2022 Pioneers in Design – Walter Hood

Pioneers in Design is the IIDA Northern California Annual Chapter Event which honors a pioneer from the design community who demonstrates innovation and inspiration. Our honorees have led novel efforts or breakthroughs in practice or implementation and brought new understanding of the impact design can have on people from the individual to entire communities.

Questions:

Please contact info@iidanc.org

Date

Wednesday, July 27 2022

Time

6:00-9:00pm

Location

SF Jazz
201 Franklin St
San Francisco, CA 94102

Organizer

IIDA Northern California

How Architecture/Landscape Architecture and Memory & Meaning Intersect in the American Landscape

Through his work, Walter Hood explores how to understand our shared and individual practices through the lens of a ‘cultural practice.’ Our built landscape transmits history whether we intend it or not. Designers can develop intentionality and craft mnemonic designs that reveal histories of place that can promote acceptance and resilience. As Hood states in Black Landscapes Matter; “we need a prophetic aesthetic to counter the colonial malaise so that we can remember and develop a new future.” Hood discusses conscious hybrid landscapes, doubling and other strategies to achieve this end.

2022 Pioneer Honoree

Walter Hood
Creative Director & Founder
Hood Design Studio
Oakland, California

Hood Design Studio is a cultural practice, working across art, fabrication, design, landscape, research and urbanism. He is also the David K. Woo Chair and the Professor of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning at the University of California, Berkeley. He lectures on and exhibits professional and theoretical projects nationally and internationally. He was recently the Spring 2020 Diana Balmori Visiting Professor at the Yale School of Architecture and the Spring 2021 Senior Loeb Scholar for the Harvard GSD Loeb Fellowship.

Walter creates urban spaces that resonate with and enrich the lives of current residents while also honoring communal histories. Hood melds architectural and fine arts expertise with a commitment to designing ecologically sustainable public spaces that empower marginalized communities. Over his career, he has transformed traffic islands, vacant lots, and freeway underpasses into spaces that challenge the legacy of neglect of urban neighborhoods. Through engagement with community members, he teases out the natural and social histories as well as current residents’ shared patterns and practices of use and aspirations for a place.

The Studio’s award-winning work has been featured in publications including Dwell, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Fast Company, Architectural Digest, Places Journal, and Landscape Architecture Magazine. Walter Hood is also a recipient of the 2017 Academy of Arts and Letters Architecture Award, 2019 Knight Foundation Public Spaces Fellowship, 2019 MacArthur Fellowship, 2019 Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize and most recently, the 2021 United States Artists Fellowship. Hood is also a Fellow at the American Academy of Rome and one of the 2021 elected members of the Academy of Arts and Letters. Hood Design Studio has also been featured in the 2021 AD 100 list.

2022 Distinguished Achievement Award

Kriss Kokoefer
President & Owner
Kay Chesterfield

Kriss Kokoefer has a passion for meaningful and achievable sustainability in workplace design. As the fourth owner of Kay Chesterfield Inc., in Oakland, CA, she is dedicated to advancing the company’s role as a national supplier of contract re-upholstery to all sectors of the commercial furniture industry. This includes corporate, healthcare, the arts, and higher education. She is proud to work with Nokia, Kirkland & Ellis, San Francisco Ballet, Oakland Museum of California, Google, St Regis Hotels, Kaiser Permanente, Salesforce, LinkedIn, University of San Francisco, and San Francisco International Airport. Kokoefer has more than 20 years of expertise in contract furniture, including roles at dealerships, manufacturers, and having her own rep group. She recently had Kay Chesterfield certified as a B Corp and a Woman-Owned-Business. Kay Chesterfield Inc. was founded in 1921 and was formerly recognized in 2018 by the City of Oakland as one of the City’s Innovative Small Business Entrepreneurs. Next step, Kriss is moving the company closer to the Bay Bridge in West Oakland. Her 10 years of dreaming of a modern, sustainable, and inviting workshop is finally happening.