Pop-Up City Part II

As a follow up to the Pop-Up City post that runs a bit further with the idea of a large scale development or city that capitalizes on the benefits we are seeing in pop-up retail, I thought I would share another realized version of this phenomenon. PopUp Hood gives local craft retailers access to highly visible retail space in an underappreciated part of downtown Oakland. It helps kickstart the careers of these small companies and it draws new opportunity and value to the neighborhood. Best of all, unlike a lot of the shipping container projects we've seen this one is taking advantage of existing commercial real estate stock.

This video is really well done. It depicts the entire process of how various forces came together to make this project happen.

Pop Retail for Startups

My brother Nick and I, aka Nick & Beau, completed a pop-up retail space for the San Francisco online marketplace, Foodzie. It was a quick project to install a multi-modal public experience in the front of their SoMA startup studio. We took a 25' x 14' loading dock with a glass garage door and converted it into a tasting room/class room/product showcase utilizing branded furniture, lighting, shelving and graphic treatments that translate their online presence into a real life experience worth sharing with new and existing customers alike.

In most of our retail strategy and design experience recently, I find that the role of brick-and-mortar retail is to evolving to be one of inspiration and an opportunity to bring enthusiasts and new customers together face to face. Last week I co-wrote an article that goes into detail about some these shifts, which you can read here. The role of inspiring experience can really be quite complimentary to the efficiency and reach that are possible with an online channel and reinforce a lot of what people love about an online brand.

Retail is also becoming a constantly evolving participatory exchange between customers and the brands they love. Foodzie is always encouraging an engagement with their community and this space will be the epicenter of that exchange of stories and ideas that make the relationship with the brand more powerful over time. Events like classes, special guests and tasting sessions will keep people coming back to the store.

We also see retail as a place where brands learn by doing. It's a great format for prototyping a brand experience and refining it with your customers. The days of designing a top down brand experience and then pulling the cover off it are gone because customers are very suspicious of that type of branding and they want to get involved in brands they believe in. The Foodzie Tasting Room won't be a static space, it will evolve out in the open as the Foodzie community refines it. Emily and Rob embrace that spirit with the same do or die startup energy that has gotten them to where they are today. It will be interesting to come back and visit over and over again and see how it has changed.

Stop SOPA and PIPA

No dount you are aware of the blackout but I just want to make sure everyone sees this video. It tells the story of what's at stake with SOPA very clearly. Afterwards go to Google who has blacked out their logo today! Click on the logo and sign the petition!

The Future of Retail

Dana Cho and I recently wrote an article about a few early indicators we have observed in our recent retail work which we believe are suggesting the future of where the industry is headed. It recently came out in the Rotman School of Management's Rotman Magazine and it just came out today! So I thought I'd share it here. Enjoy!

Guerilla Grafters: Hacking Our City Streets

I've made no secret of my belief that online behaviors are a major driver in how we are reclaiming ownership of our streets and public spaces in real life. So it was exciting to see in the San Francisco Examiner a group right here in San Francisco taking ownership of the trees along our many sidewalks by grafting thousands of fruit bearing branches into the otherwise ornamental trees.

The Guerilla Grafters are apparently engaging in illegal activity since this is considered vandalism. But the Grafters claim that each tree they graft has a caretaker who will assure that the fruit doesn't become a mess of sidewalk mush or an attractive meal for rats, two of the reasons that raise concern.

More and more, we are hacking into the existing "code" of our daily street life and the infrastructure that provides for it. This code is available and visible to all, and we continue to make modifications that question the value it provides and how it might be improved.

There are a lot of tactical urbanism projects these days that emulate a hacker mentality. Rats are probably the worst outcome that's likely to arise from the Guerilla Grafters' efforts, and that's far less invasive than stealing confidential information or someone's identity the way some hackers online have managed to do. But the behavior is still performing the same value to all of us. By questioning the status quo of a support system we all enjoy, in this case the shade, greenery, and, delight the Guerilla Grafters are making our city streets a better place. I for one am all for this type of manipulation of our public space. We should continue to question who owns these elements and how they can be improved for the benefit of the public.

Pop-Up City: Archigram's Vision Is Becoming a Reality

Following some recent thoughts about pop-up retail inspired by the Proxy project in SF, I was really excited to see more large scale pop-up retail using shipping containers. It's officially a trend, and one that we could project out a bit further to imagine something not unlike Peter Cook's 1964 vision for the Plug-In City. First, in Shoreditch, London an entire mall's-worth of shipping container shops along an underdeveloped rail line in the center of the popular shopping district.

Boxpark Shoreditch from Roger Wade on Vimeo.

And Allison Arieff recently wrote an article which praises our new found love for the temporary, and she pointed to yet another example of the pop-up shipping container phenomenon in Brooklyn's DeKalb Market.

From the New York Observer via dekalbmarket.com

It's not hard to imagine that this may well be the future of development in a world where standard construction is too slow and most ventures need to adapt to evolving circumstances. What if the entire city was an armature that received modular units which could reassemble and relocate at will with the aid of a unit-moving infrastructure? It's not all that novel an idea as Archigram's Peter Cook introduced it in 1964 as the Plug-in City. Construction capabilities and a would become a permanent fixture of a megaframe of utilities and strcuture, as cranes would move units and goods in a just-in-time society.

Archigram Archival Project

More recently Andrew Maynard proposed Corb 2.0 which created a housing community around a set of stacked, modified container units and a gantry crane that could transport them.

Corb 2.0 by Andrew Maynard

And maybe one of the most iconic proposals that pays a nod to Plug-In City, last year's vision for a highrise armature that aggregates containers for a housing unit by Luca D’Amico and Luca Tesio.

Luca D’Amico and Luca Tesio via Plataforma Arquitectura

There has been no shortage of virtual and built work surrounding the fascination with reusing shipping containers, but the scale to which they are permeating large scale commercial construction is a promising sign of a future Plug-In City. We may just find that in an continuing age where we will be cautious to build invest in the construction of a new, expensive and bureaucratically complex building. We may find that assembling modules may be the adaptable path to least resistance when it comes to building an our urban environment.

Three Reasons More City Space Should Be Like Proxy

This weekend, some friends of mine and I finally made it to the new biergarten at Proxy, a temporary urban project delivering a series of food and retail experiences via a cluster of converted shipping containers in the SF's Hayes Valley neighborhood. After a freeway was torn down post-Loma Prieta eartquake, a swath of empty lots waited for their condo-ification which has recently been postponed. Rather than let these spaces drag the surrounding blocks down a bit with their emptiness, they've come back to life in an inspiring new and dynamic form.

I think this type of urban intervention is happening at the intersection of a lot of interesting moments in our urban evolution. And this is only the beginning.

First, there is our new found sense of urgency to transform our public space to be what the citizens want it to be. Neighborhoods like Hayes Valley which have always been very active in transforming their own destiny, the removal of the highway is proof, and Hayes Street has seen a renaissance in its wake. But today we chose to make these demands from the ground up rather than waiting for municipalities to make change happen. Better yet this new sense of urgency can accelerate the pace of change to regulations in a combined effort of both the people, property owners/developers and the city administrators as was no doubt the case with Proxy. This project took quite a bit longer than it was originally suppose to in order to come to life, but the break neck speed still outpaced the usual time it takes to see a project come to life in San Francisco.

Second, A lot of the impetus for these urban interventions is focused around an increased sense of delight in our public spaces. Proxy is, if nothing else, a delightful experience that would otherwise be a stagnant fenced-in parking lot if it wasn't for the vision of Envelope A+D and the community that made it happen. We can make our neighborhoods into magical experiences that benefit everyone who engages, if we chose to participate.

Finally, We are just beginning to see the first examples of cities that adapt quickly to changing conditions of the citizens and businesses that inhabit them. For one, brick and mortar retail is beginning to respond to changing consumer behaviors evolving from online retail and in response they are seeking more visibility and a more frictionless purchase experience. Products like Square enable many small merchants like Smitten Ice Cream (try the Bay Leaf!) are able to execute transactions wherever they set up shop, and this portability makes them far more nimble than their tethered competitors who can't bring their product to where the people are as easily. Some retailers may also only need space for a brief period of time while they wait for a more permanent facility as is the case for the Museum of Craft and Design gift shop which is closing this week at Proxy. The increased visibility in a new location like Hayes Valley was no doubt a benefit to their brand awareness. Can't wait to see what will be there next.

Cities around the world should look to all of their empty lots and imagine what could be their, if only fleetingly. Proxy is a superb example. With the exception of the chain link fences, a relic of the lots' days as a parking lot that would be better left behind (if the site is truly public and containers are completely sealable at night, why have fences?), the site is completely open and full of potential for whatever delightful urban experiences are yet to come.