EXCHANGE

10:15am, Friday: The Better to See You With 


Jennifer Goold, Executive Director of The Neighborhood Design Center

Jennifer Goold, Executive Director of The Neighborhood Design Center (Baltimore, MD), will present an investigation of the physical characteristics of two adjacent Baltimore Neighborhoods under the framework of Tobias Armborst, Daniel D'Oca, and Georgeen Theodore’s The Arsenal of Exclusion/Inclusion: 101 Things that Open and Close the City (New York: Actar, 2017). Goold is working with seminar students at Morgan State’s Graduate School of Architecture to document the built environment in Bolton Hill and Upton communities, the government and business structures that created segregated neighborhoods in Baltimore City (which has a majority black population), and the visible features that signal welcome or exclusion to people crossing neighborhood lines or enabling or suppressing cultural or economic practices. Additionally, the project will investigate how people’s resistance the inclusionary or exclusionary tactics are visible within the built environment. The project looks at data from the census and the Baltimore Neighborhood Indicator Alliance, secondary sources on the great migration and redlining practices, development history via Sanborn Maps and Baltimore’s Open Data, photographs, and maps inclusionary, exclusionary, and resistance tactics. In this preliminary phase of work we will define and document some of the most prevalent tactics in the two Baltimore neighborhoods. The presentation will share how a deep reading of the built environment can support the practice of public interest design.

About Jennifer: Jennifer Goold joined the Neighborhood Design Center in 2012 after more than a decade of work in cultural resources management, historic preservation, development and planning. At NDC, she directs all aspects of the center’s operations including staff, programs, outreach, and fundraising. Through the work, Jen also shares her passion for people who care deeply for the places where they live and for the role of public space in making great cities. A Baltimore resident since 1993, she has been involved in many of the city’s largest historic building rehabilitations, including the American Can Company, Silo Point and Tide Point. She received a BS in Interior Design from Indiana University and an MS in Historic Preservation from Columbia University.

 

11:00am, Friday: bcHEROES 


Lisa Neergaard, Senior Policy Associate at bcWORKSHOP

In 2014, buildingcommunityWORKSHOP [bc] wanted a fun way to celebrate local advocates and neighborhood leaders that exemplified the spirit of Martin Luther King, Jr and MLK Day of Service. Inspired by sports cards, we created bcHEROES to be a tangible, fun, and collectable packs of cards that recognize and honor local heroes, highlight the efforts of under-recognized local heroes, and promote individuals getting involved with local causes they care about. So often we focus on honoring the heroes of the past; bcHEROES gives us an opportunity to talk about our present day heroes, the ones working to make our communities the places we love. The 1st edition of bcHEROES highlighted 25 Dallas heroes both past and present, distributed across the city on MLK Day. The following year, bcHEROES was expanded to include other geographies in which [bc] works - Houston and the Lower Rio Grande Valley. 2015 also brought the incorporation of community nominated heroes, and creation of at buildingcommunityheroes.org. Through the website individuals can nominate their local hero and learn more about the heroes of prior editions.

About Lisa: Lisa Neergaard is a Senior Policy Associate at buildingcommunityWORKSHOP. Lisa is heading policy and community capacity building initiatives of [bc]. Through a process of informing, [bc] empowers communities to better advocate for the resources their communities need. Lisa brings planning and policy experience to many of [bc] efforts, including our multi-year cross-partner efforts in the Lower Rio Grande Valley; LUCHA [Land Use Colonia Housing Action], Unidos por RGV [United for RGV], and RAPIDO. These efforts bring increased education and resources to low-income communities as they participate in local planning activities, and advocate for greater engagement, equity, and partnership in area decision making. Additionally, Lisa is supporting [bc]’s continual effort to share what they learn through their wide range of work with governmental and non-profit organization to increase the impact of our work, and increased choice for residents. Lisa brings with her to [bc] experience in marketing research, urban design policy with the City Design Studio, most recently design project management with Paramount Theme Parks. She attended the The University of Massachusetts, Boston for BA in American Studies, and later The University of Texas, Arlington for a Master in City and Regional Planning.

 

2:45pm, Friday: Focus Group: Gender Equity in Architecture 


Lizzie MacWillie, Associate Director at bcWORKSHOP

Focus Groups are opportunities for ACD40 attendees to pose questions and solutions for topics relative to the practice and professional development of designers engaged in the public interest design and community-based design fields. This focus group will convene individuals interested in exploring Gender Equity in Architecture and will generate a public report on the discussion.

About Lizzie: Lizzie MacWillie is an Associate Director at buildingcommunityWORKSHOP. Lizzie heads up People Organizing Place (POP), the participatory city shaping initiative of [bc] that positions local stakeholders as experts to proactively shape their neighborhood’s future. Lizzie brings to the team critical design experience managing [bc]’s multi-year creative placemaking initiative, Activating Vacancy, an initiative focused on bringing people together to share food, stories, art, experience, and histories as well as enabling neighbors to talk, to learn, and to organize. This activation leads to cultural, physical, and political changes that can revitalize neighborhoods, improve infrastructure and bring economic benefits to residents. Prior to joining [bc] in her current role, Lizzie was a part of OMA/AMO in Rotterdam, NL, as an editor of “Elements of Architecture” by Rem Koolhaas, a collection of books about 15 basic units of architecture. She received a Master of Architecture in Urban Design and a Master of Design Studies in Art, Design and the Public Domain from Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, and a Bachelor of Architecture from Carnegie Mellon University.

 

3:45pm, Friday: Focus Group: Fellowships & Public Interest Design

 


Elizabeth Jones, Senior Design Manager at bcWORKSHOP

Focus Groups are opportunities for ACD40 attendees to pose questions and solutions for topics relative to the practice and professional development of designers engaged in the public interest design and community-based design fields. This focus group will convene individuals interested in exploring Fellowships & Public Interest Design and will generate a public report on the discussion.

About Elizabeth: Elizabeth Jones is a Senior Design Manager at buildingcommunityWORKSHOP. Elizabeth is in charge of managing [bc]’s impact and project evaluation efforts, as well as heading up the Public Design Impact Initiative (PDII), an initiative to identify community and nonprofit groups with design needs and match them with local design professionals. Elizabeth’s architecture and social science background brings both a design and systems perspective to community-based work. Her analysis works toward communicating the efficacy of using design to address social, economic, and environmental issues to the design profession; and its value to the general public. Elizabeth received her Bachelors of Architecture from the University of Arkansas E Fay Jones School of Architecture in 2010. She started at [bc] as a bcFELLOW in November of 2010 and accepted her current position at [bc] in 2011 after completing her VISTA service.

 

10:30am, Saturday: Sustainable Design and Perception


Cole Cappel, LEED AP, ND, Planner and Landscape Designer

Mapping, design, and visualization programs have been increasingly helpful to create project proposals and infographics depicting design advantages and large scale benefits. Progressive designs can be best explained through the perspective of the future user in visual displays understandable by all. In this presentation, Cole reflects on his experience earning his LEED AP Neighborhood Development credential, working on certification requirements for LEED ND and LEED BD+C projects, as well as working with researchers at University of Texas at Dallas to analyze developer and city official awareness and interest of sustainable design.

About Cole: Cole currently works for Westwood Professional Services as a Planner and Landscape Designer focused on retail, single family, and multifamily projects across North Texas and Central Minnesota. Cole joined Westwood in 2014 bringing urban design and land planning background with experience in the non-profit and public sectors. Cole is passionate about finding ways to better integrate sustainable design, technology, and place making in the built environment, and has earned industry distinction and been published for his design concepts and work with community groups. Cole graduated from the University of Texas at Austin, earned the LEED AP Neighborhood Development credential, and is currently working with a University of Texas at Dallas research team on a year-long project exploring industry perspectives on sustainable development.

 

11:00am, Saturday: Positioning Yourself on the Spectrum of Identity, Power, and Privilege


Shalini Agrawal, Director of the Center for Art and Public Life at the California College of the Arts

This workshop begins to build the framework of a community engagement practice that is to be enacted and reflected on regularly. We ask design practitioners to place themselves on a spectrum that identifies various societal privileges and distributions of power. This includes discussion of how practitioners might be perceived as outsiders in communities who have experienced a different social context related to power, privilege, and oppression. The goal is to establish a reference vocabulary for personal introspection while laying the foundation of an ongoing self-reflective practice. This interactive session aims to bring clarity to the challenges of a practitioner’s positionality in a manner that reinforces learning when engaging with communities. (Please note: This session is limited to 20 participants).

About Shalini: Shalini Agrawal is the Director of the Center for Art + Public Life at the California College of the Arts, where she oversees and facilitates mutually beneficial partnerships and programs with community-based organizations and the college. Trained as an architect, Shalini has over 20 years of experience facilitating multi-disciplinary design workshops between participants of all ages, ethnicities, and socio-economic statuses. She is co-founder of the Chicago non-profit Architreasures, where she co-designed the community engagement programming, still core to the organization since 1996. Her professional practice, MAC Studio Landscape Architecture, engages communities in design of their landscape. She is adjunct professor in Interior Design, Individualized, First Year and Visual and Critical Studies.

 

1:15pm, Saturday: University-Based Design Outreach as Intermediary Between Capital Funding and Under-Served Communities


Christopher Koizol, AIA, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Architecture & Director of the Colorado Center for Community Development at the University of Colorado, Denver

This presentation will explicitly examine the role of the community design center as an intermediary between large-scale funders and local institutions. Specifically, the presentation utilizes 50 years of outreach work of the University of Colorado Center for Community Development (CCCD) to explore the proposition that community design assistance can bridge the gap between the funding objectives of potential funders, (e.g., State government, philanthropic donors) and communities that have been traditionally “under-served” by the design professions. The paper explores the basis of being underserved, identifying specific populations in urban areas, as well as large extents of rural areas. In the case of CCCD and Colorado, various State and philanthropic “funds” (e.g., Energy Impact Assistance Fund, State Historical Fund, Great Outdoors Colorado, Colorado Creative Industries, Colorado Health Foundation) have made competitive grants for capital projects available to local communities. Over the years CCCD has evolved into an intermediary attempting to assure improved applications for funders and more holistically successful proposals for the communities with whom we work. Our business model has often relied on base funding from the large funders, and matching funds from individual partner communities. The Center’s value proposition is that a poorly conceived grant proposal, no matter how deserving the project idea, causes problems and inefficiencies in implementation, increasing transaction costs to both grantors and grantees. Our program theory is that by investing in front-end design assistance (including programming and preliminary costing) both grantors and grantees benefit. Our current long-term agreement with the Colorado Department of Local Affairs is the principal example. In addition to promoting successful community outcomes, our model also provides a valuable clinical training opportunity for students in our planning, architecture and landscape architecture programs. Three senior professional staff members supervise about 40 part-time, paid student employees each year. Finally, this argument is linked to other research related to the important role of intermediaries in the field of community development. 

 

About Christopher: Chris Koziol, is an Associate Professor of Architecture at the University of Colorado Denver. He directs both the Master of Science in Historic Preservation program and the College’s Colorado Center for Community Development (CCCD). The degree program affords students training in emerging aspects of heritage conservation including advanced documentation, sustainability, and neighborhood conservation. CCCD is a five decade old community design center that has provided technical assistance and advocacy for communities throughout Colorado. While Chris has focused his personal Center projects on urban projects arising from the non-profit and community-based sectors, he also manages a professional and student staff focusing on technical assistance to small and under-served communities across the state. The Center functions as a clinical teaching practice for the College while addressing the planning and design needs of a wide array of partner organizations. He also currently serves on the steering committees of Denver Shared Spaces, an initiative to spur collaboration among non-profits, and Space to Create Colorado, a statewide effort to develop affordable arts-based live/work space in rural communities.

 

2:00pm, Saturday: Community Participation in Healthcare: A Designer’s Inside View of the Link Between Authentic Co-Creation and Health Equity


Samantha Dempsey, Designer at Upstream
Andrea Thomas Brown, Service Designer at Mayo Clinic

Incentivized by pay for performance reimbursement models and whole-person care, there is a push in public healthcare institutions to incorporate community perspectives into planning and prioritization activities. This is illustrated by the formation of community health needs assessments, patient advisory groups, and a burgeoning interest in design thinking. While these efforts take a step towards community design, they can unknowingly reproduce structures of oppression under the banner of community health. Our economic system which privileges profit generation and a culture of consumerism is reflected in the way community participation is controlled. This includes determining when and for what decisions feedback is deemed appropriate, selection of participants, curation of discussion topics, use of data, and ownership of the interpretation and decision-making process. As systems-oriented designers working within a safety net health system’s innovation center, this talk will share opportunities to rethink the practice of community participation within an anchor institution. We explore why the authentic participation of communities is essential to transform the healthcare system into a driver of health equity and the key roles that transparent constraints, historical context, and narrative play in co-creation.

About Samantha: Senior Human Centered Designer, Hennepin County Medical Center’s Upstream Health Innovations
Samantha is a senior human-centered designer at Hennepin County Medical Center’s Upstream Health Innovations. She is committed to co-designing with communities to foster human flourishing, impact health equity, and improve health experiences. Her approach blends human-centered design, systemic design, and visual storytelling to facilitate social impact. Before coming to Upstream, Samantha designed patient experiences at the Mayo Clinic Center for Innovation as a Maharam STEAM Fellow, explored the intersection of health and technology as a senior behavior change & experience designer at Mad*Pow, and served as curator of the Designer's Oath. When she is not designing for health, she enjoys embroidering patterns of bacteria onto household objects. @samanthademps

About Andrea: Andrea Brown is a designer at Hennepin County’s Upstream Health Innovations center in Minneapolis, MN. She is committed to creating social impact through healthcare transformation. She is inspired by technologies that enhance human relationships and care models that build equity, trust, and capacity. A believer that systemic change is possible, Andrea sees the designer’s role to be about amplifying the voices of those under-represented in the current system, hosting conversations between diverse groups, and building upon the efforts of front-line staff and community partners who challenge entrenched power dynamics with kindness, open-mindedness, and collaboration. Andrea holds a master's degree in product design from Pratt Institute and an undergraduate degree from Wesleyan University. Previous to working at UHI, she spent years at Mayo Clinic where her work covered a range of topics from redesigning the prenatal care model, to improving the hospital patient experience, to investigating the value of patient's self-tracking.

 

2:45pm, Saturday: SEED Evaluator and the Intangible Outcomes Protocol


Sue Thering, Program Director at Design Corps

This intensive will introduce two methods for documenting and reporting on the processes and outcomes of Public Interest Design initiatives: the SEED Evaluator and the Intangible Outcomes Protocol. The SEED Evaluator is an online interface that practitioners are using to systematically document the processes and outcomes their work, access peer review, and apply for third-party SEED certification (the USGBC recommends the SEED Evaluator for “Social Equity” credit in the LEED certification). The Intangible Outcomes Protocol is systematic methodology that practitioners are using to document the social outcomes of their work that are not captured by conventional methods of program evaluation and reporting. This intensive will include discussion, live online interaction with the SEED Evaluator, and hands-on practice with the Intangible Outcomes Protocol. Case studies examples will demonstrate how these tools can be efficiently integrated into practice and can effectively communicate social, economic, and environmental results to a broad range of stakeholders.

About Sue: Sue has contributed to partnership projects in urban brownfield neighborhoods, rural “coal country” Appalachia, and remote First Nations reservations. Sue’s practice, research, publications, and teaching focus on documenting the outcomes of transdisciplinary and participatory community planning and design, with particular attention to social outcomes. Sue holds professional degrees in Architecture and Landscape Architecture (BPS Arch, SUNY Buffalo & MLA Cornell) and a research degree in Environmental Science (Ph.D. SUNY-ESF). Prior to joining the Design Corps team, Sue was the Founder and Executive Director of Design Coalition Institute in Madison WI. Prior to that, Sue was the Founder and Director of the Community Design Action-Research Group at the UW-Madison.

 

EXPLORE

10:15am, Friday: Design for Equity: Novel Engagement Strategies for Inclusive Community Building


Allan Co, Architect, Community Engagement Manager, and Rose Fellow at Hudson River Housing
Erin Porter, Architect, Community Engagement Strategiest at Mathes Brierre Architects and Founder of Women's Creative Action Collaborative

Today, it is standard for architecture and development projects to include public facilitation and participatory design as means to build stakeholder and community buy-in. However, these projects and processes can face barriers to authentic inclusion: public forums often draw upon the same, narrow demographic, and can seem exclusionary; social minorities can be underrepresented; participatory design often falls short of community-driven design; and new development might unintentionally perpetuate historically-rooted inequality. How can community engagement go beyond participation and foster authentic, inclusive community-driven development and embed equitable community priorities into projects that celebrate a neighborhood’s whole character? How do we bring residents to “the table” if they have been “left out” historically or feel disenfranchised, unwelcome or cynical? This session discusses best practices in participatory development and community engagement. Advocating for more robust and grassroots community processes that are inclusive and ethical, we discuss novel tactics for participation and multi-tiered strategies of outreach and engagement that can educate and expose designers and builders to issues affecting the marginalized, strengthen project outcomes, and foster equality in space. We then explore and discuss best practices for developing and these strategies outreach and engagement. Nonprofit organizations, community development corporations, and for-profit firms are each uniquely situated to address the challenges of community-driven design, ethical engagement, and equitable development. The way each uses its strengths and resources offers insight that can be leveraged and applied in many contexts. We offer on-the-ground experiences and case studies of our outreach methods and discuss how those experiences shape our projects,, the lessons learned, and what might be transferrable to future work. Following case studies, presenters and participants will work together to create an example engagement strategy based on a real development challenge, utilizing knowledge from the session to envision a community-driven process.

About Allan: Allan Co is an Enterprise Rose Architectural Fellow, working with a partnership between Hudson River Housing in Poughkeepsie, NY and MASS Design Group in Boston, MA.  Allan's work focuses on quality affordable housing and community building as catalysts for equitable economic revitalization.  In this capacity, Allan's work focuses on resident capacity building and fostering local expertise to diversify traditional development projects for socio-economic resilience.  As a fellow, Allan spearheads ongoing efforts to marry community engagement work with building and development, delivering multi-tiered strategies for outreach to embed grassroots efforts and drivers into projects through design on both the building and city scale.  Previous to his fellowship, Allan worked as an architect in the private sector, most recently in New York City.  Allan received his Bachelor of Architecture from Rice University, and a Master of Science in Architecture History and Theory from University of Washington.

About Erin: Erin Porter is a registered architect and community engagement strategist who works to integrate community engagement into formal practice. She pushes to bridge communication between practitioners and clients in order to demystify the design and construction process and to position architects as advocates. Previously, she has served on the board of the National Organization of Minority Architects Louisiana Chapter, advocating for Design Justice through community outreach, fellowship, and youth education. Erin was a founding member of the AIA New Orleans Women in Architecture Committee and part of the team that produced the Design/Forward Symposium in 2013 at Tulane University. Erin holds a Bachelor of Architecture from Rice University and is LEED AP BD+C and SEED certified. Erin currently works for Mathes Brierre Architects in New Orleans.

 

2:00pm, Friday: Essential Aspects of an International Design/Build Project: The Story of Yaxunah Cenote Renovation


Lauren Rochelle, Designer at the Maya Research Program
Grace Lloyd Bascope, Ph.D. Director - Mexico Projects at the Maya Research Program
Iona Bruckner, Designer at the Maya Research Center
Josie Lawler, Plant Specialist at the Maya Research Center

This presentation will explore the essential ingredients of a successful international community design/build project. Using the Yaxunah Cenote Restoration as our case study, we will demonstrate what proved necessary for our success and what, in retrospect, was superfluous. Trust and a strong relationship with the community are well known to be foundations for successful community design. Elements we found equally important: wealth sharing by incorporating paid local labor, adopting an existing power structure to make community design decisions, and using larger workshops to include non-represented groups. This is also a unique opportunity to hear what worked and did not work from a client perspective, as one of the Maya Research Program directors will be present to discuss the current status of the project and speak to the community response.

About Lauren: Lauren Rochell is a LEED BD&C accredited architectural and landscape designer based in Austin, TX placing priority on natural materials and native landscapes. Lauren has participated in design/build projects throughout Latin America. She received her Masters in Architecture from UT Austin in 2009.

 

2:30pm, Friday: The Cedar Crest Gateway: Use Imagery and Infrastructure to Connect and Celebrate Community


Lenny Hughes, RLA Regional Director of Planning and Landscape Architecture and Vice President at Halff Associates, Inc.
W.J. Bud Melton, Special Projects Manager, Halff Associates, Inc.

The Cedar Crest Gateway is about connecting communities, creating an identity and providing safer pedestrian and bicycling opportunities while celebrating the natural quality, culture and history of South Dallas and Oak Cliff. It took a rather basic refurbishing of a bridge across the Trinity River, and instead takes that refurbishing much further, creating a true gateway and the connecting of neighborhoods across the river. In that sense, it is a prime example of recognizing opportunities and taking advantage of them. A unique form of public outreach included an on-site demonstration called the “Better Bridge Event”. This event provided an opportunity for citizens, civic leaders, and business owners to review ideas for the gateway area and provide feedback. The bridge was closed for a day, and amenities and activities were provided, including seating, food trucks and even a jazz musician. The event was open for a day and used the community’s help to envision what the gateway could become. Out of that input, an incredible set of monuments and a river overlook were developed. The combination of monuments was intended to represent an abstracted form of “community” (Oak Cliff and South Dallas) as if “Holding or Passing of the Torch” and a gentle “Handshake” that is slightly etched into the frame of the monument signifying a strong community bond. The monuments are especially attractive at night, with internally lighting that becomes a beacon and welcoming feature. As part of the session, the presenters will engage attendees in using imagery to symbolize the goals and desires of a community. Groups will first identify what their goals are for their community, and then will be challenged to come up with “symbols” that represent those goals. Each group will present to other attendees, further emphasizing the notion of community talking to community.

About Lenny: Mr. Hughes, Vice President and Regional Director of Urban Planning and Design, joined Halff Associates in 1995. Lenny has more than 23 years of experience in urban planning and design, landscape architectural design, active transportation planning and an extensive background in visioning, community planning and public engagement. Lenny has helped shape the growth and development of communities across the state of Texas, leading public outreach, visioning and planning efforts in mainstream markets and minority communities for several citywide and regional projects. Mr. Hughes has also served on the Board of Directors for the Dallas Arboretum, Treasurer for Texas Trails and Active Transportation, participated on discussion and review panels for the City of Dallas Artist Committee of Professional Jurors and also for the City of Frisco’s Artist Panel Jurors and is currently serving his 3rd. term on the Urban Design Peer Review Panel for Major Public Improvement Projects for the City of Dallas.  Mr. Hughes strives to work in a partnership with his clients through excellent communication, ensuring that the design and spaces are customized to meet their needs as each site provides a unique opportunity for a creative but sustainable solution.  In his free time, Lenny enjoys cooking, dancing, hunting & fishing and exploring the outdoors with his son.

About Bud: Special Projects Manager, Halff Associates, Inc. Bud Melton joined Halff in early 2016 after 20+ years as a subconsultant to Halff with Dallas-based Bowman-Melton Associates. His fresh perspectives in active-transportation infrastructure, urban planning and designing for bicycling and walking help bring focus to any project. He engages as a project advisor during project visioning – and from site analysis to agency coordination for all types of pedestrian and bicycle related projects. His variety of experience with active transportation networks helps guide feasibility, alignment, right of way and design typology decisions for bikeway, sidewalk and transit-oriented connections throughout the full range of rural, suburban and urban transects. Bud is on the board of Greater Dallas Planning Council; an Allied member of the American Institute of Architecture Dallas Chapter - and serves on its magazine advisory board; the Association of Pedestrian and Bicycle Professionals; American Planning Association/Texas Chapter of APA; and is an UrbanPlan Volunteer and Associate Member of the Urban Land Institute, and serves on its North Texas area TOD Product Council.

 

4:15pm, Friday: DesignVoice: Engaging Citizen Architects in Community Design


Beau Frail, Michael Hsu Office of Architecture
Kristina Olivent, hatch + ulland owen architects
Shelby Blessing, Page/, AIA Austin DesignVoice

DesignVoice is a committee within AIA Austin comprised of grassroots volunteers that enables design professionals to have a meaningful impact through community-based design activism. DesignVoice has led multiple civic design initiatives and has developed a scalable model of effective community engagement unique to their local AIA Austin chapter. This interactive panel will showcase and outline DesignVoice’s mission, present a framework for implementing grassroots volunteer-led community-based design, and critically examine the following three DesignVoice-initiated projects to share tools for success, as well as lessons learned and suggestions for future improvement. Tiny Victories—A national design competition to design affordable microhomes, in partnership with Community First! Village, a 27-acre master planned community providing permanent housing to the chronically homeless. More than 40 homes resulting from the competition have completed construction, and DesignVoice is beginning the process of post-occupancy evaluation with community residents. HOPE Farmer’s Market mobile farmstand—A local design charrette addressing access to fresh produce in East Austin food deserts, which provided innovative ideas for a mobile, bicyclepowered farmstand prototype. The farmstand has been built and is used primarily as an educational and engagement tool for the Farmer’s Market. Bus Stop Shelter—A local design competition for a bus stop shelter in an underserved area along a major transit route, in partnership with Capital Metro, Austin’s public transit service. The winning design, Mi Jardin, is currently fundraising through a combination of crowdsourcing and corporate alliances to complete construction. These projects will be critically explored to assess effective methods for establishing collaborative partnerships, enabling volunteer empowerment, developing programs, engaging stakeholders, executing fundraising, and measuring impacts. By celebrating the successes and learning from the challenges of these community projects, DesignVoice aims to share lessons that will benefit those engaging in similar work in their own communities, especially those working through grassroots volunteer organizations.

About Beau: Beau Frail, AIA, is a Project Architect at Michael Hsu Office of Architecture. Beau is passionate about social impact design and working with communities to design equitably and inclusively. Beau serves on the Texas Society of Architects’ Board of Directors and on the AIA National Associates Committee as the Regional Associate Director for Texas. He has served as the chair of the DesignVoice committee at AIA Austin, where he helped lead public interest design charrettes for local nonprofits and developed outreach programs with the City of Austin promoting affordable housing. Beau’s civic engagement also includes serving as a Design Commissioner at the City of Austin and as a founding member of the Open Architecture Collaborative Austin chapter. Beau was honored with the 2016 Associates Award from AIA and the 2015 Texas Society of Architects Associate Member of the Year Award. He received his Master of Architecture from the University of Texas at Austin.

About Kristina: Kristina Olivent, AIA was drawn to architecture because of its potential as a medium of social uplift. She earned her Master of Architecture degree at The University of Texas at Austin, and now works as a Project Manager at h+uo architects in Austin. At h+uo, she manages publicly- and privately-funded projects at a wide variety of scales, with an emphasis on affordable housing. When starting a new project, Kristina strives to use architecture as a catalyst for good in the community. Outside of work, she serves as co-chair of the community-outreach component of her local AIA Austin chapter, the DesignVoice committee. Before helping to lead this committee, Kristina volunteered with DesignVoice for four years during which time she helped to initiate and host a design charrette com­petition to create a new place-making bus stop shelter for an underserved Austin neighborhood. Kristina is continually looking for opportunities to accomplish public uplift through art and architecture.

About Shelby: Shelby Blessing, AIA, believes that architecture should act in service of the people who inhabit it, and that great design empowers and strengthens communities. She began a career in architecture after working as an educator, first teaching conversational English at a university in China, then working with teenagers and rescued wildlife as a youth leadership and environmental education program coordinator in New Mexico. Shelby holds a BA in Visual Art (Printmaking) from Whitman College and a Master of Architecture from the University of Texas at Austin, where she participated in the inaugural Public Interest Design program. Shelby currently serves as chair of AIA Austin’s DesignVoice committee, which connects design professionals to local opportunities for community-focused design. She is an Associate and Design Architect at Page, where she has primarily worked on housing and education projects.

 

5:00pm, Friday: KEYNOTE LECTURE


Bryan C. Lee, Jr., Colloqate Design

Bryan is a Designer and Design Justice Advocate. He is the founder/Director of Colloqate Design, a nonprofit multidisciplinary design practice dedicated to expanding community access to design and creating spaces of racial, social and cultural equity. Lee most recently served as the Place + Civic Design Director for the Arts Council of New Orleans and prior to that at the 2014 AIA National Firm of the Year, Eskew+Dumez+Ripple (Architecture) in New Orleans.  

Bryan is the founding organizer of the Design Justice Platform and organized the Design As Protest National day of Action. Additionally, he has led two award winning architecture + design programs for high school students through the Arts Council (local) and the National Organization of Minority Architects (national), respectively. He serves on several boards; most notably as the Design Education Chair National NOMA board and on the National AIA Equity + the Future of Architecture Committee. He was selected as the 2014 NOMA member of the year, 2015 Next City Vanguard Fellow, 2015 International British American Project Fellow. In 2016, Bryan was selected to give a TED Talk and to Keynote at SXSW Eco on Design Justice. 

 

9:00am, Saturday: Just Design for Change


Maria Bergh, co-founder of Just Design

How do we work for community in a divided, contested, and un(der)funded era? Just Design posits that a cooperative model allows a dispersed community of affiliated engineers, designers, and planners the support to take on political projects, the accountability to do it well, and the platform to make it count. Without investors or philanthropists, Just Design is accountable first and foremost to its clients, going above and beyond the standard of care to ensure work is not only sustainable, but anti-oppressive. Member-owners make decisions through consensus, put up capital and take home pay. A global network supports opportunities for emerging and retiring professionals to empower themselves to join the public interest and community design spheres, while educating, supporting, and holding accountable practitioners to advance the field as a whole. This network ensures local work is done by local designers, and the financial returns stay local, too. Just Design member-owners’ projects include design for the Flint water crises, air quality monitoring in Chicago’s manufacturing district, and exploring how to witness to the inequity in permitting projects such as the Dakota Access Pipeline in support of tribal and other leaders. Just Design is, in short, an interdisciplinary, grassroots answer to the vast need for social, economic and environmental design. Just Design would also be willing to participate in the pre-conference session; three members of the co-op leadership are SURJ (showing up for racial justice) organizers, and Just Design was conceived as a vehicle to go further towards opposing oppression than design philanthropy has yet.

About Maria: Everyday people construct community through memories and then stories. These stories bring together, divide, and structure our culture. Just so, a facade protects some, excludes others, and creates an edge for the commons. In ten years of study and practice, Maria finds herself in the walls of architecture, between the profession and the people it serves. These days, she embraces this role as she practices including the excluded. While seeking her Masters of Architecture and Masters of Community Planning from the University of Cincinnati, Maria worked for ZGF, NBBJ, Anderson Architects, Fuller Center Disaster ReBuilders, and the Cincinnati Community Design Center. Upon graduation she became a bcFELLOW at buildingcommunityWORKSHOP, and then helped grow the Dallas office of Boulder Associates Architects, a sustainable healthcare design practice. Maria supports Open Architecture Collaborative, Archeworks and Su Casa Catholic Worker while launching JustDesign, an interdisciplinary design cooperative in the public interest.

 

9:30am, Saturday: Communal Innovation: Planning for the neighborhoods to accommodate knowledge sharing and innovation making


Shima Hamidi, Ph.D. Assistant Professor of Planning, Director of the Institute of Urban Studies, University of Texas at Arlington
Ahoura Zandiatashbar Urban Planning Doctoral Student,Research at the Institute of Urban Studies, University of Texas, Arlington

The discussion of innovation and urban space has been multiscalar, however debates are growing on micro-scale innovative urban ecosystems impacting the future of community design. The innovative urban ecosystem encourages its members to co-innovate through built urban environmental traits. With this respect, innovative behavior in urban space stems from knowledge production and sharing. This presentation is based on the key findings of the research by Dr. Shima Hamidi (Assistant Professor of Planning and Director of the Institute of Urban Studies (IUS)) and Ahoura Zandiatashbar (doctoral student of Urban Planning and IUS researcher) on the built environmental traits of U.S. innovative urban ecosystems.

About Shima: Dr. Hamidi is the urban planning professor at the UT Arlington College of Architecture, Planning, and Public Affairs (CAPPA) where she is also director of Institute of Urban Studies and the executive director of Center for Transportation, Equity, Decisions and Dollars (C-TEDD). She has been involved in several national grants from the U.S. Departments of Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, Transportation Research Board, National Institute of Transportation and Communities, American Association of Retired Persons, National Institutes of Health, Ford Foundation, and Smart Growth America. She has written more than 25 journal articles and a book on transportation, urban design, and walkability, as well as urban form and its quality-of-life impacts. The results of her research were presented in a national press release in partnership with Smart Growth America and have been cited in more than 100 national and regional newspapers and magazines such as The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and CNN Money.

About Ahoura: Ahoura is an urban planning doctoral student in UT Arlington College of Architecture, Planning, and Public Affairs (CAPPA) where he is also an urban studies researcher at the Institute of Urban Studies. He holds a Masters in Architecture and Urbanism from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and a Bachelor in Architecture. While earning his Masters, Ahoura participated in research projects regarding Los Angeles Agriscape, revitalization of Shiraz’s inner city’s urban heritage, and safety assessment in heritage residential neighborhoods. He has presented and published the results of his research activities in local and international academic journals and conferences. During his PhD career, he pursues his research interests in community development and economic growth via knowledge-based urban development initiatives and planning for Innovative Urban Eco-systems. Ahoura is recognized by D-Magazine as a CAPPA start student for his research and academic activities.

 

10:15am, Saturday: Port Towns Ecodistrict


Marita Roos, Program Director, Neighborhood Design Center, Prince George’s County, MD. Landscape Architect for Art Walk
Kelly Fleming, Landscape Architect, Low Impact Development Center, Laurel MD. Project Manager for EcoDistrict Stormwater Master Plan
Nancy J. Meyer, Executive Director, Community Forklift, Edmonton MD, Port Towns Community Development Corporations

Located immediately adjacent to the District of Columbia's eastern boundary, Port Towns is the most historic, ethnically diverse enclave in Prince George’s County. Covering 2.18 square miles, the area has 13,331 residents with a median household income of $42,570 and a demographic makeup of 47% Black, 26% White, 4% Asian and 31% Hispanic.  Port Towns benefits from a shared vision of environmental stewardship within the four local jurisdictions: Bladensburg, Colmar Manor, Cottage City, and Edmonston, as well as from political support from experienced and innovative community-based sustainability organizations. Two significant and interrelated concerns for the low-lying Port Towns are environmental justice and flooding. The Port Towns are bisected by the Anacostia River, an urbanized and degraded watershed with a high concentration of industrial activity. The EcoDistrict vision is to transform industrial space and incubate and accelerate green and sustainable businesses, through a focus on recycling, reuse and repurposing of materials and waste. Port Towns EcoDistrict is notable for the support received from Prince George's County agencies, the four municipalities and non-profit/for-profit partners, led by Community Forklift, an upcycling business and activity hub. Residents and community members are drawn in to the EcoDistrict process through engagement in the Stormwater Master Plan, where participants prioritize issues and identify green infrastructure projects to enhance their quality of life. The Art Walk will invite local artists to create pieces made of found objects and recycled materials, integrated into a new neighborhood park. The presentation for ACD will discuss how the EcoDistrict concept arose from communities challenged by decades of disinvestment, how strengths and areas for new investment are identified, and how community members have begun to see their role in a sustainable future.

About Marita: Marita is a registered landscape architect and planner who writes, designs, plans, builds and teaches with the aim of enlarging our participation in the urban/natural environment. Marita directs program activities at the Neighborhood Design Center’s Prince George’s County office, bringing a perspective from over twenty years of private and public practice. For one of her favorite projects, the Central Delaware River Waterfront Visioning Plan, she worked with dockworkers, residents and environmental advocates to regenerate seven miles of Philadelphia shoreline as a diverse and viable series of places. Marita holds an MSc in biodiversity management from the University of London Imperial College at Wye and an MLA in landscape architecture from the University of Georgia. She lives in Annapolis for the kayaking and osprey-watching.

About Kelly: Kelly is a landscape architect responsible for the sustainability design effort at the Low Impact Development Center, a non-profit organization in Prince George’s County, Maryland that focuses on sustainable stormwater management solutions for urban and developing areas. She has a Master of Landscape Architecture and a Master of Design Studies with a concentration in urbanism and ecology from the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University. She employs critical thinking to the various challenges in implementing green infrastructure and low impact development to combat the environmental and sustainability challenges faced by the region. Her work involves engaging and educating residents about the benefits of green infrastructure and helping them to implement projects in their communities. In addition, she has led landscape design studios in green infrastructure and community design at the University of Maryland and at the Sustainable Futures Program at the Monteverde Institute in Costa Rica.

About Nancy: Nancy J. Meyer is the Chief Operating Officer of Community Forklift and has been a tireless advocate and visionary leader advocating a holistic approach to environmental issues, community development, economic justice and civil rights. She has seamlessly woven these causes together at Community Forklift and throughout the local community. She has taken Community Forklift from a struggling start up to a thriving building materials reuse center with revenues of over $2 million annually, more than 40 employees and the diversion of more than $30 million worth of materials. She is also Chair of the Port Towns Community Development Corporation which is a regional leader in the development of the Port Towns EcoDistrict.

 

10:45am, Saturday: Community Collaboration to Enable Creative Placemaking


Betsy del Monte, FAIA, LEED BD+C, Principal at Transform Global and Instructor at ULI UrbanPlan

Presenting ULI Creative Placemaking Project and Grant Opportunities

A great example of harnessing community input and energy into real results that benefit everyone is creative placemaking. The Urban Land Institute (ULI) has recently awarded grants to projects that support creative placemaking, using arts-based placemaking strategies and programming to strengthen the connection between the built environment and human health. Two are projects that revitalize commercial corridors, and two others plan multi-day workshops for stakeholders, helping them implement projects that promote physical activity and encourage healthy behaviors. All projects were selected from applications made by ULI District Councils (local chapters) in collaboration with community groups, artists, developers and others. Selection was made based on a combination of factors including, among others:

- Focus on a topic at the intersection of creative placemaking and health.
- Partnerships with community groups and/or public agencies are in place.
- Providing both tangible and intangible community benefits, especially for low-income residents
- Involving multiple stakeholders, including artists, community, developers, public and private sector partners.
- Partners have a plan in place to take action on the recommendations, including plans for procuring necessary follow-on funding.
- The project is part of a broader effort to revitalize a disinvested urban or suburban arterial.

This session will include a brief case study of each of the selected grant recipients, as well as an explanation of the selection process. Suggestions for structuring future grant applications will be provided, along with a question and answer period. The Creative Placemaking Project is being undertaken as part of the ULI’s Building Healthy Places Initiative. The project is developing resources about effective creative placemaking strategies that will be distributed to ULI members and partners. Community design leaders can learn from this effort to create initiatives in their own area, or possibly team with a local District Council to submit their ideas for future grant funding from ULI.

About Betsy: Betsy is the Founding Principal of Transform Global, formed to engage communities through collaboration, advocacy and education, while protecting the environment and natural resources. She was formerly a Principal Architect and Director of Sustainability for The Beck Group. Betsy helped create and teaches a Masters in Sustainability and Development at the Lyle School of Engineering of SMU, exploring many aspects of sustainability and resilience. She is a national instructor for ULI’s UrbanPlan exercise, and has served as a juror for ULI’s Hines Competition. She has been a visiting lecturer at University of Texas at Austin, University of Texas at Arlington, Rice University, University of Virginia, Texas A&M, and Boston Architectural College. Betsy has been named a Fellow by the AIA and as a Senior Fellow in the Design Futures Council. Betsy is past President of AIA Dallas, and North Texas Green Building Council. She sits on the boards of North Texas ULI, Dallas Habitat for Humanity, bcWorkshop and The Trinity Commons Foundation. Betsy received her Bachelor of Science degree in architecture from the University of Virginia, and a Master of Architecture degree from Rice University. Her experience includes work at architecture firms in Atlanta and Houston, and with Philip Johnson and John Burgee in New York.

 

11:30am, Saturday: Cities, Land, & Sea: The Landscapes of Community Design


Shannon Arms, Landscape Designer, OLIN, Philadelphia

How do you define community? There are a near infinite number of answers; this is definitely true when you ask Landscape Architects. For landscape architects, communities are large and small, socioeconomically diverse, interspecies, inter-generational, and can include inanimate objects. The connectivity they create is across time, political boundaries, cultural regions, watersheds, and climate zones. To a Landscape Architect community design may include a hipster, an empty nester, a libertarian mayor, a polluted stream, a failing interstate and a partridge in a rare species of pear tree. 
 All designers are facing an unprecedented suite of design challenges due to the globalized economy, ecological systems in crisis as a result of climate change and the contemporary flow of information. These factors are expanding the limits of what defines community; meaning every person and place is embedded in multiple communities. So, what do Landscape Architects have to offer the increasingly complex and interconnected future of community design? Three things; one, an expanded concept about the types of physical and social communities we can design and the benefits of doing so. Second, Landscape Architecture engages tremendous range of scales, from a single raised garden bed to entire water.

About Shannon: Shannon is an educated Architect and Landscape Architect practicing with the Philadelphia-based OLIN Studio. Her formative years included equal time biking suburban Bay Area streets and exploring the hills of Northern California. These experiences cultivated a passion for vibrant people places and deep love for the wild places surrounding them. Shannon believes access to nature is a basic human right and that revealing nature within cities is a critical aspect in creating more equitable, connected and resilient places. So, let's get together, and get outside!

 

1:15pm, Saturday: The Alley Flat Initiative: a green, affordable, infill-housing model


Nicole Joslin, Executive Director, Austin Community Design and Development Center
Marla Torrado, Program Coordinator, Austin Community Design and Development Center

In many ways, Austin is experiencing struggles typical of a rapidly growing urban area: a shortage of housing supply, increasing income disparity, and dramatic transition of historically low-income neighborhoods. Residents experiencing this tension between income stagnation and increasing housing costs are disproportionately vulnerable to housing insecurity, resource neglect, and health and wellness disparities. However, efforts aimed at neighborhood improvement also create a gentrification effect that negatively impacts these existing vulnerable populations. The attractiveness of these centrally located neighborhoods to new higher income households increases housing cost burdens for the remaining low-income residents, who now face higher rents and property taxes. In addition to the impact this has on the household’s mental health, an ever-increasing housing cost burden ultimately leads to displacement of long-term residents. The Alley Flat Initiative works to promote a sustainable neighborhood development model in Austin’s urban areas by increasing the supply of green affordable housing through the development of Accessory Dwelling Units and by overcoming the barriers to building them. Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs) are small, detached homes, often accessed from underutilized alleyways. Alley Flats are green, affordable ADUs developed with the goal of maintaining existing low and moderate-income homeownership and increasing the supply of affordable rental housing in central Austin single-family neighborhoods. The long-term objective of the Alley Flat Initiative is to create an adaptive and self-perpetuating delivery system for sustainable and affordable housing in Austin. Although the basis for the Alley Flat Initiative program grew out of an architectural challenge to design small footprint, affordable, net zero housing, we have faced many other construction, financing, regulatory, and social challenges over our decade of experience putting units on the ground. These challenges have birthed new partnerships to streamline the Alley Flat delivery system, which may provide a model for neighborhood stabilization in other similarly situated cities.

About Nicole: As Executive Director of the Austin Community Design & Development Center, Nicole works to fulfill the Center's mission to support the creation of affordable living opportunities through community-engaged design. Nicole is a licensed Architect with a Master's in Community and Regional Planning and experience in disaster recovery, community engagement, and sustainable community development. Nicole is also part of the EquityCollective, a group of design activists working as accomplices to social justice movements, and serves on the board of Evolve Austin Partners, which champions the Imagine Austin comprehensive plan, crafted by the people of Austin to create a more affordable, mobile, and sustainable city.

About Marla: Marla Torrado is the Program Coordinator at the Austin Community Design and Developing Center, an Austin non profit working towards creating affordable living opportunities through community-engaged design. She is deeply interested in social justice, participatory processes and community engagement, as they relate to planning processes. She holds a Ph.D. in Community and Regional Planning from The University of Texas at Austin, a Master's in Geography and Bachelors in Environmental Science.  

 

2:00pm, Saturday: Reimagine Crowdus


Jessica Burnham, Executive Director, Deep Ellum Foundation
Emily Vanderstraaten, Programming & Marketing Coordinator, Deep Ellum Foundation

Reimagine Crowdus was a 30-day living prototype that explored turning Crowdus Street, a small cross-street in Deep Ellum, into a pedestrian street. We were able to plan, design, and program a non-traditional experiment that allowed us to go from thinking we had a good idea to knowing we had the right idea. Deep Ellum is an entertainment district east of Downtown Dallas that does not have any centrally located public space within its 177-acre boundary. Crowdus Street runs north and south in the core of the area and has been consistently activated for pedestrian uses. Not only is it a natural location for a public gathering space, it has also been the home to the Deep Ellum Outdoor Market since 2010, it was the primary location for a weekend pop-up park that happened in Spring of 2015, and it was the focus of a design competition that called for highly conceptual designs for turning the entire car-centric street into a pedestrian-centric street. Based off of these previous efforts, the Deep Ellum Foundation was able to go a step further to create a fully-functioning prototype of the transformed street for the entire month of September 2016. Our goal was to reimagine the street as an opportunity for public gathering, potential events, and programing that can’t currently happen in the area. We worked directly with groups from the design competition to create a multidisciplinary design team. From February through September we planned, designed, programed, installed, and cleaned up the whole project. We had one street, three blocks, 30 days, and 52 events. Our session will focus on major lessons we learned, both good and bad, as well as the several different ways the project has propelled us to future efforts and ideas.

About Jessica: MFA and Executive Director of the Deep Ellum Foundation. Jessica has a BFA in Communication Design from the Metropolitan State College of Denver and an MFA in Design Research from the University of North Texas. She got her start in community engagement and community-based design through her thesis project that looked at how a community can be built strictly through communication. Her efforts led to creating a business association in a small entertainment district in Dallas called the Lowest Greenville Collective which ultimately led to her current role as Executive Director of the Deep Ellum Foundation. She was also the Designer in Residence for the SMU Masters of Design and Innovation program for the Spring of 2017. Jessica lives in Richardson, Texas and loves exploring new restaurants and any art history museum with her husband and two-year-old son.

About Emily: BBA and Programming & Marketing Coordinator for the Deep Ellum Foundation. Emily graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a BBA in Marketing in 2014. After graduating, Emily went to Aix-en-Provence, France to do marketing and communications at a local winery, Chateau La Coste. She then returned to Dallas to work with the New Business team at The Richards Group helping with business development and brand management. Emily currently is the Programming & Marketing Coordinator at the Deep Ellum Foundation and works on promoting the area as a whole while helping business owners communicate and collaborate. Emily lives in Dallas, Texas dabbles in French, and devotes much of her free time to mentoring young girls in high school.

 

2:30pm, Saturday: Introducing the MicroClinic: Bridging Gaps in Healthcare Delivery


David Lopez AIA, Sr. Healthcare Planner, SmithGroupJJR Dallas Office
Ana Castillo-Deutch, RA, Architect III, SmithGroupJJR Dallas Office
Juan A. Navarro, Architectural Designer, SmithGroupJJR Dallas Office
Elaine Lu, Intern Architect, SmithGroupJJR Dallas Office

The barriers in healthcare delivery exist on multiple layers, and to eliminate these barriers requires a joint effort. As architects, some of these barriers that came to our attention on our healthcare projects includes: Culture - Reaching the appropriate care is especially difficult for patients with limited English proficiency. Not only is it difficult to communicate clearly with their doctors, it is also harder for them to find the best place to get the appropriate care. Transit - Public and private transit both have limitations. Low-income communities and rural communities, where limited medical resources are available, are particularly disadvantaged. Time - The Monday through Friday rigid hours of clinics are pushing patients to more expensive emergency departments and reducing the effective utilization of emergency departments.

Telemedicine makes remote diagnosis and treatment possible by employing telecommunication technologies. Today, as technology advances on exponential levels, telemedicine tools are becoming more and more affordable and accessible. In the MicroClinic project, we are proposing a new type of clinic to target the 3 problems that we have identified and design a point for care that is Affordable, Accessible and Personal. It’s as small as a photo booth and can be located at any location that has internet access, i.e. coffee shops, libraries, schools and etc.. Setting the MicroClinic in an environment that people are familiar with can eliminate their anxiety of seeing a doctor. It is a much more approachable starting point of care. From there, people can be guided to best pathways for further treatment without barriers. Further design details will be shared during the presentation. During design development, we evaluate our design by surveying different types of user groups. This process and the results will also be presented to our audience.

About David: David has 30 years experience as an architect and planner having started his professional career in Dallas, Texas. Over the past fifteen years he has focused on strategic facility planning working directly with healthcare systems of all sizes and academic medical centers serving clients across the United States. Prior to joining SmithGrupJJR, David honed management consulting expertise by working exclusively with hosptial CEOs, COOs, and service line directors on a wide range of unique healthcare projects and planning engagements.

About Ana: Ana has nearly 15 years of experience dedicated to the Healthcare and Higher Education sectors. She has dedicated her career towards the thoughtful implementation of health-care architecture, and has worked together with David Winfrey on healthcare projects for over a decade. Her calm, detailed approach has proven effective in delivering inspiring, high-performance environments on time and on budget.

About Juan: Juan has over 20 years of experience in all facets of project management and delivery including programming and conceptual design, coordination of contract documents, design team consultant selection, bidding and negotiation, construction administration, and project closeout documentation. His experience spans several specialities - healthcare, senior living, public facilities and education. He has managed and been a team member on numerous large-scale multi-phased renovations and expansions including University Hospital, Riverside Community Hospital and Baylor Sammons Cancer Center.

About Elaine: Elaine has an exceptional understanding of complex architectural design for both private and public institutions. Her experience includes design for healthcare, workplace, higher education and campus planning, both domestically and internationally. Elaine has exceptional design experience and is proficient in SketchUp, Revit, Rhino, and AutoCAD. She is fluent in both English and Mandarin.

 

3:15pm, Saturday: Within Formal Cities: Tactical Urbanism in South America


Brian Gaudio, CEO, Module Housing
Abe Drechler, Architectural Intern, Kieran Timberlake

Within Formal Cities is a documentary film on the housing crisis in South America and the innovative ways architects and designers are addressing it. Directors Brian Gaudio and Abe Drechsler traveled to 5 cities in South America where they interviewed over 40 architects, designers, planners, government agencies, and residents to learn about the ways South American cities are providing better housing, infrastructure, and public space in the informal city. The film features some of the top public interest design firms and professionals in the world, including: ELEMENTAL, Mazzanti, Urban Think Tank, Bryan Bell, David Perkes, and more. The film’s purpose is to inform and inspire the next generation of designers, planners, and architects to use their skills to address the global housing crisis. A session schedule would be as follows: a. 5 minute introduction to the film by Directors, b. Film Screening (45 minute run time), c. 15 minute semi-structured Q&A afterwards with moderator and Directors.

About Brian: Brian is Co-Founder and CEO of a housing startup company called Module. Module is creating affordable, adaptable housing solutions for the 21st century. Before moving back to Pittsburgh, Brian was a Fulbright Scholar in the Dominican Republic where he led an urban design research initiative. He has lectured and given presentations for the American Institute of Architects, the Rockefeller Foundation, and numerous universities in the US and abroad. Brian has design experience in both the for-profit and nonprofit world, working in the Blue Sky Department at Walt Disney Imagineering and serving as an architectural intern at the Gulf Coast Community Design Studio. Brian graduated Summa Cum Laude from North Carolina State University with a Bachelor of Architecture where he started a non-profit organization and was a Finalist for the Harry S Truman Scholarship.

About Abe: Abe is currently employed as a designer at KieranTimberlake, an award winning architecture firm based in Philadelphia, PA. The office prides itself on its philosophy of sustainable design, in-depth research and innovative approach to problem solving. Notably, the firm designed the New London Embassy, which will open in 2017. Abe graduated Summa Cum Laude from North Carolina State University with a Bachelor of Architecture in 2014. While in school he took several courses in urban and public interest design. He spent four months studying abroad in the Czech Republic, and has visited and worked on community development projects in Haiti and Honduras. He was previously employed in Austin, Texas, where he worked on affordable housing and community design projects. Abe is a native of Mocksville, North Carolina and loves to talk about the small town’s urban history.

 

ENVISION

10:15am, Friday: Going Coastal: Designing for Ecological Literacy


Eric Leshinsky, Senior Associate Designer, Asakura Robinson
Coleman Coker, Ruth Carter Stevenson Regents Chair in the Art of Architecture; Director, Gulf Coast Design Lab, The University of Texas at Austin, School of Architecture
Karla Klay, Executive Director & Founder, Artist Boat

This session brings together three individuals working on the front lines of climate change and coastal resiliency along the Gulf Coast, and whose diverse work has focused on creating places and programs that nurture a greater ecological awareness within communities. Although working independently, the practices of these presenters have intersected at Galveston’s Coastal Heritage Preserve, a vast conservation area currently being restored and enhanced as a critical habitat area, community open space and a regional educational destination that serves as a microcosm of Galveston Island’s constantly changing ecosystems. The fundamental premise of this presentation is the imperative for designers to leverage design and programming as mechanism for nurturing greater ‘ecological literacy’ within communities increasingly impacted by climate change. Coastal communities are not only places where the impacts of climate change are most visible and visceral, they are also places that accommodate large numbers of visitors, many from places where the impacts of climate change are less dramatic and less understood. For these reasons, coastal places provide a circumstance in which design can play an highly impactful role in how the nuances of landscapes are communicated to broad audiences. The presenters will use project examples both from the Coastal Heritage Preserve and elsewhere along the coast to illustrate how even modest design efforts in sensitive coastal environments can be leveraged to convey more resonant ecological lessons.

About Eric: Eric Leshinsky is a designer, planner, and artist based in Austin, TX, where he leads the Urban Ecology studio for Asakura Robinson, an integrated landscape architecture, planning, and urban design firm. He maintains an active interest in regional ecological issues and often seeks out opportunities for projects that can help reframe the relationship between cities, communities, and their natural landscapes. In the last 10 years, he has designed or planned open space projects at a range of scales from neighborhood parks to regional trail systems, as well as mixed-use developments with integral open space features. Eric has held teaching positions at the University of Houston, George Washington University, Morgan State University, Delaware College of Art and Design, and the University of Maryland. In 2011, he was an Artist in Residence at the University of Houston Mitchell Center for the Arts where he co-founded the regional cultural initiative Shrimp Boat Projects. Eric is the recipient of grants from the Creative Capital Foundation (2012) and the Baltimore Creative Fund (2010). He holds a B.A. in Political Science and Economics from Columbia University and received an M.Arch from the Rice School of Architecture in 2006.

About Coleman: Coker is the Ruth Carter Stevenson Regents Chair in the Art of Architecture at the University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture and director of the Gulf Coast DesignLab, a community outreach program for advanced design students there. Coker holds a Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome and is a Loeb Fellow in Advanced Environmental Studies at Harvard University Graduate School of Design. He has a Master of Fine Arts from the Memphis College of Art and received an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts from there. Coker has taught at numerous schools of architecture. He has held the Fay Jones Chair at the University of Arkansas, the Favrot Chair and Professor of Practice at Tulane University School of Architecture and is past director of the Memphis Center of Architecture, an urban design studio open to schools in the region that focused on a deeper appreciation of local ecologies through the art of building. Coker is a registered architect with forty years of experience in design offices - over thirty years as principal of his own firms. He has lectured extensively at professional forums and has received numerous honors including National AIA Honor awards. Coker’s work has been published widely both at home and internationally.

About Karla: Karla Klay is the founding director of Artist Boat and has over 25 years of experience in arts and environmental education. Artist Boat was incorporated as a 501(c)(3) in 2003 by a board of directors representing artists and scientists from universities, government, and the private sector in Galveston, Harris, and Dallas Counties. Through her leadership 48,000 underserved youth and members of the public have paddled Galveston Bay, restored 53+ acres of coastal habitats, created public art interpreting coastal ecosystems on 50 campuses and the Galveston Seawall, conserved 600 acres of land forming the Coastal Heritage Preserve, and created habitats on eight campuses. Participants are empowered to educate others, trained to conserve or restore natural resources, and changed to protect the biodiversity of our Gulf. Karla Klay holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Southern Methodist University and a Bachelor of Science from Texas A&M University in Marine Biology. She completed the Yale Conservation Finance Course on scholarship in 2011. She completed the Rice University Leadership Institute for Nonprofit Executives in 2013. Karla was selected by the National Audubon Society in 2012 as a national leader receiving the TogetherGreen National Leaders Fellowship Award for her role in conservation on the Gulf coast, and was awarded the Gulf Guardian Award in 2013 by the EPA Gulf of Mexico Program for her contribution to the Gulf of Mexico communities in the field of environmental and place-based learning.

 

2:00pm, Friday: Community Design + City Government: Lessons for Meaningful Partnerships


Ceara O’Leary, Senior Designer & Project Director, Detroit Collaborative Design Center

The City of Detroit is at a moment of transition as it emerges from bankruptcy and swiftly gains capacity in terms of municipal functions. There is a shift occurring as the Planning Department begins to play a more active role shaping the direction of community development and the built environment citywide. This leadership comes on the heels of decades of inadequate city services, and a history of community organizations creatively filling gaps in municipal services. For the last 23 years, the Detroit Collaborative Design Center (DCDC) has served as a resource and partner for Detroit communities, dedicated to creating sustainable spaces through quality design and the collaborative process. As the Planning Department has stepped up to establish a progressive vision and lead design initiatives in Detroit’s neighborhoods under the direction of Maurice Cox, the DCDC has been involved in a handful of key planning initiatives. DCDC often acts as a liaison between the community and the city, contributing to engagement and design efforts. This session will unpack three recent City-led projects in Detroit communities, focusing on tangible lessons for neighborhood engagement, collaborating with city departments, and meaningfully working with Detroit communities toward shared design and planning goals. Featured projects will include: Fitzgerald Revitalization Project – A neighborhood strategy that proposes new public spaces and lowmaintenance landscapes for large numbers of otherwise vacant properties and envisions a “blight free quarter square mile.” Douglass Market Transformation Plan – A neighborhood plan spanning three distinct communities created in pursuit of Choice Neighborhood funding and emphasizing mobility, safety and access to jobs in the food economy. O’Shea Park – A partial deconstruction project that re-envisions a condemned rec center in a previously decommissioned city park as an observation deck overlooking the largest urban solar array.

About Ceara: Ceara is a Senior Designer and Project Director at the Detroit Collaborative Design Center, where she leads collaborative community design and planning projects that support neighborhood revitalization efforts citywide. Ceara joined the DCDC in January 2012 as an Enterprise Rose Architectural Fellow. She sits on the AIA Housing Knowledge Community Advisory Group, just completed a fellowship with the ULI Larsen Center for Leadership, and was recently named a “Top Urban Innovator” by Next City Vanguard. She teaches public interest design and community development courses as an adjunct professor at the University of Detroit Mercy School of Architecture. Previously, Ceara worked as a Community Designer with bcWORKSHOP and a Public Design Intern at the Gulf Coast Community Design Studio in Biloxi, Mississippi. Ceara graduated from the University of California, Berkeley with Masters degrees in Architecture and City & Regional Planning and she earned her undergraduate degree from Brown University.

 

2:30pm, Friday: Park Design Therapy


Allison Hu, Design Strategist, P.S.East
Nicolas Rivard, Design Impresario, PARTs

In the near Eastside of San Antonio, citizen-led park planning offers a model for equitable public space cultivation. This session will explore how a research project led designers to shepherd a community park vision in their own neighborhood, get hired by the City of San Antonio to do the same in other neighborhoods, and take the first steps toward creating the design strategy office, PARTs (Participation Studio).Central to the workshop is a reflection across participants around personal motivations and dispositions that lead one to seek the role of mediator, translator, or impresario, and how to sharpen these skills as a designer. Equally central is a dialogue about community and cultural factors that may encourage the rapid advance of an awareness of the value of inclusive planning processes among public leaders & the development community - how do you recognize these factors and how/when do you act upon them? Activities will explore methods for cultivating long term public space stewardship in resource-scarce neighborhoods, increasing urban/design literacy, and growing volunteer advocacy into paid work. Sprinkled throughout the session, unresolved questions arising from this work will be presented to the audience as prompts for response. The hope is to turn a presentation into a conversation and leverage a room full of community design experts for useful feedback.

About Allison: Allison is a design strategist in San Antonio, TX (PARTS / Public Space East / Overland Partners), working on initiatives that promote cultural understanding, ignite relationships and provide a clearer path to community resources or power. She believes relevance is earned and nurtured, not simply built - a perspective informed by years of work on public spaces spanning exhibits, parks and urban redevelopments. Grounded in ethnography and critical geography, she writes, lectures, and has taught an advanced studio on participatory strategy in the rapidly urbanizing periphery of Buenos Aires with BaSiC Initiative. Allison is a licensed Architect with degrees from UT Austin and MIT SMArchS in Urbanism. Her work has won awards from UT-Austin, AIA Fort Worth, and the Urban Land Institute and has contributed to publications by MIT Press, Taschen, and Penn Press. Her field notes are kept at mixedmammals.com.

About Nicolas: Nicolas Rivard is a designer, activist, and entrepreneur based in San Antonio, Texas who practiced for 5 years before starting Participation Studio, a design strategy office helping organizations increase their impact through design. He is also a co-founder of Public Space East, a non profit advocating for open space improvements throughout San Antonio’s Eastside. Nicolas completed a Global Health Corps Fellowship in Rwanda, was selected as a 2016 NextCity Vanguard, and was recognized as a Salud America! Health hero by the University of Texas Health Science Center. He holds degrees from the University of Texas and Harvard University and is deeply committed to ideas of social justice and design equity. When he's not out exploring a new neighborhood, he's probably kayaking down a river or in the woodshop, kitchen, or garden.

 

4:15pm, Friday: Dealing with Big Systemic Problems


Kevin J. Singh, AIA, LEED AP BD+C, Associate Professor of Architecture, Director, Community Design Activism Center, Louisiana Tech University School of Design

This session will attempt to get attendees to examine a broader picture for their community-based work and projects. The symptoms of systemic problems are everywhere. How do we as community designers begin to address: poverty, infrastructure, obesity, housing, climate change, public education, and social justice/equity for these and other issues? The presenter, trained as an architect and design center leader, will present his initial work at evaluating social, economic, and environmental issues in north Louisiana. These findings then helped to create partnerships (leveraging researchers with city and community leaders) to solve specific problems (big picture to achievable and doable projects). The work resulted in forming the Sustainability Consortium and will be used as a case study during the session. This community-based work is only possible if we go beyond what we perceive and understand as community design and begin to establish partnerships to improve our communities from a larger perspective. We can’t solve any one of these problems, but we can begin to create a ripple that will enable others to help chart a better path forward to improve our communities. The session will help attendees evaluate their city, establish priorities, and develop projects to begin addressing systemic issues in their community.

About Kevin: Kevin is an Associate Professor of Architecture at Louisiana Tech University where since 2006 he has taught 4th year design studios, professional practice courses and has served as Director of the Community Design Activism Center (CDAC). He is currently serving on the Board of Directors of the Association for Community Design (ACD). In 2014, he was named a Building Design + Construction magazine 40 Under 40 honoree. His community design work will be featured in the forthcoming book, Public Interest Design Education Guidebook: Curricula, Strategies, and SEED Academic Case Studies (Abendroth/Bell, 2017). In his free time, Kevin enjoys hiking and biking in locations across the US.

 

9:00am, Saturday: Overcoming Displacement in Denver, CO: How to Mitigate Market Issues through Responsible and Creative Community Beneficial Design

Tim Reinen, Executive Director, Radian Inc.
Megan Yonke, Program Manager, Denver Shared Spaces, Radian Inc.

Data). The need to focus on providing affordable housing to newcomers and long-time residents in the Denver Metro Area but also focusing on rapidly rising costs of commercial real estate space is at the highest its ever been. The market is rapidly shifting throughout Denver which in turn leaves behind underserved communities and local based non-profits. These issues are what we at Radian Inc. are focusing on. The shared economy concept has reached a pinnacle status in the U.S. not because it’s fashionable, but rather it makes logistical sense. Relating to both commercial and residential uses, non-profits and mission-based businesses are constantly looking for tactics to lower operational costs. We are dedicated to solving these issues through creative design to enhance community beneficial spaces. Denver Shared Spaces (DSS) is a program under Radian Inc. that uses shared spaces as a tool to creatively and strategically connect community-oriented businesses, social enterprises, and nonprofits with one another in affordable commercial space to prevent displacement and enhance collective services.  We are finding that community-benefitting organizations are seeking non-traditional spaces such as commercial kitchens, performance spaces, and maker spaces that our group will help connect and create. DSS partners with commercial building owners, developers, non-profits and government entities to create, manage, and improve mission-driven shared spaces in the Denver Metro Area to help reduce displacement, homelessness, and disruption of community fabric. Radian, Inc. advocates for a city in which community engagement and empowerment is centered at the heart of the design and planning process. As a community design center, Radian, Inc. provides guidance for individuals, organizations and neighborhoods to actively participate in creating healthier, sustainable and more equitable communities. Together, the Radian/DSS team provides a wide suite of support to the organizations that provide crucial wrap-around services in our community.

About Tim: Executive Director, Radian. Tim Reinen is the Executive Director of Radian Inc. with over a decade of professional experience in the architecture and design field. He has been involved in programming, design, documentation and construction administration for both private and public sector clients. He has a Masters of Architecture degree from Morgan State University and a Bachelor’s of Science in Landscape Architecture from the University of Connecticut. Tim has concentrated his efforts in the nonprofit field to follow his passion to help under-served communities. His work is framed around inner-city development in transit orientated neighborhoods and surrounding urban corridors to enhance the health, sustainability and quality of our communities.

About Megan: Program Manager, Denver Shared Spaces. Megan Yonke has over ten years of experience supporting partners and clients in business, program, and policy planning and implementation. Through work with a local private real estate developer, Urban Ventures, and a market study provider, ArLand Land Use Economics, she has advanced knowledge of the Denver Metro Area real estate market. At Denver Shared Spaces, she supports community-benefitting organizations, both for- and non- profit, in finding space to thrive and enhance their services. She has a BA in International Relations and Economics from Michigan State University and is working on an MA in Urban Planning at the University of Colorado Denver.

 

9:45am, Saturday: Mentoring the Next Generation of Community Designers


Garrett Jacobs, Executive Director, Open Architecture Collaborative

The Community Design field is relatively nescient but has an incredible amount of interest from emerging professionals. We have plenty of experienced practitioners to share best practices but do we have the collective capacity to support all these well intentioned designers to conduct appropriate community design? Do practitioners have the time to mentor those who wish to engage but don’t necessarily know how? Do we know what skills and knowledge is necessary to ensure a high bar of service for our movement? In this session we will pilot a quick speed mentorship model and then work together to discuss how to ensure a supportive community of practitioners that encourages professional development. We will discuss best practices of mentorship from other fields, the outreach that the Open Architecture Collaborative receives, the role the OAC can play in supporting other designers, and results from our pilot mentorship program currently being run. And of course next steps to building a more connected and supported field for the impactful work.

About Garrett: Garrett’s architectural journey began in post Katrina New Orleans. With a passion for social justice and connecting people, Garrett focuses his energy on organizing the allied design professions in reflective community work. He has over six years of organizing experience from community design build projects, to running an international network of volunteer chapters, and even a national network of municipal civic technologists. Garrett led the reorganization of the Architecture for Humanity Chapter Network and is currently the founding Executive Director of the Open Architecture Collaborative working to inspire, rally and support designers to challenge the status quo of design services.

 

11:15am, Saturday: ACD Showcase Series

This session will highlight diverse community design projects and initiatives:


Community Powered Design
Kate Cairoli, MA, LEED, Director of Communications, Open Architecture Houston
Kate has a decade of experience in public health and ecological design. Her focus has been on disparities and inequalities at the intersection of human and environmental health. She has worked with non-profits and foundations that focus on health and environmental issues. After studying writing at Yale University and working on environmental justice in public health, she earned a Master’s degree in ecological design at the Conway School, and found a career in public interest design where she can combine all of her passions. She currently resides in Houston, TX, where she serves as the Director of Communications for Open Architecture Houston, works as a public health research analyst, and is on the boards of the Blackwood Educational Land Institute and the Blue Yak Foundation.

Kim Hanschen, AIA, Managing Director, Open Architecture Houston.
An architect and Houston native, Kim received her M.ARCH from Rice University. Her first experience with public interest design was as part of the design team for an affordable housing project in post-Katrina Biloxi, MS with Architecture for Humanity. Kim then served as a founding board member for Architecture for Humanity Houston. Now, Kim works as an architect at Jackson and Ryan Architects and serves as Managing Director of Open Architecture Houston, a non-profit design organization that creates collaborative, sustainable solutions by connecting under-served communities with design professionals.


Liquid investigations from an interstitial approach
William Sarradet, Virtual Conference 2017
William Sarradet is a digital media artist and critic based in Dallas Texas. During the past four years, he has organized media discourse and happenings across the Dallas-Fort Worth region including video screenings and intermedia performances. Current projects focus on the opacity of design intention that lies between the designer and the user. His concerns of the current day pertain to the flow of information and data literacy among the public. He is a participant in the "society of something," a liquid organization of speculation, an informal initiative to analyze critical and rhetorical works.


Advocates for Community Transformation
Teddy Brookins, Strategic Initiatives Specialist, ACT
Teddy graduated Magna Cum Laude from the University of North Texas with a degree in History and a minor in Criminal Justice. He later earned his J.D. from William and Mary Law School in 2014. During law school, he felt called to work with the poor and marginalized of America’s inner cities. With this call in mind, he attended the Baylor University: Diana R. Garland School of Social Work after completing his law degree and received his Master’s in Social work in 2016. While studying at Baylor, Teddy worked at Mission Waco where he provided homeless intervention services and helped organize the organization’s Fair Chance Campaign for ex-offenders seeking employment. As Strategic Initiatives Specialist, Teddy helps ACT develop strategy for the sustainable transition from casework in target neighborhoods where goals have been reached, while also facilitating research and reconnaissance efforts in new neighborhoods that could benefit from ACT's work. In addition to these responsibilities, he supports field work in West and South Dallas, and coordinates Spiritual Integration initiatives, helping to promote a more seamless integration of evangelism and justice.


NYC Million Trees, and an open Urban Forest
Avi Nagel, City College of NY
Avi has long held a passion for working toward a brighter tomorrow at the intersection of design and social justice. Currently Avi is working to achieve his Masters of Architecture at City College of New York. Avi attended Clark University where he earned a Bachelor's in Geography and Spanish, with a thesis on mapping urban social movements in Latin America. He speaks English and Spanish fluently.  Upon his graduation Avi worked in NYC with Youth in Harlem where he directed an award-winning health and wellness program at the Harlem Children’s Zone. In 2013 Avi took a position as a draftsman at Design 42 Architecture, a small firm in NYC specializing in Health and fitness centers in the NYC metropolitan area. Avi took on a leading role in designing and managing the role out of multiple gyms in the Bronx New York and New Jersey. In 2014 Avi took on the role of Resident Engineer at Hill International, the nation's largest construction management company. At Hill, Avi oversaw more than 10 million dollars of New York City Department of Parks and Recreation projects, including tree preservation, the Million Trees NYC project, sidewalk design and construction, and a prototype structural soil system in Manhattan. Avi also was a lead estimator and inspector for the Governor's Office for Storm Recovery, surveying and assessing damage after Hurricane Sandy and working to build a New York State coastal asset database, preparing the state for future environmental impacts.

 

1:15pm, Saturday: Tenth Street Historic District Neighborhood Resource Center


Skyler Fike, Design Associate, [bc]
Evan Hildebrand, Fellow, [bc]

The Tenth Street Historic District Neighborhood Resource Center is the rehabilitation of an historic home in one of the few remaining freedmans town in Dallas, TX. Using the Resource Center’s design and construction as a learning opportunity, it acts as a “neighborhood home” with a resident bcFELLOW providing resources dedicated to bring community-driven improvements to the Tenth Street Historic District, making design services more accessible to area residents. This presentation will introduce the project as well as invite attendees to participate in developing public programming and resources to be used in the Resource Center. Attendees will form groups based on topic areas (historic preservation, accessibility, etc..) and the presentation will be broken up so that each group has time to discuss the information presented. Participants will be asked to analyze as a group, the social, economic, and physical context of the neighborhood and use their expertise to create applicable public programming to be offered at the Neighborhood Resource Center.

About Skyler: Skyler Fike is a Design Associate at buildingcommunityWORKSHOP. As a Dallas native, he brings with him a strong understanding of Dallas and Fort Worth, and a commitment to these cities for the foreseeable future. He is primarily working on making projects in Dallas. In his other time, Skyler is a photographer, and hopes to use this medium in tandem with his practice of architecture, and service to the greater community. His greatest desire is to see homelessness and poverty come to an end, and to use these practices to tell compelling stories and empower communities. Skyler holds a BA in Architecture from the University of Oklahoma. In 2012, Skyler attended a small liberal arts school on the eastern shore called the Trinity Fellows Academy, where he received a year-long fellowship to study under some of the greatest minds in the arts, religion, culture, and sociology, as well as alongside a community of diverse peers. This time spent in the northeast profoundly shaped his understanding of architecture, people, and why remaining grounded in one place serves to better a community and a the city at large.

About Evan: Evan Hildebrand is a bcFELLOW at buildingcommunityWORKSHOP. Evan is a part of the People Organizing Place (POP) initiative, working in the Tenth Street Historic District of Dallas on the renovation and programming of a house in the neighborhood as community resource and engagement center. Born in Madison, Wisconsin and living for the past five years in Minneapolis, Minnesota; Evan has experience working with community-engaged design at a variety of scales, from a small workshop focusing on activating a single vacant lot in a downtown neighborhood, to a field guide examining how public interest design is viewed and practiced across the Twin Cities. Evan holds a Bachelor’s degree in Architecture from the University of Minnesota’s College of Design.

 

2:15pm, Saturday: 2057: Predicting The Next 40 Years of Community Design

Peter Aeschbacher, 2000-2003 Rose Fellow (LACDC); Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture and Architecture, H. Campbell and Eleanor R. Stuckeman School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, Hamer Center for Community Design, The Pennsylvania State University
Kathleen Dorgan, FAIA, LEED-AP

Understanding the historic dynamics of the movement can help us to better navigate our next 40+ years. Peter Aeschbacher and Kathy Dorgan will share their research into the decades of history of community design and the development of this field. Session attendees will then be asked to predict what the next 40 years will bring. What variables will shape it? What will community design practice look like? This workshop is part of a three session series in ACD40's Envision track that will trace the practice of community design, key individuals and moments that shaped the field, and variables that have influenced practice.

About Peter: Peter holds a joint appointment in the Department of Landscape Architecture and the Department of Architecture and is affiliated with the Hamer Center for Community Design. Trained as an architect, urban planner, and graphic designer, he has extensive national and international experience in design and community development. Aeschbacher has worked with arts-based, non-profit organizations, undertaken numerous community revitalization and affordable housing projects, and been an activist and advocate for social and environmental justice issues. He has also worked closely in and with underserved communities and marginal populations, including community-based projects involving at-risk youth in Los Angeles. These projects include the design and construction of community gardens and local parks, as well as environmental education initiatives. He is a former Frederick P. Rose Architectural Fellow (2000-03) with the Los Angeles Community Design Center. He is a founding member of CityWorksLA and a former board member of the Association for Community Design. Aeschbacher has lived and traveled widely, including working as a graphic designer in Switzerland, where he also learned to bake bread. He worked in South Africa on community development projects during the transition from apartheid, arriving there by riding a motorbike across Africa.

About Kathy: Kathleen Dorgan, FAIA, LEED-AP is an architect and urban planner who specializes in sustainable participatory community design and development. Her work includes arts-based placemaking, design of high-performance housing, main street revitalization, structuring green initiatives, resilience and technical assistance to not-for-profit organizations and public agencies. Her projects have been exhibited in the National Building Museum and museums and galleries throughout the nation. She received a Harvard Loeb Fellowship and is a past chair of the AIA Housing Knowledge Community, the Association for Community Design and the AIA Housing and HUD Secretary’s Awards Juries. She is a member of the Connecticut Housing Finance Authority Board. Ms. Dorgan an active volunteer and is a frequent speaker, instructor and writer about resilient design and incremental community renewal.

 

3:15pm, Saturday: Panel: From Community Design to Public Interest Design: The Next Generation(s)

Moderated by: Peter Aeschbacher, 2000-2003 Rose Fellow (LACDC); Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture and Architecture, H. Campbell and Eleanor R. Stuckeman School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, Hamer Center for Community Design, The Pennsylvania State University.

Panel features: David Perkes of the Gulf Coast Community Design Studio, Mia Scharphie, and Jennifer Goold of the Neighborhood Design Center.

In 1968 Whitney Young, head of the Urban League, shocked the members of the architectural profession assembled for that year's AIA convention by excoriating them for their "thunderous silence" in the face of the problems that faced American cities. In the shared lore of the Community Design Movement, this electrifying moment galvanized action; community design centers sprung up across the country as the architects' response. But in fact, at the same convention, students were making their voices heard. Building on their occupation of Columbia University and allied with other who would become groups such as The Architects' Resistance (TAR), these students were kicking down the doors of the establishment. And others, outside the institutional structures of the profession, were already hard at work: ARCH in New York; the Architects' Workshop in Philadelphia, and others aligned with the Civil Rights movement, Black Power, and the American Indian Movement (AIM). This history of those who were already there – especially the contributions of minority architects – is often overlooked in the popular story. And what happened after the initial flush of institutional and governmental support waned in the Nixon and Reagan administrations is also often left unexamined. This presentation will expand our current understandings of the foundations, dynamics, and development of the Community Design Movement by tracing its origins to some surprising places (1963, not 1968! More than buildings! Not the elite class!), defining several clear phases in the historical development from the heady days of allied government and foundation support in the 1960s to the dark days of reactionary retrenchment in the 1980s.

 

4:30pm, Saturday: KEYNOTE PANEL
Back to the Future: Community Design and Public Interest Design in a New Political Climate

Moderated by: Peter Aeschbacher, 2000-2003 Rose Fellow (LACDC); Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture and Architecture, H. Campbell and Eleanor R. Stuckeman School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, Hamer Center for Community Design, The Pennsylvania State University

Panel features: Kathy Dorgan, David Perkes, Mia Scharphie, and Jennifer Goold.

The Community Design Movement began by integrating advocacy work, technical assistance, and direct action for social change. In the 1960s these architects, designers, and planners were aligned with federal level efforts such as the newly formed Cabinet-level Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Office of Economic Opportunity, the Model Cities program, and with foundation initiatives such as the Ford Foundation's Grey Areas Program. The 1970s saw a change in presidential administrations and economic challenges. Social support, public housing, and other urban programs contracted as the political winds shifted. Some Community Design Centers adapted to the new context; others were unable to survive. Other factors were at play beyond funding, however, including the role of professional institutions and education programs, and the capacity of small, independent organizations to navigate a landscape increasingly occupied by the other kinds of CDCS: Community Development Corporations. The design professions, already sidelined by professional and economic circumstances, have reimagined community design as 'public interest design,' the latest in a long series of titles for a consistent commitment to social justice. Recent calls for infrastructure investment alongside a fundamental change in policy regarding social welfare will dramatically impact community development. Professional roles and institutions continue to redefine themselves, further impacting how architects believe they can make a difference. This presentation will look back to the phases of Community Design Centers' historical experiences, professional contexts, and self-definition to draw lessons from the past for what may lie ahead as the political winds have once again shifted.

About Peter: Peter holds a joint appointment in the Department of Landscape Architecture and the Department of Architecture and is affiliated with the Hamer Center for Community Design. Trained as an architect, urban planner, and graphic designer, he has extensive national and international experience in design and community development. Aeschbacher has worked with arts-based, non-profit organizations, undertaken numerous community revitalization and affordable housing projects, and been an activist and advocate for social and environmental justice issues. He has also worked closely in and with underserved communities and marginal populations, including community-based projects involving at-risk youth in Los Angeles. These projects include the design and construction of community gardens and local parks, as well as environmental education initiatives. He is a former Frederick P. Rose Architectural Fellow (2000-03) with the Los Angeles Community Design Center. He is a founding member of CityWorksLA and a former board member of the Association for Community Design. Aeschbacher has lived and traveled widely, including working as a graphic designer in Switzerland, where he also learned to bake bread. He worked in South Africa on community development projects during the transition from apartheid, arriving there by riding a motorbike across Africa.