REBAR

From CT4CT: Creative Tools for Critical Times

REBAR is an interdisciplinary collaborative group of artists, designers and activists based in San Francisco. Rebar’s work ranges broadly in scale, scope and context, and therefore belies discrete categorization. It is, at minimum, situated in the domains of environmental installation, urbanism and absurdity.

1 Projects
2 See Also
3 External Links

Projects

Bushwaffle

Bushwaffle, 2008

REBAR's BushWaffle (2008) is modular inflatable furniture designed to facilitate relaxation and inhabitation of public outdoor spaces.

According to REBAR:

Bushwaffle is modular inflatable street furniture that functions as a personal space-softening device ("PSSD"). Usable as stand-alone art objects and street furniture pieces, Bushwaffle also tessellate into spontaneous aggregations, similar to the human swarms of emergent "urban playground" events. By infusing the physical landscape with brightly-colored inflatable padding, Bushwaffle temporarily softens the rigid psychogeographic contours of the urban situation and enables new forms of unscripted collaboration, improvisational architecture and cultural exchange. Designed to transform ordinary urban spaces into soft places for experimentation and play, Bushwaffle seeks to extend Rebar's examination of the "green" movement to include the concept of "social greening" in the built environment.

See also:

COMMONspace

COMMONspace, 2006-07

REBAR's COMMONspace (2006-2007) is a project that explored, evaluated, and mapped San Francisco's privately-owned public spaces.

According to REBAR:

In an effort to provide more public space downtown, the City of San Francisco has partnered with private developers to create a number of privately-owned public spaces. Some of these spaces are open and inviting - activated by public use. Others are under heavy surveillance, difficult to find, appear private, or are fundamentally inaccessible. To date, these spaces have not been systematically evaluated. The goal of COMMONspace is to evaluate, activate and reclaim these spaces as a critical part of the public realm and as a valuable component of San Francisco's intellectual and artistic commons.

See also:

PARKcycle

PARKcycle, 2007

REBAR's PARKcycle (2007) is a human-powered park on wheels. It was built in collaboration with the kinetic sculptor Reuben Margolin.

According to REBAR:

While its physical dimensions synchronize with the automotive “softscape” of lane stripes and metered stalls, the PARKcycle effectively re-programs the urban hardscape by delivering massive quantities of green open space—up to 4,320 square-foot-minutes of park per stop—thus temporarily reframing the right-of-way as green space, not just a car space. Using a plug-and-play approach, the PARKcycle provides open space benefits to neighborhoods that need it, when they need it, as soon as it is parked.

See also:

PARK(ing) Day

PARK(ing) Day Perth, 2008

REBAR's PARK(ing) Day is an annual and open event in which citizens transform urban street parking spots into temporary public parks. The event was created in 2005 and has grown to become a global event with over 150 public parking spots transformed in 2007. It is co-sponsored by the Trust for Public Land. REBAR has created a PARK(ing) Day Assembly Manual and Streetscape Intervention Toolkit that can be freely downloaded and used.

See also: