Archive for 'Interviews'
San Francisco in 2100: Best and Worst Case Housing
“Architects can help to envision what density could look like. Paris is a lot denser than San Francisco, and yet we’re still willing to travel thousands of miles to enjoy it.”
by Rebecca Firestone with Mark English AIA
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Kearstin Dischinger: Policy Planning and Bay Area Housing
“I see this symposium as an opportunity to engage with architects who care deeply about the area… Policymakers and designers speak different languages, but we both need to engage with the public and with one another… [In San Francisco] our identity is in our diversity. That’s why people want to come here. [And yet] the way we think about housing hasn’t changed in 50 years…”
by Rebecca Firestone with Mark English AIA
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Riki Nishimura: Bay Area Urban Strategies
“We are at a moment of inflection where critical decisions are required for the Bay Area. ‘Home’ to me is more than just a dwelling; it’s where I feel as a citizen that I have responsibilities and opportunities to help shape it into a place that matters.”
by Rebecca Firestone with Mark English AIA
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Adrianne Steichen: Bay Area Housing Policy
“For the first time, residents of San Francisco actually care that other people can’t afford to live here… The recent Federal Administration change is strangely having the effect it wanted to have, namely, disrupting the status quo. [We] should use it as an opportunity to advance conversations on housing in a positive way.”
by Rebecca Firestone with Mark English AIA
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Johanna Hoffman: Bay Area Housing and Adaptive Urban Design
“My work – design and planning for climate adaptation – requires a more long-term perspective. Trying to understand our cities by looking farther back into the past and farther in the future, helps us to understand that some of the problems we’re facing now are connected to questions that people have been asking for a very long time. In this way, the challenge of housing in San Francisco presents a valuable opportunity to address the city’s present and future vulnerabilities head-on.”
by Rebecca Firestone with Mark English AIA
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Jonelle Simunich: Foresight Specialist Speaks About Bay Area Housing
“Cities globally are, and will continue to, have population growth. My question is how will we re-design our cities to accommodate the influx of new residents?… The spaces we design and inhabit today are the artifacts of future generations.”
by Rebecca Firestone with Mark English AIA
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Allison Arieff: Urbanism and Bay Area Housing
“Instead of stopping new housing, we should be focusing on better neighborhood planning, better integration of housing near jobs and transit and better programs for creating economic opportunity… A city shouldn’t bend over backwards to let a company come in and add thousands of new jobs without both parties working to figure out how to house those thousands.”
by Rebecca Firestone with Mark English AIA
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Craig Hamburg: Developer, Citizen, Urbanist
“I’m disappointed that housing is so often treated strictly as a commodity… Designs should be impactful, not relying on cheap materials or bloated buildings. Developers aren’t the same as speculators. Developers are in it for the long-term…
“Context matters, too. My vision for San Francisco is to have great public transportation with higher density around the transit hubs, and get more cars off the road.”
(Photo: 400 Grove St., San Francisco by DDG, design by Fougeron Architecture)
by Rebecca Firestone with Mark English AIA
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David Baker Architects: Affordable Housing, Slower Streets
Architects David Baker and Amit Price Patel discuss ways to make city housing and city living more effective, livable, and inclusive. For example, Lakeside Senior Apartments integrates low-income, formerly homeless, and special-needs seniors in a new 92-unit building in Oakland, California. (Photo: Bruce Damonte)
by Rebecca Firestone with Mark English AIA
