The Refounding of a City: Civic Center Plaza, San Francisco 2004

Exploring San Francisco through classical ideas of civic plazas, this project unfolds ancient ideas of how cities are formed in the beginning as in Ancient Roman times and develops a new idea of public space for San Francisco’s Civic Center Plaza.  Emphasis is put on the individual and a relationship between the stoic architecture; the citizen is put on stage. 

The project involves constructing both adult and kid podiums on site with the participation of the public.  Together, we would raise the walls.  Seasonally, the podiums would be placed in a different site of the plaza staging a relationship between the participant standing at the podium and the architecture or the opposing podium in front of them.  This project encourages participants to write in chalk on the face of the podiums.  An accumulation of the voices of the participants would develop as new rites of the city of San Francisco as the podiums rotate seasonally in the Civic Center Plaza.  Together, participants and artist would break down the walls of the podium and pieces of the newly constructed walls of rites of the city would be free for the city to take home.

You are yourselves the town, wherever you chose to settle

 It is people that make the city, not the walls without them

BACKGROUND

Since the founding of Rome, we have cultivated societies that reflect a respect for the voice of the individual.  In our progressive city of San Francisco, we walk the streets and these voices are heard.  Whether it’s the picketing for health benefits or critical mass reminding us that bikes are a significant percentage of the users of the San Francisco streets, there is energy in our city of voicing our opinions.  The founding of cities focused on these conceptual and utilitarian ideas. Forums and plazas were central to the idea of meeting grounds for the citizen and place for issues to be discussed, voice to be heard. San Francisco also has plazas, which attempt to carry these ideological concepts. The space I am focusing on is San Francisco’s Civic Center plaza where the east meets the west with our Asian Art Museum, where protesters gather, where ethnic festivals are held, where the San Francisco Night Coalition keep the energy going.