Ruth Asawa`s Origami Fountains Japantown San Francisco 1 Editorial Image

Ruth Asawa was a second generation Japanese American, called Nisei, who was a very famous sculptor. During the 1970`s revitalization of the San Francisco Japantown and Fillmore areas, she did a couple of fountains for the new Buchanan Mall, designed to look like Tokyo`s Ginza District.Her fountains, designed to look like the Japanese art of folding paper, Origami, of flowers, were originally done in steel. When the fountains were left turned off for several years, due to the continued California and San Francisco drought conditions, the fountains were turned off. Unfortunately, this caused the fountains to corrode.So what we now have are exact replicas, in Bronze, also done by Asawa, done in 1999, also as a part of the revitalization of the area.As seen 14 December 2022.