Win a trip to North Adams, MA to visit MASS MoCA and stay at the Porches Inn.

Ever dream of running the bases at the Phillies stadium?  Want to get away for a weekend and check out modern art in an idyllic old mill town in the mountains?  With the raffle prizes at the Community Design Collaborative’s Bowling Ball you have a chance to do all that and more.

This year’s raffle prizes are full of exciting trips, delicious foods and exquisite items for your home.  The Berkshires Weekend GetAway package will take you to scenic North Adams, MA with tickets to MASS MoCA, the nation’s largest museum of contemporary art, and an overnight stay at the Porches Inn- a collection of cleverly renovated 1890s row houses.

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The Community Design Collaborative is pleased to announce our second round of service grants for 2010.  Design professionals volunteering with the Collaborative will be helping LOGAN Hope, Lower Moyamensing Civic Association, New Kensington Community Development Corporation, Refuge for the Perishing Holy Temple, and Friends of Schuylkill River Park design and advance projects that will improve open space in the city and enhance social service and educational facilities.

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The Collaborative is partnering with the City of Philadelphia Mural Arts Program on a pilot program that coordinates architectural and landscape improvements with public art on commercial corridors in Philadelphia.

The partnership brings together design professionals and artists in a creative and collaborative effort to holistically address issues facing commercial corridors.  Through the Collaborative’s rStore program, our volunteers will work with muralists to integrate proposed building improvements and surrounding landscaping plans with public murals. This pilot effort will address two sites in Philadelphia, one on East Passyunk Avenue in South Philly and another on Ridge Avenue in Roxborough. “Part of evolving is forming good and new partnerships,” said Jane Golden, Mural Arts Executive Director.

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At last night’s Infill Philadelphia: Industrial Sites Design Challenge Reveal, SMP Architects, DIGSAU, and Charles Loomis Chariss McAfee Architects demonstrated both serious-minded and fun-loving ways to reinvigorate old industrial sites.

Alan Greenberger, Deputy Mayor of Planning and Economic Development, began the evening by observing that the city is “a mosaic of industrial use mixed with residential uses. That’s how Philadelphia was built.” Finding creative ways to repurpose these old industrial sites—many of them empty and underutilized, some of them spectacular—for modern industry is an opportunity for re-knitting Philly’s neighborhoods together.

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Medium site for the design challenge located on Oxford Street in Kensington. Photo by Peter Kubilus.

Philadelphia’s stock of old industrial sites are full of character and connected to neighborhoods which can be assets for attracting the next generation of industries that are vital to the Pennsylvania economy.

On Thursday, May 27 the design teams for the Infill Philadelphia: Industrial Sites Design Challenge will reveal their solutions for remaking three old industrial sites, which seek to honor Philadelphia’s industrial heritage while looking toward opportunities that lie ahead.

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The lanes are filling up fast for the 14th Annual Community Design Collaborative Bowling Ball, so make sure to sign up your team soon and get practicing to perfect your game.

You can test your bowling mettle against teams from over 25 firms and organizations. Prizes go to the best, and worst teams, as well as those who come dressed in the grooviest outfits.

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The Community Design Collaborative is featured in the latest edition of the Philadelphia Social Innovations Journal. Connecting Dreamers and Designers, written by Collaborative staffer Haley Loram and Bernard Brown, presents the Collaborative’s special brand of highly-skilled volunteerism.

Nonprofits and corporations tend to focus on philanthropy as monetary donations rather than skills-based volunteering that takes advantage of their employees talents and abilities.  Nonprofits tend to be unaware of pro bono services offered  by for-profit companies, while corporations often under estimate the impact of skilled volunteers. The Collaborative works to fill this gap by helping nonprofits leverage the skills of design professionals and creating connections between design firms and community organizations.

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