Hans Shiller Plaza

 Posted by on August 27, 2014
Aug 272014
 

Corner of Peabody and Leland
Visitation Valley

Leland Avenue Improvement Project

Opening in March 2001, Hans Schiller Plaza was the first Visitacion Valley Greenway site to be completed. Construction was supervised by the Trust for Public Land with funding from the Columbia Foundation founded by the late Madeleine Haas Russell.  The gift was made in memory of her friend Hans J. Schiller.

 Hans J. Schiller was a Bay Area architect and environmental activist. Mr. Schiller’ s career spanned more than 50 years. Schiller settled in the Bay Area in the 1940s and established the firm, Hans J. Schiller Associates, in Mill Valley. Schiller’s passion for his work was matched by his commitment to ensuring that people from all walks of life had access to parks and open space. It was these commitments  that lead to his appointment by Governor Jerry Brown as Commissioner of the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission in 1978.

The Landscape architect on the project were Sarah Sutton and Chris Kukula of Wolfe Mason and Associates. 

Hans Shiller Plaza

The Visitacion Valley Greenway is composed of a linear series of six publicly owned parcels (each a block long), cutting a swath through the heart of Visitacion Valley. Over a period of 16 years it has been developed by the members of the Visitacion Valley Greenway Project in partnership with the San Francisco Recreation and Park Department (SFRPD) and the Trust for Public Land. Originally a PUC easement, it took 5 years of negotiations to gain permission to build the Greenway. The Visitacion Valley Greenway is a Parks Partner of the San Francisco Parks Trust.

Visitation Valley Greenway would never have been possible without the tireless effort of artists Fran Martin, Anne Seeman and Jim Growden.

Fran MartinFran Martin, Design Coordinator for Visitacion Valley Greenway was responsible for the tile work.

Fran holds an MA in art and worked as a sculptor until 1995.  In 1994 she began working full time as a co-ordinator of the Visitation Valley Greenway Project.

Jim Growden Gates and FencingJim Growden was the designer for the entry gates and fencing.

Jim received an M.A. in sculpture from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1972. Jim worked as a sculptor of wood and steel, for 25 in San Francisco. In 1993 he moved to Visitacion Valley where he became involved with the Visitacion Valley Greenway.

Visitation Valley Greenway Project

*

Leland Avenue in San Francisco

Jim Growden has created 8 of the Greenway’s 12 signature gates and finials, as well as the cut steel images of native animals and plants seen at the Native Plant Garden, as well as on Leland Avenue.

Hans Shiller ParkFran Martin created 2 of the Greenway’s gates, weir walls, tile work and patios with columns sites.

Art work in Visitation Valley

 

Mar 072013
 

150 California Street
POPOS on the 6th Floor Terrace
Open 9 am to 6 pm

Arch by Edward Carptenter

Ed Carpenter is an artist specializing in large-scale public installations ranging from architectural sculpture to infrastructure design. Since 1973 he has completed scores of projects for public, corporate, and ecclesiastical clients. Working internationally from his studio in Portland, Oregon, Carpenter collaborates with a variety of expert consultants, sub-contractors, and studio assistants. He personally oversees every step of each commission, and installs them himself with a crew of long-time helpers.

While an interest in light has been fundamental to virtually all of Carpenter’s work, he also embraces commissions that require new approaches and skills. Recent projects include interior and exterior sculptures, bridges, towers, and gateways. His use of glass in new configurations, programmed artificial lighting, and unusual tension structures have broken new ground in architectural art.

Carpenter is grandson of a painter/sculptor, and step-son of an architect, in whose office he worked summers as a teenager. He studied architectural glass art under artists in England and Germany during the early 1970’s

Ed Carpenter at 150 California Street

 

150 California Street is a 22 story office tower in the heart of the downtown San Francisco´s business district. Its sixth floor roof garden provides landscaped outdoor space for the building´s workers. The owner´s unusual challenges to the artist were first to create a sculpture which would disguise and ameliorate a large air vent and diesel exhaust stack emerging into the roof garden, and second that the sculpture should add to the ambience of the garden for its users. Ed Carpenter´s solution to this brief incorporates both the vent and the stack into an arbor-like aluminum and stainless steel tension structure. Integrated into the structure is a network of tension cables supporting laminated dichroic glass details designed to cast delicate projections and reflections of colored light onto surrounding architectural surfaces. The sculpture provides an arching contrast to the surrounding skyscrapers and creates an inviting space beneath its 54´ span for workers on their breaks.

150 California Street POPOS

 

Privately-owned public open spaces (POPOS) are publicly accessible spaces in forms of plazas, terraces, atriums, small parks, and even snippets that are provided and maintained by private developers. In San Francisco, POPOS mostly appear in the Downtown office district area. Prior to 1985, developers provided POPOS under three general circumstances: voluntarily, in exchange for a density bonus, or as a condition of approval. The 1985 Downtown Plan created the first systemic requirements for developers to provide publicly accessible open space.

The Downtown Plan also established the “1% Art Program”.

error: Content is protected !!