COCA COLA EVENT
San Francisco Pier
San Francisco 1980
While I was a student I designed ‘parties’ for a hotel chain. This project for Coca-Cola vendors revived a dilapidated Pier in San Francisco where I transformed the space.
I published this project as Building Conventions in Real Life Magazine, 1980. Seven years later the Coca-Cola Natural Foods hut was rebuilt across from Pike’s Place Fish Market in Seattle as the temporary home of the Center on Contemporary Art also known as COCA.
Exhibition site before installation
Exhibition site after installation
Most parties focus on food, but rather than asking the attendees to eat their way through the ethnic history of San Francisco, I proposed that the food displays be based on historical research: that moment when Coca-Cola gained hegemony world-wide. Hence, I proposed these naturalistic dioramas in drawing form.
None of these were done, but one of my proposals, the Coca-Cola Natural Foods hut appealed because it solved a real problem—massive amount of garbage, especially Coca-Cola cans, produced here.
China in the 1960’s where a Coca-cola dispenser would be located next to the changing room pagoda
Or a Japanese kitchen, circa 1949, where the Coca-cola dispenser replaced the ice chest.
