In April, Rebar teamed up with the Washington DC Office of Planning, the 14th Street Uptown Business Association, and curator Justine Topfer to participate in a citywide public art project, 5×5. Together we put on a series of events and activities to engage the community in generating design ideas for pubic space along the Central 14^th Street NW Corridor.

At the intersection of 14th Street NW and Colorado Avenue, we tested out a future Colorado Art Plaza. The mockup incorporated a full-scale street painting, new planting beds, and moveable Bubbleware street furniture. Later in the day we ran a Community Design Charrette: a series of visualizing activities. Sharing our design process tools, participants offered feedback, sketched ideas, and built scaled model pieces.

In mid-June, Rebar will return to DC with a collection of temporary “test” furniture based on the conversations and feedback we received during this first visit. Rebar’s collaboration in DC intends to test out full-scale designs to see how they work before permanent investments are made.

The ridge, which serves as a physical barrier for the California sea lions on the island as well as a blind for biologists studying the birds, now stands at six feet tall. Cormorants and other bird species make use of the ridge as nesting habitat because it provides excellent shade and a solid wind-break. The completed ridge will allow the birds to utilize their habitat without disturbance from the biologists and researchers who occasionally inhabit the island. The ridge is built out of all natural materials with no metal parts. Eucalyptus logs make up the wall and red cedar dowels were used to pin the logs together.

Aerial photo credit: Northern California Aerial Photography

Replanting of several species of native plants took place over the course of the fall and was also finished on the November 9th trip. We were happy to see the survival of several plant species from the previous year including yarrow, salt grass, and many more. We were able to supplement these with more native species including beach bur, salt grass, American dune grass, lizard-tail, coyote brush, beach morning glory, mock heather, beach strawberry, coast buckwheat, and dune tansey. Several species of seeds were also spread, among which were beach bur, yarrow, lizard-tail, coyote brush, mock heather, and Farallon weed.

For more information about the Año Nuevo Island Restoration Project please visit the project site.

For more info on the Año Nuevo Island restoration project look for our previous post or our even earlier post – and be sure to visit the restoration project blog.

Check out the below videos of the log move and look for future updates as the project continues!

In an earlier blog post we wrote extensively about our habitat restoration project on Año Nuevo Island. On the island – one of only a handful off the coast of California – Rebar collaborated with a broadly interdisciplinary team, including Oikonos Ecosystem Knowledge, Año Nuevo State Reserve, Go Native, the artist Nathan Lynch and the California College of the Arts ENGAGE program. Our aim was to rehabilitate the habitat of the Rhinoceros Auklet, a state-listed species of concern. On the island, which resembled a ruin more than a state park when we first arrived, Rebar designed a set of ceramic nest modules for the Auklet, as well as a habitat ridge made from harvested eucalyptus logs that would separate sea lion habitat from Auklet habitat. The restoration project was supported by generous grants from the Luckenbach Council Trust and the Creative Work Fund and would not have been possible without the help of an army of skilled and dedicated volunteers. Thanks to you all!

The "central terrace" of Año Nuevo Island - before habitat restoration

The "central terrace" of Año Nuevo in April 2011

We are pleased to present this video update of the project, which – along with the photos above – shows how much the island has changed in six short months since we finished the restoration. The video was produced by Peck Euwer and Swell Pictures, Lloyd Fales and Michelle Hester. Enjoy the show!

The Panhandle Bandshell is a full-scale performance stage made from reclaimed and repurposed materials, including 65 automobile hoods, obsolete computer circuit boards, reclaimed wood and recycled structural steel. Equal parts monumental sculpture and functional performance venue, the Bandshell has hosted a diverse range of community-based programs in city and national parks in San Francisco.

Also a visually arresting sculpture, the Bandshell illustrates the creative potential of recycling, repurposing and reuse, and promotes collective awareness of human impact on the environment. The Bandshell is well-pedigreed: it has won several design awards and has been displayed at some of the most prestigious architecture exhibitions in the world.

In the summer of 2007, the Bandshell was installed in San Francisco’s Panhandle Park, where it was open all summer for both impromptu and scheduled performances of all varieties. In the summer of 2009, the Bandshell was transported and re-installed at San Francisco’s Fort Mason Center, the largest urban national park in the country, where it hosted community-based performance programs for more than a year.

Currently in storage, the Bandshell seeks an appropriate permanent home!

The piece is award-winning and world famous! Exhibition and awards include:

EXHIBITIONS
2008 Venice Architecture Biennale, Venice, Italy
2008 American Institute of Architects, San Francisco, CA.
2009 National Constitution Center, Philadelphia, PA.
2009 Parsons School of Design, New York, NY.

AWARDS
2008 AIA Design Awards, Urban Design, Merit Award
2008 ASLA Professional Awards, N. Cal. Chapter, Merit Award
2009 ASLA Professional Awards, General Design, Honor Award

We are seeking proposal submissions from art galleries, city parks, community organizations, landowners and other interested parties.

For more information, please download the brochure [PDF].

The Submission deadline is Friday, June 17, 2011.

The Bandshell was designed and fabricated in San Francisco by The Finch Mob, Rebar, CMG Landscape Architecture and Scene 2 with the generous support of Black Rock Arts Foundation.

City Goats climb, chew and entertain.

Along Cargo Way in southeastern San Francisco, a herd of 80 goats lives on a 10-acre site ringed by the SF Bay Railroad and a cement recycling plant.

City Grazing, the local “rent-a-goat” service, introduces an alternative to weed control and land restoration. Currently, the goat herd is outgrowing its existing shelter, which consists of a series of shipping containers and feed structures.

To accommodate herd growth, improve living conditions for the animals, and to make caring for them easier for their human guardians, Rebar has developed an economical solution that simultaneously references the shelter’s industrial location and uses a variety of repurposed, prefabricated materials. This efficient, low-impact accommodation will serve this herd of urban goats for many generations to come.

Proposed Shelter design includes re-purposed shipping container, K-rail highway separators and W-rail highway guardrails.

On Earth Day weekend  SFBR welcomed the new members into the herd and hosted a “Goat Naming” party. Few city goat representatives were sent to graze and entertain at Heron’s Head Park EcoCenter opening, where they got plenty of  love from the visitors. All black with a white stripe, one goat in particular was destined to represent the Rebar studio across the great goat-trodden lands of San Francisco.

Young Rebar is looking foward to new shelter and an abundance of sites to graze, plus plenty of play time with his buddies: Madonna, Lady Gaga, Spike, Frisco, Fudge, Noodle, Poopsie , Marshmallow and Columbo. If you see him out and about in the city, be sure to say hi.

For more pictures go to our Flickr Set.

All black with a white stripe this baby goat was destined to be Rebar's new mascot.

David Gavrich talks about his herd.

Rebar is grazing at Heron's Head Park.

Young fans get the goats back home at the end of the day.

Yes, despite the prevailing presentation of events, there was a tsunami.

Isla Alejandro Selkirk, one of the Juan Fernandez chain

Robinson Crusoe Island experienced particularly intense and deadly devastation. A group of journalism students from Chile and the U.S., who visited that remote island, have produced a video that gives a window into the culture of the island and the destruction visited by the recent tsunami. You can watch the video below.

Oikonos has set up a relief fund for the Juan Fernandez Islands.You can donate by clicking here.

100% of donations go directly to on the ground island relief efforts.

Tsunami Relief for Robinson Crusoe Island from Más a Tierra on Vimeo.

And here is the post from the journalists:

“In the spring of 2006, as a combined group of American and Chilean journalism students, we traveled together to Robinson Crusoe Island, four hundred miles off the coast of Santiago, Chile, to document life on this small and isolated island.

In the ten days we spent recording and photographing the people of the island, each and every one of us was struck by their unique way of life and the resolve with which they carve out their existence in such a remote place, rich with history but severely lacking in resources that we often take for granted.

And so it was with great sorrow and shock – in the days following the 8.8-magnitude earthquake that shook the Chilean mainland in February 2010 – that we began to hear news trickle in about Robinson Crusoe Island.

According to reports, the island’s emergency warning system failed, and a giant tsunami took the residents by surprise, covering nearly two miles of the island and reaching 300 meters up from the natural coastline. When the ocean retreated, it took with it nearly all of San Juan Bautista, the coastal settlement that the island’s 650 residents call home.

What few community resources that served the people of Robinson Crusoe Island before the tsunami hit are now completely wiped away: the school, community center, fishing boats, supply stores… and many, many homes.

As you can tell from the stories and lives highlighted on this site, the fragile yet resilient community of Robinson Crusoe Island is a special place in this world, and its people need our help in rebuilding their lives. Anything you can give to help these families would be a tremendous help. Oikonos, a 501 c 3 non-profit, has set up a donation fund to directly support the people of Robinson Crusoe Island. All of the money they receive will go specifically to the people of the island, to rebuild their homes, their school and their livelihoods.

Please take a moment to do what you can, and explore this site to learn about the unique and wonderful lives you are helping to rebuild.

We thank you for your open hearts”

Relief Efforts

1. Donate to the cause. Please give what you can. Go straight to oikonos.org/donate.htm and send some tax deductible dollars. 100% of your donation goes to the island.

2. Spread the word. Email your friends, colleagues and family members. Twitter and Facebook the story. Many of you work at major news organizations. Use your connections to get this written about, blogged about and talked about. A little effort goes a long way.

Mobile media, localisation media, new map-making and storytelling forms as well as other mobility instruments have infiltrated our cities and lifestyles.They have mutated city-dwellers relation to time and space; we are witnessing a multiplication of mobility practices and forms, of trajectories, of theintensity of the communication flow and trips. What is the impact on our perception of geographical areas, on urban forms and city planning, on ourlifestyles? This is the question that the artists are to explore in the workshop, developing varied artistic projects directly linked to the territory (strolling,mobile interface, urban game art, immersive systems, ephemeral architecture…)

Also at the conference are several artists and collectives from around Europe including Adelin Schweitzer, Ulrich Fischer, Studio 21bis, Antonin Fourneau, Zoom+Infraksound+Damien Masson, Collectif Zoom, Damien Masson, Christophe Goutes and Pixel 13. If you are in Paris, come see us. Rebar will be presenting on Thursday January 28th at 2pm, at the Fondation Deutsch de la Meurthe, Cité internationale universitaire de Paris. More updates on the Doxa, from the road!