Alice Berman has been involved with the Collaborative since chocolate covered espresso beans and popcorn were a staple of volunteer meetings. As an undergraduate at the University of Pennsylvania, she got her first taste of community design by volunteering with The Architect’s Workshop, a community design center that served Philadelphia throughout the 70’s. Alice went on to receive a Master of Architecture from Washington University. Returning to Philadelphia to start her career, Alice helped found the Community Design Collaborative. Since then, she’s participated in nearly every aspect of the Collaborative. Alice and I sat down to discuss the Collaborative, its work, and its volunteers— then and now.
You co-founded the Collaborative in 1991. Why did you get involved? What role did you have in the Collaborative’s founding?
I wanted to keep a hand in the nonprofit community while actually living (or trying to make a living) in the for-profit world. I thought it was really important to be able to give back to the community and give architects and other designers the means to do that, especially with the constantly changing political environment. The political administration had changed and many of the social action and urban/community development programs were getting cut or budgets slashed; there was really no money for programs important to sustaining Philadelphia neighborhoods. Among others, Urban Development Action Grants were coming to an end which was one of the incentives for starting the Collaborative.
There was a big group of us that were founders. Everybody had a somewhat different idea of how to get there but we all held common goals and values. Don Matzkin, one of the leaders of the founding group, was vital in keeping the ideas churning. Everyone from the novice interns to the seasoned professionals were treated equally. While the group resisted formal structures and hierarchy, we realized we needed to become a formal 501c3 nonprofit organization to pursue and qualify for the funding we needed to grow, hire a staff, and have greater impact.
I’m really impressed you managed to stay together and actually develop into the Collaborative.
It worked out – a lot of popcorn and chocolate covered espresso beans got us there. It was a group that came from all different sorts of places that had an interest in the same sort of outcome, in developing a means to stay involved in the community and having intern architects and architects participate in way that they’re not able to in their everyday practice.
From your perspective how has the Collaborative changed over the past 20 years?
It took us a really long time to come up with our mission statement; “Building neighborhood visions as communities and volunteer design professionals work together.”
But a zillion meetings later and over twenty years, it hasn’t changed. How we accomplish our mission has changed though. At the beginning we had no staff, now we have a pretty big team of staff and volunteers, as well as an established committee structure which enables us to have broader outreach and impact. We’ve grown radically in terms of being known in the broader community, not only in Philadelphia with our network of volunteers, funders and supporters, but also in the nonprofit community we serve, the people who serve them, the grant makers and the broader design and development community. We are now considered a thought leader in neighborhood development and urban issues. That status led to being selected as co-host for the national conference on community development and design here in Philadelphia in October.
So you see the Collaborative as having a greater national presence?
We’ve become respected. When we first started, one of the things we did was go to other community design organizations that were already established. There were very few at the time. But now we’re a model for new community design centers that are forming. People come to us for that knowledge and organization development advice as well as policy issues in the city.
How does the volunteering process compare to twenty years ago?
The basic process of doing the project hasn’t changed that much. We’re still pulling teams together and working directly with the client. But there’s more oversight from the Collaborative. Also, in the past, non-profit organizations were applying for much more basic design services. Neighborhoods have had to fight for themselves and their groups have become more sophisticated—as have our services in order to provide to them. Now we provide a broader array of services, go more in-depth on feasibility studies and master plans, and through Infill Philadelphia and charrettes come up with design strategies to address urban design issues.
How do you feel people’s perceptions of the Collaborative have changed?
A lot of firms initially felt that the Collaborative was competing directly with services that should’ve been for-pay services. Now we have a track record of projects where the Collaborative’s feasibility and preliminary design work enabled [non-profits] to get funding to go and hire design firms. It’s much easier for us to go to firms now and say, “Well, look, we’re actually creating work for the industry.” That was a much bigger struggle early on. Twenty years has made a big difference in that regard. People see the benefits on both sides: there’s work coming out of it and there’s some prestige in being associated with a successful Collaborative project.
What’s it like for you working with young intern architects?
I love it. It’s one of the reasons I still volunteer. It’s one of the things I like doing in my own office. Once you do the same thing long enough, seeing the enthusiasm of others doing it for their first time is, I think, part of what we all need to do to keep the interest up for ourselves.
Do you see a change in the kind of people who are volunteering architects now versus when you were an intern architect volunteering for the Architect’s Workshop?
There’s a different skill set. They don’t know anything more about architecture than interns ever did because that comes with time, but their graphic skills are often better… and their computer graphic skills are certainly more advanced than mine. The Collaborative has always been interdisciplinary but that’s much truer now.
You’re a board member, a volunteer, and a co-founder. You have many hats. What’s been your favorite part of being involved with the Collaborative?
Probably the people. It’s always been a great group of people with a passion for what we do and the services we provide. And the client groups– it’s nice having enthusiastic, grateful, and satisfied clientele.
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