HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

HAPPY TURKEY DAY!!!

With just a month over my 1 year anniversary, this is a great time to reflect on just how special this year has been.  So just a small recap of this year and what I'm so thankful for.

1.  I guess the first most important person to thank is my amazing husband.  When I told him a year ago that I wanted to start my own socially responsible design firm he said 'do it!'  Through the ups and downs of entrepreneurship he's been by my side.  For those of you that know entrepreneurship, the special one's in our lives are those that are able to manage our ups and downs.  But the joy is in celebrating even the smallest accomplishment and my husband is the best at finding any reason to celebrate! :)  It's been the most fulfilling journey.

2. My business partner, Katie Crepeau, for joining my mission 6 months into the business to try and better understand the architecture + design industry landscape.  We still haven't cracked the code for transforming a new business model, but we've tested a few methods.  It's been an emotional journey with a lot of busy and late nights and husbands that haven't seen us.  Without Katie, Urban Matters wouldn't be where it is today, touching the lives of more people than I had ever anticipated in the first year!  It's not easy to find a socially impact driven partner and for this I will forever be grateful!  We've pushed the envelope - attended a hack-a-thon, where our project was one of four to win, submitted a business idea for an accelerator program (we've become more tech than I'd ever thought I'd be) and launched a mini development project (seed is planted) that we hope brings urban vitality to vacant lots and builds community throughout the US.

3. Great Clients!!!  We have the BEST clients in the world!!  If you ever get to meet the individuals behind all the companies that we serve, you would be amazed!!  Some of the brightest minds out there, and all doing something so fantastic for our world.  We are so proud and honored to help physically show their amazing mission, values and culture within their environments.  So thank YOU clients!!  We look forward to continully helping you enhance your space and always improving the value that we add!  

4. For our biggest supporters!!!  You know who you are...you make the hard times easy.  You believe in what we are doing and you show it in the best ways by either donating your time to our causes or cheering us on when we most need it.  Thank you for sharing our vision!!  I've been introduced to some of the most giving and sharing individuals this year.  It gives me goose bumps just thinking about it and it's what keeps me inspired each and everyday.

5.  A growing client base! Because of SOCAP, a gathering of some fantastic organizations, we were able to share our vision with companies outside of the bay area, enabling our client base to now spread to the east coast!  We look forward to meeting and sharing more of our expertise with the world.

6. For all the efforts and hard work that has been started by AfH, Public Architecture, bcWORKSHOP and Kounkuey Design Initiative.  Thanks for forging the way for a paradigm shift.  We need you!

HAVE A WONDERFUL THANKSGIVING!  And know that we are toasting to YOU today!

-iheartcities

Creating Urban Vitality Without Owning Real Estate

If you’re familiar with her seminal book The Death and Life of Great American Cities, you’ll know Jane Jacobs often focused on the connection between design and vitality in an urban setting. As designers, architects, or planners, it’s often easy to become preoccupied with the aesthetics of design. Reading Jane Jacobs or, as I ended up doing this past Friday, visiting thirteen different reclaimed parking spaces around San Francisco, is a good way to remind yourself that good design is not really about aesthetics. It’s about people.

Park(ing) Day got its start just around the corner from here in 2005 when a single parking space was transformed into pocket park for the two-hour limit of the meter. Now it’s an international event for one day each September in which anyone can participate. Urban Matters hooked up with the folks at HUB San Francisco for their makeshift living room in front of the Chronicle Building and it certainly didn’t take long to notice the improvement.

By Jane Jacobs’ standards, San Francisco already has a leg up on many other urban areas. It has most of the necessary design ingredients for yeasty vitality—density, mixed uses, varying building ages and so on that she talks about. This urban inheritance, if somewhat accidental, ultimately can be credited with giving the city much of its livability and dynamism. But the city is a victim of its own success. How do you preserve and enhance its vitality as prices go up and diversity goes down?

Park(ing) day seems to be one answer: take it to the streets and let it be temporary. It’s not dissimilar to many other insurgent ideas like food trucks, farmers markets, critical mass bike rides, and Urban Matters own Nomad gardens project. All are partially ways to create vitality without having to own the real estate. As you’ll see in the photo chronicle below, there is an abundant diversity of Park(ing) Spaces. But the best ones, of course, were filled with people.

The first Park(ing) space I visited at Carla & 4th featured this cleverly adapted shipping container. This is a more permanent iteration of the Park(ing) Day concept, officially blessed by the city, but, alas, not much hoopla here. And the seating was a bit shallow.

Another city sanctioned installation, not quite done yet at Townsend & Lusk. Interested to see where this goes.

The first truly temporary project I encountered was here on Bryant between 2nd and 3rd. Although not quite yet in full swing, the miniature sailboat racing contest is being prepped in the background. Was sorry I didn’t make it back here to see all the different boat designs in action.

CBS Interactive at 2nd & Folsom put on it’s best huckstering mojo as they gave out free ice cream and entreated passers-by to get in on a game or two.

In contrast these two just up the street were intently focused on the Jenga game at hand – no huckstering here.

(Almost) business as usual on Mission & Montgomery. 

Wow, this elaborate putt-putt golf course next door by SPUR took some effort. And it was a doozy to play as well. This guy’s probably six-over-par.

Yay! The Urban Matters/HUB SF/5M hangout in front of the Chronicle Building. Infested with conversant HUBbubs.

Took the BART down to the Mission District for further sightseeing. An appropriately more ragtag vibe going on around 19th & Valencia for the most part.

The teepee…

This was a good one. Three spaces long, real sod, and some hard-fought games of cornhole made it a memorable stop. The appearance of the perplexed police officer made things interesting. He wasn’t so hot on the fire…

Balloon city, blue turf, banana Cajun fritters, bike borrowing further up at 17th and Valencia. These guys pushed the ‘park’ idea in a new, slightly surreal direction.

Last one of the day up in Hayes Valley. City Car Share, normally solving the congestion issue from a different approach, joined in on the fun with their own little slice of Astroturf. Selling point: free candy.

NOMADgardens Needs Donations

We are looking for donations to help prepare NOMADgardens for its launch in August. Have you recently cleaned out your garage? Are you looking for someone to pawn off some soil too? Well then you are in luck. We need your underused gardening equipment and spare stock troughs.

Take a look at our wish list below and email hannah@urbanmattersdesign.com if you have anything to share with us. Any size donation is appreciated as well as leads on possible donors.

Thanks in advance!

-h.nomad

Designing with the HUB San Francisco

Urban Matters was hired by the HUB San Francisco to work with the office tenants in selecting furniture from Herman Miller!! We worked with 18 out of the 21 offices, visiting their space, meeting with them to find out their needs/wants/wishes, creating furniture layouts, and providing them a material palette with finishes, wallcovering and other accessories to showcase their mission, values and work.

It was a fast-track project -- we worked 265 hours in 3 weeks! -- but also very stimulating and rewarding for our creative side. Since we’ve been focusing on business development and NOMADgardens, we were happy to get the chance to draw, design and create beautiful spaces for good organizations. We know the hard work will pay off and make for happy work atmospheres.

Here are a few samples of our drawings. We can’t wait to see the transformation when the new furniture and accessories arrive!

Along with the office spaces, we worked with Shivani, HUB San Fancisco’s talented Operations/Facilities Manager, to select the collaborative work space furniture. The HUB has a warm, colorful material palette with a mix of light and dark wood and red, orange, and apple green fabrics and paint that we used to select furniture to provide more seats and workspace options. Shivani knows the HUB so well and has a plethora of ideas for making the members work experience positive, enjoyable, and rewarding. We hope the new HUBs opening up have a similar person that we can collaborate with to make each one equally successful.

We really enjoyed getting to know each of the companies and learning more about what they do, along with sharing our design skills and services. They fit our customer segment perfectly so we will be asking them questions to test our business canvas, like what value did we add? How much would you pay? How would you like to communicate with us? Would you seek out design services again? We’ll be blogging about our results so check back again soon for that info along with photos of the revamped HUB San Francisco!

-kc