The board of the Golden Gate Bridge, Highway and Transportation District recently voted unanimously to approve a $76 million funding plan for installation of steel-cable nets 20 feet beneath the east and west edges of the bridge that are intended to deter people from leaping to their deaths or catch them if they do.

The net, suspended from posts, will have a slightly upward slope, and will collapse a bit if someone lands in it, making it difficult for the jumper to climb out. The bridge district will deploy a retrieval device to pluck jumpers from the net. But this will not be the first net to span beneath the Golden Gate, which, when it was constructed, was the longest suspension bridge in the world.

When building the Golden Gate Bridge, the lead structural engineer insisted on the installation of a safety net even though its $130,000 cost was deemed exorbitant. Over the four years of its construction, the net saved 19 men, who named themselves the “Halfway to Hell Club.”

The safety measure, however, was not entirely successful — in one case, a catwalk collapsed and a dozen men were plunged into the water, becoming entangled in the net along the way. A few survived, rescued by a crab boat, but ten men died. Today, there’s a plaque on the south western side of the bridge at the entrance to the west sidewalk dedicated to the workers who died that day.

Explore, play, and wonder at gigantic, fantastical, artworks at Inflatable — a new exhibition at the Exploratorium, opening on May 26, 2018. The renowned San Francisco museum is partnering with art, design, and visual culture blog Colossal to present a collection of large-scale, inflatable artworks.

Inflatable features artwork by contemporary artists Amanda Parer, Jason Hackenwerth, Jimmy Kuehnle, Shih Chieh Huang, and an art collective, Pneuhaus. Born out of thin air, these dynamic sculptures include otherworldly organisms, a forest of cushiony columns, an inflatable insect-eye room, and more.

Even visitors familiar with the Exploratorium will see the space in a new way. Museumgoers will be able to enter an inflatable multi-lensed camera obscura that feels like stepping into the compound eye of an insect. Massive crouching inflatable humanoids will fill the building from floor to ceiling, making the West Gallery feel at times like a dollhouse.

And visitors will feel they’ve entered a microscopic biological world thanks to a balloon artwork inspired by organic forms that will be constructed onsite, to deflate almost imperceptibly throughout the summer in a process that gestures toward biological decay.

Visitors of all ages can step inside a tornado, turn upside down in a giant curved mirror, walk on a fog bridge, and explore more than 650 hands-on exhibits.

You’ll find all of this plus unique programs, discussions, and events; a café and restaurant; two stores; and more at Exploratorium’s beautiful San Francisco bayside location on the historic Embarcadero.

• Daily Summer Hours (May 26–September 3), 10am–5pm (All ages)
• Thursday Evenings, 6–10pm (Ages 18+)
• Friday Evening Extended Hours (July 6–August 31), 10am–9pm (All Ages)

Located between the historic Ferry Building and Pier 39, the Exploratorium is a short distance from San Francisco’s top attractions: Fisherman’s Wharf, the Alcatraz ferries, and Chinatown. Entry to Inflatable is included with museum admission.

Learn more at exploratorium.edu/inflatable.

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This post is sponsored by the Exploratorium in San Francisco

Could tiny prefabricated stackable mobile housing units help solve homelessness in cities like San Francisco, where nearly 7,000 people sleep in the streets every night? Affordable housing has all but disappeared in the Bay Area, pushing thousands of people out and giving many people nowhere to go. While most developers in San Francisco are busy working on building the kinds of expensive condos that exacerbate the problem, one is offering a potential solution in the form of minimalist pods.

Patrick Kennedy and his team at real estate development and rental company Panoramic Interests present the MicroPAD, a self-contained, 160-square-foot mobile home that can stand alone or be stacked into a complex of up to 300 units. Nine-foot ceilings and generous windows flood the interiors with natural light, and each home contains a bed with storage drawers, a modest kitchenette, armoire closet, desk with chair and shelves, and a bathroom with a toilet and shower.

The units can be manufactured in about a week, exceed California seismic code, are made of non-combustible materials and feature engineered soundproofing and 24/7 filtered ventilation. Ultimately, aside from the size, the MicroPAD offers better quality housing than the more conventional apartments for which many of the city’s residents already pay lots of cash. The size and stickability is a response to the eye-watering $1,200-per-square-foot cost of development within the cramped city – it’s quick and easy to build, and doesn’t take up a lot of space.

Using prefab materials shaves 40% off the cost of conventional construction, and the developers note that the units can be built on, or in the airspaces above, unused and underutilized city-owned lots to further cut costs. At a cost of $1,000 per unit per month, the MicroPAD would come in at well under the average $17,353 currently spent per year on each homeless person in other forms of supportive housing. Panoramic Interests has a bunch of proposals on their site showing how and where the units could be stacked into 33-unit or 300-unit buildings.

Clearly, a lot of thought has been put into this proposal, and the company has already produced a number of prototypes to demonstrate exactly how the units work – one is placed outside Kennedy’s office on Ninth and Mission, a neighborhood with a significant population of homeless people. Of course, in a city where anyone who isn’t a tech worker struggles to get by, this concept could and should be scaled up to offer affordable housing for all.

A 500-square-foot condo feels a lot larger when you can manage to fit a bedroom, guest bed, dining area, work space and closet in one tiny room without cluttering every possible surface. To prove that it’s possible, the designers at ICOSA teamed up with Peter Suen to make the most of a very modestly sized residence in San Francisco’s Financial District, creating a clean, contemporary, adaptable solution that translates to other small spaces.

The Domino Loft is the result of testing a wide variety of space-saving features within the limited apartment, which has high ceilings, but only one room to work with aside from the kitchen and bathroom. The designers tried drop-down ceilings, movable walls and other more complex ideas, but ultimately settled on the tried-and-true loft concept as the simplest and most effective way to maximize every inch of available space.

The room-within-a-room features a partially enclosed space topped with a sleeping loft, which is accessible via sliding library ladder from the closet area. Inside, a thin and light bed comes down from the wall, and its bottoms surface acts as a whiteboard when stowed away. There’s a built-in bench next to a fold-down dining table, a standing desk and lots of storage. The closet fits an impressive number of shoes and offers drawers as well as space for hanging garments.

Made of concrete panels, wood slats, metalwork and custom cabinets, the components were fabricated off-site in an Oakland workshop before assembly within the apartment.

Flying over New York City, San Francisco and Las Vegas, this photographer has managed to both capture the essence of each city he shoots from the night sky above while also turning these places into surrealistic, faux-futuristic versions of themselves.

Using a full-body harness to hang out of helicopters, adventurous artist Vincent Laforet went to great lengths and high altitudes (in some cases nearly 10,000 feet) to take pictures of each setting (NYC and LV shown above, SF shown with making-of video below).

Special permission needed to be obtained to use flight paths normally reserved for passing planes. Tilt-shift techniques make the scale more comprehensible and help highlight areas of focus in each shot. What is truly remarkable, though, is how each set both reflects the photographer’s personal style but also very much embodies the character of each distinct location.

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