Who seriously does an architecture competition just out of the goodness of their heart without a boss breathing down their neck? Well, despite having 3 landscape designers drop out of our team of 5, Erik Kramer managed to keep me on deck to submit our crack at the San Francisco 280 Freeway comp. Most of our conceptual work was achieved over a bottle of vino and in the company of our replacement 3: my mother (as she visited SF – she offered practical nuggets), Dr Klaus (came for the dinner, stayed for the good times – he offered spurts of inspirational genius), and Casey (came for the dinner, and I think he left after that….?). Then, picture my sorry mug sitting in a Chicago hotel room, alone, at 3am the night before it was due…

Looks like toffee apple land. Anyway, the competition called for:

… concepts … that are made possible through the replacement of the elevated Highway 280 north of 16th Street with a surface boulevard.

So our design is all about re-use of materials and structure, engaging with vistas,  and re-energising the community… by turning a freeway into a park and other assorted delicious elements. But I’m not so much the architectural lingo frother, so I’m linking you out here if you want to read more.

Basically, my passion lay in giving it a jazzy name… And as I ABSOLUTELY LOVED the recent Star Trek: Into Darkness flick (admittedly unexpected – Klaus had to bribe me to go see it), I had one of the most satisfying moments of self-entertainment when I came up with this one: Tar Trek: Into Parkness.

Just take a moment to mull that one over.

Yep. Pretty good huh. Especially when put next to my other suggestions (“double double soil and rubble”, “grassy promenade deluxe suite”, “crouching rubble, hidden elevator”, “I can’t get no fenestration”, “banana hammock”, “rocky slice of cheesecake”, “duck crossing”), you’d think I had a winner. However with a crude and blatant disregard of my – I’m going to say it – literary genius, it was submitted under “Bay City Stacks”. How vanilla. Albeit appropriate.