Press Releases
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and the San Francisco Planning Department Host the 2016 Market Street Prototyping Festival
09-19-2016. Market Street Prototyping Festival
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA), in partnership with the San Francisco Planning Department, presents the return of the Market Street Prototyping Festival, a three-day festival featuring temporary interactive installations conceived to make Market Street a more engaging and vibrant destination. Read more »
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and the San Francisco Planning Department Announce Selected Projects for 2016 Market Street Prototyping Festival
06-08-2016. Market Street Prototyping Festival
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA), in partnership with the San Francisco Planning Department, announces the selection of 30 prototypes to be on display as part of the 2016 Market Street Prototyping Festival. Read more »
2016 Press Coverage
Artist Surveys Everyday San Franciscans’ Moods, With Surprising Results
11-02-2016. Hoodline
With the election only days away, national news headlines project that the national mood is low. But are San Franciscans really feeling so down? Read more »
SPUR Talk: Market Street Prototyping Festival Debrief
11-01-2016. StreetsBlog SF
This afternoon, the San Francisco Bay Area Planning and Urban Research Association (SPUR) hosted a panel discussion at its Mission Street location that was a debrief for the Market Street Prototyping Festival. Read more »
This pavilion by Kuth Ranieri Architects is made of concrete formwork
11-01-2016. The Architects Newspaper
Kuth Ranieri Architects’ pavilion made out of cardboard Sonotubes (prefabricated tubular formwork for casting concrete), created for this year’s Market Street Prototyping Festival in San Francisco, has earned the firm a People’s Choice award. Read more »
360 degrees of Market Street Prototyping
10-2016. Kiosk Blog
We’ve been checking out the 2016 Market Street Prototyping Festival, a design-driven event that brings prototype public-art installations to San Francisco’s Market Street. Read more » | See 360 video »
Digital Manufacturing Meets Art to Create ‘Strange’ Connections on San Francisco’s Open Streets
10/18/2016. Business Wire
The Market Street Prototyping Festival recently celebrated art and community in one of San Francisco’s most-traversed neighborhoods. Read more »
Urban Change Through Rapid Prototyping
10-09-2016. Brandon Donnelly
The Market Street Prototyping Festival is just finishing up in San Francisco. Read more »
30 scenes of urban innovation at the Market Street Prototyping Festival 2016
10-07-2016. Curbed SF
The idea is to promote promote walking, biking, public transit, and public engagement. Read more »
5 Years After Twitter, Mid-Market Begins to Blossom
10-06-2016. Beyond Chron
October 6 launches the three day Market Street Prototyping Festival featuring 40 art installations to “spur curiosity and connection on Market Street.” Read more »
Interactive Street Art Headed to San Francisco’s Market Street for 2nd Time
10-06-2016. ABC 7 News
The street that’s at the center of San Francisco will be looking a lot different over the next two days. Read more »
Salesforce, Oracle redesign urban landscape, if only temporarily
10-06-2016. SF Chronicle
Banish thoughts of cool provocations like the Market Street Prototyping Festival, which is worth a plunge if you’re downtown on Friday or Saturday. Read more »
Prototyping Festival Seeks to Make Market Street a More Vibrant & Connected Destination
10-04-2016. SF Station
On October 6-8, Market Street will be transformed for the second consecutive year by more than 30 models, or “prototypes.” Read more »
’27 Steps’ peace pavilion at the Market Street Prototyping Festival
10-01-2016. Marina Times
Artists, architects, designers, and technologists have created an installation to deliver a message of peace through action. The 27 Steps peace pavilion will consist of two pyramid forms… Read more »
October 6 Through 8: Explore Street Art and Design Along San Francisco’s Market Street with the LightHouse’s New Free Tactile Map
09-29-2016. Lighthouse SF
LightHouse for the Blind has teamed up with a special partner to introduce an accessible element into one of San Francisco’s most intriguing new design-focused city art projects: introducing the Market Street Prototyping Festival Tactile Map. Read more »
101 Small Ways You Can Improve Your City
09-27-2016. Smart Growth Online (Originally in Curbed)
The least you can do to make a big difference where you live Read more »
A sneak peek at the urbanist sidewalk art popping up on Market Street this fall
07-29-2016. SF Gate
Civic wonks and design nerds descended on A.C.T.’s Strand Theater yesterday for what can best be described as a prototype party Read more »
How MIT And San Francisco Are Testing A New Approach To Disaster Prep
07-01-2016. Fast Company
Resilience isn’t just about what happens when disaster strikes. It’s about what happens in the days—and years—before that. Read more »
Prototyping Fair To Return To Market This Fall, With More Experimental Attractions
06-11-2016. Hoodline
Fans of large-scale interactive public art, rejoice: another Market Street Prototyping Festival is on the horizon. Read more »
Transforming a South Side Neighborhood
06-01-2016. Urban Milwaukee
Diverse Clarke Square area makes changes that echo and may influence other efforts nationally. Read more »
Mesa Arts Center, Desert Botanical Garden Win National Endowment for the Arts Grants
05-12-2016. Pheonix New Times
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA) in partnership with the City of San Francisco Planning Department, requests creative proposals for submission in the 2016 Market Street Prototyping Festival. Read more »
YBCA and San Francisco Planning Department Announce 2016 Open Call for Market Street Prototyping Festival
03-07-2016. PR Newswire
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA) in partnership with the City of San Francisco Planning Department, requests creative proposals for submission in the 2016 Market Street Prototyping Festival. Read more »
2015 Press Coverage
Market Street Makeover: Prototyping Festival Breathes New Life into SF’s Urban Corridor
10-06-2015. KQED
This video brings you inside the Market Street Prototyping Festival where even the most troubled areas of Market Street buzzed with energy day and night. See video »
This Public Bench Turns Into A Merry-Go-Round To Connect Strangers On The Street
05-15-2015. Fast Company / Co-Exist
You’re not going to want to stare at your smartphone when you’re riding on this thing. Read more »
Re-Imagining A City: Temporary exhibits take over San Francisco streets
04-17-2015. Inhabitat
San Francisco recently played host to a 3-day explosion of interactive street art and urban designs installed along Market Street, a major boulevard through the city’s downtown. Read more »
Will S.F.’s Market Street Be Redesigned Into a Place for Play?
04-15-2015. Next City
Last Thursday morning, a cohort of visiting government officials, nonprofit founders and advocates for the arts spilled onto San Francisco’s Market Street to discover a hexagonal ping-pong table. Read more »
Musical Traffic Lights, And Other Street Projects That Made San Franciscans Look Up From Their Phones
04-14-2015. Fast Company / Co-Exist
The city’s Market Street Prototyping Festival featured over 50 creative installations that were hard to ignore. Read more »
Control These Robotic Flowers With Your Mind
04-13-2015. Fast Company
Self-proclaimed “robot fan” Ashley Newton has invented a set of gorgeous robotic flowers that you control with your mind. Read more »
Giant Typewriters, Glowing Trees Take Over San Francisco
04-13-2015. CurbedSF
Despite a series of makeovers over the decades meant to turn Market Street into a pedestrian magnet, San Francisco’s main thoroughfare often feels like a place to scurry through, not linger. Read more »
Photos of the Week: April 6-12, 2015
04-13-2015. San Francisco Chronicle
Read more » ( subscription required )
San Francisco’s Musical Traffic Light Pedestrian Orchestra
04-13-2015. GOOD Magazine
If you happened to be on the streets of San Francisco last weekend, particular Market, you were certainly in for a (cardboard) treat. Read more »
Massive Prototyping Fest Turns Market Street into Temporary Urban Playground
04-10-2015. Curbed SF
Despite a series of makeovers over the decades meant to turn Market Street into a pedestrian magnet, SF’s main thoroughfare often feels like a place to scurry through, not linger. Read more »
Walking Through the Prototyping Festival
04-10-2015. SF Gate
Walking to work last Thursday, I came upon participants in the Market Street Prototyping Festival getting set up for the week-end’s activities. In every installation from Van Ness to Fifth Street, my route, the feeling of anticipation/excitement was high. Read more »
藝術原型設計亮相 美化舊金山街道
04-10-2015. NTD Television SF Bay Area
想過在街上與陌生人一起演奏樂器、打一場乒乓球嗎？在舊金山的街道上，你就會發現這些樂事將成為可能。一起來看看吧。 See video »
52 Wacky Art Exhibits You Can Play With Take Over San Francisco’s Market Street For 3 Days
04-09-2015. SF Business Times
Dozens of art exhibitions will flood Market Street starting Thursday as the public prepares to vote on which ones will become a permanent fixture in this rapidly changing San Francisco corridor. Read more »
Painter tells stories behind Golden Gate Park statues
04-09-2015. SF Gate
The florid Minervini paintings are part of a visual arts renaissance on Market Street that has nothing to do with the long-awaited Mid-Market arts district. There are brilliant murals painted by renegades on construction fences and security grates, and this weekend, there will be 52 art installations lining the street to form the Market Street Prototyping Festival. Read more »
San Francisco’s Market Street Festooned with Public Art for 3-Day Fest
04-09-2015. ABC 7 News
A six-sided ping pong table and a giant rocking chair made of grass were among the art installations along San Francisco’s Market Street and it’s all part of a three-day festival that could determine Market Street’s future. Read more »
5 Bay Area events to check out, April 9-12
04-08-2015. SF Gate
Running from the waterfront to the Financial District, through downtown and to the Castro, Market Street is arguably the heart of San Francisco. So how do you make it more vibrant? An open call to artists asking that very question resulted in hundreds of submissions, 50 of which will be created as prototypes and put on display Thursday through Saturday at the Market Street Prototyping Festival. Read more »
Prototyping Festival Set To Take Over Market Street Sidewalks
04-07-2015. Hoodline
There’s never a dull moment on Market Street, and the upcoming Prototyping Festival plans to make San Francisco’s busy pedestrian thoroughfare even more vibrant this Thursday through Saturday. Read more »
3-day outburst of art taking over Market Street
04-07-2015. San Francisco Chronicle
On Thursday morning, 52 elaborate art installations, ranging from a giant kitchen table and chairs to a walk-through kaleidoscope, will be open to interpretation on the double-wide sidewalks of Market Street. On Saturday evening, the exhibition ends, and by Monday morning, it will all be gone without a trace. Read more » ( subscription required )
Prototyping Festival hopes to bring a new look and feel to Market Street
03-31-2015. SF Gate
Though it is essentially the spine of the city, running through San Francisco’s middle section, touching its tourist hubs, shopping meccas, and business centers, Market Street has also historically been kind of disturbing: dirty, dangerous to pedestrians, cyclists, bus riders and drivers alike, drug addled, fecal stained and difficult to navigate. Enter the Market Street Prototyping Festival. Read more »
Thousands to ditch cars, take to sidewalks for Walk to Work Day
03-25-2015. SF Gate
Next week, San Franciscans will take to the streets for their daily commute. The third annual Walk to Work Day (http://walk2workday.org) is April 9, when thousands of people who live or work in the city will celebrate the most healthy and sustainable way to travel at one of the dozen-plus Walk to Work Day “hubs.” Read more »
2014 Press Coverage
Public Works: Bringing New Life to a City’s Lost Waterways
12-30-2014. Torontoist
San Francisco’s Market Street pays tribute to its forgotten waterways with a special art installation. Read more »
One solution to SF’s housing crisis: microhomes
12-5-2014. SF Examiner
As more and more people move to San Francisco hoping to snag a shrinking number of homes, a self-described Bay Area nomad says he has a solution to ease The City’s housing crisis: microhomes. Read more »
Butterflies Set to Take Over Market Street for a Few Days
11-26-2014. CurbedSF
The Western Tiger Swallowtail butterfly is all around us in San Francisco. The butterflies can live their entire lives in the city, which is an ideal habitat thanks to its warm climate and London Plane trees… Read more »
A Hidden San Francisco Creek Will Become Street Art
11-24-2014. Fast Co.Exist
Hayes Creek is long gone, but a San Francisco designer is bringing it back—sort of. Read more »
Meet ProtoHouse, the Tiny Cube Home Popping Up on Market Street Next Year
11-21-2014. CurbedSF
ProtoHouse is one of many innovative projects popping up on the sidewalks of Market Street during April’s three-day Market Street Prototyping Festival. Read more »
San Francisco Streets Painted With Hidden Creeks
11-17-2014. Discovery
When Spanish explorers first mapped San Francisco, what they found would surprise today’s residents. Nearly every valley had its own arroyo, or a creek that only appears when there’s enough rain to fill it. A new art project will place them under the feet of busy commuters, approximating in paint or light where the small waterways used to run. Read more »
Lost San Francisco Creeks to Resurface As Street Art
11-12-2014. CurbedSF
San Francisco used to be covered with creeks and streams, but now only a few remain. Most of the waterways are long gone, having been built over or blocked as the city developed. But for a few days in April, the former Hayes Creek will reappear in an artistic new way. Read more »
San Francisco Is Painting the Streets with Historical Creeks
11-12-2014. CityLab
Though it’s not common knowledge today, there used to be a waterway that burbled through the heart of downtown San Francisco. This was Hayes Creek, a since-culverted gully that stretches under Hayes Valley and just south of City Hall. Read more »
Market Street Project To Remember Forgotten Waterways
11-12-2014. SFist
Before the Wiggle was the bike route of least resistance through some of San Francisco’s hills, it was a flat creek bed that hosted an intermittent stream. But that’s the story of many waterways and seasonal “arroyos” lost to memory that would be recalled by a proposed project of the Market Street Prototyping Festival coming in April. Read more »
Design Teams Try Ideas to Liven Up SF’s Market Street
11-6-2014. ABC 7 News
On Friday afternoon, you might see some brightly colored tables spread out on San Francisco’s Market Street. They’ll be the first signs of a much bigger event happening in a few months. San Francisco is holding a contest to make its most heavily traveled street as innovative as the city itself. Read more »
Fog Installation to Celebrate San Francisco’s Unique Climate
11-5-2014. PSFK
Mark Twain famously mused that the coldest winter he’d experienced was, in fact, a San Francisco summer. The author has done well, then, to make himself unavailable for an upcoming Market Street event, during which an extra bit of human-made fog — on top of whatever cold weather an SF spring also sees fit to bring — will be rolled out. Read more »
San Francisco Plans to Produce More Fog to Build Community Spirit
11-3-2014. CityLab
The city’s planning department has teamed up with the Knight Foundation and the local Yerba Buena Center for the Arts to crowdsource ideas about “improving our famed civic spine and how we use it.” Read more »
Day Around The Bay
11-3-2014. SFist
There’s a bunch of weird, twee stuff at the Market Street Prototyping festival. Read more »
Market Street Getting a Rolling Fog “Maker”
11-3-2014. The Bold Italic
Next April, Market Street will undergo a three-day transformation as part of the Market Street Prototyping Festival, a showcase of weird, captivating, and interactive art projects that highlight not only the relationship between residents, but also the interconnectedness of the different neighborhoods and lifestyles. Read more »
A Sneak Peek at the Urban Interventions Popping Up on Market Street in 2015
10-31-2014. Curbed SF
This week, the teams that will participate in the first-ever Market Street Prototyping Festival were selected by the San Francisco Planning Department and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Read more »
Ideas For Transforming Market Street Identified
10-30-2014. SocketSite
“Chosen based on their “creativity, sense of community, potential to make Market Street a more vibrant public space and ability to identify Market Street as uniquely San Francisco,” the fifty (50) teams which will each receive a $2,000 stipend to prototype their ideas for San Francisco’s Market Street Prototyping Festival have been selected.” Read more »
Festival Could Blanket Downtown SF With Sensors
08-16-2014. re/code
Neil Hrushowy, a progressive urban designer for the city, kicked the meeting off with a nod to the entrepreneurs: “The government can’t solve 21st century problems by itself, and we should stop pretending it can,” he said. “It’s hard for government, which gains power by saying no [through] regulation, to step aside and say yes.” Read more »
San Francisco Is Crowdsourcing Ideas for a New Market Street
09-22-2014. SFWeekly
Maybe this is a step in the right direction for San Francisco: a revitalization effort that doesn’t involve tax breaks for tech companies, or taxpayer money diverted to private developers, or slavish imitations of other cities. Read more »
Area students turn signal boxes into art at Missouri City intersections
07-24-2014. YourFortBendNews
“Our main focus has been, and will be, that this is a platform for the community. We have so much talent here in the city, and this is an excellent and creative platform for citizens to show that off,” City Manager Ed Broussard said. Read more »
Knight Prototype Fund: When Storytelling Meets Civic Action
07-14-2014. PBS / KQED
The Knight Foundation on Wednesday announced the most recent winners of its fund, which looks to support early-stage media ideas in an effort to push them closer to a formal launch. Read more »
Livable cities are becoming a science, but civic engagement is still an art
06-19-2014. KnightBlog
There are signs that community engagement in livable cities is producing an innovative new generation of engaged community leaders and citizens, the foundation of a healthy democracy. Read more »
Autodesk: Help Re-imagine San Francisco by Contributing to the Market Street Prototyping Festival
06-19-2014. In the Fold / Autodesk
Autodesk is supporting the event as technology sponsor by providing world-class design and fabrication tools free of charge to participating teams. Read more »
The future of Market Street is in your hands!
06-18-2014. FashionSchoolDaily / Academy of Art University
The Prototyping Festival invites you to take part in creating the next chapter of San Francisco’s public space. Read more »
San Francisco uses crowdsourcing for a Market Street makeover
05-27-2014. SF Business Times
San Francisco’s Market Street is getting a makeover — and city planners are using crowd sourcing to find a new aesthetic for the busy thoroughfare. Read more »