Roads Were Not Built For Cars was crowd-funded on Kickstarter and is going to be available for free digitally and for purchase in print.

Washington, DC’s Capitol Riverfront neighborhood is a new, 500-acre mixed-use community and riverfront destination featuring one and a half miles of river frontage stretching north to the U.S. Capitol. Historically the Capitol Riverfront was anchored by the Washington Navy Yard, the longest continually operating naval facility in the country.

In 2012, The Capitol Riverfront Business Improvement district (CRBID) engaged AECOM and Rebar to develop Streetscape and Public Realm Design Guidelines to help orchestrate public realm improvements over the site’s planned 20 year build-out.

To complement the long term strategic plan, Rebar developed an interim use and cultural activation program intended to choreograph a sequence of shorter-term economic, ecological and cultural catalysts taking advantage of temporarily vacant sites to knit together disparate parts of the neighborhood and connect people to the Anacostia Riverfront.

Date: 2012
Client: Capitol Riverfront BID, AECOM
Location: Washington D.C.

Public Space and Institutional
Civic Center Victory Garden – San Francisco, CA
Parklet projects – Various in San Francisco
Panhandle Bandshell – San Francisco, CA
Mint Plaza– San Francisco, CA
Treasure Island Master Plan – San Francisco, CA

Public Engagement
Park(ing) Day – San Francisco, CA and worldwide
Growing Home Community Garden – San Francisco, CA
Hayes Valley Farm – San Francisco, CA
Huntington Park – San Francisco, CA
5×5 ArtPlace – Washington DC
Central Corridor Public Art Plan – Minneapolis, MN
Reclaim Market – San Francisco, CA

Educational
Texas A&M – College Station, TX
CCA Pavement to Parks – San Francisco, CA
CCA Tacoshed – San Francisco, CA
University of Québec – Montréal, QC, Canada

Detour 2012: Design Renegade was a three-week art and design exhibition in Hong Kong produced by the Ambassadors of Design and curated by John Bela and Justine Topfer.   The curatorial concept was to explore niches and loopholes in the social and spatial fabric of the city and exploit them for public benefit – prototyping new concepts for public space.

The curators brought an international cadre of artists and designers including Candy Chang, N55, Raumlabor, and Andrew Kudless and paired them with up and coming Hong Kong artists Caroline Mak, Kasey Wong, Wong Tin Yan and others. The exhibition site – a former police station in Wan Chai – was transformed into a lively, experiemental playground that fostered inquiry and generosity among the hundreds of visitors.

Date: 2012
Client: Hong Kong Ambassadors of Design (HKAoD)
Location: Former Wan Chai Police Married Quarters,
Jaffe Road, Hong Kong

Wan Chai Police Headquarters, Gloucester Road, Hong Kong

 www.detour.hk

Detour 2012 Vernissage

Thursday, November 29, 4pm at the vacant lot of the former Wan Chai Police Married Quarters, Jaffe Road, Hong Kong

Exhibition Dates: November 29 – December 16, 2012

 An art and design exhibition featuring playful and experimental interventions that guide the public towards a more compassionate urban experience.

DETOUR 2012: Design Renegade

Co-curated by John Bela and Justine Topfer

Detour 2012: Design Renegade directs the attention of the public to explore our “right to the city.”^[1] An outstanding group of artists and designers from Hong Kong and around the globe have been rallied to imagine how Hong Kong’s public space would look and feel if it were designed for our health and wellbeing, to support the sharing of resources and generosity, versus competition and profit.  The exhibition’s curators have challenged artists, designers and the public to seek niches and loopholes in the social and spatial fabric of the city and to exploit these loopholes for public benefit, benevolence and delight. The exhibition’s participants become agents of urban change: design renegades.

Site-specific installations are on display at the central exhibition space at the former Wan Chai Police Married Quarters. From this base, artists deploy works throughout the public realm, instigating guerrilla art and tactical design. From subversive and emotive maps and street signs, DIY cargo bikes, snake dances through the street, to contemporary interpretations of the classic Pai Dong, Design Renegade provokes new ways of behaving and engaging in public.

Design Renegade is about using small scale and temporary moves to test new ideas, informing Hong Kong’s long-term urban planning efforts. Playful and experimental interventions spark new possibilities and guide us toward a more compassionate urban experience.  Through the cultural collision of local and international participants, the artists of Design Renegade expand our ways of reading and understanding the city.  This powerful collective vision is likely to engage and challenge exhibition visitors as never before.

^[1]David Harvey (2008). “The Right to the City”. New Left Review 53: pp.23-40.

About the Curators

John Bela, Rebar, Co-Curator

www.rebargroup.com

John is a landscape architect, artist, curator and teacher with over a decade of experience creating public space, public art and community participation projects. A passionate urbanist, John focuses on catalyzing social and spatial innovation to create socially just and ecologically resilient environments. John combines insight, humor, wit and rigor to create eye-opening events, spaces and experiences. As a Rebar founder and principal, he has spearheaded the evolution of the practice from tactical interventions to innovation in strategic planning processes to shaping city policy. John lectures and teaches worldwide, is a senior lecturer at the California College of Arts in San Francisco and a Distinguished Lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley. John studied Landscape Architecture and Environmental Design at the University of California, Berkeley, Biochemistry at the University of Massachusetts and sculpture at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Justine Topfer, Out of the Box Projects, Co-Curator

www.outoftheboxprojects.com

Justine Topfer is an Australian-born curator with a particular interest in public art. For five years she has been working collaboratively with a broad spectrum of contemporary artists, art organizations, and institutes of higher education. She has worked closely with government bodies, the corporate sector and a diverse array of external stakeholders to realize innovative exhibitions. Justine is currently a curator with the Public Art Program at the San Francisco Arts Commission. Previously, she was the Public Art Producer for the 2012 ZERO1 Biennial, where she oversaw the largely expanded public art component and associated programming of this year’s Biennial. In 2011/12 Justine was selected by the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities as one of the curators for The 5×5 Project, which featured twenty-five temporary art projects that activated and enlivened publicly accessible spaces and added an ephemeral layer of creativity and artistic expression to neighborhoods across the District. Justine keeps her ties with her motherland: In 2011 she co-curated the City of Sydneys Laneway Art Project, commissioning internationally renowned artists to enliven Sydney’s side streets and public spaces through temporary public art.

Aidan Li, Creative Director

About the Hong Kong Ambassadors of Design (HKAoD)

www.ambassadors.org.hk

Established in 2006, Hong Kong Ambassadors of Design (HKAoD) aims to stimulate exchange between the local and international design community and the public, through a series of imaginative and unconventional initiatives channeling creative energies from both street and studio. It is founded as a non-profit and registered charity by a group of individuals from Hong Kong’s design community. Working with its sister organization, the Hong Kong Design Centre, HKAoD presents diversified and educational initiatives and strives towards the common goal of promoting design and culture and generating enthusiasm for creative ventures.

Detour 2012 Artists and Satellite Exhibitions

Civic Center

The Cave

Andrew Kudless + Riyad Joucka

Otto Li

Tim Li

Caroline Mak

N55

Start from Zero

Kacey Wong

Raumlabor

Wong Tin Yan

2012 Hong Kong Design Year

Michael Lau

The University of Hong Kong Department of Architecture

PolyU Jockey Club Design Institute for Social Innovation

Alliance of Designers, Japan (AODJ)

HKDX

Central Oasis Gallery

Makers’ Fair

The D.C.Office of Planning (DCOP) engaged Rebar to implement the Central 14^th ArtPlace project. Building upon a temporary artwork commissioned by independent curator Justine Topfer and the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities (DCCAH) as part of the groundbreaking 5×5 Public Art project,  Central 14^th is one of four Arts and Culture Temporiums launched by DCOP in 2012 that paired artists and community members in an innovative approach to cultural and economic development.

Rebar created three actions and events over the course of the summer, working in close collaboration with our community partners; the 14^th Street Uptown Business Association (14UBA).  1) a Colorado Art Plaza mock-up that tested spatial ideas for a future permanent plaza, 2) a Street Furniture Design-Build workshop that developed ideas emerging from a community charrette into a set of unique furnishings for local businesses, and 3) an Art Food and Culture Crawl that brought neighborhood restaurants, artists, musicians, and community out into the street for an evening feast of culture.

The Central 14t ArtPlace project received the Award for an Outstanding Implemented Project from the National Capital Area Chapter of the American Planning Association (NCAC-APA)

Date: 2012
Client: DC Office of Planning, Central 14th Street NW Community
Location: Washington DC

For the Cycle Club San Francisco, Rapha and design studio Rebar have deconstructed an iconic Rapha Citroën H-Van in order to create a ‘bookended’ public space. Known as a ‘parklet’, our design blends the cultural history of road racing’s support caravan with the contemporary cycling scene of San Francisco’s Marina District. Serving as a gathering place for group rides and the tales told upon return, our parklet is open to anyone, regardless of their bicycle persuasion.     via rapha.cc

Stay tuned for announcements about the opening party later this week.

Located in the heart of Portland’s South Waterfront District, the Zidell family’s 33-acre riverfront property is the largest undeveloped site in the city. For generations the land has been home to the family’s industrial businesses. Now, after extensive environmental restoration, the site is prepared for redevelopment. As barge operations continue on a portion of the Yards, the family has launched an ambitious plan to transform the land into a mixed-use district complete with parks, plazas and river access.

Zidell has enlisted Rebar to develop an Interim Use and Cultural Activation plan to complement the strategic master planning process being led by ZGF Architects. The plan choreographs a set of temporary uses that put the site on the map as a cultural destination over the course of the Yards’ multi-year build out.  With an overarching goal of reconnecting people to the Willamette River, Rebar’s plan adds a layer social and spatial innovation to what is considered one of the top five transit-oriented development infill sites in the country.

Date: 2012 – …
Client: Zidell Marine
Location: Portland, OR

An increasing share of the Internet’s visual resources are now locked away in private cabinets, untagged and unsearchable, shared with a public no wider than the photographer’s personal sphere…Hundreds of millions of people who have photographed culturally significant events, people, buildings and landscapes, and who would happily give their work to the commons if they were prompted, are locked into sites that don’t even provide the option. The Internet (and the mobile appverse) is becoming a chain of walled gardens that trap even the most civic-minded person behind the hedges, with no view of the outside world.

 

Josh Wallaert, “State of the Commons,” Design Observer, November 8, 2012.

Paris-based architecture firm Atelier Zündel Cristea (AZC) has proposed an unusual pedestrian bridge on the Seine that dares us to reconsider our public behavior and our conventions for moving through urban terrain. Why walk (snooze) when you can bounce?

Designed for the competition brief, A Bridge in Paris, AZC’s uncanny renderings show three inflatable donuts that are nearly 100 feet in diameter, which span the river and carry leaping passengers on trampoline-like netting: ”Our intention is to invite its visitors and inhabitants to engage on a newer and more playful path…An inflatable bridge equipped with giant trampolines, dedicated to the joyful release from gravity as one bounces above the river.” 1