James Risberg

As part of his Care Culture project, Toby Shorin dreamed up a philosophical gallery show exhibiting a poetic slice of his work on Centers: social places of healing and community.

Due to our shared love of Christopher Alexander (a major inspiration for the show's content) and my application of his process to my design practice, Toby pulled me in to transform the Baukunst office space into a showcase of precisely the Centers his show was about.

The space was to serve three purposes: a vibin' vessel for the big opening night event, a cozy venue for an intimate dinner party for founders and stewards of Bay Area Centers, and an open gallery for Toby to have meetings and showcase his work for a few weeks.

Working with a largely blank canvas, with very little in way of partitions or lighting of any sort, I set out to create distinct and inviting zones all while organizing around the need to properly showcase and light the large-format posters and reference literature of the exhibit itself.

What we arrived at perfectly suited our needs and created the conditions for just the sort of togetherness guests were reading about on the walls, and felt great enough that our gracious hosts decided to buy the whole setup off of me and keep everything I installed right where it was!