Bios Design Collective Cup Canopy

Cup Canopy by Bios

One of the major events of the Architecture in the City Festival is the San Francisco Living Home Tours, which provide an opportunity to see some of the city’s best new examples of modern architecture. Additionally, the architect of each house will be on hand to answer questions about the design, construction and inhabitation of each abode.

The home tour headquarters, at Stable in the Mission district, is hosting a site-specific installation by the Bios Design Collective. Bios, which is comprised of a group of former CCA students, seeks their architectural inspiration in biological forms and processes. Within this conceptual framework, the collective explores ways of producing architecture through parametric modeling and digital fabrication techniques.

The installation is essentially a canopy of plastic cups held aloft by guide wires and connected to each other with plastic clips that were specifically designed and fabricated by laser cutter. Designed to provide shade and to announce Stable’s gallery entrance, the canopy swoops and turns from the entry door of the back patio to the gallery. The tumbling form lends it an appealing air of lightness and movement that makes you wonder if it might float away on the wind.

The main materials – over 2,000 plastic cups – were harvested from the Outside Lands Music Festival, representing what the designers call a ‘secondary stage’ of use for a common everyday product. This ethos is in keeping with the Architecture in the City Festival’s theme: Everyday, Design. Yet it also represents a subtle critique on the lifecycle of a ubiquitous product and the throwaway culture that permeates our thinking about said product. If red plastic cups can be transformed into art, what else can we, as designers, create with the detritus of our society?

The Bios canopy was designed and managed by Chris Chalmers, Charles Lee and Jess Austin, who were assisted by Joe Perez-Green, Ben Barragan and Pia Jaqelyn-Malinas.