If you’re in San Francisco this week, join us for a few noteworthy upcoming events:

Not Business As Usual

“Not Business As Usual,” looks at how creative firms encourage innovation by advocating for creative experiences beyond the working environment. It’s easy to work more than 40 hours a week, but research suggests that this is neither sane nor productive for the individual or the business. Thus, creative professionals are experimenting with new ways to encourage exploration and idea generation — often by telling employees to get outside, wander, and take a break from the routine.

Risky? Yes. Worth the payoff? Several firms are starting to think so. In an upcoming event with SPUR in San Francisco, architects and landscape architects will investigate the value of experiences outside of daily office- and client-based routines. Amirah Shahid (SWA Group), Mark Schatz (Field Paoli); Nicholas May (Tom Eliot Fisch) and Lilian Asperin-Clyman (NBBJ) will share an experience that helped “shape their outlook, their designs, and even their careers.” Find out more about this event or join in while it’s happening Tuesday, May 1, 2012.

Processcapes Exhibition

Processcapes, a new exhibition also at SPUR, opens the following day on Wednesday, May 2, 2012. Curated by UC Berkeley’s Judith Stilgenbauer, the exhibition will feature design work by graduate students in Berkeley’s Landscape Architecture program and their explorations of “program-specific ways of combining time, process, ecology, and placemaking — ideas oftentimes considered to be divergent in the urban landscape.” It’s not enough for landscapes to be beautiful or memorable: they need to be performative and useful as well.

Image courtesy of Judith Stilgenbauer and UC Berkeley.