MINIInternational #29: San Francisco

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September 18, 2008

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MINIInternational #29: San Francisco

San Francisco is that little bit more curious, colourful, courageous - and sometimes crazier - than other cities. It's a place that embraces new ideas, whether the hippie movement, its prolific digital, technical and web-based innovations (Silicon Valley is, as it were, virtually on the doorstep), or its community initiatives. San Francisco is the green capital of America, moreover, and has become an exciting model for the future of our big cities.

Coit Tower, one of the city's many landmarks.

Creative, stylish, innovative, socially and environmentally aware. A laidback, spectacularly beautiful, hip, little big city, it is also blessed with a benign climate. In its latest issue, MINIInternational magazine turns the spotlight on San Francisco.

Mission District.

"San Francisco has always had a spirit of innovation and a desire to be out there as a radical city," says Jared Blumenfeld, one of the city's highest-profile inhabitants. He heads the Department of the Environment and regularly causes a stir with projects such as the introduction of a ban on the use of plastic bags (which Los Angeles has recently emulated).

It is surprising how different dimensions overlap in San Francisco, how art serves social purposes, how ecology, pleasure and technical innovations go hand in hand. Perhaps it is precisely in this interdisciplinary approach that the real opportunities lie: abandon the ivory tower, open your eyes wide and involve the reality on your doorstep in your work!

There is so much to discover in this West Coast metropolis: eccentric artists like "Chicken John" Rinaldi, or Howard Rheingold, godfather of the virtual web; the largest roof garden in the USA atop the sensational new Academy of Sciences, designed by star architect Renzo Piano, or the Zen Compound disco that generates electricity; Amy Sarabi's avant-garde fashion collection; and the foodie paradise that is the Ferry Plaza market.

Legendary: the now defunct island prison of Alcatraz in San Francisco Bay.

A popular meeting place virtually around the clock: Dolores Park.

Dolores Park is the favourite relaxation spot for San Franciscans.

Click on a picture to launch the image gallery (10 images)

The city's architecture covers the whole spectrum from Eugene Tsui's off-the-wall houses inspired by nature, all the way to the stylish prefabricated Glidehouse by Michelle Kaufmann. On the box you can watch Current TV, the alternative channel founded by Al Gore, while those who prefer the big screen can turn to MobMov and find out which abandoned industrial site is the venue for that evening's guerrilla drive-in cinema show. San Francisco is nothing if not different.