Presidio Habitats: Artists and architects design homes for the ‘animal client’
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Chinese artist Ai Weiwei turns Ming Dynasty-style blue-and-white porcelain vessels into nests for the Western Screech Owl.
Jensen Architects of San Francisco plant bright yellow, modernist, stainless steel chairs in and around a meadow to bring us closer to the blue heron. (They are used for bird-watching and bird-perching.)
L.A. artist/architect Fritz Haeg contributes a hollowed-out, tree-like tower where the California Slender Salamander and the Coast Garter Anake, among other species, can make themselves at home.
These are just a few of the art projects now up in the Presidio park of San Francisco thanks to the nonprofit foundation For-Site. For ‘Presidio Habitats,’ For-Site asked several artists, architects and designers to create homes for species that either populate or once populated the park, what Haeg calls ‘the animal client.’
‘They don’t happen to have money and they don’t happen to have language — so our communication is mediated by wildlife experts,’ Haeg says. ‘But animals are equal partners in our cities.”
The Presidio Trust bills it as the first site-specific art exhibition developed for a national park.
For the full Arts & Book section story, click here. And find a photo gallery here.
-- Jori Finkel
www.twitter.com/jorifinkel