At 8:30 a.m. bright and early on a Thursday morning, a group of local business owners and intern architects were huddled over photos and diagrams in the Frankford Community Development Corporation’s office sketching and discussing lighting and signage.
The meeting was organized by the Community Design Collaborative as part of the rStore program, which provides preliminary design consultations to groups of small business owners organized by community-based nonprofits. Each rStore project includes a consultation day in which storeowners meet one-on-one with volunteer design professionals.
The Community Design Collaborative has teamed up with the Philadelphia Industrial Development Corporation (PIDC) to support a design challenge that will tackle some of the common issues surrounding retooling older industrial sites in urban neighborhoods through an original approach—innovative design.
The Infill Philadelphia: Industrial Sites Design Challenge will officially kick off on Tuesday, February 16 at the Urban Outfitters Headquarters at the Philadelphia Navy Yard, Building 543 from 4 – 6:30 p.m.
A sneak peak at the Retooling Industrial Sites exhibit.
The Philadelphia City Paper article Lofty Aspirations profilesthe Collaborative’s upcoming Retooling Industrial Sites exhibit. Beth Miller, Executive Director of the Collaborative, and exhibitors from KSS Architects discuss the possibilities of repurposing former industrial areas.
Collaborative volunteer James Curry, MetEast senior Angelo Drummond and Angelo's adviser Keinan Thompson discuss the Cramer Hill project.
Every Community Design Collaborative service grant begins with a kickoff meeting to present the volunteers with background on the project, the site, the neighborhood and the client and their mission. Last week Angelo Drummond’s vision for a teen lounge in the Cramer Hill neighborhood of Camden, NJ moved one step further when the Community Design Collaborative held a kickoff for a project with the Cramer Hill Community Development Corporation to create a conceptual design for a community center based on Angelo’s ideas. At the meeting, the volunteers heard about Angelo’s research while project manager Heidi Levy showed them photos and maps of the site and surrounding area.
Angelo, a senior at MetEast High School, decided to focus his senior thesis on researching and developing a community teen lounge after looking around his neighborhood and seeing that teenagers did not have a safe place to hang out after school. MetEast is a public school established by the nonprofit Big Picture Learning and encourages students to pursue their passions through internships and a senior project that benefits the community. Angelo wanted to help reduce violence in the community by creating a space for teenagers to spend time and participate in events and activities.
The prefab 100K House designed by Interface Studio: Principal Brian Phillips says. "Just a small piece of construction is about construction. The other pieces are about politics and labor and money and environmental concerns."
Inga Saffron profiles four groundbreaking Philly architecture firms, showing a common thread shared by KieranTimberlake, Erdy McHenry, Onion Flats, and Interface Studio Architects: “architects who do not blush in saying that what they’re doing is socially important work.”
“They’re not the sort of architects you go to when you want just another pretty building… instead they dream of making buildings that can go up in weeks instead of months, that are manufactured rather than constructed, that penny-pinch on energy, and can be tossed into the recycling bin when the world grows tired of them.”
Tavis Dockwiller, principal of Viridian Landscape Studio, a long-time Collaborative volunteer.
The Community Design Collaborative and local nonprofits have benefited many times from the sustainability savvy of landscape architect Tavis Dockwiller. Tavis, principal of Viridian Landscape Studio, has volunteered on five Collaborative projects. For her, landscape architecture is not just about understanding biological processes but enhancing the spaces in which we live, “Design is important because it reveals the beauty in place and people need beauty.”
Tavis and her firm had a hand in developing a conceptual design for a sustainable master plan at the Cook-Wissahickon School in Roxborough and a neighborhood open space for the Mural Arts Advocates that will highlight local ecological diversity and help reunite adjudicated youth with their community. More recently, she lent her expertise as part of a design charrette organized by the Collaborative as part of Infill Philadelphia to explore the temporary use of former industrial sites.
Images courtesy of exhibit participants C&G Partners, Cho Benn Holdback+Associates, Inc., Allen + Killcoyne Architects and Lynch/Eisinger/Design.
The Community Design Collaborative has been busy putting together Retooling Industrial Sites, an exhibit that will showcase the work of over 50 design firms in transforming old industrial sites back to productive use. Leading examples of industrial reuse in Philadelphia and inspiring projects from cities across the country will be on display at the Center for Architecture, 1218 Arch Street, Philadelphia, PA from February 5 through March 26.
The exhibit will serve as a forum for the growing interest in industrial sites and urban manufacturing. It will also highlight the important role of design in making industry a new and positive part of urban neighborhoods. The featured projects pay homage to the industrial past and provide a vision for a new industrial and urban renaissance.
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