Top SF Designers + Architects Featured at Slow Food Nation

Firms Bringing Event to Life Include: SOM, IDEO, SMWM, BCV Architects, ROMA Design, Marta Fry Landscape, David Baker + Partners, CCS Architecture, Natoma Architects
Leaders in the Bay Area’s architecture and design worlds have stepped to the plate to design the inaugural edition of Slow Food Nation, taking place in San Francisco over Labor Day weekend, August 29 to September 1, 2008. The event is expected to draw 50,000 people to the Civic Center and Fort Mason Center to build support for a food system that is good, clean and fair.
Designer Hans Baldauf, principal of Baldauf Catton von Eckartsberg (BCV) Architects, headed an advisory committee enlisting two dozen San Francisco architecture and design firms to offer pro bono collaborations with Slow Food Nation curators on designs from interactive Taste exhibits, a marketplace and soapbox, to the installation of an organic Victory Garden in the plaza in front of City Hall. The installation and planting for the 10,000-sqaure foot garden was implemented in July.
“It is only natural that the Bay Area architecture and design community should be so excited about helping to create the first Slow Food Nation event here in the United States,” said Baldauf. “The Slow Food Movement provides an ethical and cultural dimension to the complex issues of sustainability that are on the forefront of the challenges that we are confronting as designers. Beyond this, Slow Food celebrates community and joy of sitting down together to enjoy a meal prepared from sustainable, locally produced products that are good, clean and fair. It is appropriate that this event be designed in a collaborative spirit by so many talented members of the design community.”
Members of the Design Advisory Committee include: Hans Baldauf, BCV Architects; Allison Arieff, New York Times, Sunset Magazine; Michael Bernard, Virtual Practice; John Peterson, Public Architecture and Peterson Architecture; John Bela, CMG Landscape Architecture; Larry Bain, Let’s Be Frank; Michelle Meany, Wilson Meany Sullivan; Eleanor Bertino, Eleanor Bertino PR and Margie O’Driscoll, Executive Director, AIA, San Francisco.
“In the end, Slow Food really isn’t just about the food. It’s about community, craft, collaboration,” said Allison Arieff. “The bringing together of all of these amazing architects, designers, artisans and alchemists to create what will truly be a feast for all senses and sensibilities. This endeavor represents the perfect pairing—and then some.”
Design firms participating in Slow Food Nation include BCV Architects, ROMA Design Group, SMWM, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), CMG Landscape Architecture, Stanley Saitowitz | Natoma Architects, CCS Architecture, David Baker + Partners Architects, Marta Fry Landscape Associates, envelope Architecture+Design, Macy Architecture, Cary Bernstein Architect, Studio Terpeluk, Aidlin Darling Design, Sagan Piechota Architecture, Winslow Architecture, Second Office, Randolph Designs, Min|Day, J+DForm, Public Architecture and Jensen Architects. All designs are following green principles and stringent budget constraints.
Over the past four months, design teams have worked with Slow Food Nation curators to develop and design the individual physical spaces that will bring Slow Food Nation to life. Addressing issues of sustainability, reuse and repurpose, designers have worked within very limited budgets to construct spaces that will create as little waste, post-event, as possible.
Fort Mason Center
Fort Mason Master Plan – Baldauf Catton von Eckartsberg Architects
Fort Mason Outdoor Space Plan – ROMA Design Group
The Taste Pavilions are Slow Food Nation’s grand celebration of good, clean and fair food from across the United States. Taking place in the 50,000 square-foot Festival Pavilion at Fort Mason Center, each of the 15 uniquely designed pavilions showcases a different food through on-site demonstrations and tastes. Featured foods include: Beer, Bread, Charcuterie, Cheese, Chocolate, Coffee, Fish, Honey & Preserves, Ice Cream, Native Foods, Olive Oil, Pickles & Chutney, Spirits, Tea and Wine.

Beer – Randolph Designs
John Randolph designed San Francisco’s Gordon Biersch Brewery and Restaurant and is back to his craft, craft beer that is. Paired with Beer Curator, Dave McLean (Magnolia Pub and Brewery), Randolph has repurposed refrigerated shipping containers to chill and store the 150 microbrews being served via bottle, cask and keg and to provide enclosure in an otherwise windy outdoor location at Fort Mason. The bar, made of recycled beer bottles, will be topped by a loaned Vetrazzo “Alehouse Amber” recycled countertop.

Bread – Stanley Saitowitz | Natoma Architects
Providing the entryway to the Taste Pavilion and constructed out of a complex scaffolding system, Natoma Architects’ design for the Bread Pavilion will house both a baking area (featuring two tandori ovens, two pizza ovens and a commercial deck oven) and a “Bread Museum.” Acme Bread’s Steve Sullivan and Natoma Architects have worked closely to design a display space large enough to showcase breads from over 40 bakeries across the country and nearly 200 photographs. Other key elements include a living wheatgrass planter box and service and preparation counters in the French bakery tradition.

Charcuterie – Cary Bernstein Architect
Cary Bernstein Architect’s design reinterprets the familiar butcher shop in the form of a gallery. Using large scale photographs of salumi, video installations (including a “Salumipedia”), object vitrines and display of the cultural history of meat eating shown through significant artworks, the Charcuterie Pavilion will also feature over 200 samples of charcuterie displayed in large scale “meatrines” and traditional tools used in charcuterie production.

Cheese – Macy Architecture
Drawing inspiration from materials used in cheese production, Macy Architecture sourced over 1,100 milk crates to create the structural element for the Cheese Pavilion. Sprouting atop the crate structure, differing grass varietals will illustrate the importance of the animal’s diet, while an “aging cave” constructed of hay bales, will explain affinage, the craft of aging and maturing cheese. After the event, all of the milk crates will be returned to Straus Family Creamery.

Chocolate – Aidlin Darling Design
Conceived as an immersive, multi-sensory environment, Aidlin Darling Design has focused on the origins of chocolate in designing a tasting pavilion for artisan chocolate-makers. Equal parts education and tasting, the pavilion allows one to engage in the geography of cacao harvest and production under a canopy of reclaimed lumber and palms, a direct reference to cacao’s particular semi-shaded equatorial growing regions. The Chocolate Pavilion design is an aggregation of hundreds of borrowed shipping pallets that transform this ubiquitous industrial object into an artful frame through which the story of chocolate is told. The visitor can interact with the farmers, see material that shares cacao’s origins, hear the crack of cocoa shells and smell the aroma and taste the chocolate as it’s being made.
Coffee & Tea – envelope Architecture+Design
The Coffee and Tea Pavilions at the Slow Food Nation Taste Hall are conceived of as filters for experience.  Sheer fabric enclosed Tea Pods and Coffee Halls remove the visitor from the activity of the larger event. These tasting chambers offer a more intimate taste experience and allow visitors to focus on the cup in their hand, the nuances of the brew, the discussion with an expert.  The pavilion design is framed by an ethic of reuse: all elements of the design are either rented readily available items or will be repurposed after the event.
Fish – Marta Fry Landscape Associates
Working with a space spanning over 3,000 square feet, Marta Fry Landscape Associates and Fish Curator, Tom Worthington, have designed an educational exhibit and tasting area inspired by the continual motion of tidal flows. Seeking to trap visitors within the space and lure them to explore each of the pavilion’s educational themes: environment, salmon, best practice fisherman and an art exhibit. Other features include the tasting area and a “bellavista” displaying the day’s catch on ice.
Honey and Preserves – Second Office
Inspired by the idea that honey and jam are “backyard foods” that can be produced using ingredients found in a San Francisco yard, the main wall of the pavilion derives from a backyard fence that one can peak through. Using primarily borrowed materials such as berry crates that will go back into use after the event, the pavilion will also feature observation hives and a pollinator garden.
Ice Cream – J+DForm
Using simple wooden crates stacked and overflowing with the fruits of the season, J+DForm have incorporated design elements inspired by the ingredients that produce quality gelato and ice cream. A panoramic view of a snow-capped mountain with provide the background for display and tasting counters, also designed and constructed out of re-purposed wooden crates.
Native Foods – John Glavis, Bernadette Zambrano and Diana Almeadariz
Located outdoors at Fort Mason Center, the Native Foods pavilion will feature three traditional Native American Yokut shelters and two ramada shade structures constructed out of over 40 bundles of native California tule reeds. The tule is being collected in the Sacramento Valley, woven into mats by volunteers at the Regenerative Design Institute in Bolinas, California and will be assembled into the Yokut huts and ramadas onsite.
Olive Oil – Brett Terpeluk, Studio Terpeluk
Dual enclosures, split by a band of olive trees, allow visitors the option of either cursory or in-depth olive oil tasting experiences.  The cursory tasting area offers a more sensual experience where the visitor samples regional oils on a 20’ long reclaimed wood table ringed by a continuous band of subtly-lit olive oil bottles. The enclosure is draped in orange olive harvesting netting punctuated by the sounds of oil in motion.  The in-depth tasting area provides a more educational experience where themes of regionality, history and quality assessment are described graphically.  A continuous shelf of regional oil bottles will enclose a series of reclaimed wood tables where experienced tasters will educate visitors as to the myriad flavors of California olive oil.

Pickles & Chutney – Sagan Piechota Architecture
Spawned from the idea that the Pickles & Chutney pavilion should exploit the constituent elements that are typically associated with the process of pickling, the design involves the suspension of over 3,000 mason jar lids from the ceiling, and creating walls made from mason jars and filled with recipes and pictures of pickles from around the world.  The pavilion also includes a tasting and display area for visitors to sample a variety of pickles from across the nation.
Spirits – Min|Day
The Spirits Pavilion is an abstract field of colored strips reminiscent of agricultural planting beneath a floating cloud of colored paper umbrellas. The environment created by the exhibition evokes the agricultural origins of spirits; surplus grains and produce transformed into something magical. Backing this abstracted environment is a long wooden bar clad in historical images of bars, public houses and cocktail lounges from the origins of the American cocktail.
Wine – David Winslow, Winslow Architecture
The largest space of the indoor Taste Pavilions, and housing wines from across the nation, the Wine pavilion design features a 36-foot long bar and five tasting tables, staffed by professional sommeliers. In addition, large infographic panels focusing on sustainable wine production and practices, photography from American vineyards and iconic wooden wine barrels will showcase the best of American wines.
Civic Center
Civic Center Master Plan - SMWM
The Civic Center houses the Slow Food Nation Victory Garden, the Marketplace, featuring 60 California farmers, and Slow on the Go, an outdoor food bazaar, demonstrating how “fast” Slow Food
Compost Exhibit – IDEO
Constructed out of reclaimed wooden shipping pallets the Compost Exhibit will provide an educational, hands-on space where visitors can learn about the composting process. The “kitchen sink” display will offer information and facts about composting at home and a working compost pile will provide an opportunity to see compost in action. Ready to plant “black gold” compost bricks will be available to visitors as a take-away.
Food Bill Declaration – Public Architecture
Working with Roots of Change to provide a forum in the Rotunda of City Hall for the ceremonial launch of a petition calling for New Vision for a 21st Century Food, Farm & Agricultural Policy, Public Architecture has paired a customary speakers podium with a display of locally grown fruits and vegetables, evoking a literal representation of farm policy.
Slow on the Go – CCS Architecture, David Baker + Partners Architects
Drawing inspiration from open air markets in Marrakech, Morocco, David Baker + Partners and CCS Architecture have teamed up to design Slow Food Nation’s outdoor food vendor stalls and eating area at Civic Center Plaza. Featuring an “infinite” table and canopy that runs the length of the Slow on the Go area, the table will provide the front counter for each vendor kitchen and a community table for sharing and social interaction while the canopy will serve as a source of shade. The table top is made from rough cut eucalyptus trees set on rented scaffolding, and post event, the wood will be returned to be milled into lumber and the scaffolding returned to its owner.
Soap Box – Craig Hartman, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill
Located in the Slow Food Nation Victory Garden and already fully constructed, the Soap Box was originally designed as a temporary space for farmers and food producers to share stories and information among a small audience during Slow Food Nation. However, to suit the longer term needs of the Victory Garden, SOM adapted their design adding storage space within the stage for garden tools and working with Scene 2 Construction to erect the structure in time for the Victory Garden Community Planting Day on July 12, 2008. Recycled lumber, donated from The Reuse People in Oakland.
Water Stations – SMWM
Working with Food & Water Watch to create a space to serve San Francisco municipal tap water to Slow Food Nation attendees, SMWM’s design will juxtapose large-scale images of the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir with a structure built of recycled water bottles.
Welcome Pavilions – Jensen Architects
The entryway to Slow Food Nation, the Welcome Pavilions at Fort Mason and Civic Center Plaza will be visible from near and far. Serving as a beacon and a billboard, each Welcome Center will be housed in a re-claimed shipping container painted Slow Food Nation signature orange and topped by a full size, galvanized steel windmill.  The shipping container design also provides the necessary security.

About Slow Food Nation

Slow Food Nation is a subsidiary non-profit of Slow Food USA and part of the international Slow Food movement. It was created to organize the first-ever American collaborative gathering to unite the growing sustainable food movement and introduce thousands of people to food that is good, clean and fair through enjoyable, accessible and educational activities. Slow Food Nation is dedicated to creating a framework for deeper environmental connection to our food and aims to inspire and empower Americans to build a food system that is sustainable, healthy and delicious.