In his dual role as Chair of the Alameda County Art Commission and its Public Art Advisory Committee, partner Brian Laczko works with county administratives authorities, government project managers, other architects and designers, and, most of all, artists.
Combining this direct experience with our other project management expertise, Finn-Laczko Architects is increasingly consulting directly with public artists and art commissions in an "artist's architect" capacity, assisting them in the integration and realization of a creative idea into a successful piece of public art within an ever-complex public projects system.
Below are examples of the breadth of our expertise - from planning to urban design, from the bureaucractic to detailed design and execution - in working with variety of artists and arts organizations in the realm of Public Art:
As part of the "Percent-for-Art" component of the Measure DD, the $88 million initiative to rehabilitate the gem at the heart of Oakland, the reconstruction of the 12th Street Bridges provides a pedestrian opportunity to connnect the tidal flows of Lake Merritt to the nearby water of San Francisco Bay
Working with artists Todd Blair and John Rogers, we have advocated and coordinted their public art work proposals into the larger public works bid sets for the bridges and surrounding lands.
Working with Oakland PAAC, we did a survey of potential sites along a four-block stretch of lower Telegraph Ave. The focus on possibilities for both permenant and temporary locations for incorportaing public art, especially media and light art, into a quickly transforming redevelopment district.
While a member of the Public Arts Advisory Commmittee for the ACAC, we used our skills to perform pro-bono consulting with artists under County contract.
Here for examples of this consulting
Working with Ms. Chamberlain, together we developed her basic idea of a large ceiling fixture for a renovated hearing room for County Planning Commission. Starting with her concept of 14-foot diameter steel disk, laser cut with the shape of Alameda County, as well as portraying the distribution of population at the time of its installation.
Ms. Chamberlain's original idea was that the steel disk rotate one revolution per hour. For reasons of expediency and cost, though resolved in detail, her design of steel and slumped glass infill was successfully installed without the rotational component.
Having worked closely with Mr. Marsh on his SF Chinatown Goddess of Democracy project, he asked that we work together on some initial urban design/siting studies for similar memorial in Washington, DC.
As the architect-member of the Steering Committee headed by Tom Marsh, we successfully installed a scaled-down bronze replica of the sculpture erected by students during their 1989 protests in Tianenmen Sqaure, Beijing. It is located in the public park at the heart of SF's Chinatown