NBBJ Designing Samsung’s New Silicon Valley Campus
New courtyard at Samsung’s new San Jose Campus. (Courtesy NBBJ)
As Apple and Facebook have proven, corporate complexes are all the rage these days in Silicon Valley. Samsung (Apple’s phone nemesis) is the latest tech titan to add to the roster of architectural Bay Area campuses, rivaling Apple’s planned circular headquarters and Facebook’s Gehry-designed West Campus. The company plans to build a 1.1 million square foot sales and R&D headquarters on its current North San Jose site. Designed NBBJ, it will include a 10-story tower, an amenity pavilion, and a parking garage.
Datagrove weaves a tangled electronic web at ZERO1′s Art + Technology Biennial
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Datagrove installation at ZERO1′s Art + Technology Biennial in San Jose, CA. (Future Cities Lab)
Use of cell phones is strongly encouraged for tech devotees flocking to Silicon Valley’s ‘social media whispering wall’
As its name implies, Datagrove is literally a grove of data or a “social media ‘whispering wall,’” if you will, that aggregates locally trending Twitter feeds and parrots them out of speakers and LCD displays woven into the digital branches of the installation. Nonprofit art/technology network ZERO1 commissioned the installation from San Francisco–based experimental design company Future Cities Lab for its Art + Technology Biennial in San Jose, CA, now on view through December 8, 2012. The theme of this year’s Biennial is “Seeking Silicon Valley,” which seems like a particularly appropriate place to plunder data normally hidden away in smartphones and amplify it for all to hear using custom sensors, text-to-speech modules, LEDs, and LCDs capable of responding directly to people in the immediate vicinity.
On View> “Local Color” Celebrates Experiments With Bright Hues
Bean Finneran’s Yellow Cone (14,000 curves), 2005. (Courtesy San Jose Museum of Art)
Local Color
San Jose Museum of Art
110 South Market Street
San Jose, CA
Through January 13, 2013
The way people experience color can be subjective, as preference for a particular color is a personal one. Artists, however, have evoked certain emotions such as pleasure or gloom by manipulating color in value and hue in their pieces. San Jose Museum of Art’s Local Color explores the effects of color through a range of works selected from their permanent collection, displaying over twenty artists who experimented with color. Viewers will be able to experience a myriad of emotions as they venture through this multihued exhibition which will include simple black and white pieces as well as saturated, colorful works. From the modest palette of blue, gray and black in the hypnotic painting Wheel by Barbara Takenaga to the luscious and bright colors featured in Bischoff’s photographs of Barbie dolls, the exhibition’s various pieces will allow visitors to recognize color itself as a medium in art.
Don’t We all Need One of These? SPUR Opens San Jose Office
(Courtesy SPUR)
One of the Bay Area’s most effective urban instigators, SPUR (San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association) is opening an office in San Jose. The move came about for a few reasons, says the group. First, San Francisco has a declining share of the region’s population, so it makes sense to branch out. And second, most planning decisions are made locally, so SPUR needs to establish footholds in the area’s major cities.
The new branch office was made possible by a successful $1 million fundraising campaign that will fund operations over the next three years. Leah Toeniskoetter will head up the new office and brings a background in real estate and economic development and finance.
“San Jose wants to be walkable, it wants more transit-oriented development and sustainability,” SPUR Director Gabriel Metcalf told the San Francisco Business Times. “In many ways, San Jose’s challenge is America’s challenge.” A move to Oakland could be next on SPUR’s agenda.
House Proud: AIA-HUD Awards for Excellence
Arbor Lofts in Lancaster, California by PSL Architects (Courtesy AIA)
Four housing projects were spotlighted today by the American Institute of Architects‘ Housing & Custom Residential Knowledge Community and the U.S. Department of Housing & Urban Development as laudable examples of affordable housing architecture, neighborhood design, participatory design, and accessibility.
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