builds furniture and objects for the home – is that they get to live with what they produce. Scattered among the prototypes and material samples are items that the pair have collected over the years, including red fibreglass armchairs designed by Vico Magistretti for Artemide and glassware by Agustina Bottoni.

‘Our practice is rooted in softness and the sentimentality of objects,’ says Chaudhary. The duo aim to stretch the limits of what everyday objects can do. ‘It can be poetic, sometimes chaotic, and deeply personal.’

This approach was put to the test last year when they had to go through the arduous process of gaining green cards to become US residents. A set of scratched-up steel thali plates, originally sourced in India, and their determination to revive them in a new way, provided them with a sense of catharsis. ‘Every day, emotionally drained from writing pages and pages for the application, we would sand these plates for hours, then check if we could see our reflections,’ says Zacharias. ‘It gave us a way to reflect on our Indianness, our alienness, and the impermanence that comes with living on visas.’

The resulting ‘Mirrors for Aliens’ series was exhibited at NYCxDesign 2023, garnering a lot of attention. The designs will also be shown by gallery Superhouse during New York Design Week 2024, and the prototype was recently acquiredby the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMoMA). ‘It all feels very full circle, and would have been impossible without everything this space has transformedinto for us,’ concludes Zacharias.

soft-geometry.com

Architect John Portman’s influence on Downtown San Francisco is inescapable. Renowned for his neo-futurist geometries and monumental atriums – as seen at the wedge-shaped Hyatt Regency that forms part of his larger-than-life Embarcadero Center – the late innovator completely reshaped hotel design in the city and across the US during the second half of the 20th century.

Discover The Jay, designed by AvroKO

A few blocks away from the Hyatt, still in the heart of the Financial District, another Portman building that features jagged concrete façades was recently renovated by US design studio AvroKO and reopened as The Jay. Part of Marriott Bonvoy’s high-end Autograph Collection, the 360-key property is marketed as a boutique hotel to compete with the likes of the Kelly Wearstler-designed Proper, and was designed as an ode to its original architect, as well as some of San Francisco’s more obscure historical figures. ‘Not the usual suspects, but lesser-known artists and activists – people that you really only know about as a lifelong resident,’ said Greg Bradshaw, principal and co-founder of AvroKO.

The studio used Portman’s signature brutalist style as a reference for interior elements such as relief-panel screens and carpet and upholstery patterns in the hotel’s communal areas, which were reorganised to group all public amenities on one level.

‘The biggest challenge was the vertical circulation between the first-floor entry and the third-floor lobby,’ explained Bradshaw, whose team installed a grand spiral staircase based on a design at Portman’s home in Atlanta. This oversized reinterpretation revolves around a sculptural golden pole at its centre, ‘encouraging people to use the stairs as much as possible’ up to the reception, lounge, coffee bar, and various areas for drinking and dining.

The food and beverage programme for The Third Floor is led by Michael Magallanes, executive chef of the award-winning Omakase Group, who has crafted breakfast, lunch, and dinner menus from local sources to be enjoyed either in the indoor dining room or out on The Terrace.

The outdoor space also nods to Portman, with colours and prints of the soft furnishings lifted from a photo of the architect on a San Francisco doorstep in the 1970s. Surrounded by a variety of native plants, there are also fire pits, a retractable pergola, windbreaks in case of inclement weather, and a full bar for patrons to enjoy during entertainment programming. For those seeking a cosier refuge, tucked away beyond the 360-degree lobby bar is a leather-wrapped lounge, which can be hired for private seated dinners or cocktail events.

In contrast with the heavy concrete exterior and darker-toned lobby area, the guest rooms feature much cleaner and lighter decor while evoking brutalist forms. AvroKO looked to the counterculture of 1960s San Francisco to inform these interiors.

‘The transformative thinking of the era shows up in patterns, distortions and reflections, and different screening elements used throughout the hotel,’ said Bradshaw, who listed influences ranging from boutique owner Peggy Caserta to artist Ruth Asawa. The latter’s curvaceous, highly textured works were key references for the rounded furniture, patterned carpets, and colour palette of dark burgundy, black and bronze details that stand out against the otherwise neutral, airy hues and warm woods.

Angled floor-to-ceiling windows that wrap the bedrooms offer views of the Bay, the historic Coit Tower, and the downtown skyline. These vistas are best appreciated from The Nest, the hotel’s top-floor penthouse suite, which includes a living area, a dining area, a private king bedroom with an ensuite bathroom, and a guest bath totalling 1,660 sq ft.

Textured plaster surfaces in a variety of calming shades, together with soft bouclé fabrics and plentiful natural light, form a serene oasis that appears a world away from Portman’s brutalist architecture – even though the angular shapes of his building are ever-present.

marriott.com

‘Works in Progress’, a regrettably brief exhibition taking place at the American Industrial Center in San Francisco's Dogpatch district until 23 January 2024, is as much about local designers talking to each other as it is about local design – community-building as much as profile-building. 

Design in the Bay Area

Bay Area furniture design has long been overshadowed by Silicon Valley's virtual excellence, but it has always harboured its gems. In recent years, it's shifted from mass production towards a maker movement and bespoke craftsmanship, from minimalism and simple sustainability towards experiment and eclecticism, experience and storytelling, upcycling and circularity. It has become less niche and more diverse.

Reflecting all of this, ‘Works in Progress’ is an elegantly concise show of 12 pieces by 13 creative studios, co-curated by three designers (from three separate studios), and the first of an indefinite series. Kelley Perumbeti (Office of Tangible Space), Kate Greenberg, and Sahra Jajarmikhayat selected similarly scaled seating pieces by a range of studios, artists, interior designers, and craftspeople. 'I like to think of each piece as a self-portrait of each designer/studio, encompassing the look and ethos of their practice,' says Jajarmikhayat.

Greenberg agrees. 'Everything from proportion and material language to outlook on the world are hidden here in plain sight. The first time we brought these pieces together in one room, it felt like you could set aside any two and they either shared surprising common ground or duelling affirmations.'

Viewing Greenberg and Jajarmikhayat's collaborative side table, made of glass, next to Prowl Studio’s stool, made from a 3D textile knit from wool and recycled polyester, the materials and forms couldn’t be more different. But both comment on natural phenomena – one, erosion, the other, regeneration after wildfire.

At a glance, furniture artist Caleb Ferris' wooden stool could be mistaken for melting marble, an endearingly flatfooted version of ball and claw-foot seating. This elegantly cartoonish maximalism offers a striking contrast to design-build studio Fyrn's luxe-industrial stool, crafted using a proprietary system of replaceable (read: customisable, product life-extending) components.

Art and design collective Studio Ahead worked with textile brand JG Switzer to make its Merino wool stool, which was felted by founder Jessica Switzer herself, using fibre from her own Sonoma County flock. It sits beside a work of ‘nostalgic futurism’ crafted by NJ Roseti, a small windowless building of a stool with a restrained Memphis form and colour scheme.

Woodworker Duncan Oja is influenced by found forms, tree offcuts, tool marks and textures. Ido Yoshimoto (featured in our Wallpaper* USA 300 guide to creative America, and also with a piece in the exhibition ‘100 Hooks’ at JB Blunk Estate, until 11 February) is an artist and arborist who salvages wood and bone and finds inspiration in rot, rust, weathering and growth. Looking at their stools – one rough-sawn charred oak, the other carved from old-growth redwood – you can almost hear the two men sitting down together, drinks in hand.

'Works in Progress' is on view until 23 January 2024

American Industrial Center
2345 3rd St
San Francisco, CA 94107

@worksinprogress_sf

In a way, 'Enthroned' at Jessica Silverman all started because of Judy Chicago, though the pioneering feminist artist is neither the focus nor even featured in this exhibition. In fact, the show isn’t even about art, instead solely highlighting contemporary women designers. So how does Chicago come into play? Gallery founder Silverman and Marc Benda of Friedman Benda struck up a friendship after Benda acquired a Chicago work from Silverman a few years back. 

'Enthroned' at San Francisco's Jessica Silverman

Though self-professed 'art people', Silverman and her wife, the writer Sarah Thornton, became enraptured by contemporary design when they bought an apartment in a 1962 building in San Francisco’s Nob Hill, intended to live in but also a perfect showcase.

Silverman and Thornton, who just released the book Tits Up (available for preorder), are ardent feminists and activists, but also aesthetes, so as their design journey ramped up, it was important to furnish their space as a reflection of who they are. That led the duo towards women designers, which happens to be a standout area for Benda. 'I’m not taking jabs at anyone else, but Marc really cares a lot about supporting women and women designers,' Silverman says.

With feminism in mind, Silverman and Thornton 'started chatting with Marc about that, and came up with doing this exhibition together', since a focus on championing cutting-edge, thoughtful women design practitioners isn’t in regular rotation. Thus, 'Enthroned' was born, and pitched originally as a show of chairs (hence the name, though don’t ignore the regal undertones either). However, as discussions ramped up, the selections leaned towards designers whose 'design is really sculptural and doesn't just read as design', says Silverman, 'it doesn't just feel like stoic furniture.'

A statement of support and celebration

'Enthroned', which opened to coincide with San Francisco's FOG Design + Art fair (the latter running 18 – 21 January), stands as a statement of support and celebration, as much as it is a pull away from the tropes of masculine dominance in minimalism and domestic softness often linked to women’s work. 'This is design that really is very much in dialogue with art,' explains Silverman, 'These are not typical couches or chairs, but rather sculptural objects that have functionality.'

Just who’s been pulled into dialogue with each other? Off Benda’s roster are the likes of Carmen D’Appollonio, Najla El Zein, and Faye Toogood, as well as damsels-in-demand such as architect Johanna Grawunder, Mexican architect Frida Escobedo, whose dripping chain furniture has earned her the 2024 Charlotte Perriand Award, and Lara Bohinc, whom Thornton discovered in the Natalie Kovacs-curated 2021 Curio section at Design Miami and acquired her 'Kissing Chair'. Bohinc’s inclusions in the show are her 'Big Girl' chair and 'Peaches Pouffe', both feminised reimaginings of 1970s Italian upholstered furniture.

Also featured is the dripping surrealism of Barbora Žilinskaitė, whose 'Roommates' stool is an 'open edition' of sorts, where each edition is rendered in a different colour, making each of the series more like a unique work of art. The show also highlights scene-newcomers Jay Sae Jung Oh, the artist whose works such as 'Savage Planter' have been causing quite the stir over at Salon94 (which will bring Oh to FOG this year, in fact), and ibiyanε, a young studio from Martinique featured in 'The New World' exhibition at Carpenters Workshop Gallery.

'Women are still extremely under-represented in design,' Benda jumps in. '“Enthroned” is a wonderful project to bring together relevant work by a group of very talented women in such diversity of expression and background. They’re usually seen in a design context while, from conceptualisation to realisation, the genesis of the works exhibited share visual artists’ tools and depth of narrative,' he explains. A show where women get a seat at the table? Sounds like a page taken from Judy Chicago’s 'The Dinner Party', too.

'Enthroned' is on view until 2 March 2024

Jessica Silverman
621 Grant Avenue
San Francisco, CA 94108

jessicasilvermangallery.com

Patrick Martinez’s ‘Ghost Land’, showing at the Institute of Contemporary Art San Francisco (ICA SF) until 7 January 2024, is the most ambitious and expansive presentation to date from the LA artist, who is known for his mixed-media landscapes, paintings and neon artworks that draw on themes of diversity, immigration, racism, injustice and inequality.

‘Ghost Land’ by Patrick Martinez at the ICA SF

Distilling the visceral experience of LA into abstract landscapes, ‘Ghost Land’ captures not just the passage of time but ongoing personal, civic and cultural loss – like graffiti that still remains after attempts to erase it.

The show features a large-scale sculptural installation, as well as a series of neon artworks and large, mixed-media paintings, which Martinez layers with the kind of materials, finishes and details commonly seen on community centres, schools, liquor stores and markets around the city – such as stucco, spray paint, window security bars, vinyl signage, ceramic tiles and neon – before scraping, overlapping, obscuring and even power-washing layers of his composition away. Like the exhibition title implies, these landscapes hold the ghosts of long-lost histories.

Meanwhile, his sculpture, commissioned by the ICA SF for this exhibition, is Martinez’s first landscape in the round and his largest work to date. It’s partly inspired by the 1980 mural Filling Up on Ancient Energies, created by Chicano art collective East Los Streetscapers in the LA neighbourhood of Boyle Heights. Originally more than 20ft long, the mural was removed in 1988 by Shell Oil without notice; when the collective sued Shell for its destruction, they won a settlement, paving the way for the California Art Preservation Act.

Martinez honours this legacy by creating his own version of a wall, built with cinder blocks. Capturing the moment between creation and destruction, Martinez has layered the wall with personal references, including portraits and landscapes that pay homage to his Californian roots, his Filipinx, Mexican and Native American heritage, and the urban visual language of his community, interweaving his own narrative with a historical one.

‘Building a sculpture out of cinder block was something I always wanted to explore,’ he says. ‘It’s a fleeting material, it’s everywhere in the city, but it’s also being replaced by more modern aesthetics, such as “gentrification fences”. The East Los Streetscapers mural was painted on a long cinder-block wall and it made me feel that I wanted to show multiple sides of painting and sculpture at the same time. I wanted to try and achieve this with the wall structure, but also the broken pieces of cinder block. The materials I use speak to the fact that this city is changing, the materials I’m using are physically disappearing.’

Martinez has exhibited both locally and internationally, with his work residing in the permanent collections of numerous galleries, including LACMA, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Cornell Fine Arts Museum, and Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.

‘Ghost Land’ is on show until 7 January 2024 at the ICA SF, icasf.org

For the better part of the last three decades, Takashi Murakami has dominated popular culture with his bounty of recognisable symbols. From his now-ubiquitous Flowers to his equally endearing Mr DOB alter-ego, Murakami’s brightly coloured universe has expanded the reaches of art well beyond the canvas. Through his influence, Vans slip-on sneakers, Perrier bottles and T-shirts for Uniqlo, as well as music videos for Billie Eilish, cushions for the Museum of Modern Art and collectible timepieces for Hublot (both IRL and NFT), have all become veritable platforms for art. And while he has made his work available to as many people as possible, Murakami still continues to retain his standing at the pinnacle of the art world.

If it is possible to surpass this peak, Murakami is about to do it with ‘Takashi Murakami: Unfamiliar People – Swelling of Monsterized Human Ego’, a major exhibition that’s currently on view at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco until 12 February 2024. Showcasing more than 75 works, including more than a dozen that have never been seen before, the monumental presentation offers a unique view of where one of the world’s most prolific artists is currently, in both his life and career. 

‘This exhibition came to be by invitation of [the museum’s senior curator of Japanese art] Laura Allen, and in terms of the content, I have been running my own ideas on the rails she has laid out,’ shares Murakami. ‘Her theme has been to push my interests of the moment to the forefront.’ 

Rather than retread familiar ground with Murakami’s smiling and playful characters, Allen chose to focus the show on the artist’s use of monsters as a lens for examining human behaviour against the complex juncture of where we are today: a chaotic present and a virtually limitless digital future. 

‘The show focuses on works from the past decade,’ Allen says. ‘In recent years, Murakami’s work has been evolving at a rapid pace. He has changed his subject matter in reaction to large external events, such as the 2011 Tōhoku quake, the pandemic, changes in the digital world, and internal events, like the isolation and alienation of the pandemic years.’ 

By honing his use of monsters, which has percolated as a theme in the artist’s oeuvre over many years, the show facilitates a probing of Murakami’s darker side, which feels especially poignant against the range of intensities facing the world today. 

Discussions for the exhibition first began in 2018. While things ended up being derailed and delayed due to the global pandemic, what has ultimately emerged is an exciting new body of work that will surprise even the most fervent of Murakami fans.

Takashi Murakami on Unfamiliar People and monsterization

‘Because the exhibition was interrupted by the pandemic, a great deal of time passed between the conception of the exhibition and its completion. Laura repeatedly expressed that she wanted to see my latest works,’ Murakami says. ‘Before the pandemic, we had selected the most recent works at that time. Then, after the pandemic began, I produced the Unfamiliar People series, which expresses the horror of the moment when humans turn into monsters, and new NFT-related works in rapid succession, so eventually, almost the entire show came to consist of the latest works. This is how Unfamiliar People became the main visual of this exhibition.’

In Unfamiliar People, Murakami depicts misshapen, sci-fi-style characters that nod to the world of aliens disguised as people in John Carpenter’s 1988 film They Live, who revealed different and unexpected traits once their surface layers were peeled back.

'When I contemplated what the audience might expect and would like to see, based on this “Monsterized” theme, one thing I thought of was monsters that are not in human form,’ he says. ‘After the pandemic started, some people who used to live normal lives started to loudly voice strong opinions, or turned out to be vaccine conspiracy theorists, or started attacking others out of an astonishingly intense sense of fear. Some who seemed to be absolutely kind had abruptly changed, and
I felt that it was impossible to understand human beings just by looking at the surface.’ 

Allen observes: ‘Somehow, the pandemic unleashed a kind of creative rebirth for Takashi. Suddenly, around the fall of 2020, new types of monsters were springing to life – and we were able to capture this moment in the pandemic portraits featured in this show, such as Unfamiliar People, and in the works related to the moment when, as he said “his brain turned on” to the potential of virtual and digital art.’

The exhibition’s other namesake (the ‘Swelling of Monsterized Human Ego’) is equally timely and a jab at society’s increasing submersion in the digital realm and its obsession with social media – areas that Murakami, himself a prolific poster, continues to grapple with.

‘One of the recent themes for me in creating new artwork has been the formation of new types of ego and the loss of substance in communication caused by social media,’ Murakami explains. ‘In [Darren Aronofsky’s 2022 film] The Whale, the ways in which the main character and his daughter communicate through social media and Zoom seemed to illustrate the drastically different ways the generation that has had social networking since birth and my 61-year-old self communicate. I can’t completely comprehend how best to interact with and through social media, and am at times confused. In other words, I have a hard time understanding the distance of new relationships mediated by social media and it troubles me.’

Ironically, by contemplating the effects of rampant digital use in our daily lives, by contemplating the effects of rampant digital use in our daily lives, Murakami began pursuing a new visual arc – the incorporation of ukiyo-e motifs, a classical genre of Japanese art spanning the 17th to 19th centuries, into his work. Translated as ‘pictures of the floating world’, this style of painting is not only well-known due to its depictions of Japanese wealth, power and prosperity, it was also something Murakami has consciously avoided – that is, until now. 

An epic, 25m-long new work, Judgement Day showcases an unravelling composition of classical figures, monsters and beings in various states of being ‘monsterized’, which poetically dovetails with his signature Superflat style that draws from post-Second World War anime and manga aesthetics. ‘Laura and I had started to discuss the keyword “monsterized” for the show a few months before the opening, and I was exploring how to create a work that aligned with the keyword. Then, one day in early July, on the way back from my daughter’s ballet recital, the idea came to me and I made this work,’ says Murakami.

‘For a long time, I was very reluctant to use ukiyo-e motifs for my paintings. The reason was that I used to think it wouldn’t be such a good idea for me, as a Japanese, to use “Fujiyama Geisha” to make my debut overseas and gain recognition for it,’ he elaborates. ‘However, I have now been working in Europe and the United States for about 30 years, and I felt that it would actually be strange for me not to make any mention of ukiyo-e, which is the most well-known art form from Japan among people overseas.’

He continues, ‘I thought it might be good to explore and create [different] kinds of Japanese monsters in the context of ukiyo-e, which is very familiar for someone like myself, born and raised in Japan, as well as to the general audience, visually speaking. And so with this piece, I referenced it for the first time. I placed Taira no Kiyomori hi-no-yamai no zu [also known as ‘The fever of Taira no Kiyomori’], a work by Tsukioka Yoshitoshi, an artist of the Meiji period (1868-1912), at the centre of my painting, and surrounded it with motifs from famous ukiyo-e paintings by Tōshūsai Sharaku, including the large heads. I tried to express the “monsterized” state of human beings in the painting.’

With solid colour fields created using his trademark squeegee work technique, which he says ‘express[es] a rougher and more dynamic use of colour’, Judgement Day feels akin to another momentous work, which Murakami created after the Great East Japan earthquake of 2011, The 500 Hundred Arhats, which measures a whopping 100m in length. Allen anticipates Judgement Day to be equally seminal. Completed in just under three months, it is a deep testament to Murakami’s artistic process and promises to be a late-career masterpiece.

‘Takashi is a force of nature, and so I’ve been swept into the whirlwind of his practice. Getting a behind-the-scenes view of his creative process, studio mechanics and techniques has been a privilege that we’ve tried to share in various parts of the exhibition,’ she says. ‘The scale of the paintings, the density of their imagery, the diversity of styles and techniques. These are all works that really need to be experienced in person.’

Murakami’s ruminations about Japanese art’s traditional past are also articulated through a series of works made in response to ancient and traditional ceramics, of which he is a fervent collector and connoisseur. Again, he has translated recognisable ceramic motifs, such as Qinghua carp, perch and lotus flowers, into painted form, while preserving the classical palette of painted blue and white porcelain. While seemingly unlikely, and certainly unexpected, Murakami’s connection to ceramics is deep-rooted and yet another throwback to an earlier stage in his career.

He reveals, ‘When I made my debut at the age of 29, Mr Akira Aoi, a collector who had works by Willem de Kooning and Picasso, took me to the Museum of Oriental Ceramics, Osaka. At that time, he explained to me about the eroticism of ceramics, which I didn’t understand at all and took home with me as homework to think about. Mr Aoi has since passed away, more than ten years ago, and I had wanted to and tried to somehow reach his state of mind before that, purchasing and observing ceramics. Along the way, I truly fell in love with ceramics from the bottom of my heart, having developed its vocabulary and sense of history for myself. I am not sure if what I understand now is the same as what Mr Aoi was trying to tell me, but I think I now understand the eroticism of ceramics in my own way.’

‘Murakami’s evolution is not a straight line but recursive, circling back to older interests, and sampling and remixing again and again, as is his style,’ Allen concludes. ‘He always has his eye on “the changing flow of desires” in the world, and he’s constantly looking for new ways to express the bizarre or brutal [because] those desires affect who we are and how we experience the world. Doing all that, with a sense of humour, is a powerful way to make art that is accessible to a larger and younger audience.’

With the show rounded out by painted works recording Murakami’s creation of NFTs and Murakami-themed avatars for the Clone X NFT collection, ‘Unfamiliar People – Swelling of Monsterized Human Ego’ is a comprehensive snapshot of Murakami’s standing as one of the world’s most acclaimed contemporary artists.

When asked if he took any risks with this exhibition, he replies, ‘I didn’t take any risks. Because art is not about taking risks. However, I think the biggest risk was that I made the people at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco worry for a long time that I may not be able to produce the works in time for the exhibition. I think the risk has been hedged now that we have managed to present Judgement Day.

‘I believe that art and philosophy are things with tremendous power,’ he asserts. ‘When you come into contact with them, your brain shifts at once from your ordinary life to the unrealistic world of imagination, and at the moment of that shift, your sense of values change beyond the reality that is born out of your new life.’ 

‘Takashi Murakami: Unfamiliar People – Swelling of Monsterized Human Ego’ is on view at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco until 12 February 2024, asianart.org, @takashipom

This article appears in the November 2023 issue of Wallpaper*, available in print, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today

Expensify’s new San Francisco office gives a fresh meaning to a workplace reimagined. The software company’s headquarters, conceived by local architecture studio ZGF, has been reinvented as a chic members’ club - complete with a curved bar counter, cocktails, and comfortable, lounge-inspired seating.  

Expensify: workplace reimagined

Even before the recent global pandemic pushed many to redefine what an office should look like, Expensify was developing an idea to refresh their place of work through a more hospitality centred approach. Their plans were put on hold due to the subsequent lockdowns and working-from-home patterns, but returned stronger than ever, once the city slowly started finding its post-pandemic rhythm.  

‘Our mission was to translate this into a curated experience. We concentrated on the front entry area, which was to become the lounge, and leveraged a “user-interface” approach. We were hyper focused on crafting the style, elements visitors would be able to see and touch, and getting the experience right; the various aspects of how members and employees would want to use the space – to connect and chat, to work, to sip a craft cocktail,’ says Franco Rosete, principal at ZGF.

‘One of the main drivers of the vision was to redefine what it means to enter a space. The idea of a traditional lobby or reception was questioned early on. The typical sequence of a space is one where you land, check in, and then head off to the destination. But we asked what if the destination is the first thing that you see?’ 

The refreshed space is now more members-only lounge than traditional desk arrangement, and it is available to all the company’s employees, members and their guests. Set on the 16th floor of a Financial District building, the space has a curved bar at its heart and was conceived to offer an immersive experience, as soon as visitors step through the door. ‘The optimistic blue was chosen to greet those who enter the space. The bar is a living expression of the brand: pink velvet establishes a vibrancy and energy that echoes Expensify’s irreverent work culture. After all, their motto for working is “get shit done and don’t ruin it for everyone else”,’ says Rosete.  

Bespoke details are complemented by a material palette of stained oak, walnut wood, marble, plush velvet seating, and transparent glass, creating a welcoming, subtly luxurious environment. Office essentials, such as wifi and private phone rooms, and meeting rooms of various sizes, are mixed effortlessly with snacks, and a full selection of craft coffee, tea, and cocktails - while everyone is looked after by Expensify’s in-house, chat-based concierge service. 

zfg.com

On 18 March, acclaimed American painter Kehinde Wiley will unveil a new exhibition ‘An Archaeology of Silence’ at the de Young Museum, part of The Fine Art Museums of San Francisco. 

Wiley created this monumental body of work as the global Covid-19 pandemic, the murder of George Floyd and the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement gripped the world. ‘An Archaeology of Silence’ conveys the brutality, humanity, injustice, grief and grace that the Black community has endured and exemplified. Made up of 26 works that vary in scale, all aspects of the exhibition stand as elegies and monuments to those lost and those who have lost. 

‘An Archaeology of Silence’ expands on an earlier series, Down, that Wiley made in 2008 – a group of large-scale portraits of young Black men, inspired by Hans Holbein the Younger’s The Dead Christ in the Tomb (1521-1522), which prompted Wiley’s still ongoing investigations into the iconography of death and sacrifice in Western art across mythological, religious and historical subjects. The new works reframe the artist’s observations to also confront the legacies of colonialism through the visual trope of the fallen figure. The resulting works are of Black people struck down, wounded, in repose or dead, each referencing a historical painting of saints, martyrs and heroes to underscore the cycle of violence against Black and Brown people.

‘It’s strange how ideas are not just play things, but have consequence in the world,’ says Wiley, during a preview of the works ahead of the opening. ‘To go from just being here messing around with oil paint to being able to engage powers and principalities and tendencies that exist out there in the real world. This seemingly casual act of making paintings can actually really be quite consequential.’

He says, ‘When I first started painting, I was basically naval-gazing and trying to make stuff that satisfied conceptual arguments that existed at Yale or that I read in books. Then I came out at the Studio Museum in Harlem and started to move in a different direction. Slowly, I started fashioning this language about power, authority and dignity that is a lot more about looking out and it became more about how we sit in the world.’

The works in ‘An Archaeology of Silence’ are some of the largest and smallest that Wiley has ever created. Using scale to elevate their subjects to hero status, the works range from figurative bronze sculptures that hauntingly depict grief, pain and mourning to vibrantly, flower-filled portraits featuring residents, staff and friends of Black Rock, the residency which the artist founded in 2019 in Senegal and where he spent most of lockdown. Filled with personal markers of Senegalese and West African culture, especially in the depiction of hair, these portraits comment on the deep roots of systemic oppression and violence that Black and Brown people endure all around the world. 

A significant aspect of the show is the museum’s demonstration of reverence and sensitivity towards the subject matter. Thanks to a $1 million grant from the Ford Foundation, public programming and interventions from community partners who work in the areas of restorative justice and human rights have been incorporated to inform visitors’ experience. The museum’s Textile Arts gallery, just adjacent to the exhibition space, has also been designated as a respite room, where visitors can collect themselves and their thoughts before or after viewing the works.  

An additional $1 million grant from Google.org also makes the exhibition more accessible to the Bay Area community, by enabling the museum to offer eight weekends of free admission. This grant also supports a free audio guide, public programming such as a talk with the artist, grief workshops, school and youth curriculum, an exhibition film, and an ongoing community engagement speaker series presented in partnership with LiveFree – an SF organisation working to end the gun violence, mass incarceration, and the criminalisation of Black and Brown people. 

Kehinde Wiley: 'An Archaeology of Silence' runs from 18 March – 15 October 2023 at the de Young Museum, San Francisco. famsf.org

The San Francisco midcentury gem that is Beacon House has an interesting origin story. Built in the 1960s to the era's modernist architecture style, full of wood, soft light and open spaces, it is now the family home of an architect and a biologist, who one day, walking down the street, saw it and joked that this would be their ideal home. Their dream soon became a reality when the residence went on the market, and the couple quickly snapped it up. They then went to family friend Vivian Lee of architecture studio Edmonds + Lee, to help with the renovation. 

Beacon House: a modernist renovation story

'[The decision] was all heart, no head,' the clients explain. The space had been lovingly preserved by the previous owners, yet still required modernisation, which the architects had to tackle cleverly, considering the home's relatively compact size (compared to the typical residence the studio has worked on in the past). Lee quickly shifted her approach to what she calls a 'jewel box' scale.  

The architecture team proceeded, making small alterations and surgical interventions, respecting the home's existing overall character. This meant revisiting the programmatic connections between spaces – switching, for example, the primary bedroom for an office. Clever changes, such as creating a rather 'compressed' foyer that gives way to a dramatic, expanded double-height space beyond, enhance the living experience, adding Frank Lloyd Wright notes. The effect was further defined by a bespoke lighting design plan by Fisher Marantz Stone. 

'We wanted to respect and keep the original redwood ceiling, which became a catalyst for the rest of the house,' one of the clients says, emphasising the entire team's inclination to keep a simple, if not restrained material palette that draws on Beacon House's roots. 

The fruitful collaboration resulted in a home that feels warm and comfortable, but also impressive in its drama and historic identity. It was a team effort, the architects explain. 'There’s nothing more rewarding than working with another design professional,' Lee says. 'They can really understand your ideas – and they tend to be more critical, so when you do get it right, it’s rewarding.'

edmondslee.com 

Hosono House is this rare gem of a project – an unusual urban setting that has been completely and utterly transformed into an unexpected domestic haven. Ryan Leidner Architecture worked with ‘an interesting setting’, making the most of a structure built at the rear of its plot in San Francisco’s hilly, Bernal Heights neighbourhood, to craft a family home with a distinct feeling of seclusion – a true, green, urban retreat. 

Hosono House is a San Francisco domestic haven

The remodelling of an existing building, Hosono House was unusually set back on its property. This gave the architects the opportunity to create a strong sense of privacy – a sanctuary for their clients, a couple of lovers of Italian design and furniture. At the same time, ‘looking to reimagine what was a rather awkward layout, the project reorganised the spaces, creating a new entry stair and front façade with large openings offering views onto the garden’, the architects explain.

A bridge flies over the sloped, richly planted site, leading visitors to the home's main entrance, on a half-level landing. Hosono House's impressive, double-height main living space and kitchen are up just one flight of stairs, nestled at the top of the building. The bedrooms are located downstairs.

Ryan Leidner and his team worked with the building's existing wood beams and ceiling, which were were refinished and left exposed, while combining them with minimalist architecture, clean surfaces and muted tones throughout. Here, natural wood tones meet flowing white surfaces, creating a home designed as a 'relaxed social space'. Meanwhile, generous yet strategically placed geometric openings maintain the owners' privacy while allowing looks out towards the city, or the garden's foliage, orchestrated by landscape experts Stephens Design Studio. 

The decor mixes vintage Italian, Japanese and Californian modernism influences. There is, for instance, a custom-made dining table by local furniture maker Nobuto Suga, a set of vintage ‘Tucroma’ chairs by Guido Faleschini, and a ‘Locus Solus’ tubular armchair by Gae Aulenti. 

A ground-level lounge serves as a cosy family room and opens up to the lower courtyard and nature beyond. ‘Inspired by the warm atmosphere of a whisky bar in Tokyo, the floors, walls and ceiling are clad in wide-plank white oak, and a record-playing station overlooks the space. A custom velvet daybed offers a place to relax and enjoy views onto the garden,' the architects write. 

ryanleidner.com 

Faith Ringgold is an artist with a humble manner, though her impact on art history is nothing of the sort. Born in Harlem, NY, in 1930, Ringgold is amongst the most important political artists of our time. With powerful, emblematic narratives, she has spent five decades uncovering the many subjectivities of history, challenging historic stereotypes and false truths of African-American identity, championing underrepresented narratives and drawing attention to gender inequality. Ringgold’s bold, indelible impact on art history and the lives of Black Americans, Black women and Black people more widely can never be erased. 

With a major retrospective now on view at San Francisco’s de Young Museum, Ringgold is gratified by the recent response to her work. ‘My mother always said I would have to work twice as hard to go half as far. I believed in myself – as my family did – and just kept working no matter what the response was. I am delighted to see my work appreciated by so many,’ says the artist, whose work is framed intellectually from her position in the Harlem Renaissance. 

Ringgold’s work in narrative quilting has made her a pioneer of the medium. Her ‘story quilts’ are actually paintings – acrylic on canvas – with pieced fabric borders. Unduly associated with craft, the medium has been adopted into the narrative of contemporary art in more recent times. Though Ringgold did not consider herself a pioneer at the time. ‘Throughout my professional life I felt free to do whatever I wanted to do – and use whatever material was suitable for my vision. I felt no limitation.’ 

As well as her tapestries, her narrative scenes – such as the American People series, the focus of the de Young exhibition – confront race relations in 1960s America. A mural-scale painting concludes the series, culminating in violent chaos with the riots that were erupting throughout the country. Fighting in the streets and the undocumented killings of African-American people were frequent. Blood is drawn and spatters evenly; the struggle touches all. Done-up, buttoned businessmen represent the core of the struggle; a battle amongst the middle class for the surety of their social positioning. 

‘The images I created reflect my experiences and what was going on around me. In the 1960s, I embraced the civil rights movement because Black artists were being overlooked. In the 1970s I embraced the women’s movement because female artists were ignored more than men. I think the same issues are relevant today.’ Many of the key works of the Black Arts Movement were solely focused on Black masculinity, and this often threatened to drown out the voices and messages of Black women artists of the movement. Indeed, Ringgold would come to realise, after joining, that the movement would serve to give men power over women. Ringgold’s work is an expression of freedom, as an African-American, as a woman, and above all else as a Black woman.

‘I hope people will be inspired by my art and find the courage as I did to do whatever they feel moved to do – whether it’s in art, science or any discipline. It takes courage to be free and express one’s own vision. Everyone is important and has a unique story to tell.’ 

We are living in an age where purpose is being reinvented and historical narratives are being uncovered and afforded due attention. How far have we come and how much farther do we have to go? To this, Ringgold muses ‘We have made progress to a certain extent but there is a long journey ahead. There is much work to do before our society attains true social justice. These past few years have exposed the extent of prejudice in our society. There is a lot of catching up to do before there is true equity.’

Ringgold allows us to believe in the possibility of freedom; her work is deeply personal yet universal. It unravels an experience shared by many through her unique perspective. It can be said that some of the best art is made through the exploration of one’s own experience. Ringgold agrees: ‘It is essential for an artist to find their voice. What distinguishes a great artist from a mediocre one is their artistic vocabulary. One may be influenced or inspired by another artist's vision, but finding one’s own distinct voice is the goal. You cannot make art about anything you haven’t experienced.’ Ringgold’s work draws you in because faith is at the centre; to look at her multifaceted oeuvre is to enter a relationship with history, her story and your own.

Ringgold is rightly credited with expanding the American story; but at the core of her work, her own deeply nuanced story resonates, a story for us all to share. Art is a unique expression of life, and Ringgold's expression urges us to take notice of a bigger story, more American People, and a more expansive humanity. 

'Faith Ringgold: American People', until 27 November 2022 at the de Young Museum, San Francisco. deyoung.famsf.org

A San Francisco bungalow has been transformed by local architecture practice Spiegel Aihara Workshop (SAW) into a modern family home. The Fourth Wall, as the project has been titled, expands a 1907 home in the city's Bernal Heights neighbourhood. The square footage addition was not the only goal with this project. The architects and clients also wanted to make the connection between the interior living spaces and the garden more ‘intentional', and both aims are achieved in one fell swoop with a brand-new rear extension and façade. 

With this move, dark, cramped, inward-looking rooms have been reimagined into bright and spacious interiors orientated towards a green garden. An existing, smaller exterior building was entirely removed and replaced with the extension, spanning the home's full three levels and adding a structured, contemporary, geometric look to the rear façade. 

The two lower levels contain mostly living and entertaining spaces for family and guests, while the top floor houses bedrooms, with the master suite looking down to the green garden. From there, the façade appears like a stack of windows, terraces and openings, highlighting the ample light and visual connections the redesigned home now has. A new staircase inside also links up seamlessly all interior levels. 

‘Towards the yard, the exterior cladding appears to turn inside out, wrapping the same slatted pattern along the fences and, in turn, framing the backyard as an outdoor room,' the architects write. ‘This fence is often used as a screen for scenic projections. In addition, SAW regraded the backyard for drainage and added raised Corten perimeter planter beds for screening and an edible garden. This all plays out as a big inversion, as the backyard was reoriented to face in, a seat from which to experience the activity playing out across the home.'

From tired San Francisco bungalow to spacious, architectural home; The Fourth Wall is a clever sleight of hand that adds design value to the existing urban fabric. SAW partners and co-founders Dan Spiegel and Megumi Aihara are deft at this kind of feat, as previous projects by the studio, such as the Wraparound House, demonstrate. 

INFORMATION

sawinc.com

A residential concept that puts collectible design at the heart of its ethos has opened in San Francisco’s new luxury condominium, One Steuart Lane. The building, located on the waterfront along the Embarcadero, encompasses minimalist and modern architectural codes complemented by contemporary interiors designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, with amenity interiors by Rottet Studio.

Design studio FrenchCalifornia has collaborated with Laguna Beach-based Peter Blake Gallery on curating a residence inside the building, working in harmony with the high ceilings and floor-to-ceiling windows that flood the apartment interior with light.

Curated San Francisco apartment

The project, Residence 903, presents a chic curation of design and art, incorporating design pieces from Jorge Zalszupin, Joe Goode, Rick Owens, Sergio Rodrigues, Stephanie Bachiero, Vladimir Kagan and Wendell Castle. There are also works by artists including James Turrell, De Wain Valentine, Larry Bell, Lita Albuquerque, Mary Corse, Peter Alexander, Scot Heywood and Tony DeLap.

‘At FrenchCalifornia, our intention was always to partner with Peter Blake Gallery for this project, given their expertise in West Coast minimalism,’ says founder Guillaume Coutheillas. ‘In collaborating with Peter Blake, we selected works that evoked an immediate visual response within the context of One Steuart Lane. We hope our design helps potential clients find a personal connection to the building as they experience the residence in the presence of design pieces that help tell the story of the building and San Francisco’s unique design aesthetic.’

For Peter Blake, the collaboration was a natural one: ‘Together, we were able to create a flat fit for a collector of California minimalism – including American Light and Space and hard-edge artists – and modern design spanning the 1930s Bauhaus to early 1970s French. The residence exudes sophistication and refinement.’

Photography: Scott Hargis

INFORMATION

onesteuartlane.com

The San Francisco townhouse, majestically standing in neat rows on the West Coast city’s iconic hills, has a special place in our image of the Golden City. Locally based architecture studio Aidlin Darling Design has now created a modern reinterpretation of the typology – a property called Art House. The project, conceived for a private client and led by founding partner Joshua Aidlin, ‘honours the legacy of stellar craftsmanship within the Bay Area’, explain the architects. Indeed, streamlined design and bespoke details and features abound in this new home.

Art House is located on a south-facing hillside in the Cow Hollow neighbourhood. The front and rear façades each have a distinct personality and serve a different purpose. The street-facing one feels subtler, more opaque and maintains the proportions of the nearby Victorian structures to avoid breaking the street’s rhythm. Yet, as you come round to the back of the site, the rear façade unfolds to reveal four, dramatic, glass-enclosed floors and a domestic interior, which glows when lit at night and opens up to long views of the garden and the cityscape and Bay Area beyond. A common language of artfully poured in-situ concrete, timber cladding and glazed openings unite the two sides.

The interiors, led by spatial generosity, master craft and those views (which include from the Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz Island and the Palace of Fine Arts), create a gently luxurious atmosphere. Double-height living spaces, shaded floor-to-ceiling openings, high-quality materials (such as walnut wood and stainless steel) compose spaces that feel welcoming but also grand – yet still suited for the domestic scale. Different moods are catered to in different areas, from the expansive main living area with its Studio Drift art installation and chandelier, to the slightly more 'compressed' bedrooms that lead the eye towards the vistas. 

A similar, tailored approach is followed outside. ‘The lowest floor opens up to a landscaped oasis that breaks up into three smaller gardens as the terrain follows the hillside, creating three distinct opportunities within the vicinity for solitude, connection, and relaxation,’ the architects explain. 

Aidlin Darling Design draws on the past and infuses this project with contemporary thought and craft, ensuring the result is a timeless classic. ‘There was an emphatic focus during the design process to create not the 25-year home but the 200-year home — one that is impeccably crafted out of materials that will age gracefully,’ the team says of this take on the San Francisco townhouse. ‘The home was embraced as an unparalleled opportunity to design to all the human senses: not just the visual, but also the tactile, olfactory, and auditory.’ 

INFORMATION

aidlindarlingdesign.com

A Spanish Revival home in San Francisco has been given a 21st-century makeover, courtesy of architects Spiegel Aihara Workshop (SAW). Wraparound House, the commission for a family of five, involved updating an existing home, adding space to accommodate group activities and entertaining, and also stabilising and tackling the land below, which was contaminated and in need of remediation. The architects obliged, transforming this San Francisco home into a light filled, generous, six-bedroom abode that bridges past and present, while reclaiming its site. 

The architects worked on the design both ‘vertically and horizontally', they say. ‘Rather than simply building upon the new ground, we saw the challenge as redistributing the ground vertically across the site, throughout the building. While many buildings have terraces, or balconies, or things like that, we set out to maintain a complete continuity of a new ground across the entire house, ensuring that every roof was not so much the top of something, but the bottom of something – a new ground,’ says SAW's Dan Spiegel.

San Francisco home with curve appeal

Inside, a central staircase becomes not only a connector between levels, but also a sculptural accent. A second, exterior stair links the different floors via the outdoor terraces. This access and relationship to the outdoors takes place on every level, in different ways; connecting the indoors with the garden, and allowing for long vistas of the bay and the Golden Gate Bridge were a key part of the clients' brief. 

Meanwhile, soft, rounded corners, light colours, crisp surfaces and large openings ensure the interior of this San Francisco home feels fresh and open, creating a sense of calm, while highlighting the views. Meanwhile design studio White Space, headed by Heidi Kim, worked on the interior. 

The rounded edges play another role too, Spiegel explains: ‘It sort of works as a gradient: the spaces are more public, more outward looking at the top, and more private, more inward looking at the bottom. The rounded edges of the garden path form a scooter/bike track; the rounded corners of the family room gradually guide you out to the terrace; the master bathroom is conceived as a thickened window for the bedroom, balcony-like and perched over the bay. On most days, I’m just as likely to take the exterior stairs as the interior stairs to move between rooms. It doesn’t quite look like it, but it works a bit like a mobius strip in that way.' The house's name – Wraparound – is inspired by this too. 

SAW's Megumi Aihara, a landscape architect, spearheaded the ground's remediation, starting from scratch with the garden to compose a design that accommodates new soil for planting and new trees, including two majestic October Glory Red maples placed on site. This way, modern architecture is balanced by rich, leafy nature in this San Francisco home.

INFORMATION

sawinc.com

whitespacedesign.net

The Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD) in San Francisco opens its doors again this month for the first time since the pandemic with a suitably powerful double-header featuring the works of two ascendant African artists – the Ghanaian painter Amoako Boafo and Malawi-born, Johannesburg-based artist Billie Zangewa. Both on view until early 2022, the duo of exhibitions mark the first solo museum shows of each artist, who are both widely considered amongst the most important African contemporary artists on the international stage.

Despite the simultaneous openings, each artist has been duly given their own spotlight. Boafo presents over 20 works that he created between 2018 and 2021. The exhibition, titled ‘Soul of Black Folks’ after the pioneering book of essays by sociologist and Pan Africanist WEB Du Bois, invites viewers to challenge their perceptions of the Black figure. This dialogue is intentionally amplified by the context of Du Bois’ historical writing, which contributed to the coining of the term ‘double consciousness’ to summarise the way Black people often had to view themselves through the eyes of others. Boafo’s deeply personal works, which represent sitters of all walks of African life, are steadfast celebrations of Blackness; each is an assertion of dignity and importance.

‘Du Bois’ text serves as rich source material that provides a conceptual framework for the exhibition,’ writes curator Larry Ossei-Mensah, adding that Du Bois is actually buried in Osu, Ghana, Boafo’s hometown. ‘Viewers are asked to reflect on what it means for people from the African diaspora to take agency in cultivating one’s narrative, aesthetic, and cultural expression. How does this radical act become a catalyst for a heightened sense of Black consciousness and liberation that is antithetical to the Western canonical discourse?’

Boafo’s captivating point of view is complemented by the intricate collages of textile artist Billie Zanegawa, who is exhibiting works from the past 15 years as well as new pieces made specially for ‘Thread for a Web Begun’. Zangewa’s intricate creations are enhanced by her deep understanding of textiles. From early works that feature embroideries on pieces of found fabric to more recent works that have been composed using hand-stitched fragments of raw silk, Zangewa portrays a range of personal and universal experiences using domestic interiors, urban landscapes and portraiture to challenge historical stereotypes, objectification and exploitation of the Black female form.

Zangewa’s depictions of the female experience are based on her own navigations of life in Johannesburg. Her representations of domestic scenes are inspired by the ‘daily feminism’ as she calls it, of the oft-overlooked, yet valuable work that women do daily to keep society running smoothly. 

‘Through the method of their making and their narrative content, Zangewa’s silk paintings illustrate gendered labour in a socio-political context, where the domestic sphere becomes a pretext for a deeper understanding of the construction of identity, questions around gender stereotypes, and racial prejudice,’ states curator Dexter Wimberly of Zangewa’s labour-intensive process. ‘She explores the different roles that women play in society, including motherhood and the impact that it has individually and collectively. The images in her work are deliberately decontextualised. However, when shown in a group, their fragmentary nature is further emphasised, suggesting they are excerpted from a larger narrative.’

Zangewa’s deep exploration of individual and collective identity, and of modern Black femininity will soon gain traction around the world, with solo shows upcoming at Lehmann Maupin gallery in its Seoul and London locations in November 2021.

INFORMATION

Amoako Boafo, ‘Soul of Black Folks’ and Billie Zangewa, ‘Thread for a Web Begun’, until 27 February 2021, Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD)

moadsf.org

At the age of 82, and after 60 years of spearheading feminist art, Judy Chicago has just received her first retrospective. Puzzling, perhaps, that it’s taken so long, but in understanding Chicago’s relatively recent institutional acclaim, one must first appreciate what it took to arrive here. 

I reach Chicago via Zoom. She’s in a San Francisco hotel preparing a new Smoke Sculpture to accompany her seminal show at the city’s de Young Museum. She sits on a chair, knees bent to her chest; her wavy hair has psychedelic purple sides with a silver top. She’s eating breakfast, then apologising for eating breakfast. ‘So tell me about you,’ she begins. Not a question a journalist often predicts, but then predictability is not exactly synonymous with Judy Chicago. 

Chicago was born Judith Cohen in Illinois in 1939 to a family of Jewish liberals. Her mother, a dancer, nurtured her prodigious creative flair; her father, a Marxist and labour organiser, doted on Chicago and instilled in her a political consciousness and passion for social justice. In childhood, her parents armed her with a fierce self-belief. She never considered that, as a woman, her aspirations would be unobtainable; these were obstacles reserved for adulthood. 

The veneer began to abrade when Chicago was studying at UCLA. In response to an environment riddled with hostility and cultural contempt for female creativity, the artist adopted ‘macho’ materials and techniques, like automotive parts and heavy machinery. ‘My gender kept slipping into my work,’ says Chicago. ‘I either had to try to construct an alternative face for myself and other women, or continue to not be taken seriously.’

The patriarchy was urging Chicago to make a choice: be a woman, or be an artist. But she wanted to be both. ‘I watched my male artist colleagues moving along the choo-choo train of success, then I showed work like Rainbow Pickett (1965), and nothing happened. I felt like even though I was trying my best to be one of the guys, it wasn’t working, so I thought, “What do I have to lose by being myself?”’

In 1970, Judy Gerowitz – then her married name – legally became Judy Chicago to ‘divest herself of all names imposed upon her through male dominance’. The same year, she founded the first feminist art education programme in the US at California State University, Fresno, but there remained little discourse on the lack of female representation in art. ‘Other women artists were working then, two from the Bay Area, Joan Brown and Jay DeFeo. I tried to raise the issue and asked what it was like for them, and they wouldn’t talk about it, they denied it. It was a level of fear combined with lack of consciousness.’

In 1979, Chicago unleashed a tidal wave on the art world with The Dinner Party. The installation was visited by 100,000 people in its first three months and would be seen by 15 million by 1996. It was audacious, unabashedly vaginal, staggering in scale and content, and unprecedented in its celebration of ‘feminine’ craft. The piece is formed of a triangular table with 39 elaborate place settings for 39 iconic women from myth and history, including Sojourner Truth, Georgia O’Keeffe and Virginia Woolf. ‘Even though I believed in myself, it wasn’t an easy road that I trod. If I had not found my history as a woman, and learned about what all those women before me had faced and overcome, I could never have done it,’ she says. 

But another tidal wave loomed, one carrying an unexpected concoction of criticism and utter annihilation – ‘a lumbering mishmash of sleaze and cheese’, said one Los Angeles Times critic of her installation.

Criticism came from other, more unexpected sources. ‘When The Dinner Party opened, there was a group of English feminists who were like, “Monuments are male”. I was like, “Excuse me? Why do guys only get to do the monumental?”’ Chicago recalls.

A gulf formed between those who revered Chicago’s work, and those who mauled it, but there were also those who ignored it altogether. ‘I just didn’t fit,’ says Chicago. ‘I was marginalised for many decades because nobody could fit me into the narrow categories of contemporary art. When I was young, I wanted to fit in, but now I’m old I'm like, “I don’t want to fit in.”’ 

Forty years after The Dinner Party was exhibited at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Chicago’s de Young retrospective feels like a homecoming of sorts. Its 130 paintings, prints, drawings, and ceramic sculptures, alongside ephemera and several films chart her bold and brilliant path. ‘Claudia Schmuckli [Chicago’s de Young exhibition curator] is probably the first person to try to represent my art practice and make it intelligible across different subjects and techniques. When we came here [to San Francisco], I said to her, “I have no idea how I’m going to react when I see my entire life’s work presented. I could just end up in tears on the floor.”’

Chicago is also well known for her Smoke Sculptures – also known as Atmospheres – which she began in the 1960s. In these cinematic works, pigments flood the air, liberating colour from the rigidity of painting and sculpture. ‘It was an effort to feminise and soften an exceedingly male-centred art scene,’ she says. While her male contemporaries – the likes of Michael Heizer, James Turrell and Robert Smithson – were busy moving the earth with their land art, Chicago’s Atmospheres were a different sort of environmental intervention: explosive, ephemeral and, contrary to the work of her peers, left little trace. 

Her first wave of Atmospheres was created between 1968 and 1974. ‘When I started, the issue of toxicity and the effect on the environment wasn’t even in people’s consciousness.’ Chicago stopped making Smoke Sculptures until 2011. ‘By then, they were formulated using environmentally riendly, non-toxic materials; basically, just pigment which washes away.’

These days, Chicago’s adventures in pyrotechnics are no less dramatic. In July 2021 Diamonds in the Sky was showcased in Belen, the New Mexico town where she lives in a former hotel with her photographer husband Donald Woodman. ‘Some woman called the office and said, “The smoke turned my hair yellow.”’ Chicago’s studio manager, aware of the soluble properties of the smoke’s residue, replied, ‘Did you try washing your hair?’ The woman had not. More recently, during the creation of Niçoise Smoke, a mini Smoke Sculpture that Chicago produced for Wallpaper’s Artist’s Palate series, a concerned witness raised the alarm. ‘We had no idea how much smoke we’d need. In the first one, there was way too much smoke, and it completely covered everything and the fire department came,’ said Chicago. On 16 October 2021, a new, 15-minute long Smoke Sculpture, Forever de Young will be performed in front of the museum in celebration of ‘Judy Chicago: A Retrospective’. 

Chicago – whose new autobiography, The Flowering, was published earlier this year – has had a career punctuated by interventions. It all began with injecting expression into the emotion-deprived landscape of 1960s minimalism and reached acclaim, and notoriety, with The Dinner Party, a work that shook the foundations of art history. But the work Chicago has created since has been no less prophetic, fearless or radical; it continues to expose the untold facets of history, and penetrate contemporary culture deeper than most will dare to.

From 1985 to 1993, Chicago collaborated with Woodman on The Holocaust Project: From Darkness into Light. They delved into their Jewish roots while confronting global power structures. By examining the Holocaust in a contemporary context, the piece became a prism through which to explore oppression, injustice, and the darkest caverns of human cruelty, but also hope. 

Her most recent body of work, The End: A Meditation on Death and Extinction (2015 – 2019), casts a searing eye on her own mortality, and the extinction of other species through human action, and inaction. ‘In a lot of environmental [art]work, suffering is aestheticised. You see extinct animals but don’t see how they became extinct,’ she says. ‘It’s not comfortable to look at my work, but I don’t think art’s function is to make you comfortable. I think art’s function is to make you think.’ 

Now that the art world has acclimatised to works like The Dinner Party, Chicago’s new show will take things up a gear. ‘Claudia has installed my retrospective backwards,’ explains Chicago. ‘You see the most uncomfortable work before you reach the comfortable work.’ 

Chicago’s art has never been easy to digest, and that’s the whole point. But it erupts from a place of deep curiosity, intellect, determination, wisdom and above all, empathy, not just with female artists, but with all those marginalised by the patriarchy. 

When Chicago first blazed a trail for the feminist art movement, the world wasn’t ready. But it’s not as though Judy Chicago’s art is finally in tune with the times; the times have finally caught up with Judy Chicago. 

INFORMATION

‘Judy Chicago: A Retrospective’, until 9 January 2021, de Young Museum, deyoung.famsf.org

The Flowering: The Autobiography of Judy Chicago, with introduction by Gloria Steinem, is published by Thames & Hudson, thamesandhudsonusa.com

ADDRESS

De Young Museum
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Dr
San Francisco, CA 94118

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The Wondrous Brewing Company’s new headquarters in Emeryville, San Francisco Bay Area, is a minimalist brewery that celebrates craft beer. Completed by multidisciplinary firm Garcia Tamjidi Architecture Design, the project is a contemporary mix of large stainless steel brewing tanks, refrigeration areas and grain grinding zones. Originally an empty industrial warehouse, ‘the change in use to a brewery required a seismic upgrade of the building and all new concrete floor slab to support the weight of the extraordinarily heavy tanks’ explains the American architecture practice's principal Farid Tamjidi.

The project came about after an investor had introduced Garcia Tamjidi Architecture Design to master brewer and founder of Wondrous Brewing Company, Wynn Whisenhunt who needed a new home for his growing business. ‘Brewing is a very precise and complicated process with a lot of moving parts. We built a level of expertise and then engaged the right team of consultants to execute the project’ states Tamjidi.

The majority of the scheme consists of a large brewing facility but also offers a sleek front-facing taproom. ‘We agreed to avoid having this room look like a pub or a bar. It was a place to taste the varieties of beer. In early discussions about the overall design of the project, the pure simplicity and practicality of Japanese design resonated with us all’ explains Tamjidi. The unadorned spaces employ a raw material palette where clean concrete, refined stainless steel, and rich plywood are complemented by the exposed ceilings and lofty interiors.

Over the last twenty years, Garcia Tamjidi Architecture Design has worked on a wealth of commercial, retail, and residential projects worldwide. ‘Projects like this keep our work interesting and we’re always eager to try new ideas’ states Tamjidi. The firm prides itself on creating timeless design that is meticulously detailed. For their latest project, ‘the primary goal was to build a safe, functional system to support and facilitate the creative process of crafting beer. In the case of the Wondrous Brewing Company form truly followed function.’ 

INFORMATION 

garciatamjidi.com

A minimalist stack of boxes has sprung from an ordinary yet neglected single-family San Francisco home. The project was designed by Michael Hennessey Architects and involved the transformation of the existing, 70-year-old structure into a contemporary composition of three domestic units within a single, coherent, modern shell. Created for an owner who is a design enthusiast with a penchant for Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House, the project bridges modernist architecture with a site-specific approach, all infused with contemporary sensibility. 

Located in the city's Twin Peaks neighbourhood, the site offers impressive cityscape vistas across San Francisco. Working with the vertical axis, the architects made the most of the views, going high and installing large, strip windows and glazed expanses on chunks of the facade. A combination of steel construction with aluminium frame windows makes for an overall composition that feels both sleek and softly industrial-feeling. 

Inside, the structure's three units span different sizes – there is a one-, a two- and a three-bedroom apartment, one of which will be occupied by the client. Each unit has its own character, but all feature double height spaces and a combination of rough and warm materials, such as naked concrete and dark hued woods. A sculptural dark metal staircase connects different levels, while fabric curtains add softness to the clean, minimalist spaces inside. 

The project combines an inspired owner, modern architecture and a ‘European craftsman nearing retirement,' says Hennessey, who makes sure to credit the expert craftsmanship that elevated the scheme. ‘This would be Uwe Dobers’ final project after a long career as a master builder of modern homes in San Francisco. The modest craftsman, who escaped East Germany in the 1980’s, has been a fixture in the local architecture community since that time, building numerous residences around the city for an array of storied architects.' 

INFORMATION

hennesseyarchitect.com

An early 1960s San Francisco residence by architect Joseph Esherick has been brought to the 21st century by Richard Beard Architects and The Wiseman Group. The team worked with the original midcentury home's brutalist architecture, implementing contemporary interiors to accommodate the owners' art collection and make the home suitable for a family of five. ‘[We wanted it to be] respectful of the heritage but looking to the future,' says architect Richard Beard. 

With the home's main brutalist space, the atrium living room, featuring exposed concrete and a high, skylight ceiling, Beard admits that making it feel ‘cozy' was challenging. Yet the architecture team balanced preserving the building's original character and architectural intention with making changes. 

‘The character of the house is and was defined by a number of distinctive details and materials,' explains Beard. ‘Those we preserved, and enhanced. It would have been a shame to turn the house into just another lovely suburban home. What was odd was the compartmentalised plan. At a time when open plans were becoming an innovative architectural approach to composition, this house was comparatively segmented. We carefully opened a few things up, to give a more expansive feeling through the home.'

The Wiseman Group led the interiors. Paul Wiseman had worked with Joseph Esherick on one of the latter's last projects so there was strong understanding there of the original architecture concept. Still, there were challenges there: ‘visualize Louis Kahn’s Salk Center in San Diego trying to be a warm and cozy living room,' says Wiseman. 

Working with Beard's vision for an open, flowing interior, the interiors team used midcentury references and fine tuned material choices. For example complex and clashing floor tiles were removed and plain concrete and natural wood were reintroduced where appropriate. A relatively limited palette contrasts the elegantly luxurious furnishings and artwork. 

The result is a space that bridges old and new, brutalism and modernism, soft and hard. And, importantly, it's all done in an effortless way. Beard says: ‘I find it a huge compliment to not be able to tell exactly where original interior intersects new construction; you just know it’s awfully nice!' 

INFORMATION

richard-beard.com

thewisemangroup.com

Mamahuhu is the new kid on the block in San Francisco’s culinarily diverse Inner Richmond district. 

The project from Brandon Jew, the Michelin-starred chef behind Mister Jiu’s and Moongate Lounge, and Shanghai restauranteurs, Anmao Sun and Ben Moore, both pays homage to and offers a modern take on the casual Chinese American eatery.

Reinventing classics like beef broccoli and mapo tofu with carefully sourced ingredients, Jew and his team offer a menu that simultaneously feels familiar and elevated. That balance extends beyond what’s on the plate and into the dining room, a space with wooden booths, Hay chairs and custom-made art that is playful, yet elegant.

A product of collaboration with Studio BBA, the firm behind Tartine Manufactory LA and the Jesse Hotel in Reno, the colourful interiors are warm, elevated and accessible in an oft-overcast neighbourhood. Though this 38-seat, counter-service restaurant may be laid-back, Mamahuhu, much like Jew’s other endeavors, challenges the status quo when it comes to the Chinese dining experience.

INFORMATION

Website

ADDRESS

517 Clement St

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The Avery, a new residential tower, four blocks from the San Francisco Bay, has completed, bringing the neighbourhood a new laneway with retail spaces and green walls at ground level. Developed by Related, the team behind Hudson Yards, the building was designed by OMA and Fougeron Architecture and is part of a wider masterplan for the Transit Center District by OMA – further buildings by the likes of Foster + Partners and Studio Gang will be joining the neighbourhood over the coming years.

The tapering shape of the building responds to the surrounding city and the Bay beyond. Cantilevering, stepped projections open up opportunities for corner windows and orient the 548 residences – combining condos, market rate rentals and affordable rentals – towards the best views. For the OMA partners in charge of the project, Shohei Shigematsu and Jason Long, the crenellations on the building were important parts of the design. At the upper level, layers of crenelations respond to the Bay Area, Bay Bridge and Downtown areas, while lower down the building, another set of crenellations match up with the low-rise scale of the immediate surroundings.

OMA’s tower sits upon a nine-storey podium designed by San Francisco based architect Anne Fougeron, who used materials such as brick, metal fins and Portuguese limestone to echo the surrounding historic industrial buildings on Folsom Street and SOMA. More texture is brought to the condo and rental entrances that are framed by bronze-coloured, anodized aluminum panels with a custom, lasercut pattern.

Within the podium OMA carved a new corridor, to connect Clementina and Folsom Street: ‘By introducing Avery Lane, a new passage connecting two major thoroughfares, and activating retail on the ground level and courtyard, the building will contribute to the street activities in the neighborhood and provide a new public space for the Transbay District,’ say the architects.

121 East 22nd Street’s compostition of two residential towers is OMA’s first ground up residential project to complete in New York.

Interior design firm Clodagh also looked to the neighbourhood and its architecture – Clodagh describes San Francisco as ‘a beautiful, demanding and moody city with no shortage of clouds and breezes and dark winters’. She chose interiors for the residences to reflect ‘authenticity', combining natural woods and stones, neutral colours and amber tones to connect inhabitants with nature. To acheive ‘holistic luxury’ inside, Clodagh dipped into a toolbox of modalities including feng shui, biophilia, chromatherapy, wabi sabi and radiesthesia. ‘We create balanced spaces where everyone who enters will feel as though they have arrived "at home" in a refuge of sorts from the frenetic world outside,’ says Clodagh.

‘Our lobbies both have massive fireplaces that offer a warm primeval welcome, abundant flowers and glowing light, and massive stone and wood reception desks – with massive slabs of solid wood behind the desks – for grounding,’ says Clodagh. Luxury amenities feature across the building and include indoor lap pool, community garden and pet spa amongst others – the design of the shared spaces was important to shape the social life for the residents: ‘For some fun at the Avery, it's my hope that everyone will enjoy the giant concrete bear (created by Terence Main) that makes its home at the pool!’ 

INFORMATION

oma.eu
clodagh.com

Amidst the cacophony of San Francisco’s world-renowned coffee scene emerges a new player: La Bande, a self-styled ‘new fashioned’ canteen located at the Mid-Market district’s Proper Hotel in a restored 1909 flatiron building.

LA-based designer Kelly Wearstler's eclectic multilayered aesthetic dresses the hotel guestrooms and public spaces and this now continues at La Bande, with the interior a fluid extension of Proper’s patchwork of textures, colour, and contemporary and vintage furniture pieces. Wearstler pays homage to both Secession movement and French conceptual artist Daniel Buren in her modern interpretation of a European café, marked by brass accents and with a cipollino marble bar at its heart. The café takes its name – La Bande is French for ‘the stripe’ – from the overarching motif represented in slatted blinds, glazed green linear wall and floor tiles, and sporadic interjections of monochromatic striping. It’s a striking space that encourages day-long idling.

And the food is pretty good too. From the now obligatory breakfast burrito to charcuterie plates and chopped salads, the menu is short, simple and well-executed. The real star of the show, however is the coffee; endless options which are served up with gusto and sourced from Emeryville Counter Culture, including an on-tap nitro cold brew. Come evening time these are replaced by brews of a different kind, with local craft beers and cocktails taking centre stage.

INFORMATION
Website

ADDRESS

1100 Market Street

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For the San Francisco-based, all-natural beauty brand True Botanicals, opening its first physical boutique on home turf was a no brainer.

‘The natural beauty of Northern California has informed my life, especially in creating True Botanicals, so San Francisco was a perfect place open our flagship,’ says the brand’s founder and CEO Hilary Peterson. ‘We want to have a direct relationship with our customers in every way possible. Our online conversations help them find the right routines for their skin. We want to continue that conversation offline, and in addition, offer experiences that you can only get in person.’

Those experiences include a skin clinic comprised of three treatment rooms, where clients can enjoy customised facials, an aromatherapy bar that will help visitors create custom-blends, and an onsite lab that will research and develop the brand’s upcoming products, which will also launch small batch releases that will only be available in the store. Free consultations are also offered to help pair customers with the right products for their lifestyle and needs.

Located opposite San Francisco’s famed Transamerica Pyramid, True Botanicals’ new 1,800 sq ft space has been designed by interior designer Jeremiah Brent. Inspired by the idea of a Californian oasis, Brent has filled the space with raw, tactile materials, weathered furniture and sensual imagery created by the brand’s creative partners, photographers Inez and Vinoodh. From the reclaimed barnwood used to make shelves and storage in the space, to the greenhouse-like glass ceiling and long farmhouse-style console, the rustic, yet elevated touches are a reflection of True Botanicals’ commitment to nature.

‘True Botanicals, for me, is one of those brands that is the future: it’s holistic, it’s nontoxic, it’s rooted in ceremony,’ explains Brent. ‘We wanted something experiential, rather than transactional – to beckon guests to sit down, connect, have a cup of tea, and immerse themselves in the sensorial.’

Peterson adds, ‘We are here to support our customer’s well-being, and want her to leave our store feeling better than when she came in.’

INFORMATION
For more information, visit the True Botanicals website

ADDRESS

522 Washington Street
San Francisco, California
94111, USA

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Sister companies Baker and McGuire Furniture have opened a new showroom in a four-story former brick warehouse at the San Francisco Design Center; aptly, Baker was founded just 16 years before the 1906 building was constructed, by Dutch immigrant Siebe Baker.

In the 1920s, Baker forged into modernism with its Twentieth Century Shop, including designs by Donald Deskey; in the 1930s, the brand introduced Chinese modern furniture at the Chicago World’s Fair; and in the 1950s it put the first Danish Modern furniture collection on the American market. Now, in line with its historically globally-minded outlook on the cusp of change, Baker and its affiliated brands arrive in San Francisco – recently announced as the highest rated American city on world liveability rankings – with the 16,500 sq ft space.

Baker acquired McGuire several years ago – known for the distinctive midcentury Northern Californian aesthetic of its original founders – and the new location will aptly serve as that brand’s primary home. As for Baker, the new outpost serves one of the first locations of a global roll-out plan, to join locations in Paris, Moscow, Singapore and several cities China. Designed primarily by Baker chief creative officer Tristan Butterfield with Paul Haigh of Haigh Architects, the space also showcases Milling Road.

‘We created an exquisite environment that perfectly suits the eclectic taste and preferences of our tech savvy, worldwide clientele,’ Butterfield said of the showroom in a statement. ‘We are blurring the lines of showroom, retail, hospitality and residential design to give Baker and McGuire a sophisticated sense of modern international style of utmost luxury and comfort, and service second to none.’

The launch also features collaborations from guest designers such as Jean-Louis Deniot, Barbara Barry, Thomas Pheasant, Kara Mann and Laura Kirar, as well as new selections from design history such as the Edward Wormley collection by Dunbar, bringing history full circle.

INFORMATION
For more information, visit the Baker Furniture website and the McGuire Furniture website

ADDRESS

101 Henry Adams Street
Suite 350
San Francisco
CA 94103

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In 1989, an earthquake destroyed San Francisco’s St. Joseph’s church, an architectural jewel built in 1913 that had subsequently been designated the city's Landmark #120. The massive neo-romanesque structure was abandoned through the 1990s and 2000s until design impresario Ken Fulk rechristened it as the Saint Joseph’s Arts Society this fall after a multiyear restoration. True to the site’s impressive origins, the building has found its newest tenant in Carpenters Workshop Gallery, the contemporary design gallery, which opens today with an inaugural group show.

While San Francisco’s identity is inextricably linked with technology and forward motion, the recent addition to the art landscape nods at the city’s historic cultural identity with its classical space, one full of up-to-the-moment design. 

Founders Julien Lombrail and Loïc Le Gaillard, who celebrated Carpenters Workshop Gallery’s original London location’s 10th anniversary last year, have also recently expanded the gallery to Paris and New York. They chose their first West-Coast location to exist within Saint Joseph’s, using a 9,000 square feet of the building’s mezzanine.

Nearly 100 years after the construction of the church during what was the city’s turn-of-the-century heyday, San Francisco is inarguably experiencing a similar cultural peak that progressively attracts tastemakers. While the arts club, recently opened, will be strictly for subscribers, design enthusiasts will be able to visit Carpenters Workshop Gallery along with other art and design spaces such as Assouline book corner, Mr. Fulk’s Flower Factory and the only US outpost French apothecary, Buly 1803. The private club will be open to the public for arts-related events.

The Carpenters Workshop Gallery outpost will run under the leadership of director Ashlee Harrison along with Alison Harrington, and will offer a rotating schedule of exhibitions. Programming will include biannual solo exhibitions from the gallery’s growing stable of artists, which include the likes of Rick Owens and Maarten Baas. The opening exhibition features designers such as Studio Job, Atelier Van Lieshout, Mathieu Lehanneur, Vincenzo de Cotiis and Nacho Carbonell, who offers an immersive light sculpture installation. It’s a renovation that both looks forward and backward at once.

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the website

From couture to sports-casual and swimwear to streetwear, ‘Contemporary Muslim Fashions’ at San Francisco’s de Young Museum, is not a deep retrospective; the oldest piece featured is an Yves Saint Laurent garment from 2000. Instead, the multi-media mix of apparel, accessories, art photography, Instagram images, and videos offers a thoroughly modern view of ‘modest fashion’, which itself has a broad reach beyond borders and beliefs.

‘I use the term modest fashion to refer to the many different ways that women across faiths choose to cover and present themselves in relation to their understanding of holy texts, religious traditions, and community convention,’ says consulting curator Reina Lewis.

It’s not a new market but it is continuing to gain commercial traction, indelibly shaped by a dynamic confluence of globalization, politicization, consumerism, activism, branding, and, crucially, social media. The reasons for adhering to traditional dress are varied, and can change gradually over time or day to day, depending on the person and their location, age, and ideals. When women across the world can share their own perspective on their own clothing through their own personal filters, the narrative — and accompanying preconceptions and/or misconceptions — around those styles can truly begin to shift and evolve. Capturing and commentating on these moments has raised the voices and profiles of Muslim influencers, opening up their wardrobes, and what they mean, to a growing audience.

Muslim fashion itself is a facet of this larger field, and the exhibition aims to add nuance to the ‘diverse, complex, and at times contradictory nature of the Muslim dress code,’ says architect Gisue Hariri. She and her sister Mojgan, Iranian-born partners of the New York-based firm Hariri & Hariri, designed the space with thoughtful intent to engage visitors in unexpected ways. The walls leading into the show are completely black. ‘This was our interpretation of what may feel like a dark, veiled, impenetrable environment to outsiders,’ she says. That attention to the gaze — who is looking, and what they see — is mirrored as guests emerge from that dim entryway; behind a large latticed screen is an image of female eyes peering out towards them, obscured but direct.

Once inside the show, it becomes a ‘sensual’ experience; vibrant colours and textures abound. Arches, which are common forms in the Islamic world, appear throughout, offering a ‘protective’ frame for the outfits from 80 designers: fresh takes on robe-like abaya, surfer-inspired burkinis, and unbelievably intricate high-end ensembles. All mannequins are placed on pedestals to ‘show respect to the power and beauty of Muslim women,’ Hariri says.

Alongside the finery are portraits and selfies which give intimate glimpses into how Muslim fashion manifests itself outside of the museum. ‘Very often, women wearing religiously or ethically coded garments are regarded as emblems of an ahistorical collective with an unchanging group identity — not as individuals,’ says Lewis. For the 250,000 Muslims in the Bay Area, and the billion or so more across the globe, this spotlight is a timely testament to the breadth, depth, and creativity of the clothes that might embody beliefs, but don’t define or confine those who wear them.

INFORMATION

‘Contemporary Muslim Fashions’ is on view until 6 January 2019. For more information, visit the de Young Museum website

ADDRESS

50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive
San Francisco
CA 94118

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A new office building at Facebook's headquarters at Menlo Park by Frank Gehry has opened. Named MK21, the office building was designed and built in less than 18 months and has a focus on sustainability.

The building is an extension to MK20, a previous building that completed in 2015. ‘All the things we learned doing building 20 prepared us for building 21,’ says Gehry in a video released by Facebook on the project. ‘We were getting lessons in Facebook culture and we’re making a new kind of architecture within that culture.’

Among the improvements and enhancements to the extended design, rooflines were updated to bring in more natural light, the roof garden was brought down into the office space and the circulation was concentrated to the heart of the building into a central channel.

Aiming to have a minimal impact on its environment and bring back nature to its formerly industrial context, MK21 includes a reclaimed water system – designed to save approximately 17 million gallons annually. Solar power supports activities at MPK 21, where there is a 1.4-megawatt photo-voltaic solar panel system on the roof and on the carports.

Nature and wildlife are embraced by the design that features fritted windows to protect birds as well as a 3.6 acre rooftop garden featuring over 200 trees and a half-mile meandering pathway, helping employees to unwind and relax.

Other outdoor social spaces filled with green plants and scenic landscape design include the ‘Town Square’, a sheltered green space with soaring 12m-high redwood trees, while ‘The Bowl’ is a courtyard designed like an amphitheatre to connect MPK 21 with the earlier deisgned MPK20, also designed by Gehry.

The office interior was designed with teamwork and collaboration as a priority. The offices are open plan, yet also include designated areas for quiet, independent work. A single pathway runs the length of the building like a stem connecting each part of the office. Following the path will unfold five dining rooms, 15 art installations and a vast event and meeting space.

Facebook continues to add to the Menlo Park hub and plan the completion of a two-acre park with public plaza and event space for 2019. This will also include a bike and pedestrian bridge over the Bayfront Expressway for the whole community.

INFORMATION
For more information, visit the Gehry Partners website

The natural beauty movement has found a stronghold in Ayla Beauty – a non-toxic and eco-consciously geared cosmetic emporium located in the heart of San Francisco. Founded by Dara Kennedy, a seasoned beauty industry executive who now seeks out suitable product offerings for the store, Ayla Beauty is bolstered by its philosophy that natural beauty can be potent, while safely formulated too.

True to form, the brand’s physical space wholeheartedly reflects its philosophy. Filled with natural materials such as wood, concrete, leather and brass, the intimate boutique is conceived by Chloe Warner of the local interior design firm Redmond Aldrich, who made the most of its 500 sq ft interior by creating a homey environment that clients would enjoy spending time in.

‘The space is tiny so it was a challenge to make it feel stocked without feeling like a souk,’ recalls Warner, ‘Dara also hosts seminars and beauty [pop-up] nights [in the space].’

‘My inspiration was to create something that felt feminine and slightly residential, an apothecary without a clinical feel,’ she adds. ‘I layered patterns with lavender walls to make it feel textured and interesting, and added masses of plants to add oxygen and make a small space feel more expansive. We splurged on Apparatus vanity lights and did the custom Jean Cocteau-inspired mural ourselves.’

Utilitarian elements such as walnut shelving units and Alvar Aalto stools, are offset by an array of abstract art, the mural (which is inspired by a wall in Cocteau’s 1950s house on the French Riviera) and the geometric tiled floor – all the better to experience the store’s power-packed product arsenal, which includes labels like 37 Actives, The Nue Co, May Lindstrom, along with other favourites from around the world.

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the Ayla Beauty website

Transforming a spec house into a personalised, lived in space, perfectly fitted to the owner's needs and personality is no mean feat; yet it is one that Los Angeles-based interior designer Jamie Bush achieved with flair for his latest residential project in San Francisco.

The commission came from a young tech entrepreneur with an interest in the arts and design, who wanted to include both in his home without the space appearing too ‘done' or perfect, explains Bush. ‘He wanted a feeling of a curated life with a selection of pieces which all had a story to tell', he adds.

Bush often takes his design cues from art and nature. ‘So much of my work is about natural shapes, patterns and textures', he continues. ‘In this project the screening room features one of my “TOPO” rugs, which was inspired by the eroding shorelines of the coast. We also designed a dining table shaped like an oblong pebble with a highly textured wire-brushed finish exposing the grain of the blackened oak.’

The existing architecture also provided inspiration. The striking three-storey stairwell was transformed into an atmospheric dark space with a blackened-steel-and-ebonised-oak staircase. The dark walls draw the eye up to the rooftop which features a new garden and the custom-designed viewing room that frames long vistas towards the San Francisco hills beyond. The green spaces were one of the project's most challenging elements, since the original building was not designed to accommodate them, so specialist engineers were brought in to make the necessary adjustments. The bathrooms and kitchen were also completely redesigned, while the third bedroom was transformed into a home office and library. 

Bush took extra care in selecting the right furniture, so that it would reflect the owner’s philosophy and lifestyle. The space is now an orchestrated balance of historical pieces juxtaposed with modern art and contemporary design. 

‘I feel the “key driver” for the project as a whole was to create a language of contrasts throughout the home', he explains. ‘Matt surfaces with polished and gloss finishes, light against dark, geometric forms next to organic shapes, highly textured woods against smooth glass and stone, soft against hard, handmade against machine made, fresh and new against old and worn.’

The client remained engaged throughout the process, keen to learn about design and the history of the objects involved. Bush and his team accompanied each find with books and further material to keep the client informed about the origin of the pieces included, which made for an unusual and positive collaboration. ‘He loved the project, it gave him more of a personal connection with his environment’, he says. 

INFORMATION

For more information visit the website of Jamie Bush + Co