wish...

...i could have made it to this:

Tonight at APA: Involving Kids in Planning

Madison Street Corridor Revitalization
Involving high school students in planning for their neighborhoods brings new perspectives to the table and opens students' eyes to new possibilities in their communities. Tonight at APA, Doug Hammel, AICP, and Joseph Kearney will talk about Leading Community Change, a partnership between the Chicago Public Schools , Bethel New Life, and the Chaddick Institute of Metropolitan Development at DePaul University that has involved high school students in a plan to revitalize West Madison Street in the West Garfield Park neighborhood. CM | 1.0

Doug Hammel, AICP, is an associate with Camiros Ltd., a Chicago-based planning, urban design and landscape architecture firm. He has managed the development of several plans that focus on neighborhood revitalization, downtown planning, corridor redevelopment, design and development controls, and community involvement.

Joseph Kearney is program manager for the Chaddick Institute for Metropolitan Development at DePaul University , where he works to support ongoing initiatives related to planning and land use.

I also wish I would have heard about it through work since I work at CPS and it involved CPS students?!? AND I work to provide students with design based education!?! You would think there would be better communication between units etc. but alas...i think I will contact these folks on my own to find out more info. Sounds awesome and literally right up the street from where I live. kudos!

Design for the Contraband and Freedmens Cemetery Memorial

Contraband was a term used during the American Civil War referring to a black slave who escaped to or was brought within the Union lines whil Freedmen was a term used referring to an individual who had been freed from slavery.

For the next month and a half we're going to be working on submitting something for this:

The Contrabands and Freedmen’s Cemetery Memorial Design Competition seeks design
submissions from architects, landscape architects, artists, students, and other interested individuals to memorialize and honor those who are buried at Contrabands and Freedmen’s Cemetery in Alexandria, Virginia. The site was established in 1864 as a burial ground for African Americans who fled slavery, seeking a safe haven.

More than 1,800 people were buried there over the five years that the federal government managed the cemetery. After 1869 the cemetery may have been used unofficially by families as a burial ground but was likely not maintained formally. Over the years, the site has been compromised and hundreds of graves lost from a number of actions: the removal of soil from the cemetery for brickmaking; the adjacent development of two major highways; and the construction of a gas station and office building on the sacred site. Most people were unaware that a burial
ground survived under the pavement on the commercial property until historical research began to reveal the presence of the cemetery in 1987. Community interest and archaeological investigations over the last ten years have resulted in an appreciation for the cemetery, the largest historic African American burial
site in the city, and its long forgotten story. While other physical sites that recalled the once-considerable African American presencein Alexandria have been lost, the City of Alexandria acquired the property in 2007 in order to remove the buildings, reclaim the cemetery, and create a memorial.

perhaps i'll be brave enough to post whatever we come up with =).

one more time

i officially am in love with LBBA...spent the day with my teachers today half of which was visiting their office...that is all.

Insecure Spaces

How's this for subversive design? =) Sarah Ross' "Archisuit" consists of an edition of four leisure jogging suits made for specific architectural structures in Los Angeles. The suits include the negative space of the structures and allow a wearer to fit into, or onto, structures designed to deny them.

PUSH/PULL

An "oldie" but goodie from the fall that I meant to post a small but poignant project from the University of Washington design/build challenge. A friend of mine, Andre Taybron was on the team who made it!


"A team of architecture graduate students from the University of Washington won the 2007 Design/Build Challenge in New Orleans for an interactive, tiered structure they designed for a New Orleans park.

Entrants were given 44 hours to find a client in recovering neighborhoods of the city, determine need, propose a design, raise money, build the project and present it to the independent jury.

The UW students designed a small chest of drawers for the Freret Park, a public park in the 13th Ward of New Orleans that needed seating, according to participating student Carl von Rueden.

Called "Push/Pull," tiers slide in and out of a cedar box structure for adjustable seating. A butterfly roof also helps rainwater drain, and waters a magnolia tree, planted to provide shade. Freret Park lost most of its trees due to Hurricane Katrina, according to von Rueden."

"The Revolution will not be Designed"

what do you know. the dead has arisen.

this article was brought to my attention by someone close to me...

the author writes that the kind of progressivism that, "claims the kind of thinking that can save the world from the excesses of capitalism is one and the same as the kind that can increase profits' is naive at best" and she's right. However, she seems to be naive in her limited understanding of design, design thinking and therefore her 'critique of "design thinking" as problematic. What she's missing in her critique is an acknowledgement of the continuum of design and design thinking, as not all design is concerned with budgets and consensus or monetary value...which she thinks is a requisite for "design solutions"

the article reads, "...when it comes to the nastier socioeconomic and environmental corollaries of growth, everything is going to be just fine. No need to reevaluate or contest the road to economic development. When we run into “problems,” we’ll simply innovate our way out of them." This is oversimplication at its worst.

because taking the time to type out my reflections has become a bit cumbersome in 2007 and often thwarted my desire to post, instead of continuing my critique of this article or the phenomenon it represents, i figure i could easily just share a profoundly mutual sentiments of the response (some might say "rant")from the person who shared it with me...

Design continues to be narrowly defined as strictly a scientific,
problem-solving approach which delivers "products" influenced by market
research and user group studies, all in the name of corporate progress
-
that's not the design I'm talking about and interested in.

My vision of design is both inclusive and critical of the posters and
newspapers designed by:

-Emory Douglas, Minister of Culture for the Black Panther Party;

-printed matter produced by tallers in post-revolution Cuba + post-colonial Latin American countries;

-Chicana rasquache aesthetics;

-post-civil rights Black aesthetic debates;

-Africanisms in American architecture and crafts;

-the formation of community design centers in 70s era U.S. Cities;

-participatory design in the Pacific Rim;

-capoeira's berimbau as both musical instrument and stealth weapon in Brazilian
plantations;

-Philip Simmon's iron gates in Charleston, S.C.;

-low-rider bicycle and custom car/toy culture;

-zoot suits and pachuco aesthetics;

-graveyard decorations of the Gullah-Geechee nation;

-hair shows and braiding;

-slavery era quilting as mapmaking...the list can go on and on,

the point is that we can't allow industry to dictate what design is or isn't...we must seize definitions and reorient ourselves and others to minor/subjugated narratives of design history, theory, and practice. In the examples listed above, design is firmly rooted in and responsive to its respective social/political/cultural contexts. Design in these instances is
critical, meaningful, and transformative, and exemplifies bell hooks notion of "counter-hegemonic cultural production".
design, gets sanitized in mainstream theory and history. As
such, in discussions and societal attempts to tackle these issues, we cannot continue to ONLY regurgitate popular notions of design.

the artical sounds sarcastic when it reads "design will emerge as the most powerful corrective force. for the worlds 'messiest' issues". from where i stand, design is not trying to be a mystical cure-all outside of reality...design is integral to our everyday lives (politics included!) and always has been. once we recognize that and the POWER that design has had in shaping some of the greatest progress and worst ills the better off we'll be at incorporating design in solutions in a deep and thoughtful way. some take the view that art is not revolutionary...and i myself have struggled with this idea too when confronted with artists who's work i appreciate aesthetically but seems to be for arts sake with no critical take...but just like there is commercialized art and there is revolutionary art there is commercialized design and revolutionary design. i'm want to be a part of the latter.

pumped about planning

so...i've recently gotten a fire lit under me about planning...for many reasons. i mean, i've known for a long time even as an architecture student that i was less interested in the object i was designing than the physical and social context in which it was going to be integrated. however lately its been becoming urgent for me.

recently ran across this exhibition and programming "just space(s)" about spatial justice organized by ava bromberg (one of many i interviewed for my thesis). not a term that i knew when i was doing my thesis...but there appears to have been writing on the subject for more than 3 decades...and a good way to frame my work if i can ever fully delve back into it...=(. i've got stuff planned to explore+organize in my 'hood, but btwn F/T work + F/T motherhood the mental space is just...i dunno. cramped.i'm starting to think the only way to really do so it to get into a F/T planning program so...we'll see. don't want to just be doing the 'woulda coulda shoulda' thing 4ever. ya know?

in the meantime, i'm pondering submitting to the UCLA journal "critical planning" and perhaps this spatial justice conference in march.

we.shall.see.

"handing out vouchers like halloween candy"

a friend of mine is coming to town next week who's doing research on the "transformation" of public housing...he hipped me to this tour:

ghetto bus tour

i might check it out...