Recipease

Recipease is Jamie Oliver's retail store. Its pretty great—feels accessible, humorous, bright, cheery, and inspiring. I especially liked a few details of the store design (not to mention the packaging, identity, and all the goods sold inside!): dark gray paint, chalkboards hanging off dowels to cover cubbies behind the cash wrap (you can barely see this in the top photo--its a bright blue cover shown there), ways of highlighting single bottles of wine, the cooking-class area, and the shelves sitting on thick dowels.

(most of these photos aren't mine, they're from Retail Week)

Maggie's Centre: London

This was one of the most inspiring places I've ever visited! Maggie's London is a cancer support centre; there is a network of them around the UK. Each emphasizes the importance of design and environment in recovery and as inspiration—as per the wishes of Maggie Jencks, who started the centres. This one is designed by Richard Rogers firm, and is an amazingly beautiful, humble building. It won the Stirling Prize this year, and its hardly a surprise. It is a relatively simple, small building, but the spaces are a graceful mixture of public and communal, private retreats, tranquil and bright outdoor gardens, and cozy nooks. The large design moves—from the bright orange color of the walls and building (which to my mind takes its starting point from the brickwork in the surrounding neighborhood) to the geometric roof—as well as the details (floating 'bridges', plywood casework, and the way the roof floats on a glass perimeter) are lovely. The interior is centered (as apparently all Maggie's Centres are) around a large kitchen table where everyone is welcomed with tea and biscuits. It feels very much like a warm, healing space—and also remindes me of many of the Camphill spaces in Ireland.

Adjaye's IdeaStore

I went to visit David Adjaye's original IdeaStore in London the other day. The concept of the IdeaStore--a glorified library, really—with community center aspects, classes, lots of free computers, and a supportive staff to facilitate more than book-lending—is great. The building was nice, and very nicely integrated into its neighborhood. The much-touted blue and clear facade takes its cues from the blue and white tarps of the market stall tarps outside. I was disappointed to find that the escalator, which supposedly 'brings the street in' was actually blocked off and apparently only open for the summer months. The interiors were nice but not altogether groundbreaking, I thought--more open and spare than traditional library stacks, and it was certainly well-used, but I left not entirely sure about the hype.

SF spring

 

On a beautiful spring day, what's better than packing an origami kayak into the car and setting off for the Bay? We 'discovered' Cavallo Point and packed snacks from the our farmers market. Anton's latest kayak handles beautifully and amazes everyone who sees it...

Art in the Landscape: inspiration

Richard Serra in the forest at the Louisiana Museum outside of Copenhagen. Just amazing...at the bottom of a set of dirt steps, with fall leaves on the ground and the sea beyond.

A Catalogue of Exctinct Experience: Part 2

A Catalogue of Extinct Experience: Part 1

We're working on a new project with a great group of collaborators—and want to share pieces of our work in progress here.

A Catalogue of Extinct Experience
As modern technology and urbanization have opened up new and faster experiences, they have at the same time destroyed other experiences that were once universal. The loss of these human
experiences is a fundamental disruption of the relationship between society and its environment.

A Catalogue of Extinct Experience is a public, outdoor landscape installation to inspire a shift in perspective on the natural world. It does so by engaging the visitor in sensory experiences that are commonly endangered or extinct.

These experiences range from seeing stars in the night sky (endangered by light pollution), feeling the ground under bare feet (endangered by shoes and concrete), tasting wild edible plants (endangered by industrial food production), and listening to fog roll in and out (endangered by constant background noise).

The visitor will explore the Catalogue on foot, stopping at a number of built installations distributed along walking paths. Identified by benchmarks in the ground, these installations or ‘Pauses’ will each orchestrate a direct experiential connection to a forgotten sense, and create and opportunity for reflection and rediscovery.

The set of ‘Pauses’ take cues from the dramatic natural and industrial history of the site, Commonweal Institute in Bolinas, CA, which occupies a former marine radio transmitting station on coastal bluffs.

Salt Point Mushroom Foray

We excursioned up to Salt Point State Park in Sonoma a couple weekends ago for a long-awaited mushroom foray with the Sonoma Mycological Association. All the rain made for an amazingly bountiful forest—we came home with armloads (it would have been basketloads had we planned properly) of black trumpets, yellowfoots (yellowfeet?) and one other type of mushroom whose name I can't recall. We spotted many more varieties: polyspores, hedgehogs (which we only found out later are not only edible but delicious) and deathcaps. That's expert mycologist Darvin ID-ing mushrooms at the incredibly gourmet potluck post-foray, and the spread that the group hauled in for ID-ing on the tarp below.

It was a beyond-beautiful day and hot chocolate in Jenner and then some running around on the beach at Jenner made us appreciate Northern California springtime even more.