SHED: A Modern Grange
Located in Healdsburg, California, SHED is a market, café, and community gathering space designed to bring its guests closer to the way food is grown, prepared and shared. I was contracted while the building was under construction and charged with creating installations of cultural resonance.
The owners wanted to anchor the new concept building to the region's long agricultural and manufacturing history and their decades of living and farming in the region.
I conducted ethnographic and archival research and led design and production for an interactive, in-store installation and two promotional films. The retail installation is a 24ft StoryScroll chronicling the agricultural history of the region. The films include a looped, retail-wall projection of historical vignettes and a documentary film short featuring inaugural collaborators.
SHED won the 2014 James Beard Award for best restaurant interior and the 2015 American Architecture Award.
STORY SCROLL
Our custom-built, 24-foot fabric scroll chronicles Sonoma County's history of agriculture, community, retail, and manufacturing for SHED guests and employees. The Story Scroll is mounted on the platform between the first and second floors and echoes the lives, foods, and occupational cultures of the past. Best of all, you can crank the scroll yourself from the landing and read the stories as you go.
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RESEARCH
Months of archival research in local, regional, and national libraries, as well as concentrated work at the Healdsburg Museum and Historical Society, coupled with interviews with current residents, yielded a very rich collection of stories, documents, songs, and images. Our research provided the foundation for the SHED products we created and gave company buyers and event staff robust creative content.
RETAIL WALL VIGNETTES + FILM SHORT
We created SHED: The Moving Picture, a short film with original music, to punctuate the grand opening of SHED. It welcomes customers, contributes to staff orientation, and acknowledges inaugural vendor-producers and community partners. And, following research of over 1,000 archival images, we composed Creative Stills which loop softly on the retail floor's largest open wall, showcasing the characters and changes of this lively Russian River Valley community.
