The Doxa

Rebar was delighted to provide some of our Bubbleware at the 2011 Treasure Island Music Festival, one of San Francisco’s premier music festivals. Bubbleware is a modular social furniture system that uses an inflatable interior structure covered by a sewn ripstop nylon skin. The skin, created in partnership with messenger bag company Timbuk2, is a durable material perfect for heavy-duty playtime. Bubbleware is rearrangeable and stackable, allowing for endless options and lots of fun. The design for Bubbleware was originally commissioned by Sydney Art and About’s Laneways exhibition, where Bubbleway (the Australian incarnation of the project) is currently on display at Bulletin Place through January 2012.

Rebar traveled to Sydney, Australia in early October for Sydney Art & About, an annual arts festival that utilizes public spaces around the city of Sydney. The idea of Sydney Art & About is to create an interactive public art gallery in the streets, transforming the city itself into a living canvas. Evoking a response from residents of Sydney, whether it be to laugh, question, think, or simply smile, Art & About seeks to bring art to the forefront of the social conscience.

Rebar’s contribution to Art + About is Bubbleway — a modular, inflatable social furniture system designed specifically for Laneways 2011, the fifth installment of Laneway Art. Utilizing an inflatable system enclosed in a brightly colored skin, Bubbleway serves as a fun, comfortable, and inviting place to relax. The skin, which was designed in collaboration with the San Francisco-based messenger bag company Timbuk2, is a resilient ripstop nylon perfect for the urban playground. It was also made locally in San Francisco. Bubbleway modules can be reconfigured and adapted to support a variety of interactions and the space it is occupying. Bubbleway was created to encourage a rethinking of preconceived notions of public space, and to develop new forms of informal social interactions and play.

Other commissioned works for Art + About and Laneways included artists from around Australia and Americans Janet Echelman, whose work can be seen as locally as at SFO, Bay Area native Barry McGee, and Austin-based founder of Knitta Please, Magda Sayeg. Rebar would like to extend a profound thank you to the city of Sydney and to acknowledge the curators who brought us to Sydney, Amanda Sharrad and Justine Topfer for their hard work and commitment to experimental and innovative public art.

Bubbleway is available for viewing and playing on for free 24 hours a day from September 23, 2011 to January 31, 2011 and is located at Bulletin Place, Sydney, NSW 2000.

Rebar to host Park(ing) Day 2011 After-Party in San Francisco! (Click image for full size print version of the invite)

Tuesday, April 19, 2011, 7:30 PM Rebar hosted a 72 HOUR GATHERING AT REBAR at the studio on 20th street btw Folsom and Shotwell.

Title: 72 Hour Urban Action – Regulated Architectural Anarchy

Presented by: Architect Kerem Halbrecht, Founder of 72 Hour Urban Action

This was an informal evening of exciting knowledge sharing about temporary use of public space and urban interventions. As a part of the Bat-Yam Biennale of Landscape Urbanism, that took place in Israel September 2010, unforeseen potentials and solutions to public problematic sites was examined and reacted on by 120 progressive volunteers from 20 different countries. This was a competitive architectural festival that generated interventions in the public realm within an extreme deadline, a tight budget and limited space. Now this interesting and powerful impact is searching for a new city to take action in.

The evening led to a great discussion about the difficulties of creating this kind of projects. How is the process of applying for permit for this kind of project that has no concrete technical drawings or even visionary renderings? And how do you communicate it? The answer isn’t easy and will probably vary depending on the project and it’s context. Kerem Halbrecht explained that taking a determined decision and daring to go for it is crucial for making it happen. The 72 Hour Urban Action was a part of the Bat-Yam Biennale of Landscape Urbanism, and because of that no application for further fundings or grants was necessary. But convincing the Mayor Shlomi Lahiani of the success of this project was hard, and making it was a bet. You don’t know what it will end up becoming, but you do know that the desire, initiative and the power of wanting to create is there. And good qualified volunteers! It turned out that all the 10 teams made positive spin-off of their projects and the tree winning project is still active and existing in the urban realm of Bat-Yam.

Check out more at www.72hoururbanaction.com

72 Hour Urban Action Movie Trailer from 72 Hour Urban Action on Vimeo.

72 HOUR URBAN ACTION | EPISODE 01 from 72 Hour Urban Action on Vimeo.

If you are in San Francisco this weekend for the massive and extensive Noise Pop Festival, consider stopping by the Culture Club event on Saturday afternoon at Public Works.

Rebar’s Matthew Passmore will lead a workshop on temporary urban transformations and how guerilla artists just might save the city!

A brief talk will be followed by an interactive workshop. Bring an image or ideas for how to reclaim vacant lots and other underutilized fragments of our city!

Noise Pop Culture Club
Saturday, Feb. 26, 2011 at 1 PM at Public Works, San Francisco.

Rebar will be representing at “Innovations in Interactivity: Where Technology & Placemaking Intersect”, Enlightened Spaces’ winter salon on Wednesday, February 23 at the McLoughlin Gallery in SF. Speakers include:

• Blaine Merker, Rebar
• Scott Snibbe, Snibbe Interactive/Media Artist
• Zakary Zide, Designer of Branded Environments + Experiences
• Hana Iverson, Neighborhood Narratives
• Lisa Zimmerman, 7Story (moderator)

The demand for interactivity has reshaped every aspect of our culture. No longer content to simply observe and absorb, we expect to shape our environment and personalize our experience. Held at San Francisco’s beautiful new McLoughlin Gallery, this salon will explore how cities, neighborhoods and cultural organizations are using interactive media to engage people in public spaces and create a sense of place. Join our eclectic panel as they show innovations from around the globe and hypothesize where this trend is going. Debate encouraged!

Tickets and event info here.

Rebar is seeking 4 volunteers to represent Rebar at Park(ing) Day San Francisco at SPUR on September 17. This year, Rebar will provide several Walklets to demonstrate a new modular, flexible sidewalk system that can create pedestrian plazas in the parking lane, outside SPUR on Mission Street. Our team of volunteers will transport 3 Walklets from our shop to SPUR around 10am, set up in the parking lane (just like all good Park(ing) Day events!), and stay to enjoy the party and answer questions about Walklets, which will be available throughout San Francisco this fall. At the end of the afternoon, the volunteer team will de-install the Walklets and return them to the Rebar shop.

We will provide our excellent volunteer team with a truck for transport, Rebar and Park(ing) Day t-shirts, lunch and Rebar schwag by way of thanks. Volunteers should be comfortable with lifting and a little physical work during installation, and familiarity with tools.

To participate, email blaine [at] rebargroup [dot] org.

KNUDEN, Copenhagen created by Christian Fumz, Photo: Bettina Lamm

Rebar has been invited to present at a conference in Denmark. “Contemporary Art, Play and Temporality” in Copenhagen.

The conference is organised by landscape architect Bettina Lamm, University of Copenhagen department of Forest & Landscape in collaboration with curator Charlotte Bagger Brandt, Råderum – office of contemporary art.

The working title of Rebar’s talk is ElastiCity – User generated urbanism and the adaptive metropolis. We will post more about the conference, and Copenhagen as the date approaches.

Protyping "Blades of Grass" in San Francisco

In partnership with the French art and culture organization Dédale, Rebar will travel to Paris September 10-19 to launch that city’s first large-scale Park(ing) Day event. The trip will include a weeklong residency by Rebar at the Cité Internationale Universitaire, where the Rebar team will create a mobile, public participatory art piece that inspires urban residents to re-imagine the way that we create and occupy public space.

In an “open studio” style workshop at the Cité Universitaire, Rebar will fabricate “Blades of Grass” during the week prior Park(ing) Day. The concept is to create a mobile, distributed, personal public space that can be transported by bicycle. On Park(ing) Day, each individual participating in a cross-city ride from the Second Arrondissement to the Cité Universitaire will carry a single blade of grass. The route will recall an unrealized proposal by the early 20th Century landscape architect Jean Claude Nicholas Forestier for a greenway across the city. Groups of individuals gather together in parking spaces and other sites to create temporary pubic spaces providing shade and enclosure.  Participants can assemble and disassemble at will, acting like a colony of bees or slime mold, aggregating and dispersing according to the environmental situation. Our goal is to fabricate at least 50 blades over the course of the workshop.

If you are in Paris between September 10-19, let us know and get involved!