Linden Tree presentation: June 8 (at) 7:00pm

The Urban Land Conservancy: Fix Everything

The Urban Land Conservancy is a non-profit development group formed for the express purpose of transforming and repurposing sites in impacted urban neighborhoods and communities, projects which are not economically viable on a conventional basis.

ULC, as a non-profit development entity, brings together a variety of capitalization options unavailable to the for-profit developer. This allows it to tackle complicated projects by viewing the project through a long-term lens instead of the short term “minimize risk, get the money out” perspective conventional capital is, by its nature, bound to. 

The long-term economic benefit to the agencies, municipalities, and land owners, as well social, cultural, and environmental benefits to the end users, the adjoining neighborhoods and communities as a whole are tangible and achievable.

Long-term economic value and relationships breed successful and flourishing communities. Self-sustaining development requires long term planning, design, and system implementation which measures success via multiple bottom lines: quality of life, health, productivity, minimal carbon footprint, creativity, job and business creation, housing production, nature, all combining to create vibrant, active, safe, efficient and enjoyable communities and neighborhoods.

Linden Tree presentation: May 11 (at) 7:00pm

RECIPROCAL FIELDS

David Fletcher will be presenting recent work, which will include planning work, commercial projects, and speculative works.

Linden Tree presentation: March 9 (at) 7:00pm

HUMANE MODERNISM: The Architecture of Bohlin Cywinski Jackson

Karl Backus, AIA and Greg Mottola, AIA principals based in the San Francisco office of Bohlin Cywinski Jackson, an architecture, planning and interiors firm will present four case studies that illustrate the firm’s design philosophy: one creative workplace, one urban retail, one academic, and one residence.

Linden Tree Presentation: January 12th (at) 7:00pm

CITY DESIGN FOR POSITIVE CHANGE

John Kriken is an internationally known city planner and urban designer and the founder of SOM’s San Francisco-based Urban Design & Planning Studio. He served as a general partner from 1994-2004. His professional experience has ranged from plans for new cities to downtowns and neighborhoods, as well as to campus plans for leading corporations and universities.

Linden Tree Presentation: November 10th (at) 7:00pm

TAKING IT TO THE STREETS: Public Art by Reed Madden Designs

Jeffrey Reed and Jennifer Madden are a husband-and-wife design/build team that creates site-specific, sculptural environments for both public and private clients.

Trained as architects in the 1980’s, Reed and Madden have spent the last decade focusing on public art and place-making environments. Reed and Madden are designers, sculptors and CA licensed contractors who build in a variety of materials including bronze, stainless steel, concrete, earth, glass and stone. Philosophically, they aim to create poetic spaces that encourage gathering and contemplation using three-dimensional metaphors.

Linden Tree Presentation: October 13th (at) 7:00pm

ENDLESS FORMS MOST BEAUTIFUL: Evidence of Evolution

Drawing from a new book published by Abrams, N.Y., Susan’s presentation will take you into natural history museum collections that the public rarely sees, sharing her photographs of scientific specimens from the beautiful to the bizarre, which illustrate aspects of Darwin’s theory of the evolution of life.

Linden Tree Presentation: August 11th (at) 7:00pm

MEASURING SPACE – Quiet observations combining landscape and architecture.

Lyle Gomes is a photographer and educator whose long-term study of human-made landscapes has been supported by both a Fulbright (Britain) and a Rockefeller Foundation residency, Bellagio, Italy. His previous project, Imagining Eden, was published by University of Virginia Press in 2005.

Linden Tree Presentation: June 9th (at) 7:00pm

INNOVATION & PROCESS – A peek into the journey of inventing and developing an innovative device in emergency patient ventilation

As a team member of Smart Design in New York City, Ian Halpern contributed to award winning designs for clients such as Burton Snowboards, Johnson & Johnson, Oxo, and Hewlett Packard. Following a brief stint with IDEO's medical device studio and the BioDesign group at Stanford, he co-founded ArtiVent Corporation – a medical device company that has attained FDA clearance for its first product.

Linden Tree Presentation: May 12th (at) 7:00pm

EXAMINING FORM IN JAPANESE ARCHITECTURE, DESIGN & FASHION

Sarah Lonsdale is an editor and co-founder of the online interiors site, REMODELISTA.  She worked in television and advertising for many years, of which nine were spent in Tokyo. She is the author of ‘Japanese Style’ which was published by Carlton books in 2001. She was also a contributor to an online Japanese woman’s magazine long before blogs ever existed.  She has lived in London, Paris, Tokyo and San Francisco and currently lives in the Napa Valley.

Linden Tree presentation: April 14^th (at) 7 pm 

MY NEPENTHE – Bohemian tales of food, family and Big Sur

Join us for an illuminating discussion about food, wine, family, art and architecture. Enjoy delicious treats from Romney's book while viewing images from Nepenthe's early days as well as a rarely seen trailer from the 1964 movie The Sandpiper, featuring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, and filmed in Big Sur.

Romney (Nani) Steele is a writer, a cook, and an artist, and the granddaughter of Bill and Lolly Fassett, creators of Nepenthe Restaurant. She grew up at the family restaurant and opened Cafe Kevah

Linden Tree Presentation: March 10th (at) 7:00pm

Rebar will introduce their work and share details from various projects currently on the drawing boards, including recent transformations of pavement into parks, modular sidewalks and mapping the tacoshed.

"In November 2005, a group of landscape architects, artists, and others calling themselves REBAR “rented” a metered parking space in downtown San Francisco and transformed it into a tiny public park, complete with grass, a bench for seating, and a tree for shade. The park lasted only for a matter of hours, and was met with a mixture of “surprise, approval, joy, and indignation,” but, surprisingly, no one was arrested or fined. In the two years since this intial act of guerilla urbanism, the idea has exploded into something of an international phenomenon." --On Site Issue 19: Streets, Spring/Summer 2008.

Based in San Francisco, Rebar is an interdisciplinary studio operating at the intersection of art, design and activism. Rebar’s work encompasses visual and conceptual public art, landscape design, urban intervention, temporary performance installation, digital media and print design.

Rebar remixes the ordinary, repurposes the ubiquitous and restructures the fabric of the urban environment by exposing hidden assumptions and shared meanings embedded in the everyday experience of the built world. Perhaps best known as the originators of “PARK(ing) Day” – an annual global event where artists and citizens transform metered parking spaces into temporary parks – Rebar has created numerous innovative artworks and conceptual projects around the globe.

Rebar has exhibited its work and lectured worldwide, including the Venice Architecture Biennale, the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam, ISEA, 2009 Dublin, ExperimentaDesign Amsterdam, the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, the American Institute of Architects, the Canadian Center for Architecture, the Harvard Graduate School of Design, Parsons School of Design, U.C. Berkeley, the Univ. of Michigan, the Univ. of Mass. at Amherst and many others.

Linden Tree presentation: February 10^th, 2010 (at) 7:00pm

COLLABORATION AND CONSTRUCTION – The Creative Process of Managing the Culture of Construction

Whirling Dervish  (wurl-ing dur-vish) n. 1.  A mystical dancer who stands between the material and cosmic worlds.  His dance is part of a sacred ceremony in which the dervish rotates in a precise rhythm.  He represents the earth revolving on its axis while orbiting the sun.  The purpose of the ritual whirling is for the dervish to empty himself of all distracting thoughts, placing him in trance; released from his body he conquers dizziness.

Linden Tree presentation: January 13th (at) 7pm

REBUILDING A SUSTAINABLE CULTURE

Throughout history, human communities have found ways to live within the carrying capacity of the places they lived.  What we now think of as art, was deeply integrated into their architecture, resource management and spiritual connections to the Earth. Since the 1960's, contemporary artists have begun addressing the needs of communities and ecosystems directly through the arts, pioneering a reintegration of aesthetics, restoration science, spirituality, urban development and green planning.

Linden Tree presentation:  November 11th (at) 7pm

SILKING SPIDERS, CONSTRUCTING A FARADAY CAGE AND DECOMMISSIONING GUNS: Producing Contemporary Art at The Fabric Workshop and Museum

Mary Anne Friel is a Master Printer and Project Coordinator for the Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia.  The FWM curates a widely respected Artists in Residence program which enables artists to achieve challenging projects by connecting and fostering interaction with a broad range of specialists in science, industry, media and design.