Sculptural Columns Set The Scene For This Coastal Hotel Restaurant

2024 Best of Year Winner for Hotel Dining

An amalgamation of beaches across the globe, from Crete and Santorini in Greece to Positano and Capri, Italy, influenced Marelle, this 3,700-square-foot restaurant designed by Atelier Gulla Jonsdottir in Santa Monica, California, part of a broader revamp of the Sandbourne hotel, located mere steps from the Pacific shoreline. Hand-plastered walls, in a dusky terra-cotta hue that conjures the Mediterranean, backdrop the main room, where undulating plaster columns cordon off a more intimate dining alcove. Similarly sculptural are the custom pendant fixtures, handcrafted of ceramic in Oaxaca, Mexico, that form a shapely constellation above. Welcome cocktails are served at a grand bar, built of oak with a weathered-look concrete top and backed by sunny gold-tone wallcovering. This being SoCal, the restaurant naturally flows outside, where a lighthouse-like triple-height dining pavilion is enclosed by cream-colored drapery panels—allowing for cozy privacy or full-fledged access to million-dollar views.

PROJECT TEAM: GULLA JONSDOTTIR; ALINA IGARASHI; SASHA BELYAVSKAYA.

Inside Cosentino’s West Hollywood Showroom Refresh

Even though almost six years have gone by since Cosentino put down roots in the heart of Los Angeles’ West Hollywood design district, its opening still looms as a night to remember. The venue was packed with design-scene players plus some life-size metallic figures, like Goldfinger but painted silver. Were they real-life mimes? Statues? We had to watch and wait to determine the answer. Ultimately, the evening’s real star appeared. Cindy Crawford, as glam in real life as in photos, was the brand ambassador for Silestone. The showroom remained intact until about eight months ago when it closed for renovation, inside and out.

Cosentino’s in-house team took charge of the former. Step inside to a lighter, brighter environment, with custom-cut large squares of creamy Dekton nebbia replacing deep gray predecessors as flooring throughout. New, too, is the focal wall, a ventilated face framing a monitor, cinema-esque in both size and picture quality of the continuous loop highlighting surfacing innovations. At rear, the comprehensive materials library, aka the design atelier is expanded to include textiles, tile and cabinetry samples. Perhaps newest of all is attitude. There’s lounge seating, à la hospitality settings, galore, plus cozy round meeting tables scattered throughout.

“It’s all to service our clientele, encouraging them to linger and hang out,” says showroom manager Sara Gil Montoya, who hails from Almería, Spain, where the company maintains its several-million-square-foot complex of headquarter factories leading to a global employee count of 6,000. (Almeria, by the way, is home to spaghetti westerns, including sites for classics The Good The Bad and The Ugly and Fistful of Dollars). More news? In its current rendition the showroom plays up Cosentino’s comprehensive bathroom offerings including vanities, seamless shower walls, shower trays, and floors in fetching vignettes.

Outside, the patio presents another story, adding 695 square feet to bring the total area to 2,200 square feet. Room-like in proportions, it is designed as just that, an al fresco lounge for cooking, dining, and entertaining. Credit designer Claudia Afshar a London native currently heading up a Brentwood-area studio of 14, whose portfolio spans the globe with projects from LAX to French chateaux, Los Angeles, and San Francisco residences as well as product design.

In fact, it was this last project that sparked her collaboration with the Cosentino renovation. Why couldn’t the fluted stone fireplace surround she was creating for a high-end residence be duplicated more commercially with a Cosentino product? Quite simply, she discovered, armed with samples, during a trip to HQ in Spain because the machinery was lacking. Not for long, however. Cosentino made the investment, and Dekton’s Ukiyo (Japanese for live in the moment) launched in November 2023. The material not only clads the outdoor cook space Urban Bonfire X Dekton set off, naturally, by Spanish furnishings from Expormim, but is expanding in scope under Afshar’s development. Looks like a new star is born.

Tour The Larger-Than-Life Cosentino Showroom In West Hollywood

Lutron Bathes Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin West In New Light

Certain structures, one might imagine, are sacrosanct, immune to intervention. Taliesin West, Frank Lloyd Wright’s multi-building, 500-acre winter studio and laboratory built in Scottsdale, Arizona in 1937 and named a UNESCO World Heritage site and National Historic landmark, would qualify. Yet over the years, the project, serving as headquarters for the eponymous foundation, has seen seasonal maintenance and upgrades addressing infrastructure and ADA compliancy.

In 1998, acrylic roof panels replaced original canvas counterparts that had created tent-like pavilions for the “desert camp,” as Wright called TW. Now, plans are underway to return to fabric to be more in sync to be with the architect’s concept; research of materials and framing systems is in the works. The most recent restoration effort, best termed an enhancement, is paradoxically quasi invisible, yet extraordinarily discernible. It’s all about light, specifically installation of Lutron’s patented Ketra lighting system. It’s a move enriching the experience for Taliesin West’s estimated 100,000 visitors annually.

Behind-The-Scenes Of Lutron’s Taliesin West Lighting Refresh

“Frank Lloyd Wright was all about testing boundaries and using new technologies,” Fred Prozzillo, the Nord McClintock Family VP of Preservation and Collections at the Foundation, introduces us to the endeavor. This was a case of not knowing what was wanted—or indeed needed–until Lutron’s presentation pitch. “Our proposal to the preservation team highlighted a seamless solution,” Kathryn Bertmaring, residential sales manager, Rocky Mountains, notes the catalyst. At which point the proverbial light bulb went off. Literally and figuratively. Dated, energy-hungry incandescents along with LED’s were due for replacement with a modern wireless solution operated by a single platform.

Not only could the solution, with its vast rainbow of 16.7 million color options, duplicate FLW’s envisioned “lantern of light” describing the warm glow of Taliesin’s desert surroundings but it could alter the buildings’ environments emulating natural lighting as it cycled through the course of a day and evening. As such the native rocks, stone, and sand of Taliesin’s structural components, take on whole different looks and emphasis tied to diurnal rhythms.  “Everything just fit,” Prozzillo continues.

Constraints, however, were numerous. Obviously off base was any kind of damage or alterations to existing buildings and infrastructure wiring, problematic since structural walls are 18 inches to 2-feet thick and lack conduits for wire passage. Further, Wright’s hand-made decorative fixtures, still intact, are so delicate that even replacing lamps is precarious.

Yet the Lutron team and its partners prevailed, tucking such products as slender Lightbar Slim fixtures and Lumaris tape into architectural elements so they are all but hidden. In the architect’s personal living room, aka the Garden Room, A20 and S30 lamps now illuminate those glass fixtures, imparting midday, evening, and nighttime glows attuned to the passage of time. A wireless, battery-powered shading system, also part of the Lutron portfolio, is newly installed in the site’s conference room again offering a host of options to its users All told, Bertmaring summarizes, “the approach successfully merges modern technology with historical authenticity.” Just as Wright himself would have done.

From Day To Night, Taliesin West Is Aglow

David Galullo: 2024 Interior Design Hall of Fame Inductee

Call it DNA, call it destiny: David Galullo was fated for a career in design and architecture. Credit his late father, an Italian American builder and visionary who passed on a worldview that became the underpinning of his son’s multidisciplinary practice. “He taught me to see the world as an opportunity for improvement rather than something completed,” begins the consummate professional who, although a licensed architect, does not necessarily call himself such. “I don’t want limits.”

Learn How David Galullo’s Rapt Studio Breaks Boundaries

Work is a matter of gathering, too. Each project team assembles talents spanning the full creative spectrum: architecture, design, graphics, branding, marketing, and communications. With no siloing by skill set, everyone has a voice and is free to critique any part of a proposal, not just their area of expertise. This not only results in an integrated response to each brief but also helps shape Rapt’s organization, with its three studios viewed holistically rather than as competing profit centers. “We’re breaking down barriers that other firms may have,” Galullo emphasizes.

More than 70 percent of Rapt’s practice centers on the workplace, principally in the gaming, apparel, media, and tech sectors. Its roster of completed projects lists many big names: Google, Goop, The North Face, and Tinder for starters. Current or recently finished assignments include consolidating CNN’s Atlanta operations into longtime-client Warner Bros. Discovery’s seven-building Techwood campus; relocating online gaming enterprise Roblox’s headquarters into a 180,000-square- foot building in San Matteo, California; and having just completed language app Duolingo’s New York offices at 4 World Trade Center, going on to renovate and expand the company’s headquarters in Pittsburgh. Rapt’s global planning for international financial services corporation Macquarie Group supports the company’s real estate operations worldwide, providing local design firms with a template to work from, while for real estate developer Hines, another global enterprise, Rapt crafted regional headquarters at West Edge, a mixed-use development in L.A.

Explore Rapt Studio’s Encyclopedic Portfolio

Rapt’s branding projects range from Bishop Ranch, an idyllic 585-acre business and residential park in San Ramon, California, to Tishman Speyer’s Merge, an amenity-rich, four-building, 5-acre business campus in Seattle. “Things just pop up,” Galullo says of Rapt’s encyclopedic portfolio. How about a kit-of-parts play-book guiding a retail rollout for the California cannabis concern Embarc Dispensaries as a sign of the times?

“People are more than their job descriptions,” he says, emphasizing the importance of creating adaptable workplaces that accommodate varied sensory needs and cognitive styles. Galullo’s articulate thoughtfulness has made him something of a media darling, consistently covered over his four-decade career. So, tell us some- thing no one else knows. “I just got my Italian passport,” he gleefully responds. To which we can only reply, in bocca al lupo!—his ancestral homeland’s idiom for good luck.

See Workplace Designs From David Galullo

Discover How Rapt Studio Shapes Top Brands

Marvel At This Sinuous Home Overlooking Paradise Valley

Shelter and exposure, angles and curves, concrete and steel. All coalesce in a suburban Phoenix residence recently renovated and expanded by Stance Architecture, a local firm led by principal Aaron Bass who’s well versed in Arizona’s hot, arid climes. “It had zero outdoor space,” the architect recalls of the 1980’s house he enlarged from 1,200 square feet to 3,145 with the addition of two freestanding pavilions, and turned its challenging nearly 2-acre site into a welcoming alfresco retreat. That challenge turned out to be beneficial.

Part of the steep, rocky hillside actually overhangs the property, so Bass employed its “shadow not only as a respite but also an immaterial material.” Cast-in-place concrete is the actual material used for the pool pavilion, built with passive architecture strategies, its steel canopy filtering the blazing overhead rays for those with toes dipped in the new 44-foot pool overlooking Paradise Valley and the Mummy and Phoenix Mountains. “The fins are angled to work with the sun, providing maximum shade in summer, and allowing it to skim along underneath them during winter,” Bass explains.

Steel reappears, this time sinuous and powder-coated white, in Solar Tendril, a wall-mounted sculpture by artist and Phoenix resident Pieter Diese, who Bass and his client commissioned for something “feminine to juxtapose the hard surfaces.” Supporting it all is a deck of 2-by-4-foot concrete pavers, handmade in California with high light reflective value to minimize heat gain.

This Exhibit Pays Homage To Scott Burton’s Legacy

Cut short by an untimely death in 1989 at age 50, American artist Scott Burton’s 20-year career crossed over myriad genres: from sculpture, pho­tography, drawing, performance, and video to art criticism, curation, and collecting. This legacy is examined in “Scott Burton: Shape Shift,” taking over all six galleries and the outdoor courtyard at the Pulitzer Arts Foundation in St. Louis through February 2. Among the exhibit’s more than 100 pieces, some of which Burton referred to as “sculp­ture in love with furniture,” is his 1980 Aluminum Chair that pays homage to the Adirondack version, 5-ton granite Rock Settee from 1988, and Five-Part Storage Cubes, 1982, in a rainbow palette. Inde­pen­dent curator Jess Wilcox penned the show’s pro­voc­ative title, alluding not only to the breadth of Bur­ton’s work but also the reality of life as a gay man who died from an AIDS-related illness.

11 Picks from Cersaie 2024: A Showcase of Design Excellence

Much the same way one never tires of visiting a favorite museum, one never tires of visiting Cersaie, the International Exhibition of Ceramic Tiles and Bathroom Furnishings, which took place from September 22 – 26, 2024 in Bologna, Italy. Porcelain and ceramic tiles present, as does a painting canvas, a blank surface on which designers and manufacturers can create graphics, pictorial compositions, textures, and interpretations of such materials as wood, stone, marble, and concrete. Although this year saw interesting design tendencies—a color story focusing on terra-cotta and blue tones, stripe and checkerboard designs, and the popularity of the beloved brick form enlivened with contrasting grout—we veer from a trend report in favor of presenting tiles that caught our eye as if strolling through galleries.

Check Out Our Favorite Tile Finds From Cersaie 2024

1. Alter Ego by 14Ora

From 14Ora’s Alter Ego collection, Sticks Milk on porcelain stoneware played into stylized stripes, chic in black and white.

2. Poetry Net by OTTO

Blue was a favorite color at this year’s Cersaie, particularly in the denim look from Paola Navone’s OTTO’s Poetry Net, an addition to the Hall of Famer’s vast Poetry House collection for ABK.

3. Papillon by Acquario Due

Pentagonal lines create Acquario Due’s dimensional butterfly form offered in glossy, crystalline, and matte enamel finishes along with platinum and gold.

4. Terrae by Casalgrande Padana

Casalgrande Padana’s Terrae includes a decorative mix of concrete and terra-cotta tones on porcelain stoneware.

5. Novart by Sant’Agostino 

From Sant’Agostino’s Novart collection a cement look paired with terra-cotta mosaics in a carved, 3-D effect.

6. Kimono by Federica Biasi

With Kimono, designer Federica Biasi interpreted the traditional garment’s knots and folds in highly glazed bold colors for Bassanesi.

7. Modulo Mondo by Cerasarda and Letizia Piani

Modena designer Letizia Piani explored interpretations of living spaces, from Native American tepees to Eastern pagodas and the skyscrapers of New York, for Cerasarda’s Modulo Mondo 17 collection, which are handmade in Sardinia.

8. Arialuce Curve by Marca Corona

Marca Corona’s extruded terra-cotta forms are assembled to create unique lattice screens.

9. La Lampara by Antiche Fornaci D’Agostino

Visions of the rippling Tyrrhenian Sea along the Amalfi coast are inspiration for the stoneware tiles in Antiche Fornaci D’Agostino’s La Lampara collection.

10. Wă by Federica Biasi

Wă, Federica Biasi’s simple sculptural tile for Bassanesi, derives from the irregular terra-cotta rooftops as seen in rural villages during a trip to China.

11. Collezione Blu Ponti by Gio Ponti

A Cersaie visit would not be complete without ogling Gio Ponti’s blue and white ceramics (faithfully replicated by Francesco De Maio), first designed for Sorrento’s Parco dei Principi hotel opened in 1962 and now available in porcelain.

Experience Joie De Vivre At This Colorful Silicon Valley Hotel

No need to inquire about the ethos of Hyatt’s JdV brand: It’s in the name, an acronym for joie de vivre. “Effervescent, bubbly, bright, and celebratory,” is how Dan Mazzarini, principal and creative director of New York’s BHDM Design, describes the global JdV identity. Those descriptors certainly apply to the portfolio’s Wild Palms Hotel in tech-centric Silicon Valley, which BHDM recently completed. Know what else fits that description? An Aperol spritz. In fact, a vintage ad for the trending aperitivo sparked the direction for the five-year renovation effort—“one of our smallest yet longest projects,” continues Mazzarini, whose firm has left its mark on hospitality interiors from Atlanta and New York to Honolulu.

BHDM was commissioned to redesign the two-story hotel’s public areas—lobby, F&B, conference zone, corridors—totaling 16,500 square feet. (The 207 keys had been refreshed over the years during changes in ownership.) The property gave off “easy, breezy, mid-century California vibes,” Mazzarini says, “and we wanted to exploit what we had.” The chief inherited asset was the loftlike double-height lobby. Lacking, however, was a strong connection with the adjacent dining lounge and the outdoor pool, not to mention an overall sense of cohesion.

Working with staff designers Sheila Cahill and Mattie Over­myer, Mazzarini initially devised a less ambitious and more sedate solution. But COVID halted the project for two years, and when it was rebooted, the team pivoted. “We changed the narrative to optimism,” Mazzarini recalls. “We also needed a drink!” So, the team paired Aperol spritz allusions with an apropos tagline: ’62 and sunny, a double entendre referencing the locale’s climate and the decade of the hotel’s origins. 

To instate clarity, walls that separated reception, lobby, and dining functions were razed and structural work implemented. Checking in, guests now perceive a singular, joyous space with unobstructed sight lines all the way to the pool. Interiors are populated with a plethora of circles (think bubbles, beach balls) in a riot of cheerful colors: sunny yellows, clear-sky blues, rosy pinks. A custom mobile of acrylic discs takes center stage in the loftlike lobby, while a sculptural painted-wood artwork by Tilde Grynnerup backdrops the reception desk, an MDF construction with ombré vinyl insets. Cabana stripes and poolside-appropriate furniture reference the indoor-outdoor setting. Extending the spirited theme into the grab-and-go dining lounge at the lobby’s rear is a punchy, graphic mural wallcovering. It was designed by BHDM, as was the powder-coated aluminum face lamp—pure whimsy.

Walk Through The Wild Palms Hotel

PRODUCT SOURCES FROM FRONT: WOLF-GORDON: CUSTOM MURALS, BANQUETTE UPHOLSTERY (LOUNGE), SOFA FABRIC (LOBBY). AMTREND: SCONCE BRACKETS (LOUNGE), ORANGE TABLE (LOBBY). HBF TEXTILES: BLUE PILLOW FABRIC (LOUNGE, LOBBY). COLOR CORD COMPANY: SCONCES (LOUNGE). DIVISION TWELVE: BLUE CHAIRS. BLUDOT: CAFÉ TABLES, OTTO­MANS. ASH NYC: UPHOLSTERED CHAIRS. SCHUMACHER: STRIPED CHAIR FABRIC, FRINGED PILLOW FABRIC. MOROSO: SOFA. KVADRAT: SOFA FABRIC. TRANS-LUXE: CUSTOM FACE LAMP. HEDGE HOUSE FURNITURE: WOOD COCKTAIL TABLE. MOWAX VISUAL: WALL DECORS, MOBILE (LOBBY). STYLEX: SOFA. BD: YELLOW CHAIR. GRAND RAPIDS CHAIR COMPANY: RED CHAIR. MY HOME: MARTINI TABLE. CRATE & BARREL: BOOKSHELF, CEILING FIXTURES (LOUNGE), ANGLE-BASE SIDE TABLE (LOBBY). VISUAL COMFORT: LAMPS (RECEPTION). TOMNUK: COLUMN SCONCES (LOUNGE). HKLIVING: TREE LAMP. PETITES POMMES: FLOATS (POOL). BUSINESS & PLEASURE CO.: UMBRELLAS, TOWELS.

PRODUCT SOURCES THROUGHOUT: ROYAL THAI: CUSTOM RUGS. BRERETON ARCHITECTS: ARCHITECT OF RECORD. PHIL STEIN DESIGN COLLECTIVE: ART CONSULTANT. SAN JOSE WOOD­WORK­ING: MILLWORK. MARTIN SIGN CO.: CUSTOM SIGNAGE. GIDEL & KOCAL CONSTRUCTION CO.: GENERAL CONTRACTOR.

10 Questions With… E.B. Min

In a landscape populated with multi-hyphenates and champions of diversity, E.B. Min, founder of her San Francisco-based, studio Min Design, has long been an exemplar of both. An architect by training, she started on a pre-med track, switched to art history and studio art, then completed cross-register studies at Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design followed by a Master of Architecture from the University of California, Berkeley. She holds experience in landscape architecture and bona fides in education having taught at U.C. Berkeley and California College of the Arts.

Though only six staff strong, her 20-year-old firm, a denizen of the city’s Dogpatch neighborhood—a lively mix of historic shipyards, warehouses, and a growing arts scene—has completed the proverbial project gamut, from multi-family housing and private residences to work places, an art museum, and public installations. A number of these endeavors share an elusive reference to the arts. Maybe most esoteric of all? A restroom in the new five-acre China Basin Park developed by Tishman Speyer and the San Francisco Giants.

A Korean American, Min hails from a polymath family, undoubtedly an influence on her own varied accomplishments along the career path. Her father was a professor of zoology, then involved in business development for a company making dialysis equipment. He was a polyglot, fluent in English, Korean, and Japanese, as well as an opera singer. An IRS agent and tax auditor, her mother embraced math and feminism. Min grew up in single-family homes in Atlanta; Clemson, South Carolina; and Littleton, Colorado. The seeds of an architect were planted when young Min visited the South Carolina house during construction and strolled through its framing. Memories related to her heritage run deep, too.

E.B. Min Champions Diversity In Her Design + Architecture Work

Interior Design: What does E.B. stand for and how did the appellation come about? Was it a nod to gender neutrality?

E.B. Min: It stands for my first and middle names, Eunice and my Korean name Byung Ah. A friend had sometimes used it as a nickname in college, and I decided to use the name full time after graduating. I did like the gender neutrality aspect and the reference to E.B. White as well.

ID: What are your earliest memories of design and its influences?

EBM: When I was about five or six, I visited Seoul, and I remembered feeling that we were somewhere that looked and felt very different—my grandmother and part of my extended family still lived in a traditional Korean courtyard house. That sunny courtyard with packed dirt surrounded by the porch covered with large eaves still remains deep in my memory, as I had never been inside a courtyard before. It, along with the house’s contrast of light and shadow, made a lasting impression.

ID: Given your education, how did you envision combining art and architecture?

EBM: At the time, I didn’t think there was a real division between art and architecture. I got the impression that architecture was large enough to accommodate art along with my other interests. I was fortunate to have been introduced to architecture at RISD as it was within an art school. In graduate school, art was less part of the conversation and the atmosphere.

ID: Along with architecture and art, let’s add landscape architecture to your mix. What was that experience like?

EBM: For three years, I worked for Andrea Cochran and Topher Delaney, partners in a landscape office that also had a design-build component. This was an amazing experience: women owned-led company with construction and a highly idiosyncratic and refined design sensibility. Both of them operated as landscape architects and artists.

ID: Speaking of women-owned and -led, have you made a conscious effort toward diversity in your studio?

EBM: Being a woman and Korean-American, diversity is something I inherently participate in. By my nature, my office has attracted diversity, making both the studio environment and the work more interesting. The majority of people who apply are women. We also like diversity in work, not just in project type, but in scale, clients, budget, and approach.

ID: As a related question, what is the Missing 32%, an initiative you helped establish as a board member of AIA San Francisco, and is now renamed Equity by Design?

EBM: The Missing 32% was spurred by the release of Architect Barbie. It led to a panel of women discussing experiences in the field and was a highly attended and emotional event. It also led to articles highlighting women disappearing from the profession. While women comprise 50% of architecture school graduates, they were only 18% of licensed architects. We put together a symposium with panels, originally planned as a one-day event, and it later led to Equity by Design.

ID:  Let’s take a tour of some of your recent projects, spotlighting their variety: the ICA SF, an art museum; a San Francisco residence with light a prominent element referencing James Turrell; and a TriBeCa penthouse, 3,000 miles away. What are some salient features of each?

EBM: With ICA (Institute of Contemporary Art), I like to say that the architectural solution was not to do any architecture. They were operating out of a 10,000-square-foot, exposed concrete warehouse and had about 14 weeks until their inaugural show. They were thinking about building improvements. We, instead, focused on the minimum needed to support the art. So, we created gallery walls and designed modular and easily reconfigured furniture from standard plywood and framing lumber. For a simple lighting system, we used off-the-shelf products from on-line retailers.

On a different scale, Capturing Light, our newest San Francisco residence, was a long project with a high level of detail, and execution. For a constrained site with only two exposures, we were able to create a series of moments throughout that reflect, highlight, or manipulate light in various ways. Though deceptively simple looking, the project reveals changing lighting conditions in places such as the sunken spa terrace and folded planes in the stairwell. It is a secretive house where art and architecture are both present in the design.

The TriBeCa penthouse is a remodel of an apartment in an historic warehouse. While light and views were beautiful, developer finishes were not to the clients’ liking. We were asked not to move walls but to make better use of existing spaces. In our design, cabinetry and millwork adds function while hiding or integrating such conditions as soffits, columns, and mechanical shafts, all to create deceptively simple and refined spaces. For the stair, we replaced a glass guardrail with painted steel panels and designed a playful under-the-stair hideout.

ID: Having gone through Covid-19 and flexible return to work strategies, the design world certainly knows challenges. What are some of the biggest it currently faces?

EBM: We’ve been consistently challenged in communicating exactly what we do and its value. Everyone notices bad design; few notice when something works well. I believe many people think design is how something looks, not how it behaves or the experience it provides. This overlaps with questions about AI and the role/value of the architect in creating the design experience.

ID: What is your take on AI?

EBM: While the studio has not yet started using it for design, I see it has an incredibly powerful role that we’re already using in our general lives with online apps and tools. Anything to help reduce some of the repetitive, information-gathering analysis is welcome.

ID: We can’t resist. As a long-time San Francisco resident, what are some of your favorite spots?

EBM: Green Apple Books, a favorite visit for me and my daughter. Community gardens, particularly one in the Mission on Dearborn Alley. The Vulcan Stairway in Corona Heights where there is an easy hike with panoramic views of the city. San Francisco Botanical Gardens, wonderful year-round to have a picnic and relax with friends. Hahdough Bakery in Hayes Valley, especially for the gluten challenged. Bernal Cutlery, a fantastic small collection of pantry items, a delicious tinned fish display, cookbooks, and cooking implements. SF76, a Japan Town shop with which I am obsessed for its housewares and other goods. ICA SF, of course for its shows and excellent community programming.

How This Silicon Valley Installation Nods To Viniculture

Think Silicon Valley, and tech is often the first association. Yet the stretch of northern California is historically engrained in agriculture and viniculture, its more than 80 vineyards attesting to the latter. No stranger to the area, or to these pages, Virginia San Fratello maintains her practice Rael San Fratello in nearby Oakland. An architect, educator, and author, she also calls herself a “creative technologist” and a “material scientist”; her 3D-printed clay vessels were included in our 2023 “Big Ideas.”

All these elements coalesced in Plaid!, San Fratello’s recent project with colleagues Cody Glen and Mattias Rael for the Art Kiosk, a Redwood City, California, gallery that hosts temporary, thought-provoking installations by Bay Area creatives. Like a fine wine, Plaid! tastefully blended technology, site, and sustainability. The 150-square-foot installation was composed of 300 rods in recycled clear glass. Connected by 3D-printed nodes, the vessels were colored cabernet, zinfandel, and chardonnay, but those are not figurative names; the rods were actually filled with those liquids as well as with others representing the region’s prolific spinach, turmeric, and oyster-mushroom crops, made with water and food coloring. Woven together, they formed a 12-foot-tall, plaidlike structure highlighting how vernacular and repurposed industrial materials, when paired with computational design, can create luminous spatial assemblies. rael-sanfratello.com