Virtual Disruption: A Post-Disciplinary Practice
CUDC Spring Lecture Series - Marlon Davis
18 February 2022 from noon-1pm
Virtual lecture - Zoom link
Marlon Davis will be presenting a lecture on buildings and spaces that have been erased from the history of Black American experience. He will share some 3D visualizations that explore creative paths for research and propose reclamations of these spaces renewing art, architecture and design’s relation to social justice, BIPOC communities, and history. The site of erasure he will examine is Osage Avenue in Philadelphia (1985) to retell this story. He will also discuss his work with Black Architects and Designers Guild and his work at DE-YAN to discuss how he uses 3D tools to reinvent his practice.
Rowhouses burn after local officials dropped a bomb on the MOVE house, home of a black liberation group, in Philadelphia on May 13, 1985. (Image Source: AP)
Marlon Davis is a creative, innovative thinker who tries to push the boundaries of design into new directions. He is a designer who uses his artistic ability to solve complex design problems in Architecture Landscape Architecture, Graphic Design, and Industrial Design. Marlon uses his creativity and scientific skills to think about the outside world and create meaningful spaces for people to live.
Hybrid Preservation for a Changing World
CUDC Spring Lecture Series - Taylor Kabeary and Eduardo Duarte Ruas, Preservation Side B
11 February 2022 from noon-1pm
Virtual lecture - Zoom link
Preservation Side B is rooted in celebrating and highlighting aspects of preservation in marginalized communities left out of traditional preservation teachings and practices.
As the world changes, our practices of preservation, planning, and placemaking must adapt to the need for equality, equity, and inclusion. Our fields must undergo a change from traditional practices of exclusion and narrowness (Side As) to embracing more modern practices of inclusion and expansiveness (Side Bs). How can we form a hybrid between Sides As and Side Bs to form strong practices that protect, include, and serve many communities? How can we form Side Cs? This workshop will provide a guide on how to view Side As and Side Bs of preservation and adjacent fields, and theorize on what Side Cs look and feel like.
Preservation Side B is a project founded by Taylor Kabeary (she/her) and Eduardo Duarte Ruas (he/him), two advocates and preservationists based in New York City. The project is rooted in telling stories, honoring places, and re-centering narratives of BIPOC and LGBTQ+ communities usually left out of traditional preservation teaching and practice. Preservation Side B’s goal is to tell stories to inspire people to find their own stories and bring awareness/legacy to places and traditions unique to them. Preservation Side B advocates for a disruptive practice to dismantle elitism, racism, and colonialism that drive current heritage concepts. The name of the project comes from the music industry, and it represents Side B’s goals well. B-sides are the non-title track songs on albums, which are generally given less attention by the public and media. However, B-Sides of tapes and records have their histories, stories, motivations, and successes. By looking at the core issues of preservation from an academic and professional standpoint, Preservation Side B outlines the steps necessary for a revolution in preservation, serving as a guide to recent graduates to create a more equitable future.
Ben Herring, Making Our Own Space Coordinator
Making Our Own Space, the CUDC’s award-winning design/build program for middle and high school students has a new coordinator. Ben Herring has been a visiting instructor for several years, most recently working with the Glenville MOOS students this summer on two major seating structures. He is a skilled designer and craftsman, and a gifted instructor. We are thrilled to welcome Ben to the CUDC team!
In addition to running MOOS, Ben will continue to be Principal Designer at PAADG Studio where he specializes in visualizations and architectures for public good. Ben has spoken at various universities and conferences on topics ranging from design theory, to distributive justice, the future of public space and digital craft in contemporary design. Ben was administered various honors at Ball State University where he received degrees in Architecture and Economics. He has previously served as a board member for the Haitian Vision Foundation as well as PBS and NPR member stations in Southern Indiana. He presently serves on the board of the Refresh Collective (formerly known as the Fresh Camp)
Making Our Own Space, now in its eighth year, operates in six city neighborhoods and two inner-ring suburbs. This year, we’re launching a new MOOS Rapid Response Team with the generous support of The Cleveland Foundation. The Rapid Response Team is an 18-month enrichment program for middle and high school students who have an interest in design and the desire to be active changemakers in their neighborhood. Student participants will conduct research and develop design-based solutions to address issues in a Cleveland neighborhood, in collaboration with the staff of Kent State University’s Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative (CUDC), guest designers, and community leaders.
Dark Methods : A Geography of Practice
CUDC Fall Lecture Series - Jerome Haferd, Brandt : Haferd
5 November 2021 from noon-1pm
Virtual lecture - Register here for remote access / Zoom link
“Dark Matter is not the opposite of matter, but matter that behaves differently.”
Working within erased or marginalized histories, neighborhoods, or sites that fall outside the ‘mainstream’ challenges us to question both the how and the what of architecture. Haferd, an Akron native, will chart a geography of his Harlem-based design practice, drawing connections between projects in the larger Hudson Valley, recent housing prototypes for Cleveland, St. Louis, and beyond.
Jerome Haferd is an architect and educator based in Harlem, NY. He is co-founder of the award winning design and research practice BRANDT : HAFERD. Jerome’s work focuses on how architecture establishes a dialogue between contemporary culture, non-hegemonic histories, users and spaces. Haferd has recently led community design efforts with the Harlem and Pine Street African Burial Ground Task Force groups, the Van Alen Gowanus fellows, and others. Jerome is currently on the architecture and urban design faculty at CCNY SSA, Columbia GSAPP, and Yale. He is a core initiator of Dark Matter University, a BIPOC-led network dedicated to transforming pedagogy and the space of knowledge production. Jerome received his Master’s in Architecture at Yale University and his Bachelor’s in Architecture from The Ohio State University. He has worked in the offices of OMA/Rem Koolhaas and Bernard Tschumi Architects.
BRANDT : HAFERD, Architecture, D.P.C, co-founded by Jerome W Haferd and K Brandt Knapp is a Harlem-based practice dedicated to public architecture at many scales. They were winners of the first annual 2012 Folly competition held by The Architectural League of NY. The practice was awarded the grand prize for the 2019 Cleveland ZeroThreshold competition with a multi-abled, intergenerational housing prototype. The studio is one of the 2020 winners of the AIA New Practices New York award and has been exhibited widely, including AIA New York and The Storefront for Art and Architecture. Recent projects include the 2020-21 Harlem Renaissance Pavilion with WXY and Beautiful Browns, awarded second prize in the 2021 OnOlive emerging black architect housing competition.
The Fall Lecture Series is made possible through the generous support of the College of Architecture and Environmental Design at Kent State University.
For more information, please call 216.357.3434 or email cudc@kent.edu.
Inclusive Design Across the Built Environment
CUDC Fall Lecture Series - Jordana Maisel, Center for Inclusive Design and Environmental Access, University at Buffalo
24 September 2021 from noon-1pm
Virtual lecture - Register here for remote access / Zoom link
Rooted in a critique of designer-centric practice and embracing an ethic of social responsibility, Inclusive Design (or Universal Design) focuses on developing form from function to increase the usefulness and responsiveness of our world for a wider and more diverse range of people. This presentation will provide an overview of the Inclusive Design paradigm. It introduces the goals and knowledge bases, methods of implementation and evaluation, and best practice examples.
Jordana Maisel, PhD, works at the intersection of research, teaching and practice as assistant professor in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning and as research director for the Center for Inclusive Design and Environmental Access (IDEA Center) within the School of Architecture and Planning.
She brings experience designing and conducting experimental studies in the laboratory and field; analyzing data; and, capturing and interpreting stakeholder perspectives with surveys, interviews, and focus groups. Maisel has led research in the areas of public transportation, street infrastructure, post occupancy evaluations, and accessible housing policy.
The Fall Lecture Series is made possible through the generous support of the College of Architecture and Environmental Design at Kent State University.
In partnership with the American Planning Association Cleveland Section. One hour of Certification Maintenance credit is pending.
For more information, please call 216.357.3434 or email cudc@kent.edu.
Shifting Power through Design
CUDC Fall Lecture Series - Ifeoma Ebo, Creative Urban Alchemy
22 October 2021 from noon-1pm
Virtual lecture - Register here for remote access / Zoom link
Historically the urban landscape has been used as a tool to establish inequitable power/social relationships. The same tools that have been used to shape inequity can also be used to center equity and justice in our world. This lecture will use history, theory and projects centering community engagement design to explore how to shift power through design.
Ifeoma Ebo is an experienced urban designer and strategist who transforms urban spaces into platforms for equity and design excellence. Through leadership roles in urban design and development initiatives funded by the United Nations, FIFA, and the NYC Mayors Office, she has excelled in managing multidisciplinary teams towards projects that support racial, social, and cultural equity. She is currently an Adjunct Professor at Syracuse University and Columbia University where she teaches on the intersection of urban design and equity. As the founding Director of Creative Urban Alchemy LLC, she is a highly sought-after consultant on equitable urban design and sustainable development strategy for city governments and civic institutions internationally.
The Fall Lecture Series is made possible through the generous support of the College of Architecture and Environmental Design at Kent State University.
In partnership with the American Planning Association Cleveland Section. One hour of Certification Maintenance credit is pending.
For more information, please call 216.357.3434 or email cudc@kent.edu.
The Land of Enchantment: Design, Water and The Vernacular Southwest
CUDC Fall Lecture Series - Abigail Feldman, Surroundings Studio
17 September 2021 from noon-1pm
In person: CUDC, 1309 Euclid Avenue, Suite 200, Cleveland
Close your eyes for a moment and imagine being in a place where you can see rain storms one hundred miles away. Behind you dark clouds pile up against the tip of the Rocky Mountains. The high altitude light washes over the tips of Piñon trees dotted across the desert at sunset, and you wish you had chapstick. This is New Mexico, otherwise known as the Land of Enchantment. People have lived here for a long time and water is always on our minds.
This lecture offers the perspective of one landscape architect's work to link "old school" green infrastructure to contemporary design, to help innovate strategies for stormwater, and to root design in the vernacular land use of this region from acequias to zuni bowls.
Abigail Feldman is a landscape architect at Surroundings Studio in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Previously, she was the founder of Heavy Meadow, based in New Orleans, Louisiana. She launched and directed the Growing Home program for the New Orleans Redevelopment Authority. She helped transform over a 1,000 vacant lots into community gardens, farms, and yards with families from The Lower 9th Ward to Lakeview.
The Fall Lecture Series is made possible through the generous support of the College of Architecture and Environmental Design at Kent State University. For more information, please call 216.357.3434 or email cudc@kent.edu.
Cafe Society: A Common Ground Event
Please join us on Friday, July 30th from 5-7pm for Café Society, a Common Ground conversation about accessibility, inclusion, and community life.
Meet at Invigorate Gallery, 6500 Hough Avenue, Cleveland, Ohio.
5pm - Reception & Neighborhood walks | 6pm - Common Ground conversation
Light refreshments provided. All are welcome!
The Cleveland Foundation’s Common Ground initiative is a celebration of community-led conversation. The foundation and its community partners build this event each year to showcase the many Greater Clevelanders who want to bring people together in a unique way to build community.
This Common Ground event is inspired by Café Society. In 1938, Barney Josephson created the Café Society nightclub in New York City to showcase African American talent and to be an American version of the political cabarets he had seen in Europe. Cafe Society was the first racially integrated night club in the United States. Advertised as The Wrong Place for the Right People, Café Society welcomed everyone.
Café Society is hosted by Invigorate Gallery, Barrier-free Cleveland, Jikoo Smart Park Network, and Kent State University’s Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative, in partnership with Chateau Hough, League Park, the Heritage Baseball Museum, and Maximum Accessible Housing of Ohio.
Invigorate Gallery, 6500 Hough Avenue, Cleveland
Registration is requested. REGISTER HERE
The event will be held outdoors. For more information and to discuss accessibility needs, please email barrierfreecle@kent.edu or call the Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative at 216.357.3426.
Employment Opportunities at the CUDC
The CUDC is hiring. We are seeking applicants with urban design experience, an interest in design education, and a commitment to public involvement in design processes.
We currently have two open positions: Senior Urban Designer (Position 987750) and Urban Designer (Position 987671). Both positions are based at the CUDC in Downtown Cleveland. Application deadline is August 13, 2021.
Please apply through Kent State University’s jobs portal.
Climate Change Scenarios in the Great Lakes
As wildfires spread on the west coast, hurricanes and rising sea levels batter cities on the east coast and in the south, and sunbelt cities struggle with droughts, those of us fortunate to live in the Great Lakes region watch and wonder if a rediscovery of legacy cities in the Rustbelt is at hand.
Cleveland, Ohio had over 900,000 residents in 1950. Today, the city’s population is less than 400,000. The populations of many cities, large and small, in the Great Lakes region have followed a similar trajectory, for the same reasons--globalization, deindustrialization, and suburbanization.
And yet, the fundamental reasons for why cities historically located on the shores of the Great Lakes remain true today. A central location, an interconnected network of road, rail, and energy infrastructure, and access to the largest freshwater system on earth provide a compelling basis for the re-urbanization of a megaregion that could support many more people and industries than exist here today.
The CUDC is one of seven organizations nationwide selected to receive a grant from the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy to explore scenario planning strategies. Our project envisions the possibilities for resilient and climate-responsive regrowth in Great Lakes cities.
The CUDC and architect/climate scientist Nick Rajkovich will collaborate on a community-focused how-to guide for scenario planning for climate resilience in the lower Great Lakes region. The guide will draw on our experience working with frontline community organizations in Northeast Ohio and Western New York on climate change mitigation, adaptation, and resilience issues.
Buffalo, New York from Lake Erie
The cities of Cleveland, Buffalo, Toledo, Detroit, and Erie share an industrial history that drove economic growth in the 19th and early 20th centuries, followed by decades of depopulation, disinvestment, and decline. As sea level rise, hurricanes, and other natural disasters begin to destabilize coastal areas, the Great Lakes region is could become a climate refuge in the future.
NASA/NOAA
Cities on Lakes Erie and Ontario have a moderate climate and abundant access to fresh water. However, these cities face numerous other challenges that put environmental and human health at risk: an increase in temperature extremes, more intense winter and summer storms, and increased flooding risks. Compounding the problem, high percentages of impervious land cover, sparse tree canopy, and aging infrastructure compound the risk in low income and minority communities.
How should cities in the Lower Great Lakes plan for the future? We will be creating a how-to guide for making climate-responsive land use decisions in older industrial cities and regions, exploring populations gains and losses, scenarios about where to focus redevelopment and where to protect land for habitat and green infrastructure. Drawing on our experience working in Northeast Ohio and Western New York, the guide will show how scenario planning can help communities determine how to best manage their vacant land inventories to support new development while buffering residents and businesses from the adverse impacts of climate variability and change.
The project is currently underway and will be completed in 12 months. For more information, please contact the CUDC at cudc@kent.edu or 216.357.3434.
Making Our Own Space in Your Community
HEY! Kent State University’s Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative (CUDC) is looking for a community development corporation, government agency, or non-profit organization that serves middle and high school students within the City of Cleveland to be our partner on a new initiative in our award-winning Making Our Own Space program.
Making Our Own Space (MOOS) is a design/build program where young people imagine, design, and build improvements to public spaces in their neighborhoods. The program was established in 2015 and currently operates in six Cleveland neighborhoods and two first-ring suburbs.
The CUDC’s new initiative, Making Our Own Space Rapid Response Team (MOOS-RRT) is an outgrowth and expansion of the original MOOS program.
MOOS-RRT is an 18-month enrichment program for middle and high school students who have an interest in design and the desire to be active changemakers in their neighborhood. MOOS Students will learn valuable skills and have fun while earning a stipend for their participation in the program.
Student participants will conduct research and develop design-based solutions to address issues in a Cleveland neighborhood, in collaboration with the staff of Kent State University’s Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative (CUDC), guest designers, and community leaders. The program is anticipated to run from August 2021 - November 2022.
Thanks to the generous support of The Cleveland Foundation, the CUDC will operate this program at no cost to the community partner we select through a Request for Proposals.
Proposals are due June 30, 2021.
For more information, please download the RFP or contact cudc@kent.edu.
American Roundtable: In the Mahoning Valley
Brainard Rivet Company Shop Floor. Courtesy of Brainard Rivet Company, an employee-owned company
We are happy to announce the publication of In the Mahoning Valley, a report that is part of the Architectural League of New York's American Roundtable project and that members of Kent State University's Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative edited. American Roundtable is an Architectural League of New York initiative, bringing together on-the-ground perspectives on the condition of American communities and what they need to thrive going forward.
FULL REPORT: https://archleague.org/project/mahoningvalleyohio/
In this report, we present innovative new ideas being developed in the Mahoning Valley, Ohio, such as experiments in reimagining the role of rivers, health institutions, land banks, and governments in building community wealth opportunities. We share new models for community-based educational pipelines and employee-owned cooperatives trying to reimagine the economic future of the area.
Contributors:
Building a Better Warren, Charles Frederick, Helen Liggett, Roy Messing, Quilian Riano, Jennifer Roller, Terry Schwarz, and Kristen Zeiber
Editorial Team:
Chief Editor: Quilian Riano, Associate Director CUDC
Mapping/Graphics Editor: Kristen Zeiber, Project Manager, CUDC
Photography and Editorial Contributor: Katie Slusher, Urban Designer, CUDC
Photography and Editorial Support: Kaitlyn Boniecki, Student Employee, CUDC
This presentation and discussion, captured in the video above, complements the report In the Mahoning Valley on Youngstown, Warren, Lordstown, and other communities along Ohio’s Mahoning River. Report editors Quilian Riano and Kristen Zeiber and report contributors Helen Liggett, Gary Honeywood, and Matt Martin shared findings and highlights and then discussed some of the report’s key ideas and provocations with American Roundtable project director Nicholas Anderson and Architectural League executive director Rosalie Genevro.
New Survey: Barrier-free Cleveland
Drawing of street showing signage clearances and signal buttons for people with vision impairments
Do you or someone you know have a physical or cognitive disability, or other mobility challenges caused by aging or injuries? The Barrier-free Cleveland team would like to hear from you. We invite you to take an ONLINE SURVEY.
All survey responses are confidential. In thanks for completing the survey, you will receive a $10 Visa gift card in the mail or a $10 digital gift card from Amazon.
For more information, please call 216.357.3426 or email barrierfreecle@kent.edu.
SURVEY: MOOS Rapid Response Team
Making Our Own Space is a program of Kent State University’s Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative that engages and empowers middle school and high school students with skills to transform public spaces in their neighborhoods. With generous support from the Cleveland Foundation, the CUDC is launching a new MOOS Rapid Response Team and we’d like your input as this program takes shape.
After six years of designing and building public space improvements with young people and the completion of a strategic planning process for the program last year, we are excited to begin expanding and evolving the work of MOOS. The MOOS Rapid Response Team will build on existing partnerships in many of the neighborhoods we’ve been working in. We are also seeking a new community partner for MOOS.
The MOOS Rapid Response Team will be small but mighty, working closely with CUDC staff as urban researchers tackling questions relevant to their community. While we will still pull out the drills and chop saws for construction projects on occasion, we will also expand the design tools students use to think spatially and respond to the challenges and opportunities of their neighborhoods. This first MOOS-RRT program will run for 18 months starting in August 2021 with a group of eight students ages 13-18. Students will be paid a stipend for their leadership and creative work in the program.
In May 2021, we will issue a Request for Proposals and invite community organizations to apply to bring the MOOS-RRT program to their neighborhood. Please help us shape this RFP by completing a short survey to share your thoughts on what issues are most important in Cleveland neighborhoods right now.
If you or someone you know is affiliated with a youth-serving organization in the City of Cleveland and would be interested in collaborating on this project, please include contact info in your survey response so we can follow up.
ASLA Ohio Award for Making Our Own Space
Making Our Own Space (MOOS) received a 2020 Ohio Landscape Architecture Award for community outreach, equity, and engagement.
MOOS focuses on building awareness of design professions in historically underserved and under-represented communities. MOOS students design, construct, and install placemaking features in shared neighborhood spaces. MOOS expands awareness of landscape architecture, creates relationships between practitioners and students, and presents a path to design professions.
MOOS students learn about the actions and connections required to make real changes in their neighborhoods, through public engagement and a range of design careers. Students receive a stipend for participating to honor the value of the local knowledge, creative energy, and design work they contribute to MOOS projects. Students from the Buckeye, Detroit-Shoreway, Glenville, Clark-Fulton neighborhoods in Cleveland, and from Shaker Heights have participated in MOOS over the program’s five-year history.
Thanks to the Ohio ASLA for recognizing the MOOS program with this honor!
Spring 2021 Programs
VIDEOS OF LECTURES
Brad Samuels
Beyond The Frame: Reconstructing Police ViolenceLexy Lattimore
Community Building Through the ArtsBilly Fleming, Al-Jalil Gault & Xan Lillehei
Designing the Green New DealAndrew Sargeant
Landscape Singularity Innovative Tools for Design and EngagementMiriam Solis
Equity Ecosystems: The Role Of Organizational Change In Advancing Racial Equity Through Climate Mitigation PlansBiko Mandela Gray
More in Store: Alton Sterling, Black Churches, and The Transformation of Space
Beyond the Frame: Reconstructing Police Violence from User Generated Content
Beyond the Frame: Reconstructing Police Violence from User Generated Content
Presentation by Brad Samuels
Friday, February 5, 2021 from noon-1pm
RSVP for ZOOM link
Since the late spring, SITU Research has been conducting visual investigations of protests from across the United States. This growing library of examples documents the breadth and depth of police violence and excessive use of force against protestors in its systemic context. The work leverages the extensive, publicly available, citizen documentation of each event and merges it with digital reconstruction techniques to isolate and analyze key interactions between law enforcement and civilians from multiple perspectives and crucial spatial contexts. This presentation will feature how these reconstructions serve as vehicles for accountability in the presentation of two cases: evidentiary material in a lawsuit against the Portland Police Bureau, and as an advocacy tool in a report against the New York Police Department.
Brad Samuels is a founding partner at SITU and the Director of SITU Research—an organization that merges data and design to create new pathways for justice. Outside the multidisciplinary practice, Brad sits on the Technology Advisory Board for the International Criminal Court and the Board of The Architectural League of New York, is a Fellow with the Urban Design Forum and teaches in Barnard College and Columbia University’s undergraduate architecture program
Planning Ironies of 2020
2020 carried a heavy symbolic weight. In the preceding years, communities across the country developed 2020 plans, linking local aspirations with a magical number intended to convey clear vision.
And then 2020 arrived, bringing a pandemic, a national awakening toward racial justice, political unrest, job losses, a roller coaster economy—conditions that even those with 20/20 vision didn’t see coming.
The mismatch between 2020 visions and 2020 reality underscores the limitations of long-range planning. The future is uncertain, unsettling, downright weird. So what’s a planner to do?
First, we should retire the famous admonition from Daniel Burnham to Make No Little Plans. Because little plans are a sensible response in times of rapid change, while grand plans tend to gloss over a host of inconvenient factors that we can neither predict nor control. An important lesson of 2020 is that, while we need to remain clear in our vision and intent, we should also stay light on our feet and ready to respond to whatever challenges and discoveries the new year brings.
If the first week of 2021 is any indication, we’re in for more surprises from a changing climate, an unstable democracy, an unresolved pandemic…and adversities we have yet to imagine. Hard work, hopefulness, and a creative, incremental approach are (perhaps) the tools that will carry us through.
From all of us at the CUDC, wishing you a healthy, happy, and righteous new year.
The Great Lakes Architectural Expedition
CUDC Gallery | College of Architecture and Environmental Design, Kent State University | 1309 Euclid Avenue, Suite 200, Cleveland, Ohio
Virtual Lecture and Opening Galen Pardee, Drawing Agency: The Great Lakes Architectural Expedition in Northern Ohio, January 20, 2020 at 6 pm.
Exhibition Galen Pardee, The Great Lakes Architectural Expedition, January 20 - February 26, 2021
Free and open to the public on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays from 9am - noon or by appointment. Viewing hours are subject to change. Please call 216.357.3434 or email cudc@kent.edu to confirm.
Virtual Visit Tour the exhibition here
Photo credit: Stephen Takacs
The Great Lakes Architectural Expedition, created by Galen Pardee, explores early work of the titular Expedition, a public architecture office with Lake Erie as a client. Focusing on attempts to establish their roles as public advocates and draft the contours of non-human architect-client relationships, works on display include furniture at the Parliament for a Material World, prototypes for the Maumee Basin Phosphorous Co-Op, and models of the Last Impervious Surface in Portage County Ohio.
On December 8th, 2008, the States and Territories of Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Montreal, and Quebec, signed into law the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River Basin Water Resources Compact [The Great Lakes Compact], prohibiting water removal outside the Lakes’ drainage basins and creating a sealed eco-political zone within the United States and Canada. On April 25th 2018, Wisconsin approved Foxconn’s request to withdraw seven million gallons of Lake Michigan water per day for a private LCD panel factory outside Racine: Foxconn claimed its factory’s water consumption a “public use” to skirt full Compact review. This feat of semantics exposed the Compact’s lack of actionable public water definitions, and created a leak in the Compact’s closed loop.
Finally, on February 26th, 2019, the citizens of Toledo, Ohio approved the Lake Erie Bill of Rights, granting the city legal guardianship of the Lake and its’ watershed. Unchecked agricultural runoff in 2014 had rendered Lake Erie’s water undrinkable for half a million people for days at a time: algal blooms would return regardless in July 2019. These three events inspired the foundation of the Great Lakes Architectural Expedition, an experimental public architecture office entrusted with protecting the spirit of the Great Lakes Compact, researching and designing the Watershed’s public realm, and advocating for the Compact’s human, non-human, and material subjects.
The Expedition’s mission has prompted a fundamental re-thinking of architecture’s role in the Great Lakes Megalopolis—engaging legal and physical terrains with equal dexterity, expanding architectural practice with non-human client structures, and transforming architects into agents for public materials in a world of increasing scarcity. Using archival models, drawings, documents, and studies, this rare glimpse into the office’s archives explores the organizational structure of the Great Lakes Architectural Expedition itself, as well as early attempts by the Expedition’s Lake Erie Board to establish their roles as public advocates and draft the contours of non-human architect-client relationships.
Galen Pardee LeFevre Emerging Practitioner Fellow at The Ohio State University.
Galen Pardee is a designer, educator, and researcher; currently the LeFevre Emerging Practitioner Fellow at The Ohio State University. He received his BA from Brandeis University and an MArch from Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP). Galen has taught at Columbia University and Ohio State, and designed projects in New York City and California. His studio Drawing Agency explores dimensions of architectural advocacy, material economy, and expanded practice. His research projects have been funded by The Ohio State University, Columbia University GSAPP, and the Graham Foundation; and published in the Avery Review and FAKTUR, among others.
Cleveland Metroparks: 2020 Urban Design Charrette
On October 2-5 the CUDC staff and ten Kent State CAED graduate students spent a full weekend in our own backyard, examining the Cleveland Metroparks sites of Brookside Reservation and the nearby Brighton Park and proposing design ideas for our parks & public spaces during a global pandemic.
After an outdoor site tour with the Metroparks, Western Reserve Land Conservancy, Big Creek Connects, and the City of Cleveland, the team got to work. Across the course of the weekend, the design team identified the following four goals for the project:
FLEXIBILITY: Create a toolkit of design ideas that can be deployed and reconfigured for a variety of futures
CONTINUITY: Link the Parks into a larger system, including filling “the gaps” as needed
GREENING: Extend the Parks into their neighborhoods & incorporate ecological best practices
ACCESSIBILITY: Create unique points of access, inviting exploration from a wide range of users
Brighton Park gateway concept (Kaitlyn Boniecki)
Wayfinding/public art ideas incorporating all-ages engagement (Kaitlyn Boniecki)
Neighborhood “back door” entry concept (Abby Lawless)
Brighton Park landscaping & natural play elements (Abby Lawless)
Treadway Creek Trail entry concept (Erika Chmielewski)
Wildlife Way/Old Brooklyn neighborhood connections (TyJuan Swanson-Sawyer)
The final work spanned terrain from the Cuyahoga River Valley via the Towpath Trail, the Old Brooklyn neighborhood, the newly-constructed Brighton Park, the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo, and the Brookside Reservation, with particular emphasis on strengthening connections from the park system to surrounding neighborhoods. Students also included considerations for neighborhood gateways, trail design, wayfinding, four-season use, pop-up programming, stormwater management, and streetscape redesign.
Pearl Rd/Brighton Park development, incorporating complete & green streetscapes (Alan O’Connell)
Stormwater management throughout Brookside Reservation (James Sasser)
Big Creek access (James Sasser)
Birdseye of Brookside with final design ideas (Clayton O’Dell)
The student ideas are being compiled into a final toolkit, to be posted & distributed soon to our project website, so check back there for more soon. In the meantime, you can check out the final presentation here:
Thanks again to our partners at the Cleveland Metroparks for hosting a great charrette, and special thanks to Kent State CAED, Old Brooklyn CDC, NAIOP Northern Ohio, and Robert Mastriana/4M Company LLC for supporting the charrette. And kudos to our stalwart students for their strong & creative work!