Think Silicon Valley, and tech is often the first association. Yet the stretch of northern California is historically engrained in agriculture and viniculture, its more than 80 vineyards attesting to the latter. No stranger to the area, or to these pages, Virginia San Fratello maintains her practice Rael San Fratello in nearby Oakland. An architect, educator, and author, she also calls herself a “creative technologist” and a “material scientist”; her 3D-printed clay vessels were included in our 2023 “Big Ideas.”
All these elements coalesced in Plaid!, San Fratello’s recent project with colleagues Cody Glen and Mattias Rael for the Art Kiosk, a Redwood City, California, gallery that hosts temporary, thought-provoking installations by Bay Area creatives. Like a fine wine, Plaid! tastefully blended technology, site, and sustainability. The 150-square-foot installation was composed of 300 rods in recycled clear glass. Connected by 3D-printed nodes, the vessels were colored cabernet, zinfandel, and chardonnay, but those are not figurative names; the rods were actually filled with those liquids as well as with others representing the region’s prolific spinach, turmeric, and oyster-mushroom crops, made with water and food coloring. Woven together, they formed a 12-foot-tall, plaidlike structure highlighting how vernacular and repurposed industrial materials, when paired with computational design, can create luminous spatial assemblies. rael-sanfratello.com
