Tim Culvahouse

Linden Tree presentation: May 21st (at) 7:30 pm
 
Tim Culvahouse, FAIA and principal of CulvaHOUSE in Berkeley is an architect, designer, educator, writer, motivator and facilitator of architectural design, theory and philosophy. He is most recently the recipient of the AIA/SF’s Special Achievement Award for his contribution, leadership and vision as editor and writer for arcCA. 
 
Tim will present an overview of his current book project: Which Way is New Orleans
 
‘Buildings, like men and women, are not islands. They are caught up in complex relationships with the earth, with each other, with people’s needs and dreams. Some of these relationships are clearly visible, like the almost identical façades of a row of New Orleans shotgun houses. Others are harder to see.’

Click to read more ...

Craig Hartman & Cesar Rubio

Linden Tree presentation: April 9th, 2008 (at) 7:00 pm

Craig Hartman, FAIA, of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and architectural photographer Cesar Rubio will present two perspectives on the new Cathedral of Christ the Light, which will open this September. Located on Oakland’s Lake Merritt, the Cathedral seeks to create a 21st Century architecture that will ennoble and inspire through the use of light, material and form, and convey an inclusive statement of welcome and openness—an architectural expression of both spiritual and civic renewal for the City of Oakland.  Craig has led SOM’s multidisciplinary team in realizing the Cathedral’s design. For the past year, Cesar has documented the Cathedral’s construction.

Click to read more ...

John Peterson

Linden Tree presentation: March 12th, 2008 (at) 7:00 pm

John Peterson is the founder of Public Architecture – a multidiscipline design practice in San Francisco enriched by a diverse group of professionals with expertise in architecture, education, graphic design, journalism, landscape architecture, law and publishing.

With the creation of 1% Solution, Public Architecture has taken a leadership role in identifying significant problems of broad social relevance which require innovative research and design. 1% Solution encourages architecture firms to formalize their commitment to the public good by pledging one percent of their billable hours to public interest work.

In addition to his service via Public Architecture, John serves on several nonprofit boards including Urban Solutions and the South of Market Business Association. He is a Mayoral appointee on the City’s Green Vision Council and the Mayor’s Open Space Task Force. Mr. Peterson earned both architectural and fine arts degrees from RISD and was a John L. Loeb Fellow at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design.

Click to read more ...

Brett Terpeluk

Linden Tree presentation: February 13th, 2008 (at) 7:00 pm

Brett Terpeluk is a designer transitioning from a decade-long collaboration with the Renzo Piano Building Workshop to his own private practice based in both San Francisco and Genoa, Italy.

At this month’s Linden Tree, Brett will be presenting his first built project, Farina, which overlays a design process rooted in his collaboration with Renzo Piano with a more eclectic craft-based sensibility in which ideas of reuse, tactility, and assembly are explored.   Urbanistically, the project attempts to establish an active and theatrical dialogue with the surrounding streetscape.

Since 2004, Brett has been locally managing the design and construction of the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, considered one of the most sustainable projects in the world today.  He has taught architecture at both Rice University and CCA.  At UC Berkeley, he co-taught the Friedman Professorship studio which explored the relationship between architectural expression and the implementation of sustainable strategies. He has also contributed to notable architectural journals such as Parametro and Casabella.

Click to read more ...

Shawn Lani

Next Wednesday, (Jan. 9th, 2008) artist and exhibition designer, Shawn Lani, will talk about his diverse body of work located in over forty international art, science and natural history museums.  His kinetic, interactive works focus on the kinds of fleeting patterns that inspire both scientists and artists to ask questions and pursue answers in their own idiosyncratic ways.

The work "Wave Wall" (image below) rocks gently in the breeze, each thirty-two foot aluminum pendulum is coupled to its neighbor with less than two pounds of magnetic pull. This small force entwines the individual spires and forms a cohesive whole that sways with delicate balance in even the softest breeze.

Twelve years ago, Lani's interest in museums led him to the Exploratorium, a museum of art, science and human perception. The unique culture there comprised of educators, artists, scientists and writers has deeply affected his work. His current work at the Exploratorium includes the creation of over twenty outdoor artworks at Ft. Mason.

Click to read more ...

Owen Kennerly

Next Wed (Dec. 12th), Owen Kennerly, principal of Kennerly Architecture & Planning, will present the firm's work, past the present.

Performance, Pleasure, and Fit

Our works promote the crafting of experience beyond image as the path to a fine-tuned environment.  As such, non-visual aspects of design including thermal performance, movement, acoustics, and texture are as thoroughly considered as the visual.  We believe a responsive approach to design- free from stylistic rules and conventional expectations- enables the realization of these goals.

Though most of our work consists of infill projects within San Francisco’s dense fabric, it complements a series of rural projects set in delicate landscapes that are often as highly regulated as the urban ones.  What ties the urban and rural work together is the idea of “fit” both as a verb and an adjective: Designs evolve from their settings and clients to embody dynamic solutions to environmental, programmatic, and regulatory challenges.

Owen Kennerly has worked in architecture in the San Francisco Bay Area since 1992.  Born and raised in New York City, Kennerly received a BA in Fine Arts from Northwestern University, and a Master of Architecture degree from U.C. Berkeley in 1994.  Prior to starting his own firm in 1999, Kennerly was a Senior Associate with Solomon Architecture & Urban Design in San Francisco.

Click to read more ...

Peter Koch

Join us next Wednesday (Nov. 14th) as Peter Koch, a self described Artist/ Collaborationist, Archeologist of the Book, and Cowboy Surrealist presents "Printing in the Shadow of Aldus" which is the story of the making of the book WATERMARK in Venice.

In the Fall of 2006 Peter and his wife Susan Filter joined forces to publish and print (letterpress) a large quarto limited edition of WATERMARK, a lyrical and autobiographical essay about Venice by the Nobel Prize winning poet, Joseph Brodsky.  Mr. Koch was awarded a residency at the Scuola Grafica di Venezia in Venice, Italy where he and his fellow artists and craftsmen completed printing 50 copies entirely by hand using 15th Century techniques.  Brodsky wrote his text while living in Venice in the 1980's and this is a story of artisans working on that text in Venice today, and about our collaborations with paper makers, bookbinders, printmakers, bronze foundrymen, painters, poets ,and a multitude of Venetian institutions including a printing history museum, an art school, several scholarly foundations, old Venetian families and friends...  The printing was accomplished with help from a phalanx of visiting printers from Vancouver, Verona, Cornuda, New York, London, Berkeley, etc. ....  all in a combination which should make up a very lively evening profusely documented with luminous photographs (and perhaps a few bottles of prosecco).

Click to read more ...

John Lewis

On Oct. 10th, John Lewis will the talk about cast glass in architecture and how his initial involvement with glass evolved from first making hand-blown glass objects to casting architectural glass components.

As a graduate student in architecture at the University of California at Berkeley, Lewis was introduced to blown glass by professor Marvin Lipofsky. Lewis founded the first private hot glass studio in California and later received his MA in design in 1970. His early work in blown glass led to an interest in glass casting. With the help of an NEA grant, he built an experimental facility to explore the possibilities of cast glass. At his state-of-the-art casting studio in Oakland, CA, Lewis designs and produces cast glass sculpture, tables, vessels and site specific architectural projects. He has completed numerous commissions for private and corporate clients and is represented in galleries internationally.

David Meckel

In 1985, David Meckel came to San Francisco on a one-year leave of absence from his practice and teaching in Los Angeles. He had received an invitation from CCAC's president, Neil Hoffman, and the chair of the board of trustees, Steven Oliver, to come establish an accredited architecture program within the arts college. Now, 22 years later, that program and the others around it, have propelled this lively institution into a major force in the bay area and beyond.

Join us this Wednesday as David shares the story of how these events unfolded and the synergies that encouraged this to happen in a uniquely San Francisco way. By taking advantage of the very bay area provincialism that his Los Angeles colleagues had warned would be the beginning of a huge career mistake, the largest city in the US without an architecture school birthed one quite easily. He will share his observations on the region's rich system of architectural initiatives that have evolved over the past 30 years, and how they have flourished to this day - from Mark Mack's Western Addition to John Peterson¹s Public Architecture. A common thread in David¹s own method of building community can be traced to the spatial and social strategies he learned in his very first job. He will show us how he has used these ideas as the building blocks for the environments he has helped shape over the years.

David Meckel began his career working with Charles and Ray Eames in their Venice, California studio. Five years later he directed all of the design work for the 1984 Olympics in LA, which Time Magazine declared Not just the year's, but surely the decade¹s most glittering and effective demonstration of the power of creative design. He was chosen as one of ID Magazine's ID Forty Design and Technology Innovators in 1997 and was named a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects in 1998.

Click to read more ...

Christi Azevedo

Next Wednesday (August 8th, 2007) Christi Azevedo will present her work and discuss the topic of scale as it relates to daily life, construction and community.

Christi graduated from UC Berkeley with a BA in Architecture in 1992. Over the last 15 years she has been fabricating her own designs, ranging in scale from furniture to facades while maintaining an emphasis on tactile detailing. As a homeowner of an 1880¹s Victorian, her environment has become an ongoing lesson in history and a venue for design experimentation. Her most recent project is a 4 unit infill housing project near downtown Oakland which utilizes innovative building methods.

Click to read more ...