SLOW FOOD NATION
Slow Food Nation ’08 was a three-day event in Fort Mason, San Francisco, attended by 85,000 people from across the county. The Fish Pavilion was a temporary exhibit built largely from repurposed commercial fishing materials and serving 36,000 ‘tastes’ of local fish prepared by top chefs. This immersive educational environment engaged attendees in the vital relationship between environmental stewardship and food. MFLA partnered with fish purveyor Monterey Fish to forge a unique collaboration between fish monger-food curator and designer-landscape architect.
TIMELINE
2008
STATUS
Temporary
SIZE
3,800 sq. ft
Translucent fabric scrims were suspended to create a series of undulating rooms. These surfaces also served as screens for projecting educational imagery of salmon runs and dramatic black and white x-ray images of sea life from the Smithsonian’s collection.
In developing the space, MFLA approached themes of movement, sequence, and materiality to engage visitors and evoke the visual and textural bounty of coastal waters. The spatial layout distilled the forms of traditional fish traps with their curving organic shapes and broad entries.
The ‘Bella Vista’, an artful composition of seafood supported by crab trap ‘gabbions’ filled with oysters, defined the exhibit core for discourse and dialogue.
A 12’ wide jellyfish-inspired chandelier crafted from translucent panels and fishing weights was suspended overhead. By design, all exhibit material was dispersed to other uses resulting in 100% diversion from the waste stream.
COLLABORATORS
Slow Food
PHOTOGRAPHY
MFLA
