05-13-13

LECTURE: Marika Shioiri-Clark on Dignifying Design

Marika Shioiri-Clark, principal of SOSHL Studio, will speak at the CUDC on “Dignifying Design” as part of AIA Cleveland’s 2013 Emerging Practitioner Lecture Series. Based in Cleveland, SOSHL Studio is dedicated to creating social impact through architecture and design. In response to Denise Scott Brown’s comments on her exclusion from the Pritzker Prize, Marika recently co-authored a CNN.com article on the continuing discrimination of women in architecture.

Marika Shioiri-Clark | Dignifying Design
Friday, May 31, 2013
5:30pm
Kent State CUDC
1309 Euclid Avenue, Suite 200
RSVP on the Facebook event page here

From 2007 to 2010, Marika was Co-Founder and Managing Director of MASS Design Group, an architectural nonprofit designing well-built environments that aid in the reduction of global poverty. Marika was a lead designer on the Butaro Hospital project in northern Rwanda in collaboration with Partners in Health, the Clinton HIV/AIDS Initiative, and the Rwandan Ministry of Health, and lived on-site in 2008 developing the designs and overseeing construction.

Marika has received several awards for her work in reframing architects as global change agents. She was an invited Ideas Scholar at the Aspen Institute in 2009, and received a US National Commission for UNESCO Traveling Fellowship in 2008. Marika received her BA in Urban Studies from Brown University, and her Masters of Architecture from the Harvard Graduate School of Design, where her graduate thesis under advisors Jacques Herzog and Pierre DeMeuron focused on gendered public spaces in Cairo, Egypt. In 2011 she served in the first class of global residents at IDEO.org.

Watch Marika’s TEDxStellenbosch talk on Empathic Architecture:

The Emerging Practitioner Lecture Series is organized by AIA Cleveland’s Associates Committee in partnership with Kent State University’s Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative. Events are free and open to the public.

Questions can be directed to: angela.jayjack@gmail.com

04-19-13

Call for Abstracts | COLDSCAPES Urban Infill Volume 6 | Due May 31, 2013

Call for Abstracts : Improving livability in cold climate cities

Kent State University’s Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative (CUDC) invites writers, designers, artists and thinkers to submit abstracts for Volume 6 of our annual publication, Urban Infill. Urban Infill examines themes in contemporary urban design, architecture, and planning. Past volumes have addressed shrinking cities, temporary urbanism, urban hydrology, storytelling, and diagramming in an urban context. These can be previewed here: (www.cudc.kent.edu/publications/urban_infill/index.html)

Volume 6 is part of the CUDC’s 2013 launch of the Center for Outdoor Living Design (COLD), which is dedicated to improving livability in cold weather cities (www.coldscapes.org). We invite examples and perspectives that challenge common perceptions of cold urban environments and reveal the unique design opportunities that winter cities present. Writings and projects may span across various disciplines, including architecture, landscape architecture, and urban design. We are particularly interested in submissions that correspond to any of these five (5) themes:

CONCEPTUALIZATION
(historical / theoretical framework for understanding the winter experience in cities)

REPRESENTATION
(visualizations and multi-sensory communication techniques that evoke the atmospheric conditions and ephemerality of the winter season)

EXPERIENCE OF VULNERABLE POPULATIONS
(responses to the needs of homeless individuals and immigrants during winter weather conditions)

BUILT CASE STUDIES
(examples of successful constructed architectural or urban design projects in cold climates)

FUTURE WINTERS
(unbuilt projects and evocative possibilities for winter cities of the future)

Submission Requirements:
Abstract / Description (text) : 500 words or less
Images: no more than 5 thumbnails - total file size under 10MBs.
Please send abstracts and/or images via email to cudc@kent.edu no later than Friday, May 31st 2013. We welcome new, in-progress or pre-published, original work.

Relevant Dates:

• Abstracts due: Friday, May 31st 2013
• Notification to selected contributors: Friday, June 7th 2013
• Final entries due: Friday, July 19th 2013
• Expected publication: November 2013

Download Call for Abstracts PDF

Please feel free to share with your friends and networks!

- CUDC

04-01-13

CUDC Launches Center for Outdoor Living Design (COLD) & COLDSCAPES Competition

We’re very excited to announce our new winter weather-related initiative, the Center for Outdoor Living Design, which conveniently forms the acronym COLD. The project is intended to encourage designers of various disciplines to engage more creatively with the opportunities presented by winter weather urban environments.

Representations and design strategies in architecture and urban design are often dominated by idealized imagery from warmer seasons, marginalizing the unique design opportunities that winter weather cities present. As a result, creative approaches to improving urban livability during winter are left unexplored, reinforcing common perceptions that public life can’t survive outdoors for much of the year (ahem…skywalks).

The first of this year’s COLD activities is the launch of COLDSCAPES: New Visions for Cold Weather Cities, a multi-disciplinary design competition intended to gather compelling ideas for revitalizing cold climate urban places. Submissions from the competition and other projects gathered by COLD will comprise a growing online archive of images and videos to inspire designers, city officials, and interested members of the public to embrace their city’s winter identity.

A jury of artists and designers familiar with cold weather design issues will select three thought-provoking and visually compelling submissions, each to receive a $1,000 award. A larger set of submissions will receive honorable mentions and the opportunity to be included in an exhibition and published in this year’s Urban Infill journal. To learn more about COLD and to register for the COLDSCAPES competition, please visit our website at www.coldscapes.org.

Competition timeline:
April 1, 2013 - Competition Announced
May 24, 2013 - Registration Deadline
July 12, 2013 - (6pm EST) Submission Deadline
July 26, 2013 - Competition Winners Announced

Competition jury:
Shane Coen, Founder and Principal at Coen+Partners | Minneapolis, Minnesota
Gary Toth, Director of Transportation Initiatives at Project for Public Spaces | New York City, New York
Aase Kari Mortensen, Senior Architect at Snøhetta | Oslo, Norway
Greg Peckham, Managing Director at LAND Studio | Cleveland, Ohio
Patrick Coleman, CEO at The Winter Cities Institute | Anchorage, Alaska

As Spock would often say during winter, “Live Cold and Prosper!”

The 2013 series of COLD activities is made possible through the generous support of Cuyahoga Arts & Culture and The Cleveland Foundation.

03-25-13

Bellwether

Corine Vermeule ‘Movement’ (2012)

Discussion with Terry Schwarz and Corine Vermeulen
Thursday, April 11th, 7 p.m. at the Transformer Station.

Terry Schwarz, director of Kent State University’s Urban Design Collaborative, and photographer Corine Vermeulen will lead a discussion about their work and shared interest in art’s role as a catalyst for improving and enriching the urban landscape.

Corine Vermeulen photographed the citizens and landscape of Detroit in her 2005 project, Your Town Tomorrow. Recently, she contributed to thanks for the view, mr. mies: layfayette park, detroit, a volume of interviews and photographs about life in the largest collection of Mies van der Rohe buildings in the world. She says, “Detroit represents a unique and great vehicle for change where old structures are no longer in place and the possibilities of something different to happen are endless.”

Terry Schwarz launched the CUDC’s Shrinking Cities Institute in 2005 to address the implications of population decline and large-scale urban vacancy in Northeast Ohio. She established Pop Up City, a temporary use initiative for vacant and underutilized sites in Cleveland.

Bellwether is an open-ended series of discussions and events that aims to discover the possibilities and limitations of art as a transformative tool in the city of Cleveland. Bellwether is a project of the Contemporary Art Society of the Cleveland Museum of Art.
http://bellwether.clevelandart.org/

06-26-12

Postcard Underground Sends Their Love To Pop Up Rockwell

Over the past week, we’ve received at least eight handwritten postcards thanking us for Pop Up Rockwell. When we received the first one, written on an art gallery postcard, we figured it was from someone interested in promoting an upcoming art opening and just happened to hear about our project. After three cards arrived the next day, written in different hands, it was clear something else was going on.

02-26-12

Susannah Drake Lecture 3/2/12

Susannah Drake Lecture
Friday, March 2, 2012
8:30 AM - 10:30 AM
CUDC Conference Room
1309 Euclid Ave., Suite 200
Cleveland - PlayhouseSquare

Susannah Drake is founder and Principal of dlandstudio llc, an award winning multidisciplinary design firm. She will discuss dlandstudio’s recent public projects including the Gowanus Canal Sponge Park, a public open space system designed to absorb and remediate urban storm water, and the Brooklyn Bridge Pop-up Park, a temporary waterfront open space that attracted almost 200,000 visitors over six weeks of operation in 2008.

This event is free, but reservations are required. RSVP for the event on our Facebook page here, by email at cudc@kent.edu or give us a call at (216) 357-3434.

Continuing Education credits are available for landscape architects.

Sponsored by The George Gund Foundation, the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District, and the Kent State College of Architecture and Environmental Design.

11-17-11

Lecture: ‘Big Box Reuse’ Author Julia Christensen

Bring your lunch and join us at the CUDC Friday, November 18th from noon - 1 pm for a conversation with Julia Christensen, author of Big Box Reuse, published by MIT Press in 2008.

Julia Christensen is an artist who works in video, photography, networked media, writing, sound arts, sculpture, installation, and performance. Her work has exhibited at galleries and museums internationally, including the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Carnegie Museum of Fine Arts in Pittsburgh, Spaces Gallery in Cleveland, and The Lincoln Center in NYC. Recent solo exhibitions include: Your Town Inc., (which originated at the Miller Gallery at Carnegie Mellon University and was curated by Astria Suparak), and Surplus Rising (which originated at the Banvard Gallery, Knowlton School of Architecture at Ohio State University).

Julia is the author of Big Box Reuse, published by the MIT Press in 2008. This book is a product of her ongoing investigation into how communities are renovating and reusing abandoned big box buildings in the United States. Her project “Surplus Rising” will be published as a part of the 3rd Coast Atlas, forthcoming. Christensen’s writing has been published in magazines such as Orion, Print, and Slate. Her work has been featured in publications such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, Bookforum, The New York Review of Books, Bomb, Afterall, and Dwell Magazine.

Ms. Christensen is currently the Henry Luce Visiting Professor of Emerging Arts at Oberlin College and Conservatory, where she produces the Margin Release New Media Lecture Series. Christensen has a joint appointment between the departments of Studio Art, TIMARA (Technology in Music and Related Arts), and Environmental Studies. Before coming to Oberlin, she taught at Stanford University, Pratt Institute, California College of the Arts, and other colleges. She has been an invited speaker and critic at dozens of colleges and universities, including the San Francisco Art Institute, Cornell University, Yale University, and New York University.

In the fall of 2011, Christensen will take on the position of Assistant Professor of Integrated Media in the Studio Arts Department at Oberlin.

10-27-11

Hipp Deck featured on Next American City

We’re very excited that Next American City, a non-profit dedicated to promoting socially and environmentally sustainable economic growth in America’s cities, recently featured the CUDC’s Hipp Deck project on their Americancity.org website. In addition to the popular website, Next American City also publishes a quarterly magazine focused on emerging practices dealing with urban change and innovation.

The Hipp Deck was a temporary use intervention that transformed the upper level of the 740 Euclid Ave. parking garage in downtown Cleveland into an outdoor live performance venue and active rooftop public space. The event was a celebration for the release of Cleveland Stories: True Until Proven Otherwise, the fourth volume in the CUDC’s Urban Infill journal series. The parking garage is located on the site formerly home to the Hippdrome Theater, a nationally renowned 4,000 seat performance venue. The “Hipp”, as it was commonly known, was demolished in 1981, so the Hipp Deck told the story of the site’s illustrious past by bringing back live music performance for one spectacular night.

We’re encouraged to think the Hipp Deck’s intent of spurring dialogue and action around the temporary activation of parking infrastructure in Cleveland will spread to other cities and enable others to reactivate their favorite underused spaces.

You can see photographs of the Hipp Deck event, taken by local Clevelander Matthew Fehrmann, on our Flickr site. Check ‘em out and stay tuned for more info on upcoming Pop Up City projects!

For more information on the Hipp Deck or Cleveland Stories project, please visit the CUDC’s website. The event was supported by the George Gund Foundation and Cuyahoga Arts & Culture, in partnership with Historic Gateway Neighborhood Corporation, SPIRE Institute, Filtrexx, Opera Cleveland, Ohio City Bike Co-op, Cleveland Bikes and Ampco System Parking.

10-18-11

Cleveland EcoVillage Design Charrette

Members of the public are invited to attend a design charrette, a.k.a. community workshop, to envision the Cleveland EcoVillage’s future development and urban design plans. Several projects have been recently completed or are currently underway in this vibrant community, so the charrette comes at a good time to envision linkages between these investments and plan for new opportunities.

The charrette will take place over the course of several days, beginning with a public meeting on Saturday, October 22nd at 10am and culminating in a public presentation on Wednesday night, October 26th at 7pm. The design charrette will be conducted by the CUDC staff and KSU graduate students, in partnership with Detroit-Shoreway Community Development Organization and Ward 15 Councilman Matt Zone.

Public Meeting 1
Saturday, October 22
10am - noon
Metro Catholic School
1910 W. 54th St.

Public Meeting 2
Wednesday, October 26
7pm - 8:30pm
Metro Catholic School
1910 W. 54th St.

The Cleveland EcoVillage is located in the Detroit-Shoreway neighborhood and is defined by W. 52nd St. on the east, W. 65th St. on the west, I-90 on the south and Franklin Blvd. on the north. The boundaries of the EcoVillage are based on a 15 minute walking radius around the W. 65th St. RTA rapid station.

Please consider attending both public meetings to provide your input and review the proposals that will be developed quickly between Saturday and Wednesday by the design team. The community charrette is an important opportunity for design professional, students and local residents to create a shared neighborhood vision for the future.

Click here for the Facebook event page.

Download the charrette flyer here.

For more information, please contact the CUDC at 216.357.3434 or cudc@kent.edu

10-13-11

Cover the City with Lines & ride the dambl II

Saturday, October 15, 2011
12 - 3 PM, rain or shine
Click here for Facebook event page

Join artist Paul Druecke in honoring the legacy of counter-culture icon d. a. levy. Ride the dambl (d. a. levy memorial bike lane) and/or come to the levy Midpoint Memorial where we will create an ephemeral shrine to d. a. levy. Take part in a story that links the culture wars of the 1960’s to current battles for progressive infrastructure spending and bike-friendly cities.

d. a. levy (1942 - 1968)

12 PM | Ride the dambl II
There are two starting locations for those that want to ride the dambl: West End of Abbey Avenue Bridge (West side Cleveland) and South End of Wade Lagoon @ University Circle (East side Cleveland). Riders will depart from the starting locations at 12 PM and converge at the Midpoint Memorial around 1 PM, stop for refreshments, and can either continue on to the second half of the dambl or join us onsite for the duration of the festivities. Ride coordinators will be located at both starting points: Emilio DeSabato (West side) and Kevin Cronin (East side).

12 PM | Midpoint Memorial
If you prefer not to ride, you can go directly to the Midpoint Memorial location at noon, where the dambl riders will join at 1 PM. The Midpoint Memorial location is 1933 Euclid Avenue, between E. 18th and E. 21st, north side of the street. We will occupy a small park on the grounds of CSU in honor of d. a. levy. We will play recordings of levy, and friends, reading his work. There will be levy artifacts and perhaps an impromptu presentation while covering the sidewalk with lines from levy’s poems. Ingrid Swanberg and Tom Kryss created a contemporary reading of Cleveland Undercovers for this event! Swanberg and Kryss were levy’s friends and have been key proponents of his legacy.

7:30 - 9:30 PM | Post Ride @ Becky’s
1762 East 18th Street, Cleveland, OH 44114
Join us for a drink in honor of levy and the dambl.

See map below for event locations:

View Cover the City with Lines and dambl ride in a larger map

Overview:
Paul Druecke’s project, Cover the City With Lines, was developed in conjunction with the CUDC’s Cleveland Stories: True Until Proven Otherwise. The project’s title comes from the levy poem, Cleveland Undercovers. d. a. levy (1942-1968) was a poet, visual artist, and publisher at the frontline of the 1960’s struggle for freedom of expression. He was twice arrested by local authorities while exercising rights we now take for granted. Since his tragic, premature death in 1968, supporters have called for Cleveland to honor/memorialize him. Cover the City with Lines picks up the story by proposing an extensive urban bike lane named for levy, the d. a. levy Memorial Bike Lane a.k.a. the dambl. The dambl connects Cleveland’s east and west sides while linking 60’s era culture wars to today’s battle for alternative transportation and bike-friendly cities.

Participants from first dambl ride at CIA gallery exhibit.

Download pdf description of Cover the City with Lines project

For more information, contact the CUDC at (216) 357-3434 or cudc@kent.edu

10-03-11

Rumi Shammin Presents The Oberlin Project

Rumi Shammin, PhD, Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies at Oberlin College, will discuss The Oberlin Project, a planned green redesign of the Oberlin community at the CUDC on Friday, October 7th from 12pm - 1pm. The Oberlin Project is a collaborative effort between the college and the City of Oberlin to create “full-spectrum sustainability” in which the parts are integrated to reinforce the resilience and durability of the whole community.

Rumi Shammin Lecture
Friday, October 7, 2011
12pm - 1pm
1309 Euclid Ave., Suite 200 (map)
Cleveland (Playhouse Square)
Free and open to the public

The vision of the project joins the many strands of sustainability - urban revitalization, green development, advanced energy technology, sustainable agriculture, green jobs, and education - into an integrated response to the burgeoning crisis of climate destabilization, environmental deterioration, and economic turmoil.

At the heart of the Oberlin Project is the revitalization of a 13-acre block near the city center that will include the development or renovation of a dozen buildings during the next five to seven years. The investment in construction, renovation, and energy technology is intended to stimulate the expansion of existing businesses and create new enterprises.

The Oberlin Project will also join the Climate Positive Development Program, a joint initiative of the Clinton Climate Initiative, a program of the William J. Clinton Foundation, and the U.S. Green Building Council. Launched in May 2009 by President Clinton, the Climate Positive Development Program supports the development of large-scale urban projects that demonstrate that cities can grow in ways that are climate positive—able to reduce the amount of on-site CO2 emissions to below zero.

09-22-11

Jorge Otero-Pailos Workshop

Join us at the Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative for a workshop on “Preservation and Creativity” with Jorge Otero-Pailos this coming Wednesday (9/28) at 8:30am. Preservation is often seen as lacking architectural design creativity, or worse, as standing in the way of it. This workshop will explore the ideas about creativity that undergird this prejudice, and invite participants to consider new ways in which creativity might be rethought to formulate a more productive engagement between architecture and preservation.

The workshop will last a little over an hour, and a light breakfast will be served. Please RSVP to srugare@kent.edu so that we have a count and so that we can send you some brief texts that will be discussed.

Jorge Otero-Pailos Workshop
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
8:30-10:00 am
1309 Euclid Ave., Suite 200

Jorge Otero-Pailos (Madrid, 1971) is a New York based architect, artist and theorist specialized in experimental forms of preservation. He is tenured Associate Professor of Historic Preservation at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture. He is the Founder and Editor of the journal Future Anterior. His artworks have been exhibited in international shows such as the Venice Art Biennial, and are in the collections of major museums and foundations. His works and writings have been published in international publications such as Art in America, Artforum, Architectural Record, Volume, and others. His work rethinks preservation as a powerful countercultural practice that creates alternative futures for our world heritage.

06-13-11

Vote for the Cleveland Bridge Project

We need your help! A community-driven effort is currently underway to re-open the lower level of the Detroit-Superior Bridge for year round use.

Go to bridgevote.com right now to cast your vote.

Don’t worry, this isn’t one of those ‘vote every day’ type contests. You can only vote one time per email address. If you need help, just follow these simple steps:

1. In the blue box, click “Register or Get a Password Reminder”

2. Enter your email address and click “Submit” (zip code is not necessary and your information won’t be shared)

3. Scroll down to “Cleveland Bridge Project” and click on it

4. In the blue box, click “Vote Now!”

With your help, we can win $25,000 to improve the lower level of the bridge. Vote today!

Want to learn more about the project? Check out the Cleveland Bridge Project promo video:

Cleveland Bridge Project from david jurca on Vimeo.

04-12-11

Join us for Ride the dambl!

Ride the dambl is part of Paul Druecke’s Cover the City With Lines, a project developed in conjunction with the CUDC’s Cleveland Stories: True Until Proven Otherwise. The group bike ride starts in Tremont and ends at the Cleveland Institute of Art following a route, the dambl, created in honor of Cleveland’s counter-culture icon, d. a. levy. After arriving at the Reinberger Galleries, cyclists and their bikes will enter the space becoming part of the exhibition. Their own Cleveland Story.

Tuesday, April 19, 2011
5:30 pm start time
Meet: West End of Abbey Avenue Bridge in Tremont
The first 24 people ready to ride get a free dambl tee shirt!

Ride organized by Michael Hudecek
CONTACT: Paul Druecke — pjdruecke@gmail.com
RSVP for Ride on Facebook

Overview
Cover the City with Lines comes from the d. a. levy poem, Cleveland Undercovers. d. a. levy (1942-1968) was a poet, visual artist, and publisher at the frontline of the 1960’s struggle for freedom of expression. He was twice arrested by local authorities while exercising rights we now take for granted. Since his tragic, premature death in 1968, supporters have called for Cleveland to honor/memorialize him. Cover the City with Lines picks up the story by proposing an extensive urban bike lane named for levy, the d. a. levy Memorial Bike Lane a.k.a. the dambl. The dambl connects Cleveland’s east and west sides while linking 60’s era culture wars, which levy fought in, to today’s battle for alternative transportation and bike-friendly cities.

03-14-11

Call for Entries: Cleveland Stories Dioramas & Drawings

The CUDC’s Cleveland Stories: True Until Proven Otherwise project is now in full swing with one successful StorySlam event completed, and a second in the works, as well as an upcoming exhibit opening on April 1, 2011 at the Cleveland Institute of Art’s Reinberger gallery, followed by the official book release in June. We tried to create a variety of ways for people to be involved in the project, including telling stories at the StorySlam, submitting stories through our online form and also a couple of creative competitions (with some financial incentives).

You can find more details on the Cleveland Stories project at our www.ClevelandStoryBook.com website, but here’s the important information on the two competitions, which we’re currently seeking submissions for:

Cleveland Stories Shoebox Diorama Challenge (said with a bellowing echo).

• WHAT: Construct a story you heard at the StorySlam, or one of your own, as a three-dimensional model in a shoebox.
• WHEN: Dioramas must be delivered by 4pm on March 21, 2011. The Cleveland Stories exhibit will open on April 1, 2011 and run through April 30, 2011.
• WHERE: Dioramas can be dropped off at either the Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative (1309 Euclid Ave. - Suite 200, Cleveland) or at the CIA Reinberger Gallery (11141 East Boulevard, Cleveland). The most inventive dioramas will be displayed at our Cleveland Stories exhibit at the Cleveland Institute of Art’s Reinberger Gallery.
• WHY: Each winning diorama artist will receive $50!
• Please see the Diorama Entry Form

Cover the City with Lines - Drawings of The dambl Maker

• WHAT: This drawing submission request is part of Paul Drueke’s project, Cover the City with Lines, which imagines a grass roots, guerrilla system of Bike Lanes as a memorial to Cleveland poet d. a. levy. Submit a drawing depicting your Bike Lane Machine -  a bicycle that is altered, or outfitted, so that it marks a line (with impermanent material such as solid or sprayable chalk, light, etc) on the pavement as it’s ridden.
• WHEN: Now - Submissions due March 25, 2011. Exhibition opens on April 1, 2011.
• WHERE: Drawings up to 14″x18″ should be sent or delivered to the Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative. No digital submissions, but the definition of “drawing” is loosely interpreted.
• WHY: Win $100! All drawings will be exhibited as part of Cleveland Stories @ CIA.
• WHAT 2: Two drawings will be selected to receive $100 towards the fabrication of the Bike Lane Maker/Machine to be included in the Unveiling/Demo as part of the exhibit.
• WHEN 2: Throughout April.
• Please see the dambl_guidelines for more information on the Cover the City with Lines project.

We look forward to seeing your submission and having you be a part of Cleveland Stories!