Moderated by Justin Phillips, Food Writer and Columnist, San Francisco Chronicle

Working at a unique intersection of outdoor and indoor space to lift barriers and create rich cultural experiences, Visual Artist Binta Ayofemi of Ground, Desi Danganan, Executive Director of Kultivate Labs, and Architect Anand Sheth of Studio BBA will discuss the transformation and reuse of long vacant spaces as well as reimagining how buildings meet the street. How can new approaches to overlooked urban sites, lift Black and Brown economies, and highlight food, culture, and neighborhood?

MODERATOR

Justin Phillips, Food Writer and Columnist, San Francisco Chronicle

Justin joined the San Francisco Chronicle in November 2016 as a food writer. He previously served as the City, Industry, and Gaming reporter for the American Press in Lake Charles, Louisiana. He extensively covered the growth and transformation of Southwest Louisiana’s multibillion dollar energy sector. Justin also served as a columnist for the American Press where he won a Louisiana-Mississippi Associated Press Media Editors award for his weekly food column. In the past, Justin spent time working in the newsrooms of the Contra Costa Times, the Tri Valley Herald, and the Oakland Tribune. He studied journalism at Louisiana Tech University.

SPEAKERS

Binta Ayofemi, Visual Artist

Binta creates urban forms inspired by Black abstraction, transforming overlooked urban spaces through sound, movement, and material. Binta works in Oakland and San Francisco inspired by everyday utopian forms. Binta’s first building as artwork, COMMONS opens in Oakland in 2020. Binta shifts accepted narratives around urban voids, seemingly abandoned structures, and economic displacement, while limning notions of fugitivity, freedom, duration, and Black radical imagination. Binta’s new activations of vacant lots and vacant buildings, from an urban meadow to a vacant building, suggest a state of mutability. Her artworks are experiences that mingle the senses, crossing the material and the immaterial. Her newest work includes colored mirrors for urban landscape. Binta’s work has been presented by the Kadist Art Foundation, SFMOMA, Southern Exposure, The Carpenter Center, The Wattis Institute, the Asian Art Museum, The New Museum’s New Inc, dOCUMENTA, the British Arts Council, and Chicago’s Rebuild Foundation.

Desi Danganan, Executive Director, Kultivate Labs

Desi is a serial entrepreneur. As the managing director of Plinth Agency, he has successfully grown businesses through strategic branding, design, and crowdfunding. He brings 15+ years of experience creating, funding, and branding unique business concepts which span the food, music, technology spaces. His past achievements include the Summit SF, one of the nation’s first café and co-working spaces and the Poleng Lounge, a Filipino restaurant and nightclub which was named one of SF’s Top 10 New Restaurants in 2006. As a dedicated community advocate, Desi is currently leading the strategy for the economic development of SOMA Pilipinas, a newly designated cultural district in San Francisco. He believes community consciousness and culture are the keys to developing today’s thriving commercial ecosystems.

Anand Sheth, AIA, IIDA, NOMA, Design Director, Associate, Studio BBA

Anand approaches architecture from a strong conceptual and artful point of view. He has the invaluable ability to quickly distill and interpret a clear, strong aesthetic vision from a client’s program, and to create a sense of discovery through design. Through gorgeous hand sketches, architectural drawings and diagrammatic design representations, he instinctively knows the best way to communicate design information and concepts so that his clients and project teams find purpose and direction without diverting from the project goals. Approaching architecture as an art practice was intentional from the start of Anand’s path, moving to San Francisco at a young age and committing to architectural education within an art school so that he would be steeped in that frame of mind. He brings this artistic perspective to his design work on highly crafted interiors of all project types, as well as to the studio’s internal process of researching and assembling inspiration at the inception of each project.

About the Architecture + the City Festival (September 11-30)

Co-presented by AIA San Francisco and the Center for Architecture + Design, the 17th annual Architecture + the City goes virtual and will continue to offer behind-the-scenes programs, walking tours, literature, live presentations and more that provide an excellent opportunity for all communities to experience architecture and design in a myriad of ways throughout the city. Every September, the festival reveals the many facets and layers of San Francisco, and how ­architecture and design play a key role in this ever-changing urban landscape.

For more info visit www.archandcity.org