The founding members of the Free Design Clinic are hard at work creating an organization for those who need our design services and for those who want to lend a hand to providing good design to those who need it. We're having fun doing it and can't wait to share it with you all...soon! The devastating news this week from Haiti makes us more aware than ever of the urgency of this work and how much there is to do to help make the world a safe equitable sustainable place.

In the meantime, in honor of the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday, we leave you with these quotes from Dr. King:

"The hope of a secure and livable world lies with disciplined nonconformists who are dedicated to justice, peace and brotherhood."

And this: "The nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists"

We're looking for a bunch of disciplined nonconformists and creative extremists to help us change the world.

year end update

Hey, Blog-O-Sphere, I know it has been a while since you've heard from us here at fDC. We've been doing a lot of internal tinkering, ensuring that we function like a real collective instead a hodgedy podgedy mish mash shmoopy whoopy of friends and colleagues who are working together to make a difference in our community.

Some might say we've become more rigid in our tasks (and now have fewer baby talk words to describe our working order), but I say we're becoming more stream-lined and highly efficient. The organization is as follows:

There are six committees and each committee chair is automatically a member of the steering comittee, who makes large picture decisions for the organization and the budget. Chair positions last for the year, but there will be a 3 month review (March 2010), where it is a possibility that chair position and general tasks might be rotated or altered or deleted.

Congratulations to our 2010 Chairpersons/Steering Committee!

1. Internal Operations, chairman Jason Harm
2. Project Operations, chairwoman Alison Woolf
3. Development & Education, chairman Matt Jasmin
4. Marketing, chairwoman Katie Crepeau
   
5. Outreach, chairwoman Sarah Appleman
6. Lifeboat, chairwoman (and sole member) Frances Reid

Now, since the heads of these committee also make up the majority of our membership, each committee head has a partner otherwise known as their "sherpa."

This is what Sherpas usually look like (photo on the left):

Now, I must admit that we as sherpas don't quite look the same - our wood is bigger, heavier, more impressive - we have arranged our team leaders and sherpas to create a network of leadership and team work which should improve our activities. This network is a mixture of formal organizational structure and our hodgey podgey mish mash shmooshy whooshy that separates us from the rest.

Volunteer positions for committees will be opening up soon! All sherpa positions have been filled.

Check back for further descriptions of committee purposes and goals.




Many thanks to Ronak Dave for mentoring us through this organization process.

happy holidays. merry winter. be well in the new year.

design: window plants

We've had so much interest in our screen of plants and we've really enjoyed talking about the methods to create this beautiful, useful, delicious art, well at least the first fifty times it was fun to discuss. My point is, a huge amount of interest has been generated, and we are so humbled to have had so many people walk away from our park, saying, "I'm inspired..." "I'm gonna make one of those" "How Clever!"

One author, Jaymi, on TreeHugger has this to say link-to-awesome-article.

One of our members had the idea for a plant wall, but we figured out the specifics using the instructions created by windowfarms.org.

voice: tagging the tent

Many of you at West Coast Green were able to activate this year's theme, "You Are Brilliant," by sharing your dream design idea at our Park(ing) Day Park.

As promised, we have made these ideas available for all to see! Sharing your ideas is the first step to making them a reality.

LIVING WALLS - POLYCULTURE VEGETABLE GARDENS ALONG MARKET ST. - BART AFTER MIDNIGHT - MORE BIKES, LESS CARS - MORE BENCHES - MORE REDWOOD TREES - EDIBLE PLANTS EVERYWHERE - LESS CONCRETE - MORE BIKE FRIENDLY STREETS - MORE GREEN SPACES - WINDOW GARDENS - GREEN BUILDING EDUCATION IN SCHOOLS

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.