behind the scenes

Photos op's from a meeting.

Pacific Coummunity Services

A phone call to Pacific Community Services (PCSI) proved right on target, when Executive Director Tom LaFleur conveyed to me the story of their office building being ravished by flames several months ago. PCSI is a wonderful non-profit housing counselor organization providing private consultation on a variety of topics at no charge to residents of Contra Costa County, Solano Couty and San Joaquin County.
They have set up shop literally right down the street, patiently waiting for the rebuild of their home.

Stephanie's initial consultation and last week's site visit were insightful, where she met the architect Mike Garavaglia and job captain Chris Lutjen with Garavaglia Architects, the Structural Engineer Al Saadeh of AWS, Alturo - MEP and other potential construction crew members.

Thursday morning, Stephanie, Katie and Matt made our first schematic presentation to Tom. The team discussed concept, layout, adjacencies, materiality, aesthetic taste and most important, budget. We are excited to be working with Tom in helping him re-envision his office and rebuild their team's home, which serves 1500 clients a year! We applaud Tom for providing individuals with such a great service. It's great to see organizations give back to communities and those in need. We wish PCSI the best of luck through their new transition and continued success and look forward to working with Tom through this process! Thank you Tom for the opportunity!

Park(ing) Day Complete!

Waking up with the sun is how fdC started its Park(ing) Day. Almost the entire team woke up with me –Katie, J, Stephanie, and Alison were a part of a set-up. Only three designers could have packed our City Car Share Scion like we did with room left to sit. There wasn’t far to drive since we had been able to store our entire park at an upholstery shop, Richard Andronaco, Inc. Richard was really gracious to give us a part of his storage space and he even helped us move some of the heavier buckets of sand! Thanks Richard!

The park was a huge success and we were able to feed the meter the entire day! We really enjoyed ourselves and loved our own foresight to have shade on a day which felt like you could cook eggs on the sidewalk. Thank you to all the Park Monitors who turned up to make our park a HUGE success Jenny, Stephanie, Katie, Jason, and Alison.

Our design intent was to have a park built from reused materials: cardboard tubes; umbrellas; tent poles; sand; buckets; FLOR sample tile; water bottles

Blogs where the fdC park was featured:

Inhabitat

Car-Free Talk

Streetsblog

Come Visit Us again At West Coast Green 2009 Oct 1-3! Free tradeshow passes when you volunteer to be a Park Monitor with fdC.

park(ing) day 2009 update

PARK IS LOCATED!
Come visit the Free Design Clinic on Valencia street at 20th & Valencia.

Come hang out with your friends! We're going to be hosting an ongoing art installation all day - "Voice." Stop and by to contribute yours and learn a little about what Free Design Clinic offers to clients and volunteers.

project 2: Park(ing) Day: mock-up

This past Sunday we met at Duboce Park to test constructability of an umbrella screen/canopy for our park. We had some ideas of how to put it together but doing a mock-up helped us test them out and find a system that we can use.

First we worked on securing the open umbrellas together with wire and washers, and then using sewing pins as a replacement for safety pins, which we determined will work the best. After being secured together, we could hold up the 'canopy' using the handles of the umbrellas but still needed a frame to create the main structure. We tried inverting the umbrellas and the interior space created with just the fabric of the umbrellas worked out much better!


Sarah had tent poles that we put together and strung through the inner frame of the umbrellas, popped them up, and the poles worked on supporting umbrellas. By adding smaller tent frame poles, we were able to support the inner umbrellas and we have our umbrella canopy figured out!


It would be great to use the handles and frame of umbrellas on the 'exterior' of the screen - any ideas?

We need a few more colorful umbrellas and we will be ready to construct this portion of our park on September 18th. If you have any slightly damaged and able to repair umbrellas that you would like to donate, we would love to use them for Park(ing) Day and West Coast Green - please comment below! And stop by September 18th at Valencia St & 18th to see our the completed project!