The Doxa

New project! Nomadic Grove — commissioned by the CJM in downtown San Francisco — is beginning design and construction now in the Rebar studio. Check out the museum’s press release here, and more detailed project description below.

Nomadic Grove is a meditation on rootedness in the relentlessly changing city. To sit, relaxed, looking up at a tree framing the sky is a simple and profound human experience, but one in surprisingly short supply in modern cities. Perhaps it is because trees resist the city’s constant motion, the city’s ruthlessness–they are specific in a world of impatient cosmopolitanism.

Nomadic Grove is an experimental landscape that attempts to straddle the poles of stability and movement: a seemingly solid environment where the sense of place defined by a tree can be easily disassembled and reconfigured. The grove consists of an archipelago of gem-like islands suspended low on wheels, floating just above the surface of the plaza as if it were the plane of a calm lake. Fragments of this floating terrain are solidly but temporarily anchored in one of several compositions that change from week to week. In the abstracted islands, large specimen trees are rooted, defining the center of a small world. The trees–oak, olive, cypress–are adapted to the climates of both Israel and the Bay Area, representing the Mediterranean biome that is shared between the two regions.

The gem islands, singly and in relationship with one another, provide a means for visitors to inhabit a familiar urban space in novel ways, creating amphitheaters, seating, lounging decks, informal classrooms, or social spaces, depending on the day and the configuration.

Playing on themes of migration, rootedness, local adaptation, and miniature landscape, Nomadic Grove is an inhabitable sketch of the ever-evolving relationship between human and non-human nature.

A group from Rebar, Oikonos Ecosystem Knowledge, and habitat restoration experts Go Native headed out to Año Nuevo Island on November 8th & 9th to finish work on the island for the fall 2011 season. We are excited to report that the habitat ridge on the island was finally completed!

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.

Work has begun once again on the Año Nuevo Island Restoration project! Rebar, in collaboration with Oikonos Ecosystem Knowledge and expert habitat restorers GoNative, began prepping for Fall work on the island in early October. Last week the team moved 160 Eucalyptus logs out to the island. Local landowners were more than happy to allow the Eucalyptus on their land be removed and the Año Nuevo team was pleased to be able to repurpose this invasive species. These logs will be utilized in the construction of the last part of the habitat ridge. The ridge is itself thriving habitat for a number of bird species on the island, and it acts as both a physical and visual barrier between the habitat of the pinnepeds on the island and the Rhinoceros Auklet, a listed bird species of concern. Since the first planting last year, the indigenous flora on the island has done quite well; however, a small bit of replanting is also planned for this year to round out the restoration effort and to establish a long-lasting habitat for a healthy and biodiverse Año Nuevo Island.

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!

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.

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!

Mint Plaza is featured in the July issue of Landscape Architecture Magazine.  CMG’s Willet Moss and Scott Cataffa are the lead designers of the project, which was awarded the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s National Award for Smart Growth Achievement in 2010. Rebar’s John Bela worked on the project as landscape designer while at CMG. Its great to see CMG, Sherwood Engineers, and Micheal Yarne (formerly of Martin Building Company) receive recognition for this groundbreaking project that pairs robust ecological function with a vibrant, socially diverse public space reclaimed from a former derelict and underutilized street.

From the article by Lisa Owens Viani

“One block of San Francisco’s Jessie Street is no longer. It was once a decrepit alley where drug deals and porno films were made and tour buses idled for hours. In its place lies a clean, European-style pedestrian plaza surrounded by upscale lofts and restaurants, coffee shops, and the “Granite Lady,” the Old Mint, an 1874 Greek Revival building with National Historic Landmark designation. Designed by CMG Landscape Architecture and Sherwood Design Engineers, the revitalized alley—now known as Mint Plaza—has spurred the successful redevelopment of the historic warehouses that lined the alley into housing, offices, and commercial spaces, and provided the city with a prototype for treating stormwater in tight urban areas.”

Tomorrow lunchtime….the state capitol…

Whoa, day 2 has been huge! Many of our volunteers have commented that they’ve done more ironing in the last day than in their whole lives. It’s strange that architecture and ironing….two ends of the domestic spectrum…are converging in the making of the Sho-Globe. We have 26 long sections (each, coincidentally, 26 feet long) seamed together to form the two concentric shells of the Globe.

We’ve had – again – a great volunteer turnout, and many curious passersby stopping by to ask when we’ll be deploying Sho-Globe on the streets and squares of Juneau. Just a few more hours…

By the end of the day, all of our major sections were put together and we’ve scoped out several potential sites around town to launch. Karen, Adam and Blaine also did a radio interview with James on Juneau’s KXLL.

Day 1 saw a busy volunteer turnout at our storefront workspace at 118 Seward, with all the panels cut for Sho-Globe, power system up and running, and getting ourselves organized at our new space. That took less time than we thought…which is good, because the next step is sealing the panels together which can be a tricky process. Thanks to the many folks in Juneau who came in to help Monday!