Exhibit Opening Party – Local Code: Real Estates

From SPUR:

SPUR presents Local Code : Real Estates, an exhibit by UC Berkeley Professor Nicholas de Monchaux. Local Code : Real Estates uses geospatial analysis to identify thousands of publicly owned abandoned sites in major US cities, imagining this distributed, vacant landscape as the basis for a new, green infrastructure.

The exhibit includes more than two hundred models of proposed designs for leftover space in San Francisco, milled from abandoned lumber, lasercut and etched to form part of an installation landscape of steel, recycled wood, and video projection.

Local Code : Real Estates details de Monchaux’s vision for replenishing San Francisco’s 529 acres of “unaccepted streets”,  leftover parcels whose presence tracks such pressing urban issues as pollution, impeded stormwater drainage and urban heat islands, as well as indicators such as asthma, diabetes, crime and hospitalization. Local Code’s quantifiable effects on energy usage and stormwater remediation would eradicate the need for more expensive, yet invisible, sewer and electrical upgrades; In addition, the project proposes new forms of citizen participation to conceive a more public infrastructure as well —a robust network of urban greenways with tangible benefits to the health and safety of every citizen.

Opening March 15, 2011, 6:00 – 8:00 p.m.
Running through April 20, 2011.