“No place stays special by accident.” - Ed McMahon, Charles E. Fraser Chair on Sustainable Development, Urban Land Institute

About the Opportunity: Maryland’s Eastern Shore has all the ingredients to be a living example of a prosperous, vibrant rural region. Nearly a quarter of the rural lands are protected. Renewed efforts and requirements are in place for a clean Chesapeake Bay. Shifting real estate trends are pushing development toward cities not countryside.

There is an important missing piece: focused attention and support for this rural region’s small towns. These communities historically have served as the economic hubs – as market places, community meet-ups, and population centers. They have, however, taken a battering over the past twenty years from sprawl and uncertainty about their identities and futures.

Toward this challenge, with our town work, the Eastern Shore Land Conservancy (ESLC) is engaged with the places, projects and people working toward sustainability and vibrancy of our region’s towns. After two years and a set of inaugural projects, ESLC’s Center for Towns is poised to strengthen, solidify and focus our town programs toward making the most difference for the region. A new team member will help build our town programs and deliver projects and education work with excellence.

About the Position: ESLC is seeking an energetic, dynamic individual to join our highly skilled team of professionals as Town Programs Manager. Our work focuses both on on-the-ground projects that effect change through town planning and community engagement, and on education, with a focus on sharing tools, technical support, networking, partnerships and funding opportunities our towns seek. Our programs are community driven, with a deep commitment to diversity and public engagement, and belief in the power of community land projects and education to ignite and amplify positive change. Examples of our projects can be found at www.eslc.org.

For a full job description and applicaition process, head over to: http://www.eslc.org/2013/05/eslc-town-programs-manager/

This May through August of 2013, Epicenter in Green River, Utah will be offering 1-3 summer internship(s) for architectural students that will engage with and expand Epicenter’s community development initiatives. After having a chance to visit Green River following the conclusion of our 2012 Conference in Salt Lake City, we can say that this will be a thoroughly engaging experience for any young pioneers wanting some first-hand experience in rural community design. Here's some more information:

"At a traditional internship, architectural students seek experience and a capitalization on the reputation of the firm connecting them to the next job. Alternatively, the  Epicenter provides an experience similar but specific: you will not be a CAD monkey; you will earn much less that you are worth; you will live and breathe your work, ending each day exhausted but invigorated. Our crew lives/works/plays within this small community.

As an Epicenter intern, you are one degree of separation from those actively engaged in community and economic development, small business development, and affordable housing development. The Epicenter network is unique to this place and to this way of operating. This is not to say that work within our nonprofit won’t be valued by traditional firms, it very well may. However, if you are truly pursuing an alternative model of practice, the Epicenter (founded by architectural graduates) stands as a distinctive example.

As a five-person office, you should expect to receive personal attention daily. Beyond learning first-hand how-does-it-work knowledge as project staff on ongoing Epicenter initiatives, we will assist your career development directly by connecting you by  personal reference to our network. Additionally, you will play an integral function within the Epicenter during your time here. Having a vocal and respected role in routine conversations regarding strategies, funding, and staffing is inherent to any Epicenter crew member, regardless of their title.

If you want to see what it takes to instigate and create affordable housing and  participate vigorously in community development, the Epicenter is able to provide that intensive perspective.

Interested? Email Maria for a detailed an outline of what we may begin to expect of this position. More information on Epicenter and Green River: Epicenter’s website & Facebook, City of Green River, and Destination Green River."

To read the full report, head over to: http://www.cooperhewitt.org/publications/design-social-impact?utm_source

For the second half of February we're challenging our members, friends, and colleagues to think about Growing Community Design. Choose from one of the following themes and write a short twitterized blurb (140 characters). We're encouraging fun and quirky responses, so get weird, odd, strange or whatever is clever.

Post it on our Facebook event page or Twitter along with the hashtag #GrowCD. Also, if you have a twitter and don't mind us reposting your ideas, please share your handle @______ so we can give you cred.

THEMES (include as part of your post)
#Innovation
#Education
#Leadership
#Celebration
#Opportunity

Then on March 1st, we'll select the top five, and put it to vote for most creative way to #GrowCD. 

The winner will be announced March 2nd and will receive a copy of "Greening Cities Growing Communities" co-authored by ACD Board member, Jeff Hou. 

Feel free to include links, cite other facebook or twitter members, include images, make statements, ask questions, videos, use more than one # or any other ways you can think to author the post. 

Feel free to post as often as you want and let's talk about how we grow Community Design!

        

Celebrating Twenty-Five Years of Honoring Innovative Urban Placemaking

 
Cambridge, MA – January 30, 2013 – The Bruner Foundation Inc., sponsor of the Rudy Bruner Award for Urban Excellence (RBA), today announced the five finalists for its 2013 award. This year marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of this pioneering, biennial accolade, which seeks to identify exemplary urban places nationwide and celebrate their impact on the economic, social, and physical fabric of our cities. Established in 1987, the award was created by architect and developer Simeon Bruner, founding principal of Bruner/Cott Architects and Planners (Cambridge, MA), in honor of his late father.

 The 2013 RBA finalists are:

Congo Street Initiative - Dallas, TX - submitted by buildingcommunityWORKSHOP

The sustainable rehabilitation of five houses and street infrastructure along with construction of a new home that provided transitional housing, in collaboration with resident families

 

Inspiration Kitchens – Chicago, IL – submitted by Inspiration Corporation

An 80-seat restaurant providing free meals to working poor families and market-rate meals to the public as well as workforce training and placement

 

Louisville Waterfront Park – Louisville, KY – submitted by Louisville Waterfront Development Corporation

An 82-acre urban park developed over more than two decades that reconnects the city with the Ohio River

 

The Steel Yard - Providence, RI – submitted by Klopfer Martin Design Group

The redevelopment of an abandoned, historic steel fabrication facility into a campus for arts education, workforce training, and small-scale manufacturing

 

Via Verde - Bronx, NY – submitted by Jonathan Rose Companies and Phipps Houses

A 222-unit, LEED Gold certified, affordable housing development in the Bronx designed as a model for healthy and sustainable urban living

Entries, which comprise completed projects in urban environments in the forty-eight contiguous states, are evaluated by a selection committee of urban experts based on general criteria focused on people, place, and process. The 2013 selection committee members are:

Mick Cornett - Mayor, Oklahoma City, OK

Ann Coulter - Owner, A. Coulter Consulting, Chattanooga, TN

Walter Hood - Principal, Hood Design, Oakland, CA

Cathy Simon - Design Principal, Perkins+Will, San Francisco, CA

Susan Szenasy - Editor-in-Chief, Metropolis, New York, NY

Jane Werner - Executive Director, Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh (2007 RBA Gold Medal), Pittsburgh, PA

Next month, RBA staff members will begin site visits to each finalist project in preparation for the committee’s selection of the medal winners in May. The medalists will receive cash awards to support their projects: the Gold Medal recipient receives $50,000, and the Silver Medal recipients, $10,000 each. A book chronicling the winning project case studies will be published next year and disseminated to academicians, city planners, and others to benefit urban planning nationwide.

The number of entries for this year’s program swelled 80 percent from the last entry period. “Investment in American cities is growing,” says Simeon Bruner, Founder, Rudy Bruner Award for Urban Excellence. “Collaborative, innovative approaches are essential to addressing the increasingly complex challenges of urban development and ensuring the long-term economic, environmental and social health of our cities. We are proud to highlight these efforts and honor the best of urban placemaking in the country with the Rudy Bruner Award as we have over the past twenty-five years.”

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About Bruner Foundation, Inc.

Established in 1963, Bruner Foundation, Inc. is renowned for its pioneering approach to social issues including health care, education, evaluation, and the built environment. It was the leading force in the 1970s in establishing the position of physician’s assistant, providing a new level of medical care for underserved areas. It was also instrumental in the restoration of Holocaust studies in educational curricula across the nation. In the 1980s, the Foundation established the RBA and also began to focus on the evaluation of non-profit organizations, continuing to support major programs in this arena today. The Bruner Foundation publishes a book profiling RBA recipients at the conclusion of each award cycle. An archive of all submitted entries is maintained at the University at Buffalo, The State University of New York. For more information, visit www.brunerfoundation.org.

debra@pickrelcommunications.com

Our colleagues at Architects/Designers/Planners for Social Responsibility (ADPSR) are currently petitioning the American Institute of Architects to amend its Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct to prohibit the design of spaces for torture and killing. We'd like to share their petition and for those interested in adding their names to the list or simply becoming more informed can do so through the links provided below.

"In the United States, this comprises the design of execution chambers and super-maximum security prisons (“supermax”), which inflict torture through long-term solitary isolation. As people of conscience and as a profession dedicated to improving the built environment for all people, we cannot participate in the design of spaces that violate human life and dignity. Participating in the development of buildings designed for torture and killing is fundamentally incompatible with professional practice that respects standards of decency and human rights. AIA has the opportunity to lead our profession in upholding human rights."

"In 2011, United Nations bodies determined that long-term solitary isolation is a form of torture or cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment prohibited by international law, and made special reference to the United States use of supermax prisons as a violation. All international human rights bodies have also long included abolition of the death penalty as a necessary ultimate step in realizing human rights. AIA‘s code of ethics already includes the statement “Members should uphold human rights in all their professional endeavors,” but this standard is unenforceable without reference to international human rights standards. Adding enforceable language to the AIA Code can help redress the problems caused by buildings that embody human rights violations."

You can join ADPSR’s request to the AIA by signing their petition here and learn more about the issues they are presenting here.

While in Utah for our 2012 Annual Meeting in Salt Lake City, we had the good fortune to meet up with the folks from Epicenter and travel out to Green River to see the great work they are doing. Please share this Fellowship opportunity broadly. It is a fantastic chance to work with a Center that is doing really amazing work in rural Utah.

The Frontier Fellowship gives creative professionals the opportunity to live and work in the town of Green River for four to six weeks. In the context of the frontier, Fellows respond to the rural location with their independent work. However, collaborative work is highly encouraged. While in residence, Fellows ideally spend 50% of their time working on personal projects and 50% of their time contributing to a project initiated by the Epicenter. While in residence, Fellows are given printing privileges, wifi access, use of a bicycle, Family Meal Plan membership, use of tools, and workspace. The Fellowship is currently unpaid. However, there are scholarships available for workshop supplies, travel, and/or living stipend. Fellows’ work is promoted for four-weeks (at minimum) during their Fellowship and added to an online exhibit upon completion. The experience extends long past one’s stay through inclusion in the ever-expanding group of past participants that continue to exchange ideas, information, and opportunities.

The Epicenter facilitates Fellowship opportunities on a continual basis throughout the year, and is currently seeking Fellows in the fields of visual art, community-based art, collaborative art, public art, architecture, design, film, culinary arts, new media, and writing. Applications will be accepted regardless of applicant’s background, focus, or specialty.

Important Dates:
January 4, 2013 – All applications due (in hand)
January 4 – February 1, 2013 – Application reviewed & applicant interviewed
February 1, 2013 – Final notification

The Frontier Fellowship is offered through the Epicenter, a community resource center instigating positive change through design based projects and programs. The Epicenter is located in a historic building in Green River, Utah (pop. 953) and houses an office space, a small basement workshop, outdoor workspace, and five full-time employees. Epicenter is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization.

Apply for the Frontier Fellowship at designonthedottedline.org.
To see examples of past Frontier Fellow’s work visit designonthedottedline.org/fellows.
For more information on Epicenter see ruralandproud.org.

The Philadelphia Center for Architecture is seeking candidates for the position of Director to manage and build the programs and funding for the Center. This is an opportunity to build on the growing role the Center plays in education, programming and leadership about architecture and the planning and development of the Greater Philadelphia community. The Center owns and operates a gallery and meeting facility, it is also home to a retail store, AIA Philadelphia and the Community Design Collaborative. The Director works with the Center’s Board of Directors to expand the impact and build the brand of the Center. Candidates should have an undergraduate degree in business or design discipline and/or 10 years’ experience leading a similar organization. Please send cover letter and resume to Richard Davies, Esq. rdavies@poweltrachtman.com. To download the full position description, click here. To download the Center for Architecture's strategic plan, click here. To download the Center for Architecture's program summary, click here.

Are you in the process of preparing for Sandy's arrival on the East Coast? The Center for Urban Pedagogy's "Are you Ready for a Ruckus?" is featured on GOOD and features great tool for individuals and community organization to address the implications of preparing for and responding to natural disasters.

"After last year's Hurricane Irene and a rare New York City earthquake, the Center for Urban Pedagogy (CUP) and students in College Now - a program designed to prepare New York's public high school students for success in college - interviewed insurance mavens, city and federal disaster planners, and environmental justice organizations to understand what disaster planning looks like on a community level."

Read More at: http://www.good.is/posts/ready-for-hurricane-sandy-an-illustrated-guide-to-preparing-for-disaster/