Turns out that the Presdio‘s born-and-raised millionaire and billionaire NIMBY neighbors can’t keep modern art out of our Presidio after all.
Anyway, this is the first I’ve heard of the effort. Check it.
Look for this next time your in the Presidio:
SAN FRANCISCO, May 24 — PhilippeBecker (www.beckersf.com), a San Francisco branding and design agency announced today that it is one of11 international designers and artists commissioned to create art for public display in the Presidio, in the first-ever public art project conceived for a National Park.
Commissioned in 2009 by the FOR-SITE Foundation in partnership with the Presidio Trust, 25 designers and artists were invited to submit habitat proposals for specific animal residents of the Presidio. 11 submissions were selected and commissioned for the Presidio Habitats art installation, including PhilippeBecker’s “Winged Wisdom”. [http://for-site.org/presidioHabitats/artist.php?code=2]
Winged Wisdom was conceived by Brody Hartman, director of creative strategy for PhilippeBecker, and designed in collaboration with Philippe Becker, creative director. “The American robin is an enduring icon in our landscape. It is a beloved bird whose behavior demonstrates nature’s ‘wisdom’, which in turn teaches us valuable lessons about how to relate to the land and with each other,” says Hartman. Winged Wisdom is composed of three-dimensional letters that spell out within the landscape three of the robins’ wise behaviors: ‘resolve conflict with song’, ‘adapt to change’, and ‘nest from the inside out’.
Each letter, built of steel armature and mesh netting, is filled with sterile straw, providing ideal nesting material for the robin. “Our hope is to give park visitors an unexpected, yet mindful provocation of nature’s strength and wisdom,” says Hartman.
Other installations include Fritz Haeg’s Snag Tower, Ogrydziak/Prillinger Architects’ Exhibition Pavilion, and Ai Weiwei’s Western Screech Owl Habitats. Overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge, the Presidio Habitats installations will be on view for a full year. More information is available at http://www.for-site.org/presidioHabitats/about.php
Philippe Becker Design
CEBRA
Chadwick Studio
Mark Dion with Nitin Jayaswal
Jensen Architects
Amy Lambert
Nathan Lynch
Ogrydziak/Prillinger Architects
Surface Design, Inc.
Taalman Koch Architecture
Proposals/Models on Exhibit
Jeffrey Berkus Architects
CMG Landscape Architecture
Topher Delaney
Design Ecology
Amy Franceschini with ALITE Designs
Anya Gallaccio
Fritz Haeg
Walter Hood
Michelle Kaufmann
Rigo 23
John Roloff
SIMPARCH with Deborah Stratma
Mark Thompson
Bruce Tomb and David TombAbout PhilippeBecker
PhilippeBecker is a branding and design agency founded in 1998. Agency clients include Clorox, Del Monte, Disney, Gap, Hewlett-Packard, IDEO, Jamba Juice, JCPenney, Kellogg’s, Microsoft, Safeway, Starbucks, T-Mobile, Walmart, Whole Foods Market, Williams-Sonoma, Inc., and Wrigley. More information is available at www.beckersf.com.
About the FOR-SITE Foundation
The FOR-SITE Foundation, a non-profit organization, is dedicated to the creation, understanding, and presentation of art about place. FOR-SITE was created in 2003 to encourage the development of new work for exhibition in public institutions. Presidio/Site/Sculpture, a site-based initiative of the FOR-SITE Foundation launched in 2008 with Andy Goldsworthy’s Spire, provides the public with new ways to see, understand, and appreciate the natural, historic, and cultural resources of San Francisco’s Presidio, a 1,491-acre urban national park. More information is available at http://for-site.org/.