Project:(OP)space
Date:Spring 2010
Class:A City Space Share
Professor:Mona El Khafif
In Association With: CCA URBANlab
CitySpaceShare is a pilot project being conducted by students and faculty at the CCA URBANlab, an advanced research and design studio supporting project-based initiatives in architecture at California College of the Arts in San Francisco. The goal of the project is to demonstrate how flexible architecture and a Zipcar style short-term rental model can contribute to the cultural and economic development of a neighborhood by giving communities the tools to reclaim unoccupied storefront spaces on a temporary basis.
Downtown San Joses SoFA District was selected as a testing ground for this project because the neighborhood currently suffers from a 40% vacancy rate of street-level storefronts in its commercial core. Working with ZER01, students researched demographics, met with local community members, and proposed a series of flexible architectural prototypes. (OP)space which stands for OPportunities, OPen, and OPerable is the selected design from the broader CitySpaceShare project being tested at the 3rd 01SJ Biennial. The installation is defined by hinging hexagonal sections that operate similarly to the leaves of an expandable table. By shifting the orientation of the sections a wall becomes a table, or a chair becomes a shelf.
(OP)space is installed inside the storefront space of WORKS/San Jose where students are testing their architectural design through a series of programs created with the local community ranging from bike kitchen to fashion show to DJ lounge. During AbsoluteZER0, (OP)space will extend into the street in a structure built specifically to facilitate programming inside the confines of a metered parking spot.
The project is led by Dr. Mona El Khafif, Associate Professor at CCA and project coordinator of URBANlab; Adjunct Professor Kory Bieg; and the following students: Josh Campos, Alexa Getting, Brittany Glover, Richard Lyttle, Carlos Martinez, Jeronimo Roldan, Lauren Tichy, Fabiola Vargas, Mike Vargas, Rachael Yu, and Maryam Zahedi. The CCA URBANlab was founded by the director of CCA Architecture Dr. Ila Berman.