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#THIS IS
PUBLIC
JOURNAL + + +
BUILDING TRUST INTERNATIONAL Competition based design changes the world
PUBLIC WORKSHOP
An interview with founder Alex Gilliam
HEALING WAR-TORN SUDAN
Curry Stone Award-winning TAMassociati’s EMERGENCY clinic
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SPRING 2014
(Photo: Massimo Grimaldi)
08 News
DEPARTMENTS
A taste of the latest Public Interest Design news around the world.
12 The High Line Effect
An examination of a burgeoning public park ideal for tired infrastructures.
50 Education
Expansion of Socially Responsible University Programs in the United States.
52 Events
Conferences, Seminars and Talks from March - June 2014.
54 Gallery
A gallery of select projects with social impact.
FEATURES 20 Building Trust in Design
UK-based non-profit Building Trust International explains how a competition based design organization can change the world.
28 Building Dignity in War-Torn Sudan
TAMassociati designs a hospital as a place of peace, healing, and gathering within a refugee settlement.
38 Tactical Doing:
How Public Workshop is Growing the Next Generation of Civic Leaders
An interview with Alex Gilliam, founder of Public Workshop, a Philadelphia-based community design organization. (Cover Photo: Massimo Grimaldi)
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PUBLIC design + humanity
+ Founder & Publisher Matthew Linden Associate Publisher Peter Linden Editor in Chief Andrew Goodwin Assistant Editor Nick Bilich Art Director Mathieu Anfosso Graphic Designer Tyler Thomas Contributing Writers Katie Crepeau Kathyln Kao Gilad Meron Francesca Perry Advertising Geffrey Yabes Newsstand Consultant John Ponomarev Subscription Inquires subscriptions@thisispublicjournal.com Advertising Inquires advertising@thisispublicjournal.com Letters to the Editor letters@thisispublicjournal.com
United States 1239 Garden Street San Luis Obispo, CA 93401 www.thisispublicjournal.com All Rights Reserved 2014 Copyright Š 2014. PUBLIC Journal is published quarterly by ConsciousBuild, Inc., 1239 Garden Street, San Luis Obispo, CA 93401. No part of PUBLIC Journal may be reproduced in any form by any means without prior written consent from ConsciousBuild, Inc.
Spring 2014
(Photos: Public Workshop)
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PUBLIC design + humanity
WELCOME
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WELCOME TO PUBLIC! WELCOME, PUBLIC! PUBLIC, WELCOME!
Designing and building homes for people around the country for 20 years has been exciting; creating beautiful spaces for interesting people to call home. While this has had it’s rewards, it is inherently limiting as I begin to look at the mark I would like my company, ConsciousBuild, to make on our planet. It is only the richest 1% of our society that can afford indulging in their own design-build projects. What about the rest of us? What about the types of buildings that are being designed and built for the other 99%? What about the growing need for shelter projects of all types, be they housing, schools, or clinics, here in the US, and all over the globe? Who is designing those projects and which ones get built? What does it take to get them built and whose lives get transformed by the difference those buildings can make? This is PUBLIC Journal. I would like to invite you to explore with us the extraordinary work that is being designed and built throughout the world by passionate enthusiasts of architecture, design, and construction, determined that their work makes a difference in the lives of the people that need it the most.
Matthew Linden, Founder & Publisher PUBLIC Journal is the brainchild of a few passionate writers, designers, architects, and contractors. PUBLIC seeks to provide a larger voice for the “Public Interest Design” movement, which brings light to the issues of humanitarian design, social impact projects, and community-based design organizations who are all working to leave the world a better place. This is a journal where the world of architecture intersects the voices of activism, exposing a determination to provide good design for those that need it most, but most often do not get it. The exploration of the greater good is why we have committed to providing a platform for this growing movement to reach a greater PUBLIC. Our first issue surveys the landscape of the existing Public Interest Design movement, and exhibits articles in the form of interviews, exposés, and editorials. Among the stories is an engaging account of a Sudanese clinic designed by the 2013 Curry Stone Design Prize winning firm, tamassociati. tamassociati is an Italian-based design firm that has travelled among some of the poorer regions of world to bring healthcare, housing, and public spaces to those that need it. Not only has this humanitarian approach brought tamassociati Curry Stone accolades, but they also have won an Aga Khan Award and a G.IUS Gold Medal in 2013. Another European-based organization that was interviewed in this inaugural issue was the U.K. charity organization Building Trust International. Founders David and Louise Cole provide some insight into how they began their organization, which provides design competitions that are catalysts for change across the world. On the other side of the great Atlantic pond, writer Gilad Meron examines the founder of the successful non-profit organization Public Workshop, located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. So without further ado, I invite all to read and ready themselves for the coming world of PUBLIC Journal. We hope that through these articles, photos, and words our readers will not only gain a deeper appreciation for Public Interest Design, but will also be encouraged to stand up and help those in need. It is our mission to create advocates for change and for aid throughout the world.
Andrew C. Goodwin, Editor-in-Chief
Spring 2014
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Send me 4 issues (one year) of PUBLIC journal for only $30. That’s only $7.50 per issue and I’ll SAVE $22 OFF the cover price!
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ES DIG ITAL SUBSC RIPTIO N
U.S. 4 issues at $52. NOW $30
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CONTRIBUTORS
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PUBLIC JOURNAL WOULD LIKE TO THANK THIS ISSUE’S CONTRIBUTORS FOR THEIR DEDICATION.
Katie Crepeau is an architect and writer who focuses on design, social enterprise, and environmental stewardship. She is editor at PublicInterestDesign.org, founder of DesignAffects.com, and consults on community projects in her new home city of London, England. Kathlyn Kao grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, but recently relocated to Brooklyn, New York. She currently works as a designer for Brooklyn Art Space & Trestle Gallery in New York City. Kathlyn graduated from California Polytechnic State University with a Bachelors in Architecture in 2013.
Gilad Meron is an independent
Francesca Perry is Editor of Thinking City (thinkingcity.org), a platform dedicated to the experience of cities and design. She works in community engagement for urban regeneration at make:good, a design studio which engages and empowers people to make positive change in their neighborhood.
designer, researcher and writer focused on community-based design practices and design education. His current work includes research and program development for the Autodesk Foundation, strategy and visual communication for Enterprise Community Partners, and writing for PublicInterestDesign.org. Gilad also recently co-founded a research collaborative that explores emerging models of public-interest and socialimpact design firms.
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NEWS PUBLIC design + humanity
A LOOK AT NEWS FROM THE PAST QUARTER. BROUGHT TO PUBLIC JOURNAL BY PUBLICINTERESTDESIGN.ORG February 18, 2014
“Five Years. Ten Challenges. Designing a Better World, Together.” reads the latest announcement of the Amplify program by human-centered design nonprofit IDEO.org. With support from the UK Department for International Development (DFID), IDEO.org has introduced the first global challenge “How might we make low-income urban areas safer and more empowering for women and girls?” on the OpenIDEO platform. Over the course of three months, participants are encouraged to interact online and offline throughout the phases
of research, ideation, applause, refinement, and evaluation. At the end of three months, the most promising ideas will be shortlisted and provided with seed funding and design support from IDEO.org. The Amplify program is a series of ten innovation challenges over five years. Using both online and offline collaboration tools, we’re out to find and support the most innovative new and existing solutions to some of the world’s most pressing development issues.
February 12, 2014
Nonprofit and social change matchmaker desigNYC announced 7 project collaborations between nonprofits and pro bono design professionals for this year’s theme of “resiliency.” As an organization focused on delivering “the transformative power of design to nonprofits in New York”, the selected teams “represent diverse ways to address this broad thinking about environmental, societal, and organizational resiliency across New York City.”
Healthier in East Harlem Innovative tools for City Health Works health coaches with ESI Design Stronger Local Food Systems A brand new identity and design system for Just Food with onethread A More Vibrant Staten Island Collaborative mural design between Curtis High School students, Global Kids, Inc. and SEGD New York Learning About Climate Change Communication tools to dovetail with Pier 42 exhibits for Two Bridges Neighborhood Council with McMillian + Furlow
Spring 2014
Inspired Learning Spaces Renovated multi-use classrooms for Union Settlement Association with Andrew Franz Architects Mobile Legal Aid A pop-up empowerment center serving undocumented NYC youth for Pro Bono Net with Andrew Shea & David Frisco Resilient Landscapes Multi-use outdoor space for a housing complex comanaged by Fifth Avenue Committee in Red Hook with Future Green Studio
February 11, 2014
We are delighted to share that British/Venezuelan architect Julia King was awarded the 2014 Architects’ Journal Emerging Woman Architect of the Year this past Friday. As an urban researcher and PhD candidate within London Metropolitan University’s Architecture of Rapid Change and Scarce Resources department, King embodies a true public interest designer who is addressing housing, water and sanitation infrastructure, urban planning, and participatory design processes primarily in slum resettlement colonies in Delhi.
With previous accolades including a 2011 Holcim “Next Generation” prize, 2013-2014 World Design Impact Prize nomination, and 2014 SEED Award, King sums up her design ethos as: Doing something isn’t always better than doing nothing. Good architecture doesn’t always result in a building. There is a difference between complicated for its own sake (particularly enabled by the computer), and something that has layers of meaning and cultural depth.
January 30, 2014
While working on a Sioux reservation infrastructure project with the U.S. Air Force, Quilian Riano was inspired to study design, which awakened “his interest in the participatory design processes that tackle political inequality.” The Vilcek Foundation, who present annual awards to foreign-born scientists and artists in the US, awarded DSGN AGNC founder Riano with one of four 2014 Vilcek Prizes for Creative Promise in the Arts award in recognition
of his ongoing design and activism work. Joining three designers and four biomedical scientists, the award winners will receive their awards of $35,000$100,000 at a gala in New York City on April 2, 2014. On a Sioux reservation in South Dakota, Quilian Riano, then a young man in the U.S. Air Force, had been assigned to help the Red Horse Team, the USAF’s engineering corps; their job, to provide drinking water and roads in areas that lacked the
most basic infrastructure. The reservation was near Rapid City and the Ellsworth Air Force Base, but a long way from Mr. Riano’s home in Hialeah, Florida, and farther still from his birthplace in Bogota, Colombia. Yet he made a profound connection while working with members of the Sioux nation and the Air Force team. “In short, my experience in South Dakota would become an inspiration to my decision to go back to Florida and study design.”
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PUBLIC design + humanity January 29, 2014
In anticipation of the forthcoming book The Purpose Economy by Taproot founder and Imperative CEO Aaron Hurst, The Purpose Economy 100–resembling our Public Interest Design 100–was released yesterday. Compiling 100 “disruptive innovators, policy-setters, taste-makers and researchers” through a national nomination process, we were delighted to see 8 design, architecture, and community pioneers (individuals and pairs) make the list, including:
Emily Pilloton, founder of Project H; Joshua David and Robert Hammond, co-founders of The High Line; Marshall Ganz, community organizer and Harvard professor; Ray Oldenburg, urban sociologist and human-centered city planning advocate; Ryan Gravel and Cathy Woolard, creators of the Atlanta BeltLine; William McDonough, Cradle to Cradle founder and architect; David Kelley, professor at Stanford’s d.school & IDEO founder; and the infamous author and activist Jane Jacobs.
January 23, 2014
The fourth annual SEED Award Winners for 2014 were announced yesterday. Nine projects were selected from applications representing 28 countries to epitomize the best in design that is addressing critical social, economic, and environmental issues. You might notice a few previous award winners from the PID Global Awards, which were announced in December last year. Three projects have been honored with both a SEED 2014 Award and a PID Global Award, along with three projects that received a combination of a Honorable Mention and Winner award from each jury. Winning teams will present their projects at Structures for Inclusion 14, taking place March 22-23, 2014, at Parsons The New School for Design in New York City. The lucky dual award winners will make their way to Paris in April for PID Global convening.
Spring 2014
WINNING PROJECTS The Potty Project – New Delhi, India Manica Football for Hope Centre – Bairro Vumba, Manica, Mozambique Community How-To-Guides – Detroit, Michigan, USA Comunidad Ecologica Saludable – Lima, Peru Can City – Sao Paulo, Brazil TAEQ Green Building Headquarters – Sakhnin, Israel
HONORABLE MENTIONS Re: Dimen Kam Minority Cultural Heritage – Dimen, China Walk [Your City] – Raleigh, North Carolina, USA People Organizing Place [POP] - Neighborhood Stories, Dallas, TX
January 14, 2014
Over the past two years, our team at PublicInterestDesign.org has been highlighting the people, projects and ideas that have helped bring the terms ‘public-interest’ and ‘social-impact’ to the forefront of design. We’ve been privileged to witness the birth of a movement and we are committed to doing everything we can to help it grow and mature. To build on our top 10 videos, predictions review and milestones for 2013, our fourth piece published in conjunction with GOOD kicks off 2014 with a collection of our 10 favorite articles that have helped spread the word and bring visibility to the many people, projects and ideas moving this field forward.
1. How Plus Pool is Helping Revolutionize Architecture by Karen Wong, Architizer 2. Improving School Lunch by Design by Courtney E. Martin, The New York Times 3. Blazing Trails by Cheryl Weber, Residential Architect 4. Dignifying Design by John Cary and Courtney E. Martin, The New York Times 5. Blighted Cities Prefer Razing to Rebuilding by Timothy Williams, The New York Times 6. What Legos Can Teach us About Civic Participation by Alex Gilliam, Guggenheim’s Lab | Log Blog
BONUS We couldn’t resist recommending just a few more for our PID readers: - Are Humanitarian Designers Imperialists? by Emily Pilloton, FastCo Design - A Housing Solution Gone Awry by Ginia Bellafante, The New York Times - How Infographics are Changing Congress by Mark Wilson, FastCoDesign - Calling For a Triple Bottom Line Design Metric by John Cary, Stanford Social Innovation Review
7. A Resilient New York City Requires Social Infrastructure Too by Megan Marini, Reboot 8. Architecture’s Lean In Moment by Alexandra Lange, Metropolis 9. Prototyping a Community Center by Dan Parham, Medium 10. Children of the Revolution by Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson, Architect Magazine
FOR YOUR DAILY SOURCE OF NEWS, PLEASE VISIT PUBLICINTERESTDESIGN.ORG
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PUBLIC design + humanity
Right: The High Line weaves in and out of the Lower West Side of Manhattan high above the streets. (Photo:Mathieu Anfosso)
Spring 2014
THE
The High Line Effect| EDITORIAL
HIGH LINE EFFECT +
An examination of a burgeoning public park ideal - and its ripple effect. Written by Kathlyn Kao Photography by Mathieu Anfosso
Since its debut in 2009, the ever-trendy High Line has become the new “it” girl of urban architecture, coining the term “the High Line effect.” And with good reason. With its great economic success, global publicity, and its positive contribution to city life, the High Line is a tempting model to replicate, especially when there are eager candidates of outdated and tired infrastructure slated for demolition all across the nation. As a public park built on the historic freight rail line elevated above the streets on Manhattan’s West Side, the High Line has literally made something out of nothing. Therefore, the arithmetic seems simple—abandoned infrastructure + urban setting + renovation + landscape = instant success! But it’s not as simple as it seems. The problem is that the reduction of the High
Line to words like “renovated,” “abandoned,” and “urban” negates the extreme site specificity that gives the elevated park its unique character. Or more precisely, it fails to include the high density and rich history of the city that profoundly influenced its success. Witold Rybczynski, Professor of Urbanism at the University of Pennsylvania, aptly states, “the High Line may be a landscaping project, but a good part of its success is due to its architectural setting, which… is crowded with interesting old and new buildings. The park courses through the meatpacking district, and Chelsea— heavily populated, high-energy residential neighborhoods. Very few American cities — and Manhattan is the densest urban area in the country — can offer the same combination of history and density.” Therefore, the High Line is a very unique case in our American landscape.
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PUBLIC design + humanity
HISTORY
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........................Between the years of 1846 and 1941, ........................on the west side of Manhattan, there ........................were a series of street-level train tracks designed to deliver varying goods like dairy and meat to freight terminals on streets like Hudson, Beach and Chambers. Due to the irregular train route, the train coincided with much of the pedestrian crossing. Inevitably, there were deaths; so many that the route earned its name Death Avenue (which later became immortalized in the High Line’s homage to the avenue with the 10th Avenue overlook).
Different solutions, protests and warnings came thereafter: one where the train would follow a man on horseback with a red flag at 6mph warning oncoming traffic, and another where the sinking of tracks to create a physical hierarchy helped to reduce the number of deaths. By 1908, it was reported that in the course of 56 years, the line had killed 436 people. 198 of those deaths occurred in the decade prior - the majority of them children. Naturally, the railroad accused the newspapers of “media sensationalism” to repel any attempts that might disrupt its daily route. Ironically, by pressure from over-congestion as opposed to human safety, the freight train was finally forced into elevation, thereby eliminating street level fatalities and allowing direct access to factories and warehouses lining West Side Manhattan. That elevated railway was thereafter known as the High Line. As a city freight train the High Line was in use until the 1970s when the development of the interstate system grew popular and rendered it obsolete. Two decades later, the city had demolished its southern most section, from 34th street to the Holland Tunnel, leaving the remainder of the carcass up for demolition. Fortunately, a few neighbors of the abandoned railway banded together in a citywide collaboration to rescue it from that fate. By 2009, the red ribbon was cut and the High Line was officially declared open.
Far Left: The High Line touches down into the urban fabric of New York City’s streets. (Photo:Mathieu Anfosso) Left: A photo of Death Avenue before the current infrastructure of the High Line was constructed. (Photo:Library of Congress) Right: The history of industrial materiality of the High Line can be seen in the details. (Photo:Mathieu Anfosso)
Spring 2014
The High Line Effect| EDITORIAL
WHY THE HIGH LINE WORKS?
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The High Line was designed strategically to commemorate its history and local framework. This is most apparent in its embodied experience as a linear pathway that meanders throughout the west side of New York City. Littered with different social programs like the 14th Street Passage or Chelsea Thicket, the High Line has a number of spyglass locations that give light to a nostalgic past. But while moments within the High Line are more apparent in historical lineage, the strategy to create episodes that pay tribute to a city’s past is used as momentum for other spontaneous things to arise. Negative or positive, activity will beget activity- if nothing occurs in a neighborhood, then nothing will happen. The High Line is no exception. Due to designed social spaces like the Diller-Von Furstenberg Sundeck, spontaneous activity is more likely to transpire. Today, there are now weekly stargazing sessions at the sundeck. Things occur because something is already occurring or as Dutch architect F. Van Klingeren put it, “one plus one is three- at least.” And these social spaces that have a capacity for indeterminate outcomes are scattered all throughout the High Line. In an interview by Jill Fehrenbachner, James Corner of James Cornerfield Operations, explains that “it is the experience in the duration of time that it takes to walk from Gansevoort to 20th Street” that gives the High Line its unique character. “You go through an amazing succession of episodes, and for me, it‘s this choreography and experience of this that is really the most exciting and original part of this project.”
Undoubtedly, the cultural, economic, and environmental history of the city inspired a good deal of the designs and installations occurring in the High Line. Artist Spencer Finch’s The River that Flows Both Ways is an art installation at the Chelsea Market passage that retells the journey of the Hudson River through a succession of varied colored pixel window panels. While it speaks a poetic language about the imprints of the Hudson River with New York’s Industrial past, it also plays upon New York’s current geographical identity. This installation captures and refracts the light and colors of the New York skyline, which reestablishes the success of the High Line as an accumulation of individual episodes that illustrate present day and past day New York City. Case in point, the High Line is a subliminal retelling of New York’s past through embodied experience.
It’s no wonder that the majority of energy spent in streetwalking in New York is spent navigating the immediate visual radius. Which comes at a cost: desensitization (and therefore disengagement) to a changing built urban environment. But from the vantage points of an elevated pathway, people become purveyors of the city. Awareness to any physical change of the city (construction, demolition, renovation) is intensified by the sheer fact that the High Line is elevated and at center stage with an epic backdrop of icons like the Statue of Liberty, Hudson River, and Jersey Skyline. The level of individual engagement with the built environment that the High Line provokes is important, because it integrates, rather than segregates, the city and its inhabitants into a holistic entity.
Beyond its historical roots, though, the High Line engages city dwellers in an active conversation about its saturation burgeoning development. Averaging around 25ft above street level, the additional height clarifies scale in the skyscraper filled city that cannot be understood at ground level. Most New York streets are overcrowded and lack adequate amounts of public space. Indirectly, this creates a culture of fast-paced tunnel-visioned New Yorkers. Typically, “the maximum volume for comfortable pedestrian movement is 12 people per minute per yard of sidewalk width. Anything above this level is considered to be overcrowding.” In New York, with a population of 8.34 million, it is not hard to imagine over-congestion on city streets.
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“This meant that a continuous flow of movement could be maintained while other tasks could be performed seamlessly.� Spring 2014
The High Line Effect| EDITORIAL
MONKEY-SEE, MONKEY-DO
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Yet, while the role of the High Line as an elevated storyteller and city purveyor is an element that brings character and “renewed magic” to the abandoned railway, it still does not fully depict the High Line as a resource, context-based manifestation. In fact, a similar pattern occurred 150 years ago with Central Park when cities tried to replicate the larger than life park. During the 1860s, at the wake of the first efforts of the Golden Gate Park, Olmstead devised a report for the city of San Francisco. In it, he had advised “against the replication of Central Park on the north coast of California, because of its arid climate.” This was interesting because Olmsted was ultimately commenting on the “Monkey-See, Monkey-Do” phenomenon of which many cities are guilty. More harm than good could result in the failure to acknowledge an urban framework when replicating other urban models. Take for instance Calgary and Minneapolis. During the 1960s and 1970s, after the large success of Hong Kong’s own elevated pedestrian walkways (pedways), Minneapolis and Calgary had both installed enclosed elevated
networks in their downtown areas (8 miles and 9 miles respectively). Theoretically, it was a sensible solution. In Le Corbusieur’s Voision Plan (1925), Corbusier had called for a better quality of life by the separation of vehicular and pedestrian movement. This meant that a continuous flow of movement could be maintained while other tasks could be performed seamlessly. However, while succeeding in Hong Kong, the plan had failed in the North American cities. This is important because there was a difference in context for all three cities. While Hong Kong’s main motive for elevated pedways was to find a solution for the already overcrowded street life, the North American cities were implementing the same plan as car emergent cities. Fundamentally, they lacked the density to sustain the elevated pedways. With a population of only 370,951 spanning over 58.4 square miles, Minneapolis’s downtown was decentralized and a slew of abandoned, empty lots materialized out of the construction of the 8 miles long elevated pedestrian walkway. The same analysis can be given for Calgary.
Conversely, New York City has a very dense street life. In a report for the City of New York in 2007, Jan Gehl Architects characterized New York City streets as heavily used and inadequate for the level of existing traffic flow, littered with obstacles like food trucks, scaffolding, and newsstands. Unlike what occurred in both Minneapolis and Calgary, New York City has the number count that requires an interruption of traffic flow. Located in a fast paced city, the High Line can tackle the straitjacket density through a movement-focused program. But the difference between typical street movement in New York City and the High Line is that while the movement is dictated in the High Line, function is not. Littered across the pathway are the expansions and contractions of public, private, and semi-private spaces that have the capacity to slow down pace to an experiential level that is uncommon in the big city. As Jane Jacobs once said, “a good city street neighborhood achieves a marvel of balance between its people’s determination to have essential privacy and their simultaneous wishes for differing degrees of contact, enjoyment, or help from the people around.
Photo: The High Line crosses over many of Manhattan’s streets and creates experiential places blending landscape and space. (Photo: Mathieu Anfosso)
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PUBLIC design + humanity
THE HIGH LINE EFFECT
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At first glance, the High Line has accomplished a slew of modern day feats, and it is hard to look at without a little envy. As a harbinger of large economic success, a successful practitioner of sustainable efforts, properly nesting itself as both a tourist and local attraction, and its generative ability to transform a city, there is great incentive to understand how and why it works. Much like the Bilbao Effect, the High Line has created its own set of ripples across the nation with projects like the Philadelphia Reading Viaduct, and the Chicago Bloomingdale Trail.
In the late 1800’s, Chicago deployed a partial master plan by Burnham and Root that pushed green spaces to the outer borders of the city. As such, Chicago lacks a significant amount of green public spaces- Logan Square, one of the neighborhoods in West Chicago where the Bloomingdale Trail intersects, is noted as a neighborhood that has the least amount of green spaces available to its residents—a telling reason as to why a renovated abandoned viaduct might be a good idea for the city. But unlike New York City, Chicago lacks the kind of private fundraising momentum that a city like New York is able to cultivate. As such, majority of the Trail’s emphasis has been to encourage community involvement. With its large earthen embankments, 17 bridges, shorter average elevated height than the High Line, and intersections within four west Chicago neighborhoods, the Trail does not project the same sensation the High Line has cultivated. Instead, it focuses on more grassroots oriented local attraction, such as full accessibility to both pedestrians and cyclists. This is a telling reality for much of the abandoned infrastructure slated for renovation: the High Line
Spring 2014
is a costly endeavor. In Philadelphia, Paul Levy, the president of the Center City District, succinctly states, “what we want to do is build the first phase, like New York, and have people say they love it and want to do the rest. We do not need the MercedesBenz that they built in New York.” However, while the High Line might be costly, the idea of the renovation of dying infrastructural giants might be a cheaper and feasible option than complete demolition. It’s estimated that the Reading Viaduct in Philadelphia would cost $50 million to tear down, but $36 million for a retrofit. A significant difference when a project like the Reading Viaduct has the potential to create a unique, mixed-income neighborhood representative of Center City and the adjacent Chinatown neighborhood. And therein lies the High Line Effect: beyond economic, social, and environmental success, the High Line’s greatest contribution was its ability to inspire other cities to capitalize upon their respective unique characteristics to strength and transform city life.
Above : The Reading Viaduct. Rendering by Studio Bryan Hanes
The High Line Effect| EDITORIAL
ATLANTA, CLEVELAND, SEATTLE... ….PARIS?
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Since it’s opening, approximately 4 million tourists visit the High Line every year. Twenty-nine new projects have been built or are underway in the area, and according to the New York City Department of City Planning, there are about 2,500 new residential units, 1,000 added hotel rooms, and an increase of offices, and gallery spaces lining the elevated park. And if that wasn’t enough, the third section of the High Line is to be completed this year. The impetus for redevelopment is great, so it is no surprise that other cities are beginning to propose their own versions of the elevated park. As construction is set to begin on the Atlanta Beltline in Georgia and the Chicago Bloomingdale Trail, cities are in continuous conversation on how to use the High Line as a model for future designs. The High Line was consummated through a very specific constellation of people, financial resources, politics, market forces, geography and culture that make it irreplaceably unique. As such, it serves as an example of how cities can creatively reframe their respective public spaces specific to their urban contexts. +
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PUBLIC design + humanity
BUILDING TRUST “IT WAS IN DESIGN WITH THE
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UK-based non-profit Building Trust International explains how a competition based design organization can change the world.
Written by Francesca Perry Photography provided by Building Trust International
People interested in becoming more engaged in philanthropy and humanitarian aid often ask themselves “how can I make a difference, as just one person?” Likewise, in the architectural community, many designers pose a similar question regarding design competitions: “I am just one designer - what are my chances of winning this competition?” But what if an organization were to marry the two questions by combining design competitions with humanitarian aid? Would the same questions result, or would a new question be born—can my designs change the world? Building Trust International knows that design can change the world, and change it for the better. Through their architectural and design competitions, they instigate a process that delivers catalysts for positive change, from improved schools for migrant and refugee communities, to flood-resistant homes for Cambodia’s poor and low-cost housing solutions for homeless individuals in the UK. Building Trust champions a participatory process, embedded in the needs and the aspirations of the local communities it serves. In a western culture where design has become synonymous with style and authorship, Building Trust recognizes that the true value of design lies in harnessing it to help those in need globally, through creative and collaborative solutions.
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It was with the idea that design is a powerful tool for social change, along with an insightful visit to the Burmese border that led to the creation of Building Trust,” co-founders David and Louise Cole explain. Whilst at the Thai-Burmese border, they witnessed the struggling children of displaced, stateless Burmese refugees, who were being uprooted due to the lack of land rights. David and Louise soon had the idea of creating a mobile school building that could be disassembled and transported as the refugees moved, thus providing a sustainable education solution for the community. In 2011, they launched their first design competition as Building Trust International to find the best proposal for the school project. The Coles returned to the border after selecting the winning design with local NGO’s and school members, and with the help of local apprentices, built the first “MOVINGschool.” To date, three MOVINGschools have been built, all capable of being dismantled and reused to accommodate the needs of these refugee and migrant communities. Numerous humanitarian design projects have followed the MOVINGschools project, and a promising future awaits: “We are constantly looking for new and exciting challenges,” the co-founders tell me, “where our network of like-minded individuals can use their design skills on a local scale to solve global problems with innovative design solutions.” Such positive projects, of course, rely heavily
IDEA THAT DESIGN IS A POWERFUL TOOL FOR SOCIAL CHANGE, ALONG WITH AN INSIGHTFUL VISIT TO THE BURMESE BORDER THAT LED TO THE CREATION OF BUILDING TRUST” Right: David and Louise Cole are pictured with local children at the site of their Movingschools project.
Building Trust in Design | FEATURE
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THE MORE POSITIVE THE SOCIAL IMPACT OF A PROJECT, THE MORE DIFFICULT IT CAN BE TO SECURE FUNDING This Page: The construction of the MOVINGschools project was based on a light guage metal frame that could be assembled like a kit of parts by any community.
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Building Trust in Design | FEATURE
Above: Finished photo from the MOVINGschools project. Right: This project has provide a dedicated space for children that needed educational opportunities.
on funding. All current Building Trust projects have been funded through charitable activities such as design competitions and fundraising, as well as through partnerships with corporate sponsors, fellow NGOs and international grants. “The main challenge we face as an organization,” the Coles explain, “is sourcing funding for projects and staff. We are always on the lookout for new partners to join our team and help us deliver more humanitarian design solutions around the world.” It seems that, as in many cases, the more positive the social impact of a project, the more difficult
it can be to secure funding; this is a problem that continues to hold back the design world from achieving widespread benefits for those in need. There are, however, more promising developments in design practice to celebrate. The Building Trust co-founders agree that themes such as community involvement and the use of less environmentally damaging materials are, encouragingly, on the rise. But terms such as “sustainability” have now become so all-encompassing that they cease to possess
real meaning. Designers are in danger of using sustainability as more of a trend rather than a driving principle. Whilst the co-founders of Building Trust are heartened to see more interest from younger designers, architects and engineers in similar charitable organizations—and they hope that this interest can begin to materialize more in mainstream commercial architecture—they are aware that change also needs to be driven by clients. According to the Coles, “This is where… design could change slightly, in designers being perceived as catalysts for design rather than
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PHOTO CREDITS/captions Image of the exterior corridor and sunshades of the first MOVINGschool project.
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Building Trust in Design | FEATURE
providers of design. It may seem like a subtlety, but in practice it means more fruitful relationships between client, community and designer that transform into better buildings and urban environments for us all.” It is surely within the relationship between stakeholders and deliverers that most of the challenges – as well as the opportunities – of design lie. There is a pressing need to align interests and share notions of value, because this promotes collaboration over traditional hierarchies. Indeed participatory processes are at the heart of the Building Trust ethos: one of the charity’s main aims is to ensure all projects are worked through with the local community. “It is key to making the project a success by engaging the local people and ensuring the building is truly theirs,” the Coles explain. In the second MOVINGschools project, for example, the local community was highly involved in the design of the building from day one; from choosing the structures, location and size and discussing construction methods to participating in the construction itself, the community of “end users” also became the designers and deliverers, playing a meaningful part in positive local change. Building Trust believes that design at its heart is about problem-solving, and that designers should
IT IS THIS KEEN AWARENESS OF THE BIGGER PICTURE THAT SETS BUILDING TRUST INTERNATIONAL APART.
prioritize tackling larger social and environmental issues rather than simply making things look good. The charity’s co-founders agree that awareness of public interest design has picked up over the past 10 years, and that more attention is being given to projects that are people-driven rather than defined by aesthetics. However, there is still some way to go: “there needs to be more balance between architecture as an object and architecture as something that is inhabited,” David and Louise assert; “we like to think we are moving closer to that balance.” Whilst many of the Building Trust projects take place in developing countries with urgent humanitarian needs, the organization is acutely aware of various needs in different contexts. In 2012, they initiated a design competition looking for new responses to single occupancy housing (SOH) in developed countries. The resulting project, HAWSE (Homes through Apprenticeships With Skills for Employment), addresses the needs of homeless individuals in London, working on the principal of providing temporary low-cost housing solutions in disused garage units whilst empowering users through skills building. Building Trust has been working with Levitt Bernstein (the winning designers), as well as YMCA, Habitat for Humanity and the local authority in order to create a delivery and management strategy for the project. The temporary HAWSE structures aim to be delivered to each site as a “kit-of-parts” ready for installation in each garage space, as a single en-suite bedroom, communal laundry room, or kitchen and dining area. Conceived as an interim solution, the units are demountable and reusable elsewhere. “The idea of housing alone is an Elastoplast,” the Coles clarify, “and that is why the HAWSE project gathered the support of the YMCA, Habitat for Humanity and Broadway to ensure apprenticeships, support and that the project is an incremental part in a larger framework of development.” It is this keen awareness of the bigger picture that sets Building Trust apart. The co-founders anticipate that the HAWSE model could be replicated elsewhere: “The idea is sound in creating micro homes for those that cannot afford shelter in urban centres within ‘developed’ countries. The key is in the right support framework being there alongside developments offering counseling and support to
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BUILDING TRUST INTERNATIONAL’S INDIVIDUAL PROJECTS FORM CATALYSTS FOR A MUCH WIDER DESIGN IMPACT. tackle issues that resulted in people getting into desperate situations in the first place.” In the UK, some find themselves homeless for a number of social and economic reasons. But for those in Cambodia, where Building Trust’s most recent project took place, it is the environment that can play a destabilizing role. Last year the charity hosted a design challenge to find a sustainable housing design to meet the needs of Cambodia’s poor population affected by the constant threat of flooding. As a result they worked alongside Habitat for Humanity Cambodia (H4HC), with funding from the Elton John AIDS Foundation, and delivered three new housing designs that H4HC now offer. The winning designs from the competition were chosen by the families who now live in them, a participatory process often followed in Building Trust competitions. “It was fantastic to offer a range of designs to the families… providing them with a choice in their home design and a new start which they can define,” explain the Building Trust’s co-founders. True to the charity’s name, methods like this go a long way towards instilling and building trust in their design process. The newest competition to be launched by Building Trust is “Moved to Care” which challenges design professionals and students to create proposals for a transportable medical health centre to be implemented in remote or mobile communities within Southeast Asia. Access to healthcare services in these rural communities is sorely limited, particularly in contrast to their urban counterparts; this means that those living in rural areas are sicker as well as poorer. Building Trust believes mobile medical services could address this discrepancy between health needs and service provision, lowering death rates and improving lives. Small mobile medical units could bring care to these otherwise disconnected communities, by creating space for qualified medical staff, immunizations, screening, medical advice and vital information. This need for relocatable designs, paired with the desire to connect remote rural groups with improved healthcare, led Building Trust to create the Moved to Care design brief. Building Trust is accepting submissions from professional and student architects, designers and engineers until the end of February, aiming to choose the winning proposal at the end of March. The co-founders hope that this first Moved to Care
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competition will generate ideas for healthcare solutions for refugee and displaced groups elsewhere in the region and globally. Building Trust’s individual projects form catalysts for a much wider design impact: “The real aim here,” the Coles explain, “is in proving value of design within resource-limited communities on a micro scale and providing solutions to a resource-limited planet on a macro scale.” Organizations such as Building Trust International offer hope that we are incrementally moving towards a better world, one where trust is built in design as a positive process as well as a solution. If socially minded, community-integrated practice becomes more deeply embedded as a collective starting point, then we can anticipate
at least a deceleration, if not an overhaul, of current widespread profit-oriented design and development. The aspiration is that not only architectural and design practitioners, but also clients, will participate in and promote these beneficial processes. Building Trust International looks set to play a crucial role in moving towards this more positive future for design. +
Below: Building Trust International’s newest competition poster.
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CAN YOU LEARN BY DOING?
WE CAN. WE DO. LEARN MORE. WWW.REDSTUDIOFOUNDATION.ORG
SUNZU VILLAGE LIBRARY RED STUDIO 2013
PUBLIC design + humanity
BUILDING DIGNITY IN WAR-TORN SUDAN + tamassociati designs a hospital as a place
Written by Katie Crepeau Photography by Massimo Grimaldi Raul Pantaleo
of peace, healing, and gathering within a refugee settlement.
Picture this scenario — you and your closest relatives have just moved to a foreign area in your country. The promise of work, and the desperate search to find it, has lead you here in order to feed the people you care about most. With metal scraps, tree branches, and other materials that you scavenged from the roadside, you made a hut to provide shelter from the harsh environment—heat, wind, disease, maybe even some neighbors. As you walk to fill jugs from a distant well, clouds of dust make your eyes water and your throat scratchy, leaving a reddish coat on your clothes and skin. Inside some huts you pass, people lay on reed mats, alone and recovering from some sickness. Children weave in and out amongst neighboring shelters, kicking a soccer ball, coughing, hungry. For some, this is the reality of living in Sudan. Thousands of miles away in their cozy Venetian garden studio, a team of architects from tamassociati is working on a new hospital design for a community such as this. From organizing room adjacencies, drafting up plans and elevations, and selecting materials, their decisions will have a profound influence on the health, well-being, and vitality of this Sudanese community. And unlike some of their disconnected, first-world contemporaries, who’ve never seen or experienced such a place (like many projects sprouting up in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East), this consortium of architects is refreshingly unique.
Right: An exterior spaces is shaded to create a waiting space for families and patients. (Photo: Massimo Grimaldi)
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Founded in 1996 by Raul Pantaleo and Massimo Lepore, tamassociati has been designing healthcare facilities since 2004 in some of the world’s most war-torn countries, including Sudan, Sierra Leone, the Central African Republic, Iraq, and Afghanistan. The firm has grown over the past fifteen years, keenly focusing on social-oriented design for the “third sector,” a term which loosely encompasses non-profits, non-governmental
Building Dignity In War-Torn Sudan | FEATURE
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“WE BRING TO AFRICA A HOSPITAL THAT SENDS A MESSAGE [...] THAT IS TO
Above: The colorful clothing of the Sudanese people illuminate the waiting area of the clinic. (Photo: Massimo Grimaldi) Right: The large woven wooden screens provide ventilation and shading for the community. (Photo: Massimo Grimaldi)
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RECOGNIZE EQUAL DIGNITY AND EQUAL RIGHTS” and voluntary organizations. The studio’s first healthcare project in Sudan came in 2004, when the Italian NGO, Emergency posted an opening for a site construction managerial position. “I made an application and then that started the adventure,” chuckled tamassociati partner and senior architect Raul Pantaleo. After being notified of his selection, Pantaleo moved to Sudan’s western Darfur region for six months in order to oversee the renovation of an operating theater. By working and living amongst the people served by the hospital, tamassociati and Emergency discovered they shared many of the same guiding principles, and a relationship was solidified.
dignity and equal rights.” Every Emergency health facility adheres to these two values, not to mention one other simple requirement that tamassociati satisfied with ease—quality design.
Emergency was founded in 1994, on the ethos of promoting peace, solidarity, and respect for all humans. The non-profit builds hospitals and trains local staff in providing free medical treatment to victims of war, land mines, and poverty. As one of the largest Italian NGOs, the organization operates in 16 countries and has served over 5 million people. Since their first project in Darfur, tamassociati found in Emergency a value-aligned partner with a shared vision about the power of architecture in its ability to transform people’s lives. “We bring to Africa a hospital that sends a message,” said Emergency’s Program Coordinator Pietro Parrino. “And that is to recognize equal
Now with seven healthcare facilities designed, built and fully operating around the world, tamassociati has established a thriving crosscontinental work methodology. This entails having one designer living onsite, absorbing the place, people, and needs, while a team in Italy translates the experience into the building’s design through drawings, modeling, and continuous feedback. “You have to live there, you have to be part of the organization… It’s not something that you can just apply to as an architect,” explains Pantaleo about the absolute need of an embedded presence on the project site. “You have to be aware of the people. You have to speak with the people.”
Near the end of the renovation project in 2004, Pantaleo was approached about designing Emergency’s second health center in Sudan, which came to him as a shock. “I had a meeting with the director and he asked me if I was able to design a heart center. I said, ‘Gino, look, I have never designed a hospital in my life.’ He said, ‘That’s perfect! It just has to be outrageously beautiful.’ That was the mandate.”
Spring 2014 Building Dignity In War-Torn Sudan | FEATURE
A PLACE FOR HEALING IN A BUSTLING PORT CITY
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tamassociati’s most recently completed healthcare facility continues to fulfill ......................Emergency’s “outrageously beautiful” design mandate. Adopting typical Arab building principles and forms observed throughout Sudan, the gleaming white Pediatric Center, which provides free healthcare to children under 14 years of age, wraps around a central garden, providing a place of peace and rest to a rapidly emerging refugee neighborhood in Port Sudan.
The city sits on the edge of the Red Sea as Sudan’s main port, drawing tourists for scubadiving and sandy beaches, as well as devout Muslims for the once-in-a-lifetime “Hajj’ pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia. In recent years, Port Sudan has been inundated with an enormous amount of refugees escaping surrounding areas fraught with conflicts, draughts, and instability, for the work available at the active port. This influx of residents has grown the population from 30,000 inhabitants in 2000, to nearly 500,000 in 2007—a population increase of just over sixteen fold in a matter of seven years. In order to accommodate these new residents, makeshift refugee settlements sprouted
towards the edges of the city, creating isolated, underserved suburbs of raw earth huts and not much else. “When we [went] there it was a very desperate situation. It was the middle of the desert. Nothing around. There was a school but [it was] very poor and desperate. It was great to design a hospital but it needed something more,” recalled Pantaleo.
Sixteenth century Ottoman-era buildings found in the center of Port Sudan brought inspiration for large, wooden lattice screens, which were originally used to allow women to observe activity on the streets without being seen. These organic screens offset against the white monolithic masonry walls provide ventilation and privacy to the entrance hall.
As visitors move through the exterior hall and enter the building, they are met with serene white walls and a warm gray floor covered with a barrel vault ceiling painted in shades of blue, altogether creating a cool, calming effect in comparison to the arid, dusty desert outside. Patients traverse through a single circulation artery, which unfolds into rooms containing three outpatient clinics, a 14 bed inpatient ward, a 4 bed intensive care ward, diagnostic exam rooms, and a pharmacy. Although openings have been minimized to avoid sun Four traditional materials - coral stone, brick, exposure, the lightness and airy feeling within the wood and bamboo - found in old and new Sudanese spaces provide enough ambient light to minimize buildings, are composed like a three-dimensional the need for electric lighting. The architects’ careful quilt on the front facade. Fragments of coral stone, selection and combination of materials paired which have all but disappeared from local quarries, with an easily navigable spatial layout creates a were repurposed from demolished buildings and sanctuary of restoration and rehabilitation—an used to complement the masonry cavity walls, oasis of calm in an area of chaos. constructed with locally manufactured bricks. The solution to address this deficiency was to create a public park around the Pediatric Center, along with a healing garden--a tamassociati trademark--and a sports field to fill in the 54,000 square foot site. As one enters the site through the public park, which contains some of the only trees in the surrounding area, the main entrance to the 8,400 square foot, single story facility greets visitors with a blend of familiar materials.
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PUBLIC design + humanity Grimaldi’s generous gift and artistic eye were not his only contribution to the project. “He would talk to people, play with the children, take photographs, and participate in some activities, like gardening--he loves gardening,” Pantaleo reflected. “I was talking a lot with him while we were there on site. He wasn’t interfering [with] the aesthetics of the building but rather was focused on the concept. He was very involved in the idea of transforming the hospital into a public park.”
A UNIQUE, GENTLE SPIRIT JOINS THE TEAM
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Along with the architecture team incorporating Sudanese architectural ........................tradition through material selections and the building form, the burgeoning area’s recent history (largely transformed by the new hospital) was documented by a unique artistic partner who elevated the level of participatory design for the Pediatric Center.
Construction began with clearing the site and leveling the ground. Once the area was prepped, it was immediately overtaken by local children playing a game of football (soccer). After seeing this reaction, Pantaleo and his team knew transforming the hospital’s site into a public garden, playground, and sports field was exactly what the local residents needed most, making the hospital just a small part of the bigger community space. And with Grimaldi leading the enthusiasm for gardening, the local community has created a thriving green area amongst a brown field of desert.
Italian artist Massimo Grimaldi, an avid collaborator and supporter of Emergency’s efforts, saw the new hospital in Sudan as the perfect subject for creating a useful piece of art. He wrote in his artist’s statement, “My work explores the nature of what we call ʻartʼ, the way that it is perceived, judged, and understood. It is an ongoing investigation of the criteria used to produce and circulate images, the power and limitations of aesthetic speculation, the possibility of redefining it in an ethical way. My desire to rethink the basic utility of my role as an artist, in an art system that is so often self-absorbed and vacuous, has led me to collaborate with EMERGENCY…” As Grimaldi’s fourth and largest collaboration with Emergency, the Pediatric Center in Port Sudan was the focus for his submission to the MAXXI Museum’s 2per100 Award—an annual competition that adheres to Italy’s ‘2% law’, which requires all public organizations who construct new buildings to devote a minimum of 2% of the construction costs to the production of artwork. Upon submission into the international competition, Grimaldi was awarded the top prize, which included an exhibition space on the museum’s main exterior wall and an award of €700,000--92% of which he donated to cover the cost of the hospital’s construction. Grimaldi then relocated to Sudan’s port city to join the team and photographed the entire design and construction process for the Pediatric Center.
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Right: The barrel vaulted ceiling, painted in shades of blue, creates a serene environment away from the desert. (Photo: Raul Pantaleo) Below: The circular openings within the walls help to provide views, daylight, and ventilation. (Photo: Raul Pantaleo)
Spring 2014 Building Dignity In War-Torn Sudan | FEATURE
“MY DESIRE TO RETHINK THE BASIC UTILITY OF MY ROLE AS AN ARTIST, IN AN ART SYSTEM THAT IS SO OFTEN SELF-ABSORBED AND VACUOUS, HAS LED ME TO COLLABORATE WITH EMERGENCY” |35
PUBLIC design + humanity
“THESE SIMPLE YET INNOVATIVE SYSTEMS FOR SUDAN REPRESENT NEW METHODOLOGIES THAT CAN BE EASILY IMPLEMENTED ACROSS SUB-SAHARAN AREAS”
DESIGNING FOR EFFICIENCY & LONGEVITY
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........................Because the site is in an arid climate ........................zone where temperatures often exceed ........................120°F, the grassy play areas and garden surrounding the hospital are understandably out of the ordinary and require constant irrigation. The architects worked with engineers from Climosfera to devise a wastewater treatment system to irrigate the greenery surrounding the site. “That is the only green in all of Sudan because of the filtration system with wastewater,” said Pantaleo. “This has become a central part of the [greater city] area where people can meet and also because at night it’s the only place where people can get light.” Along with extreme heat, Port Sudan’s extremely low humidity level and strong desert winds kick up
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exorbitant amounts of dust, creating enormous sand clouds fondly named “The Haboob.” Recognizing the limited resources and a sensitive operating budget for the hospital, the design team concentrated on the cooling, insulation and filtration systems to address these adverse environmental conditions while minimizing the building’s energy consumption and maximizing the occupants’ comfort level. Opting first and foremost for passive techniques, the team began designing the building’s envelope. Thick masonry walls made of two brick layers set apart with an air gap accumulate heat during the day, allowing the heat to rise and be released in the evenings through the attic space created between the barrel vaulted ceiling and insulated metal roof. This alternating 12-16 hour air cycle within the wall cavity helps maintain a temperature equilibrium for the interior spaces. The use of just these massive walls was not sufficient to ensure comfort, so the team shielded the intermittent exterior windows and walkways with braided bamboo screens to reduce solar heat gain. Again finding inspiration from the local area, the bamboo screens pay homage to fences
used in the nearby refugee camps, becoming an important feature from both a cultural and functional perspective. With temperatures maintained by the thick masonry walls and sun shades, the team returned to a successful ventilation system previously implemented 400 miles away at the Salam Center for Cardiac Surgery in Khartoum, Sudan—the traditional Iranian stack ventilation system, “badgir”. The badgir incorporates two 26-foot outdoor chimneys that poke above the building’s rooftop, pulling fresh air from prevailing North-South winds into the basement of the building. The air then weaves through a labyrinth of walls, slowing down in speed and depositing sand and dust onto the basement floors, before entering an adiabatic humidifier for treatment. The filtered air (previously at levels of 30%+ humidity) is now at a humidity of 5-10%, a temperature reduction of 10°F below the incoming temperature, and free from airborne particulates. The air then flows up to the interior spaces through small vents in the masonry walls. Finally, as the air warms, it rises up to the ceiling and exits through shorter return ventilation chimneys.
Building Dignity In War-Torn Sudan | FEATURE
“ALONG WITH HEALTH CARE, THE STUDIO’S ROOTS IN CIVIC ENGAGEMENT AND SOCIAL ISSUES HAS LED THEM TO EXAMINE NEW WAYS OF LIVING, HOW PUBLIC SPACES ACT AS A COLLECTIVE IDENTITY, AND WHAT TRADITIONAL ECONOMIC METRICS ANALYZE”
(Photo: Massimo Grimaldi) The adiabatic ‘water cooler’ system combined with the ventilation chimneys ensures continuous outdoor air flow through the hospital--the ideal condition to prevent airborne diseases amongst the patients. Electric consumption for the air conditioning system is also at a staggering 70% reduction due to coupling with the passive systems. These simple yet innovative systems for Sudan represent new methodologies that can be easily implemented across Sub-Saharan areas. With this modest yet powerful hospital design, Port Sudan’s Pediatric Center represents tamassociati and Emergency’s shared prioritization for well-designed, location-appropriate, and easily maintainable facilities that bring peace, harmony, and beauty to distressed communities. What’s the key to achieving this success? “One of the main things--that you can call a secret--is the participatory process that has been rooted in the way of thinking in this project,” reveals Pantaleo. “There is a community that is made with the doctor, the engineer, the architect, the site supervisor-there is a group of people that believe in going that direction. That is the way to process a project with that complexity.”
A FUTURE WITH LOW COST, HIGH VALUE DESIGN
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........................Since the completion of the Pediatric ........................Center, tamassociati’s methodologies ........................and projects are receiving increased recognition among the international design community, most recently being bestowed with an Aga Khan Award for Architecture and a Curry Stone Design Prize in 2013. With the award prize money, the studio, which operates as a “research team,” is focusing their efforts for 2014 around the theme “Low Cost, High Value.” Deciding on the annual theme is an essential piece in driving the firm’s efforts. Each year, the entire office meets with a different partner or collaborator and develops a statement of research to frame each individual’s upcoming work. “It’s a way of putting together the research for the
group. You have ten people trying to think in the same direction yet in total independence,” explains Pantaleo. Last year, the team focused on “Taking Care” as, “a precise will for architectural design rooted in mutual respect towards human beings and environmental tasks, as architecture concerns both of them.” This year, “Low Cost, High Value” will heavily involve developing guidelines for low-cost hospitals in Africa based on the eight successfully operating health care facilities and four new projects upcoming in 2014. Team members will be relocating to Somalia, Uganda, Rwanda, and the Central African Republic to design and build four additional health care facilities, which will serve as ‘live’ case studies to test the guidelines as they are developed. Along with health care, the studio’s roots in civic engagement and social issues has led them to examine new ways of living, how public spaces act as a collective identity, and what traditional economic metrics analyze. Two new co-housing developments will be realized in 2014, further expanding their diverse portfolio of built work, along with a new study into social profit metrics for industrial areas.
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PUBLIC design + humanity All of these upcoming built projects are capped with a dedication to building awareness about architecture’s importance to each person’s life, which the firm is exploring with print communications. Pantaleo and partner Massimo Lepore, who co-edited the European publication Utopica for three years while studying architecture at university, have returned to their roots in writing and publishing to create graphic novels that reflect on their 15 years of built work and the larger impact architecture has on communities around the globe. In collaboration with a journalist and photographer, the studio is embarking on their second graphic novel to capture tools that communicate architecture’s impact on the landscape. Pantaleo explains how the “simple,” graphical format creates “a positive way to understand the value of architecture and shift the idea that architecture is not only about the big events but things that deal with daily life.” Let’s return to your cobbled-together home in the dusty, baking desert. A strange man is approaching your shelter. He has soft eyes and a smile on his face. He wants to ask you a few questions about your living conditions, your family, and what you need the most. For some reason he makes you feel comfortable. Communicating with
(Photo: Massimo Grimaldi)
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more hand signals than words, you tell him that you moved here to find better work so you can feed your family. The dust has been bothering your throat and your children are constantly coughing. He leaves after spending a few hours speaking with you and each of your neighbors, promising that the new site across the way will be a place for you and your family to get the treatment you need.
(Photo: Massimo Grimaldi) This is the impact tamassociati and their collaborators are making around the globe. From healthcare buildings, to economic metrics, to graphic communications, tamassociati’s range of poignant designs and commitment to ethical issues puts them at the top of leading international humanitarian firms of our generation. +
Building Dignity In War-Torn Sudan | FEATURE
CLIENT EMERGENCY NGO Preliminary, detailed, final design: tamassociati (Massimo Lepore, Raul Pantaleo, Simone Sfriso with Laura Candelpergher and Enrico Vianello) PROJECT COORDINATOR Pietro Parrino PROGRAM COORDINATOR Rossella Miccio, Pietro Parrino MECHANICAL ENGINEERING Marco Paissan, Climosfera STRUCTURAL ENGINEERING Francesco Steffinlongo, INGECO SITE ENGINEERING Roberto Crestan CONSTRUCTION COMPANY Autocostruzione COVERED SURFACE AREA 780 sqm / 8,396 sf SURFACE AREA 5000 sqm / 53,820 sf TIME June 2011- May 2012 COST (CONSTRUCTION AND FITTING) €1,200,000 / $1,640,000
(Photo: Massimo Grimaldi)
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PUBLIC design + humanity
TACTICAL DOING:
HOW PUBLIC WORKSHOP IS GROWING THE NEXT GENERATION OF CIVIC LEADERS
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An interview with Alex Gilliam, founder of Public Workshop, a Philadelphia-based community design organization.
Written by Gilad Meron Photography by Public Workshop
“I’ve always been interested in the idea of making things from nothing. When I was a kid I’d always grab my Lego box and try to make something totally imaginary, like a whole city or something else awesome. So when I found out about this I was like, wait... I’m actually building a whole park? And not just a park, but a whole mini-world filled with beaches and cities and forests! I’m getting to do something real; it’s such an awesome feeling.” This is how 16 year old Alexa Eddy described her experience with Tiny WPA, the flagship program of Public Workshop, a Philadelphia-based organization that works with local community partners to create programs that engage youth in civic design projects. Launched in early 2012, Tiny WPA is a program that aims to redesign and rebuild Philadelphia’s public spaces and micro-infrastructure through improvements initiated by local youth. These design/build projects not only help transform neighborhoods, they also help train the next generation of civic leaders. Each Tiny WPA project functions as a mini boot-camp of sorts for young adults like Alexa who are passionate and hungry to have a positive impact on their neighborhoods and cities. By teaching them how to design and build “micro-infrastructure” like the playground Alexa described above (pictured on the right) Tiny WPA projects are putting young adults at the forefront of stimulating civic engagement in their communities.
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Through programs like Tiny WPA, Public Workshop is redefining the way that youth participate as citizens and leaders in their communities. In the process, they’re pioneering a new model of education that challenges how and where learning occurs. All of this happens under the careful guidance of Alex Gilliam, the founder and director of Public Workshop, a nationally recognized leader in K-12 design education and self-proclaimed “cheerleader of possibility.” Gilliam is a bold and blunt 39 year-old who knows exactly what he’s doing. He thinks three steps ahead of you and is always trying to do more and do it better. “I’m constantly trying to get more out of everything… it’s both a blessing and a curse,” Gilliam reflects. Like nearly everyone doing great work, he is constantly self-critical, but it was clear from speaking with him that his drive to constantly do more and do better is exactly what motivates him. After several long phone conversations that stretched into the night, I came to realize that Public Workshop is in many ways a perfect reflection of Gilliam’s personality. The two are inextricably intertwined; to understand Public Workshop, you have to understand Alex Gilliam and how he got there.
Tactical Doing | FEATURE
Public Workshop is
redefining the way that youth participate as citizens and leaders in their communities, and in the process, pioneering a new model of education that challenges how and where learning occurs.
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PUBLIC design + humanity
LEARNING TO SPEAK DESIGN
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After graduating from college with a bachelors of science in architecture, Gilliam spent a year in England teaching architectural history before moving to Philadelphia to pursue a career in design. After a brief stint at an architecture firm, he quickly realized he didn’t want to spend his time sitting behind a desk. “I remember it was probably my third day on the job and I accidentally fell asleep at my desk. I don’t remember how long I was asleep but I remember getting woken up by one of the principals. Honestly, they weren’t even that mad at me, but it made me realize that I just didn’t find much meaning or value in the work I was doing there.” Around that same time Gilliam heard about an opening at a school called The Charter High School for Architecture and Design (CHAD), and got a part-time position teaching there. At the time, the school was going through a number of changes, which meant that things were a bit hectic and not as structured as he had expected. But this ended up providing opportunities for Alex to step into new roles and do things he would not have been able to do anywhere else at his age and experience level. “Before I knew it I was 24 years old and was not only a full-time teacher, I was the Director of Design, responsible for writing the design curriculum for the whole school. It was like a boot-camp for me, I gained a ton of valuable experience about how you teach design and how you talk about design.” The four years he spent at CHAD shaped his perceptions of how design is taught. He quickly realized that he could never take for granted how he talked about design. “Teaching students about design really gives you an appreciation for how important it is to speak about design in normal language that anyone can understand and relate to. Most designers are never in a situation where they have to do that so they sometimes discount it.” It was during those four years teaching at CHAD that Gilliam realized everyone has the innate capacity to understand design; they just don’t necessarily use the language of design. “Developmental psychology tells us that we develop our language systems and our sense of self around space; our neighborhoods, our homes and the places we are raised. From the moment you pop out of the womb you are thinking like a designer, you are processing space in a way
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that is very much like an architect, except you’re processing it for environmental threats. Your brain is mapping the scale of space, the color, the light, and it’s doing all of that all the time and causing you to have gut reactions to the spaces you’re in. Everyone has emotional reactions to the spaces they live and work in from the moment they’re born. So what I try to do is get people to slow down for a moment and acknowledge that, and when they do, they can actually provide some pretty sophisticated analysis of space and the design of it.” That realization has stuck with Gilliam and guided much of his work. It has driven him to continually ask the question, “who is the highest means to solve a problem?” Too often we assume that marginalized populations such as children can’t make valuable contributions to the design process, but that’s simply not true. Through teaching design to middle and high school students, he realized there is tremendous untapped potential for youth to become valuable contributors to the design of cities. “For example, most major cities have no idea how their parks are being used or what condition they’re in. As a result they don’t know the best way to spend their incredibly stressed park budgets, and at the same time they get lots of complaints from citizens that parks aren’t being properly maintained. The traditional way of dealing with that would be to spend half a million dollars to hire a couple of new staff members. But having a few people keep track of hundreds of acres of parks is simply inefficient. So the question is, who is the highest means to accomplish that work? What if instead the city spent that half-million dollars to implement public space evaluation courses in a dozen local high schools and gardening clubs? Suddenly you’ve got a mini-army of park evaluators who will provide even better data because they are from the community and know the parks. At the same time, you’re providing relevance and meaning in those students’ education because they are doing something that actually impacts their neighborhood, and in the process you’re turning those students into future advocates for parks and valuable public-space experts within their community.” Gilliam is full of ideas like these that engage youth in addressing real urban challenges and have a positive impact on their schools and communities at the same time. But after four years as the Design Director of CHAD, he realized that working inside a school simply didn’t afford him the opportunity to make those types of ideas happen. He felt as though he had reached the limits of what he could do from within a school, so he left.
“I realized that even though we didn’t design and build some massive thing it was the process of doing all the small things that really was having an impact on the students.”
Left: Alex Gilliam and volunteers at the Tiny WPA adventure playground at the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society’s Pop-UP Garden.
Tactical Doing | FEATURE
RURAL STUDIO
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Gilliam left Philadelphia and moved to rural Alabama to become a fellow with the Rural Studio, a famous design/ build program at Auburn University that engages students in the design and construction of houses and community-oriented buildings for under-served communities in the region. At the Rural Studio Gilliam worked closely with a local school that was struggling in a number of ways. Gilliam’s goal was to engage the students to help rebuild their own school, but the first step was for him to understand what it was like for the students who went there.
“The students were pretty vocal about the fact that they knew no one at either the local or state level really cared about their school, and the physical condition of the school reflected that. The students felt embarrassed that this was so evident. So I created a really simple process that enabled them to first identify what exactly it was about their school that they wanted to change, and then empowered them to re-design and re-build those parts of it.” After three months though, Gilliam found himself feeling pretty frustrated. “We hadn’t gotten to what I would call design, you know design with a big D. Sure, we had painted 37 doors, fixed the bleachers and a bunch of windows, cleaned, repainted one of the gyms,
knocked down an old building and painted some murals but it didn’t seem like enough. I had wanted to do a design/build project with the students, and I was really down on myself because I thought that if the students didn’t actually design and build anything then that meant I didn’t have an impact on their lives.” “Then one day there was a moment when it all clicked. I walked into the gym and fifty students sprinted across the room asking if they could help. I had to tell them, ‘listen I’m really sorry but there are already a lot of other students working and there just aren’t enough tools to go around.” But two girls in particular persisted, begging me to let them help. So I said to them, ‘well, the only tool I have left is a paint scrapper and there’s some paint over there on the wall that needs to be scrapped.’ And before I could finish my sentence they said, ‘Yea, we’d love to scrape paint!’ “Right then I realized that even though we didn’t design and build some massive thing— some designed product—it was the process of doing all the small things that really was having an impact on the students’ perceptions of their school, which led to changes in their behaviors and their actions and ultimately impacted their lives. I had always known that designing and building things could change someone’s life, but I hadn’t ever really seen those small things as equally important opportunities.” That experience and the resulting realization led
Gilliam to rethink his entire approach to design education and community building. He realized that people can derive meaning and purpose from the simplest of tasks; it was about process, not product. That realization has since become the core of what Gilliam does. Gilliam says that using design to have an impact on people’s lives is largely about creating those experiences. “In a lot of ways I see the work I do as experience design. A big part of it is being and to identify and relate to other people and understand human emotions and motivations. Through working with those students I began to understand that they really just wanted to find meaning and value in their day, in their time at school, all I did was create an opportunity for them to do that.” “The other important factor related to this work is how it can be contagious. If I had not already been working in that school for months, doing all kinds of small projects, then those students would not have been able to see scrapping paint off the wall as valuable. If you can get a few people in a group to start something, often times it will spread. So in this case the more students in that school who I got to see the value in improving their school, the more students wanted to take part in that process. Just think about what that means if you extrapolate it to the urban scale. You start opening up all sort of possibilities for civic engagement and community building.”
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KINESTHETIC LEARNING THROUGH DESIGN
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Gilliam wrote an article last year, which has since been re-published multiple times, called “What a Bunch of Legos Can Teach Us about Civic Participation.” In it he talks about how as humans, we innately tend to copy one another, and that if we are thoughtful and intentional about how and where we take action as members of a community, then we can use that power to affect whole systems and even start a movement. This is part of the reason why Gilliam does nearly all his work in public. He feels strongly that starting a project in a public space can be very important for community building and more critically, for showing people what is possible. This is part of Gilliam’s underlying strategy for nearly all his work, something he calls “tactical doing,” not to be confused with tactical urbanism.
“I think that some of the conversation around tactical urbanism is fairly limited because it’s really a larger problem. Tactical urbanism is tapping into something much larger, which at its root is really about how we do things. It’s about saying that we want to get something done in a city and instead of trying to go through the typical bureaucratic processes, which would take years, we’re just going to go out and do it ourselves in a week. That guerrilla mentality and approach can be applied to anything from creating new bike lanes to changing the way we teach physics. It’s all really part of the same thing, it’s about how we do things and how we get things done—it’s tactical doing.” Quick to back up his ideas with theories and literature, Gilliam asked if I had read Daniel Kahneman’s book “Thinking, Fast and Slow.” He explained to me that in it, Kahneman talks about how we spend most of our lives thinking in a very slow fashion; which is very deliberative, logical and largely unemotional. But we also have this whole other way of thinking, fast thinking, which is intuitive and passionate and emotional. In the book he argues that we need to spend more time working and thinking fast because it’s extremely powerful and undervalued in our society. Gilliam said that Kahneman’s ideas are helpful because they provide an intellectual framework for what he is already doing in design and education. “We spend all our time designing slowly, methodically, with careful planning and logic, and we largely disregard our abilities to design fast. I’m not saying an architect should design
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the structural support system for a building in an hour, but there are certain situations in which designing fast can be very powerful. That’s why we always start with building and ‘doing’ (thinking fast) because it rapidly accelerates learning, facilitates a deeper understanding of the problem, builds trust and instills a sense of ownership. All we are really doing is examining how people are feeling and what they need in in a particular process; are they bored, do they need context, are they distrustful? The more you understand human emotions and behaviors and responses during the process, the more it becomes clear when you need to be doing the slow stuff, like community meetings and research studies, or the fast stuff, like tactical urbanism and pop-up dinners.” But as with nearly everything that he thinks about, Gilliam always finds a way to weave the concept into education. “You can take the same framework for strengthening a ‘slow’ community design process with tactical doing and apply it to improving learning and schools. It’s exactly the same thing.” Ultimately Alex is showing that there is more than one way to accomplish things and that sometimes seemingly simple changes in how we do things can make a big difference. Although this may be true, it’s clear from looking at the work Gilliam has led over the past decade that he’s partial to building as a tactical approach to education. In fact, nearly every project Public Workshop has been behind is rooted in a hands-on, physical building project. Gilliam has even joked in the past that he’s a proud advocate of child labor. Don’t be confused—that’s not to say he wants to see more children in sweatshops. He means that engaging youth in physical building is a uniquely powerful mechanism for learning and leadership training. “Building is kinesthetic. If you get into developmental psychology, you understand that because building is kinesthetic, it establishes
memories and emotions in your brain much more deeply than sitting and listening to a lecture ever could. This is not just my idea; there is a real physiological process going on in your body and brain that makes kinesthetic learning extremely effective.” Though his work might seem from the outside like simple novel ways to engage students and youth, it actually goes much deeper—there’s neuroscience behind his methods. “Kinesthetic learning is really important; it taps into something that students need and we can see academic and behavioral improvements when we provide students more opportunities to learn this way. For example, in one of the schools I was working in, I ran a design thinking exercise where students walked around their entire school and identified and analyzed what they do on a daily basis and what they thought needed to be improved. Ultimately, what we came to was nearly all the boys realizing they just wanted more gym class. And then to our surprise, as I kept working with those students to build solutions to the problems they identified in their school at full scale, we began to see improvement in the students’ behavior and academic achievement, not necessarily because they were getting to be more creative in class but because they were given the opportunity to move around and learn through their physical actions. They were getting to actually design and build things, move around and expel some of their limitless energy and get sweaty and get dirty and work hard. It’s not just about giving them space to release their energy though— that type of work is also tapping into a lot of larger life lessons, like the value of hard work and the value of understanding the people in your community, and the value of working with others on your team to build something. It’s really a much more holistic model of education, and that’s exactly why I think the future of learning is moving students from the classroom to the sidewalk. What if this was happening everywhere?”
“I think the future of learning is moving students from the classroom to the sidewalk.”
Tactical Doing | FEATURE
Top: A Public Workshop “Building Hero� helps a community member with the construction of a raised walkway. Left: A young girl explains how even her hard work pays off! Right: Any able bodied community member can help Public Workshop on their projects to deliver engaging and fun community spaces to Philadelphia.
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Tactical Doing | FEATURE
LEARNING BY DOING
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Gilliam knows the impact of kinesthetic learning first hand. After finishing his fellowship with the Rural Studio, he spent over a year working with master carpenters and metal fabricators in Virginia and New York, honing his building and making skills. It was not a very prestigious or well-paid year of his life, but he says he knew it was critical for him to develop those skills, so he could do the work he knew he eventually wanted to do. This was still years before he launched Public Workshop. After those years of apprenticeship, Gilliam had the opportunity to lead new programming for some very forward thinking organizations like Hester Street Collaborative and the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum. But ultimately, Gilliam realized that he wanted to push the participatory community design paradigm even further. He wanted to engage youth more systematically and develop on-going programs for young adults to play a role in shaping the design of their cities—something that had really never been done before at the scale he was imagining. He talks about how it was important to him to continue to raise the bar on how this happens and what this looks like. “I believe that great design, empowerment, and leaps in learning are not mutually exclusive – in fact they are reinforcing.” Realizing he wanted to delve further into design, he took the plunge and went back to grad school for architecture to become a better designer.
This is part of a long term vision to grow a generation of civically engaged citizens who become leaders in their communities to help re-imagine cities. Gilliam did a lot of research and work in grad school around developing new, more accessible ways for communities and youth to really change the inner city. A lot of what he was working on is more common now, but back at that time the work was still relatively novel. Right as he was finished grad school, he was invited to give a talk to an audience of urban designers and city planners, in which he described his work and how he believed it represented a new way of doing things. “For me this was just what I thought about every day and tried to do, so I guess I didn’t realize how much it would resonate with those professionals. After the talk I had people who were 20 years older than me coming up to me and saying things like, ‘You give me hope, you make me want to keep on being an urban planner.’ And I thought ‘Oh God!’ On the one hand that made it even more clear to me that the current way things were being done was just out of date and out of context, but more importantly it made it really clear to me that I was on to something.” It was right around then, just as he was leaving grad school, that Gilliam realized he should formalize this. So he created a blog, and just like that…Public Workshop was born. Through past work and professional connections he was able to secure some interesting projects soon after graduating, and for the next two years he followed the work. He was moving around the country, mainly between cities, following project opportunities. But around the end of 2011, he realized that it was not sustainable, but more importantly, not effective for a number of reasons.
“Through projects I was working on during those two years after grad school, I developed relationships with young adults, really deep relationships that were incredibly reciprocal. Because [on one hand], working with these young adults enabled me to help do some amazing work in their communities, and on the other hand I was providing them with a level support and pressure and mentorship that they were not getting anywhere else. But pretty quickly it became clear that if I was only there for a single project or in a city for even a single year, it was really hard to fully leverage those relationships, and even harder to measure my long term impact or allow projects to mature and reach their full potential. So in early 2012 I moved to Philadelphia and plan to be here for the foreseeable future. My decision to move was really about scalability and being able to do much better work and measure what I’m doing in a long term way. Hopefully that will allow me to make our cities better while creating a tidal wave of opportunities for youth.” Gilliam says that his goal is to grow an army of young adults, a civic design innovation corps, to extend impact both in Public Workshop’s projects but also to be empowered instigators of change in their communities. It’s inspiring to hear Gilliam talk about this, I could hear the passion rising in his voice as he described his goals for the future. I might be reading between the lines, but I’d venture to guess that he wants to do more than grow an army of young adults in Philadelphia, I think this is part of a long term vision to grow an entire generation of civically engaged citizens who become leaders in their communities to help re-imagine cities. Left: Public Workshop has created a revolution of involving young community members in their projects. Their experiences are well documented by Gilliam’s campaign to have everyone write how important the experience is to them.
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The real trick is how to convince people that this is something important that they should invest in. The secret is that it’s actually not by starting with good intentions, it’s by starting with need.
PASSIONATELY LOVING WORK
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“People ask all me the time, ‘how do you get the projects?’ And part of it’s people coming to me with project ideas or proposals, and sometimes it’s me going out and finding the people that I really want to work with and trying to make the case that we should do something. The real trick is how to convince people that this is something important that they should invest in. The secret is that it’s actually not by starting with good intentions, it’s by starting with need. “Taking a needs-based approach is the only way I’ve been able to get my work funded. I spend a lot of time going and talking to potential partners, including government agencies, and helping them think about where they have needs within what they do, and where we could radically rethink the role of their local community to address those needs through youth engagement. It takes a lot of time, and it’s a lot of educating, and it’s a very slow conversation. But I really think that is where the opportunities are. Even so, making it financially viable is incredibly difficult, not to mention trying to grow or scale it. But I have to just smile at times, because when you zoom out and look at the big picture, it’s pretty clear that Public Workshop is succeeding in a significantly down economy. “Sometimes people forget that this is still a relatively new business, the idea of placemaking, particularly youth-led place-making. So essentially you need to persuade people to pay for a business that they didn’t even know existed. And it’s usually not just one person, you have to diversify your funding streams to make it work. And understanding how to do that isn’t
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exactly something you can take a class in… I mean I don’t know of any courses called ‘how to piece together funding streams for communitybased place-making projects.’ So the people you’re convincing are a part of that equation too. I mean even if there was a course like that, a part of the funding is actually knowing people, having a network who are aware of your work, who can reach out to you with new opportunities, which in turn is based off of your having already done some of this work and made it publicly visible. So in some ways it’s a chicken and egg problem, which again goes back to my point, that I’ve probably stressed too many times by now…that this work is simply hard to do— that’s the real reason why there’s not more of it being done right now. “I think one of the other critical things for place making and temporary urbanism is figuring out how it actually fits into longer term systems and processes. It’s not just about funding streams for one-off projects, it’s about finding ways to make your projects contribute towards longer term goals that the city has already set and is already struggling to meet. But the really positive thing is that I keep hearing from planners and city officials that everyone wants more community engagement, and the communities are saying the same thing, so I think there are a lot of opportunities, but again, the money is still really tight. At the end of the day it’s really about identifying need and starting from there, really making any type of community engagement process come out of clear need for something, not out of desire to do good. “Lack of funding for this work and the issue of convincing people that it’s valuable is only part of the challenge though, there’s also the more practical challenge that this type of work is hard because it requires a unique set of skills
Tactical Doing | FEATURE
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PUBLIC design + humanity and understandings. One of the challenges that I have at times is that the stuff that I do, the stuff that Public Workshop does, needs to be very accessible to a wide range of people, and at times it looks so accessible that it looks easy, but it’s not. “I think one of the problems with design thinking, or tactical urbanism, or whatever you want to call it, is that there is this assumption that anyone can do this stuff. And there are parts of it that anyone can do, but not so many people who can do it all. Those people don’t just grow on trees. They are few and far between. I mean if I think about what I need in a team, and this is something I think about a lot because I’m always looking for new people to work with, I need someone who is a great designer, great at working with people and communities; they need to be a solid educator and they need to be a great builder, and they need to be a really good lateral thinker and see how lots of different pieces fit together. Right there, that’s five things, and it’s really hard to be good at all those. Not to mention the fact that once you have those skills it’s also going to take a certain amount of willingness to sacrifice your time and energy to make the work happen, which in turn means it’s most likely someone who’s in the earlier stages of their career or life, which in turn means they have to be really special to be young and already have all five of those skill sets.
happen for about 6 months. And then realize, ‘ah shit, this is really hard.’ Then they go and work for institutions. In some respects, by the time you have the maturity to do some of this work, you’re around your thirties and you need to start planning for some other stuff in your life. So I’ve seen a lot of reformed designers and educators in their forties and even in their fifties who want to do this, but to really take the leap and dive into this type of work you run the risk of only making $25,000-40,000 a year, which for some people is a big risk because they already have a family and a mortgage and bills to pay.” The more Gilliam described his experience and the sacrifices he’s made, the more it became clear that he made them because he passionately loves this work. Even though these different techniques, tools, and approaches arise out of his own deep analysis of human nature, they very much are a part of who he is as a person. At the same time, it’s clear that he is not
simply exploring what he’s interested in. He is driven by a need - a desire to do more and do it better. “I think that there are a lot of people right now who’d like to do this type of work, who’d like to start something like Public Workshop, but they are not in a position where they can make the kind of personal sacrifices this work requires or take the professional and financial risks that it takes. I’m not saying don’t do it, I mean Public Workshop is proof that those sacrifices and risks can really pay off, but you need to understand that doing this type of work is a lifestyle. It’s a lifestyle choice to constantly question what you’re doing and relentlessly look for connections, to fearlessly test to see whether your ideas actually work and to be confident enough to be okay with being wrong but curious and analytic enough to always want to know why, and constantly work to do more and do better.” +
“But even if you have the right people and the right team, the work itself is both delicate and complex, and it’s not something you’re going to figure out in the first few months, or even first year you’re working. Because even if you do have all those skills and know how to make it work, you’re not going to get a contract to do this right off the bat, and even if you do get one, then how are you going to get the rest? I mean, I’m not tooting my own horn, but I’ve made a lot of personal and financial sacrifices, some of which I probably shouldn’t have made. But what I have seen over the past couple of years is that a number of people really want to do this, and really get excited about it and try to make it
Public Workshop is proof that those sacrifices and risks can really pay off, but you need to understand that doing this type of work is a lifestyle.”
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PUBLIC design + humanity
EXPANSION OF EDUCATION
Socially Responsible University Programs
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The recent announcement of Northeastern University’s new Social Impact Lab is the latest in a line of university level programs geared towards educating the next generation on how to empower civic engagement and social change in all disciplines around the world. With many of the top universities now catering to the growing Public Interest Design and Social Impact arenas, undergraduate students around the country will be exposed to the humanitarian side of professional fields much earlier in their careers. This comes at a wonderful time for burgeoning designers as the global population that needs the most service lies somewhere within the “other 99%”. Storied programs, such as Rural Studio at Auburn University, have long taught design and construction students what it means to give back to the local community. As organizations like Architecture for Humanity have given purpose and energy to the design movement to bring more resilient solutions to the world, these university programs are becoming highly saught after. Not every student can transfer or afford the education that some of the more established programs offer. Therefore, it is a wonderful sign that universities from coast to coast are beginning to open their doors to courses and programs that empower the next generation of change-makers.
Above Screenshot from Northeastern University’s Social Impact Lab. Right (Top to Bottom): Website Screenshots - Rural Studio; University of Texas at Austin’s Public Interest Design program; Portland State Univeristy’s Center for Public Interest Design.
Among the many other universities that have recently opened their doors with programs and centers for courses focused on public interest design and social impact include: Portland State’s School of Architecture: Center for Public Interest Design, The University of Texas at Austin Public Interest Design Program, and University of Minnesota’s College of Design.
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OUR NEXT GENERATION
G CREATIN AGENTS CHANGE
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PUBLIC design + humanity
LVED IN GET INVO R UND YOU AND ARO Y! COMMUNIT
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Elevating Impact
June 20th - Portland, OR www.pdx.edu/impactentrepreneurs/
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Public Interest Design Insitute May 9/10 - Salt Lake City, UT www.publicinterestdesign.com/utah/
SXSW Interactive
March 7/16 - Austin, TX http://sxsw.com/interactive/
EVENTS Spring 2014
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CONFERENCES, SEMINARS + & TALKS Calendar of Events from March to June 2014.
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Structures for Inclusion
March 22/23 - New York City www.publicinterestdesign.org/
Public Interest Design Institute March 24/25 - New York City 99u.com/conference
TEDx Fulbright
April 5th - Washington D.C. www.tedxfulbright.org/
99U Conference
May 1/2 - New York City 99u.com/conference
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TEDx Charleston
April 8th - Charleston, SC www.tedxcharleston.org/
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IMPACT Design for Social Change Webinar Series http://impact.sva.edu/ Social Design Entrepreneurship: In Search of the Holy Grail Friday, March 7 - 12.30pm EST with Lee Davis, NESsT.
Design Citizen: Working with the Government
Friday, March 21 - 12.30pm EST with Chelsea Mauldin, Public Policy Lab.
Embedded Design: Impact from the Bottom Up Friday, April 11 - 12.30pm EST with Ramsey Ford, Design Impact.
The Legal Labyrinth: Where do I Begin?
Friday, April 18 - 12.30pm EST with Carly Leinheiser, Perlman & Perlman.
Inspiring the Next Generation: Harnessing Brilliance
Friday, May 2 - 12.30pm EST with Emily Piloton, Project H and Camp H. |55
GALLERY
PROJECT INFO: Woman’s Opportunity Center, Kayonza, Rwanda PROJECT SIZE: approx. 2,200 m2 CONSTRUCTION BUDGET: approx. $1,286,000 CONSTRUCTION TIMELINE: approx. 22 months PROJECT MANAGER: Bruce Engel CLIENT: Women for Women International ARCHITECT: Sharon Davis Design STRUCTURAL ENGINEER: OSD ENGINEERING WATER MNGMT ENGINEER: eDesignDynamics LANDSCAPE DESIGN: XS Space and Susan Maurer (Julie Farris) SIGNAGE: 2x4 WATER FILTRATION: Manna Energy Ltd. COMPOSTING TOILETS: REC REC ASSOCIATION
BIO-GAS ENGINEER: CRET sarl RAIN CISTERNS: Water for Life COOK STOVES: Manna Energy Ltd. SOLAR ENERGY: Great Lakes Energy GENERAL CONTRACTOR: Three Code Construction CONTRACTOR’S PROJECT MANAGER: Peter O. Manyara Patman Consultants PHOTO CREDIT: Elizabeth Felicella DESCRIPTION: Women for Women International, a global NGO, believes that the rebuilding of a country that has suffered through genocide is best achieved through education and self-empowerment at a grassroots level. The idea for a Women’s Opportunity Center fulfills this mission by offering women both a
permanent haven for gathering and classrooms for learning new job training skills, including the craft of brick making. By using available materials in a new design language, we hope to encourage local experimentation, so that community restoration becomes more integrated, resourceful, and environmentally conscious. In this semi-rural setting, women dedicate their days to small subsistence farms, fetching fresh water, and scavenging wood for fuel. Our site is at a crossroads above a fertile valley and is an ideal arena for architecture that opens a new world of opportunity.
PROJECT INFO: Bethaday Community Learning Space, White Center, WA Project Size: 24,000 gsf Construction Budget: $7.4 million Construction Timeline: approx. 22 months CLIENT: Technology Access Foundation (TAF) ARCHITECTURE: The Miller Hull Partnership SALVAGED MATERIAL CONSULTANT: Public Architecture CONTRACTOR: Foushee STRUCTURAL ENGINEER: DCI Engineers CIVIL ENGINEER & LANDSCAPE: SvR Design Company DEVELOPMENT: King County Park & Recreation PHOTO CREDIT: Benjamin Benschneider
DESCRIPTION: The Bethaday Community Learning Space building is an inspiring administrative and learning environment for one of Washington’s most successful STEM education programs serving students of color. This mixed-use facility strengthens ties with its economically-challenged neighborhood by providing much needed community gathering/event space and ‘eyes on the park’ in the area’s primary and ‘at risk’ outdoor space. It also exemplifies what can result from creative public/private partnerships to further equity and social justice goals. A key client design directive was to utilize salvaged materials to promote sustainability and reinforce the organization’s creative nature by
demonstrating reuse, as well as to engage the community through in-kind, physical donations. Overall, specific materials choices in this targeted LEED Gold building were considered for their longterm suitability, reviewed for potential toxic content, and evaluated for energy-efficiency and code compliance. Following consultations with Public Architecture the local architecture team facilitated design of a 100-foot long entry bridge made of reclaimed timber, and elsewhere–retired road signs, discarded wood doors, fan belts, light fixtures and a range of cast-off materials were creatively repurposed in both obvious and subtle applications integral to the building envelope, finishes, and user experiences.
PUBLIC design + humanity
BUILDING DIGNITY IN WARTORN SUDAN
tHE HIGH LINE EFFECT
Akdn.org. “Aga Khan Award for Architecture.” 2013. http://www.akdn.org/architecture/project. asp?id=4438 (accessed 19 Dec 2013).
Blackmar, Elizabeth, and Roy Rosenzweig. “History.” Central Park. N.p., n.d. Web. 02 Dec. 2013. <http://www.centralpark.com/guide/history.html>.
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Spring 2014
How We Think About Obsolete Infrastructure.” Planetizen: The Urban Planning, Design, and Development Network. Journal of Planning Education and Research, 9 Oct. 2013. Web. 02 Dec. 2013. <http://www.planetizen.com/node/65524>.
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EASTERN UGANDA
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Kumbo
CAMEROON
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Ddegya
Uganda
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TANZANIA
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TANZANIA
JI’s Red Studio
RWANDA
JI’s Red Studio
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