Envelope

Currently seeking our new Finance Manager

ENVELOPE Architecture + Design is seeking a qualified and motivated candidate to join our small, award-winning firm. We are looking for someone who can handle the day-to-day financial operations as well as assist with financial strategy for the firm.

This role will evolve based not only on the needs of the office, but on your strengths, skills, and interests. We see this role as an incubator for a smart, ambitious, motivated person to grow into an invaluable part of our firm.

Is this you? Is this someone you know? Visit the link in bio for full job description!

Congrats to chef Thomas Keller and his team at for earning three stars from California this year!

French Laundry’s famed California restaurant ​​was inspired by the "complex choreography of the kitchen,” wrote Anna Fixsen on in 2018.

It was a pleasure to work on this design project in collaboration with , and witness French Laundry’s continued success over the years!”

///Images by

Throwback to one of our favorite projects the Hollywood Hills House.

It’s a house inspired by Los Angeles, its cultural eccentricities and iconic landscape.
It was published on back in 2020.

📸

Sept 24th Intentional Shift an interactive, site-specific dance performance and arts installation at the Hunters Point Shoreline in SF. This project brings closure to our over 10 year of work at NOW Hunters Point, collaborating with community members to transform a formerly forbidden industrial landscape to a place that could be loved by and benefit the community.

Intentional Shift hopes to become a living part of the community, and that collaborators, participants, and witnesses alike feel empowered to continue efforts toward activism and spatial justice.

September 24, 2022 at 1pm* + 3pm
FREE RSVP at link in bio
*with ASL interpretation

FEATURED ARTISTS
Feline Finesse
Malik Seneferu
Prescott Circus Theatre
Kristin Damrow & Company

Co-Directed by choreographer Kristin Damrow, and spatial designer-activist Liz Ogbu , with funding from the Kenneth Rainin Foundation Open Spaces Grant and additional support from Envelope A+D

Image by Amani Wade .photography

Throwback to one of our favorite designs! Rethinking our relationships with our lived environments, Forest House experiments with liminal structures and hybrid spaces in the forested hills of Northern California.

The forest and house are one, with indoor and outdoor rooms suspended between the canopy and the floor. Rather than a singular building, the house comprises a cluster of tent cabins. The tented roofs and walls allow a connection with the natural setting—its sounds and changing seasons.

Last week, we celebrated the opening of the new Urban Alchemy Oasis at the corner of Turk and Hyde in the Tenderloin District. Once an empty parking lot, this corner site became the nation’s largest open-air drug market during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Thanks to the vision of the Urban Alchemy founders and their peacekeeping and community-building mission, a community sanctuary now occupies a space that was once a site of neighborhood trauma.

We worked with the Urban Alchemy team, transforming the site and creating a park for peaceful adults to come to sit, play games, and be treated to free coffee, tea, and water, in a safe, clean environment. The site also features a lush dog park, the only place in the Tenderloin where pets can run freely off-leash, against the backdrop of the “Rivers to the Sky” mural by Adrian Arias.

We are excited to partner with AIA San Francisco in hosting the 2022 Design Celebration under the stars at PROXY.
This annual event honoring outstanding achievements in architecture and design takes place Thursday, April 28th. In addition to showcasing some of the Bay Area’s best new work, this year’s festivities will feature the Museum of Craft and Design’s make art Mobile truck, Fort Point Beer, and Mozzeria’s wood-fired pizza.

Secure your early-bird ticket: register today! Link in bio.

@museumofcraftanddesign

Psst! Island Press is offering special friends and family discount on Alison Sant’s new book, “From the Ground Up.” If you haven’t got your copy, use the discount code “GROUND” to get 20% off when ordering from Island Press’s website. See link in bio.

Sant’s book is an indispensable guide for grassroots activists seeking to confront climate change while creating more equitable and livable cities. Envelope founder Douglas Burnham and longtime collaborator Liz Ogbu of Studio O were among more than 90 leaders Sant interviewed for the book. Their conversation highlights Safe Passage Park and NOW Hunters Point as projects that exemplify the power of community voice and creative advocacy in driving change.

Join us this Friday, April 8th, at the PROXY Spring Series with an outdoor screening of FLEE, along with a special panel before the film with Palestinian refugees from Gaza, photographers, and journalists Jehad al-Saftawi and Lara Aburamadan.
They will share their exile experience, ways of finding familiarity in the new place they call home, and the work of their nonprofit, .

See the link in the bio for additional information.

We are incredibly excited to announce the return of the [in person!] PROXY Spring Series. Come out and enjoy a movie (or five!) under the stars every Friday night in April at the PROXY Walk-in Theater. See link in bio for details.

After two years of sheltering in place and remote work, this year’s series explores the concept of ‘home’. What does home mean for those who are seeking, for those who are misunderstood, or, simply, for our future together on this planet. How do we look to a greater definition of home within communities or within oneself?

/// Designed by Reed Burnham

We celebrate the Spring season with some beautiful photos from our friends who received their seedings earlier this month.
This is the next phase of ENVELOPE’s campaign to plant hundreds of trees from .justice to support and nurture our beloved Earth and grow a more sustainable future.

If you also received a seedling from us, please share images of their new home with us! We’re excited for them to become big trees one day!


//// Notes from our friends:

-” Two Canyon Live Oak trees have been planted in their new wildflower meadow home!” “It is truly a transformative act and invokes the great joy of being a steward of place and witnessing how my simple daily care-taking actions can help bring about a beautiful abundance of life.”

“Transplanted on the Spring Equinox, March 21, 2022, to a beautiful pot.”

-Two conifers (a Deodar Cedar + a Port Orford Cedar) in their new home in West Marin!

-” What a hopeful act on which to start yet another tumultuous year.”
– a Black Mission Fig in Mill Valley

Last week, Lex and Douglas spoke with Northwestern University undergraduate students at the Headlands Center for the Arts: the perfect setting for a discussion about the Anthropocene and how our approach to design seeks to influence the trajectory of climate change and foster stewardship of the planet and all living beings.

Thanks to Professor and designer Pam Daniels, Clinical Associate Professor, Segal Design Institute at Northwestern University, for the invitation.

Have you checked out Alison Sant’s new book, From the Ground Up?

Sant’s book examines the unique ways US cities are using grassroots efforts to confront climate change while creating more equitable and livable communities. Through interviews with more than 90 local leaders in nine cities, Sant crafts a potent call to action, showing how community-led activism, combined with the power of local governments, can transform cities.

In the book, Envelope founder Douglas Burnham and longtime collaborator Liz Ogbu of Studio O share lessons learned from two projects: Safe Passage Park and Now Hunters Point.
Set in very different neighborhoods, each facing its own sets of challenges, both projects exemplify the power of community voice and creative advocacy in driving change – and how, through working together, we can rethink our cities.


/// photos by ,Alfredo Ramirez and

We’re thrilled to announce that NOW Hunters Point has received a Kenneth Rainin Foundation 2022 Open Space Program grant for “An Intentional Shift” a collaboration with Kristin Damrow Dance Company, Studio O, and the BvHP community.

Planned to unfold over the next 7 months,

“An Intentional Shift” brings closure to our work with NOW Hunters Point, a unique community-based activation project that began in 2013.

Through a series of workshops culminating in a final dance performance the piece explores how communities inhabit space, how spaces influence bodies, and how design can bring communities together.

A core initiative of the , the Open Space Program grants support nonprofits to partner with artists to create temporary, place-based public art projects that reflect and engage the diverse communities of San Francisco and Oakland.

/// Photos

Last month we kicked-off the new year with , a campaign to bring our community together in giving trees to our beloved earth. Next week, we’ll start sending out seedlings from .justice , a grassroots organization that empowers people impacted by mass incarceration and other social inequities with the skills and resources to cultivate food sovereignty, economic justice, and community healing.

They have created living-wage green jobs for over 50 people who were formerly incarcerated and built over 550 gardens in the Bay Area, more than 20% of which were completed for free or on a sliding scale.

To learn more and to support their inspiring programs with a contribution, visit plantingjustice.org link in bio.

///Photos by .justice and

We are looking forward to this Thursday's SPUR panel discussion “Creating Streets for People in the Tenderloin”, led by Alison Sant, author of From the Ground Up: Local Efforts to Create Resilient Cities.

The panel will discuss how local leaders and community advocates are transforming Tenderloin streets with new models of neighborhood safety and reclaiming streets for people.

Tickets for the digital discourse can be found at spur.org.

///Photos

Last week we joined Reed Burnham who is leading our exploration of rammed earth as a more sustainable building method. Rammed earth is a cross between adobe, which is all earth, and concrete. Reed’s mock-up highlights the qualities of both that we love: it’s a beautiful and tough cast-in-place material suitable for buildings and other durable built elements.

/// Special thanks to Dave Casella at Nuns Canyon Rock Quarry for providing the locally sourced earth, and to David Arkin from Arkin Tilt Architects who shared his recipe and other helpful advice.

Photos by// Douglas Burnham and Lara Aburamadan

We are pleased to welcome our new employees Lara Aburamadan and Artem Matusevich!

// Lara is an interdisciplinary artist and journalist born in Gaza City, Palestine, now based in California. She tends to embrace the human perspective through visual storytelling; her work explores the social and political narratives, for refugees and marginalized communities. She now serves at ENVELOPEAD as our Media Coordinator.

// Artem has been our longtime projectionist. We are looking forward to his ongoing involvement in the day-to-day management of PROXY and his added expertise in the production of our bi-annual film festival.

We look forward to growing our work and community together.

We are pleased to welcome our new employees Artem Matusevich and Lara Aburamadan!

// Artem has been our longtime projectionist. We are looking forward to his ongoing involvement in the day-to-day management of PROXY and his added expertise in the production of our bi-annual film festival.

// Lara is an interdisciplinary artist and journalist born in Gaza City, Palestine, now based in California. She tends to embrace the human perspective through visual storytelling; her work explores the social and political narratives, for refugees and marginalized communities. She now serves at ENVELOPEAD as our Media Coordinator.

We look forward to growing our work and community together.

Safe Passage Park (SPark) is taking shape in the Tenderloin, transforming the 200 block of Turk 200 block into a community space for all ages!

Envelope updated their business hours.

Today (Saturday, 4/17) is the first Community Build Day for Safe Passage Park, an 1,800-sf community space stretching along the 200 block of Turk Street. The space will provide much needed outdoor recreation areas for local youth as well as room for community movement, arts, and health classes. Come out and support the residents, businesses, and organizations who have come together to realize this welcoming community space for all! For details visit: https://tlcbd.org/spark

It was an honor to be part of "Owning [up to] the Urban" a lecture series presented by UVA School of Architecture and University of Michigan Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning exploring "how designers can carve out new agencies and urban design applications" to address to the social, economic and political challenges of our rapidly growing cities.