Post-Graduate Fellowship at the CUDC

Are you a recent graduate with a masters degree in architecture, landscape architecture, urban design, or planning? Are you interested in community design and youth education? If so, we have great news for you! Kent State's College of Architecture and Environmental Design's Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative (CUDC) is offering a one year, full-time paid fellowship.

As a post-graduate fellow, you will be supporting the Making Our Own Space (MOOS) design/build initiative for middle- and high-school students and working on community design projects as part of the CUDC team. You will also develop a fellowship project of your choice. 10% of your work time will be devoted to your fellowship project and a modest budget will be provided.

Eligible applicants will have experience in basic carpentry and fabrication, and excellent drafting/sketching and written communication skills. You must also have completed a graduate program in architecture, urban design, landscape architecture or planning in 2021, 2022 or 2023.

For the full job description and application instructions, please visit the Kent State Human Resources site. The application deadline is May 29, 2023. For more information, contact the CUDC at cudc@kent.edu or 216.357.3434.

Kent State University is an equal opportunity, affirmative action employer committed to attaining excellence through the recruitment and retention of a diverse workforce. Women, minorities, veterans, and individuals with disabilities are encouraged to apply.

Volunteer at Community Greenhouse Partners!

Kent State’s Flashes Give Back Week is a time to make a difference where it matters most on Kent State campuses and in our communities!

Please join on on Saturday, 22 April 2023 from 1-5pm for a volunteer day at Community Greenhouse Partners, 6527 Superior Avenue in Cleveland.

Community Greenhouse Partners is a sustainable urban farm that applies ecological design principles and engages community participation to grow wholesome food year-round that is provided at a low cost to the neighborhood, improving personal health while generating training, mentoring and employment opportunities.

Volunteers will assist with covering beds to prevent weeds, moving extra equipment, flattening areas for planting, clearing the forest garden and moving garbage to the front street and to the garbage room. Conditions are rugged. Work gloves and closed-toe shoes are essential.

Sign Up Here to Volunteer

If you sign up by Friday, March 17, you’ll receive a free Flashes Give Back Week T-shirt! 

What next?! with Out of Architecture

Join us at noon on April 7, 2023 for What next?! With Out of Architecture

This workshop is part of the spring program series at the CUDC, sponsored by Kent State’s College of Architecture and Environmental Design. The workshop will be a virtual event on Zoom with an in-person audience at the Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative. 1309 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland.

The workshop will explore how to design your career. We will be discussing job hunting tools and techniques, best practices, as well as providing resume and portfolio advice. We will also be looking at pathways both in, out, and adjacent to the architectural profession. This event will provide valuable insights and guidance to help you chart your course towards success.

Out of Architecture is the career consulting firm that helps you leverage the full value of your design education, in any field. The firm was started by two Harvard-educated professionals, Erin Pellegrino and Jake Rudin, who were interested in exploring the value of their skills both in and out of the architectural profession. 

Erin Pellegrino

Jake Rudin

Erin is a Visiting Lecturer in Architecture at Cornell University with a focus in Professional Practice. Her studio, Matter., established in 2015 , has focused on small-scale interventions and a process-driven design methodology at various scales. Through her work, she seeks to uncover, build upon, and create relationships through product, furniture and architectural design. She also consults with early technology and design start-up companies for tech accelerators in the New York City area.

Jake works as a member of the Adidas Advanced Creation Technologies team - fabricating, designing, digitizing, model making, and exploring all aspects of footwear. As a designer, he has spent time working around the world for firms including Massimiliano Fuksas Architects, ZGF, and the Shenzhen Institute of Building Research. He has taught extensively in architecture and design fields at universities including Harvard, Cornell, Northeastern, and Portland State University where he currently teaches Visual Communications in the School of Architecture.

Spring Lecture Series Presents - Matthew Feinberg, Theater, Politics, and the Right to the City in Contemporary Spain

Join us Friday, February 24th from 12 -1 PM for a brown bag lecture at the CUDC featuring Matthew Feinberg.

An in-person event at the CUDC with Zoom Livestream

Poised at the intersection of theater studies and cultural geography, this talk sketches the physical and imaginary contours of one of Madrid’s most iconic neighborhoods: Lavapiés. A diverse, multicultural, and rapidly changing neighborhood, it has long been the locus of resistance movements and also of cultural flourishing. Feinberg will illustrate how the neighborhood’s conflicts over gentrification, its unique role as both a site and subject of Madrid’s theater tradition, and its history of influential squatted social centers reveal much about the key economic, social, and cultural dynamics that have shaped cities in the early twenty-first century. 

Free and open to the public. Light snacks provided.

From the Theater to the Plaza can be purchased here. Use code MQSP (good until 31 August 2023) for 30% off.

Friday, February 24, 2023
Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative
1309 Euclid Ave. Ste. 200
Cleveland, OH 44115

Spring Lecture Series Presents - Sai Sinbondit, Design for Displacement

Join us Friday, February 17th from 12 -1 PM for a brown bag lecture at the CUDC featuring Sai Sinbondit.

An in-person event at the CUDC with Zoom Livestream

The terms displacement, migration, and homelessness are clearly defined, but in reality, the boundaries and similarities of the human struggles between them are blurred. In this lecture, Sai Sinbondit will be sharing the evolution of his practice I_You Design Lab and several projects that focus on addressing the fundamental needs and the betterment of people who have been displaced. Sai’s work leverages research, collaboration, design, and mindful construction to create meaningful and equitable built environments.

I_You Design Lab is a 501(c)3 not-for-profit design and architecture collective dedicated to developing and supporting meaningful and sustainable solutions that help lift the quality of life at every scale and level for people who have been displaced.

Free and open to the public. Light snacks provided.

Friday, February 17, 2023
Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative
1309 Euclid Ave. Ste. 200
Cleveland, OH 44115

Spring Lecture Series Presents - Andrew Economos Miller, Refuse//Repose

Join us Friday, February 10th from 12 -1 PM for a lecture at the CUDC featuring Andrew Economos Miller. His lecture, "Refuse//Repose," will lay the theoretical groundwork for the upcoming exhibition of the same title at the Kent State College of Architecture and Environmental Design. The talk will sift through a pile of reference, found material, and theoretical propositions that deal with architecture's contemporary organization of labor and its relationship to various natures and larger social and economic systems. The talk will be organized around the tripartite division of "Labor, Waste, and Action," in order to deal with its broad themes. It will also work as an in-progress framework that encourages conversation with the audience.

Free and open to the public. Lunch will be served.

Friday, February 10, 2023
Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative
1309 Euclid Ave. Ste. 200
Cleveland, OH 44115

Urban Histories in Practice

Jan 27 from noon-1pm - Book Release Event - Urban Histories in Practice: Morphologies and Memory

Panel discussion with editor Steven Rugare and contributors Gary Sampson, Stephanie Ryberg-Webster, and Jeffrey Kruth. In-person event at the CUDC. Free refreshments. Books available for purchase through Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Use the code URBAN25 for a 25% discount.

The new book, Urban Histories in Practice: Morphologies and Memory brings together ideas about the material and social transformation of cities by asking, “what is the relationship between history, memory, and the contemporary city?” The urgency of this question grows in the contexts of rapid urbanization in the Global South and urban decline in the deindustrializing areas of the Global North. Within these spaces, multiple disciplines shape our capacity to know the contemporary city. The panel discussion will explore critical and creative approaches regarding how these disciplines might shape this process, ultimately making it more equitable and just.

To Those Who Nourish: Farming and Environmental Health in Northeast Ohio

CUDC Fall Lecture Series - Imani Badillo, To Those Who Nourish: Farming and Environmental Health in Northeast Ohio

21 October 2022 from noon-1pm

In person event at the CUDC, 1309 Euclid Avenue, Suite 200, Cleveland.

Free and open to the public. A light lunch will be served. This event will also be livestreamed over Zoom

Artist and workshop organizer Imani Badillo will discuss the multi-year SPACES x Cooking Sections partnership, To Those Who Nourish. This project looks closely at the deoxygenated state of Lake Erie and the impact of harmful chemical fertilizers. A major source of life and water for the Cleveland area, UK-based artist collective Cooking Sections has partnered with SPACES to create a monument in the lake to farmers who committed to engage in the longer-term Non-Phosphorus Support Network.

This group of farmers across Northeast Ohio will connect quarterly to discuss their own methods and efforts to move away from chemical fertilizers. This talk will provide some background for the project, introduce the group of farmers committed to the overall health of Lake Erie, and will explore how art can uplift the local community and pave the way for future change. 

Imani Badillo is a Puerto Rican, Black, and Alaskan Native artist, writer, and workshop organizer from Cleveland, OH. Imani’s work communicates environmental justice concerns using painting, fiber art, and bookmaking. Their sole goal as an artist is to use illustrated thoughts and memories as an invitation into getting into a right relationship with human and more-than-human others.

Special thanks to SPACES Cleveland and FRONT International 2022.

Centering Diversity: Landscape Architecture in Ohio Summit

A collective of Ohio Landscape Architecture practitioners, educators and partners are planning a summit centered around Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (JEDI). 

Centering Diversity: Landscape Architecture in Ohio will take place in-person at two locations - the CUDC in Downtown Cleveland and the Knowlton School at Ohio State - on Friday, October 7, 2022. The goal of this summit is to explore, discover, and synthesize best practices relating to JEDI in landscape architecture throughout Ohio. Proceedings, goals and outcomes formed during the summit will be published into a report that will be made available for public use.

In preparation of the summit, the organizers are collecting data from JEDI initiatives in landscape architecture across the State of Ohio. This information will be used to analyze how the profession is performing with regard to Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion within our state. Information obtained from this survey will be disseminated to all registered participants in advance of the summit and published in the report. Please complete this survey by Friday, September 23rd: 

Survey link: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1qi8IigPnEEdYMkpnKMFjPSqh6gAdzYQfAaAXbHGN_Q8/viewform?edit_requested=true

2.0 CEU approval is pending for both in-person participation and via recording. Further speaker and event details will be confirmed shortly. Please forward this event info and survey along to your respective firms, institutions, or any other affiliates. Direct any questions to ohiolandscapejedi@gmail.com. 

This is a free event but donations can be applied to help cover the cost for this event and further ongoing JEDI efforts throughout the state.

The two in-person locations that will host this hybrid event are:

• Knowlton School, The Ohio State University, 275 W Woodruff Avenue, Columbus, OH 43210

• Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative (CUDC), Kent State University, 1309 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, OH 44115

Asynchronous Participation is available. There will not be virtual streamed sessions during the day of the summit. Instead, virtual participation will occur before and day-of through Miro, where participants can contribute insights and feedback on provided prompts. Recording of roundtable discussions will be made available following the in-person event, pending CEU approval.

Agenda

• Arrival & Networking (1:00-1:15)

• Welcome & Introduction (1:15-1:30)

• Panel/Roundtable 1: Establishing a Baseline (1:30-2:30)

• Break (2:30 - 2:45)

• Session 1: Learning Landscape (2:45-3:30)

• Break - (3:30 - 3:45)

• Session 2: Diversity in Practice (3:45-4:15)

• Panel 2: Next Steps (4:15 - 5:00)

The deadline to register for the summit is Friday, September 30th. In-person seating is limited. 

There will be an informal/optional happy hour social following the summit at both locations.

Centering Diversity: Landscape Architecture in Ohio | Facebook

Ohio Landscape JEDI (@centering_diversity) • Instagram photos and videos

Cyclical City - Stories of Urban Transformation

CUDC Fall Lecture Series - Jill Desimini, Cyclical City: Stories of Urban Transformation

28 October 2022 from noon-1pm

In person event at the CUDC, 1309 Euclid Avenue, Suite 200, Cleveland.

Free and open to the public. A light lunch will be served. This event will also be livestreamed over Zoom

Co-sponsored with the Ohio Chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects (OCASLA). Landscape Architecture Continuing Education System (LA CES) credit pending.

As cities evolve and resources shift with time, spaces within those cities are often left fallow and abandoned. Cyclical City tells the stories behind these sites, from Philadelphia’s Liberty Lands park to Lisbon’s Green Plan, and it looks at the ways in which these narratives can be leveraged toward future engagement and use.

Jill Desimini posits a fundamental role for spatial design practice to transform abandoned urban landscapes through time. She argues for approaches that promote the specific affordances of the land itself (hydrology, vegetation, topography, geology, infrastructural capacity, occupation potential); the importance of cyclical change; and the particularities of the cultural, political, and physical context.

In her lecture, she will explore these themes in five cities—Philadelphia, Berlin, Lisbon, Amsterdam, and Saint Louis—and across centuries, from periods of great upheaval to ones of relative stability and even economic growth. She considers what landscape-driven design can bring to cities losing people and economic resources, how design practice can be more inclusive in a context of market failure, and the ways in which abandoned landscapes can become our commons.

Jill Desimini is a landscape architect and associate professor at the University of Connecticut. She is trained as an architect and landscape architect and has practiced in both fields. Her current research investigates potential futures for abandoned landscapes, with an emphasis on climate and justice.

She is author of Cyclical City: Five Stories of Urban Transformation (University of Virginia Press, 2022), From Fallow: 100 Ideas for Abandoned Urban Landscapes (ORO Editions, 2019) , and co-author of Cartographic Grounds: Projecting the Landscape (Princeton Architectural Press, 2016). Her work has also appeared in Manifest Journal, Bracket [Takes Action], JAE Online, A Public Space, LA Frontiers, New Geographies 10: Fallow, Journal of Urban History, Landscape Journal, Journal of Landscape Architecture, Scenario Journal, The Journal of Chinese Landscape Architecture, Places, as well as in book chapters on fallowness, urban wilds, land banks, and other related topics.

She holds a Master of Architecture and Master of Landscape Architecture from the University of Pennsylvania and a Bachelor of Arts in Urban Studies from Brown University. Prior to joining UConn, she was Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and a designer at Stoss Landscape Urbanism, Atkin Olshin Schade Architects, Wallace, Roberts and Todd, and KieranTimberlake.

Jill Desimini, Cyclical City: Stories of Urban Transformation is the third program in the CUDC’s Fall lecture series, organized around the theme of Cities and Material Landscapes.

Trails & Greenways Mini-Conference

The FREE Greater Cleveland Trails and Greenways Mini-Conference will be held on September 21 and 22.

Decision makers, planners, practitioners, trail advocates share ideas, discover new tools, and set the stage to transform plans and concepts into successfully completed projects. Be a part of this free 2-day conference!

Wednesday 9am–Noon virtual sessions

• ODOT: WalkBikeOhio & New Multi-modal Design Guide

• Promoting Trail Projects Through Social Media & Photo Library

Thursday 9am–Noon virtual sessions

• The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), aka Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL), Funding

• The New Wayfinding Sign System - Cuyahoga Greenway Partners and Destination Cleveland

Mobile Workshops 2–3:30pm, 3:30–4:30 (workshops repeat each day)

• Euclid Creek Greenway Connector 2:30pm

• Nord Family Greenway, University Circle 2:30pm

• Bike Tour: Public Space Improvements Along the Cleveland Cultural Gardens 3:30pm

CEUs available for various professions. 

Learn more, get links and registration information at GCTrails.org.

Making Art Work

CUDC Fall Lecture Series - Mac Love, MAKING ART WORK

9 September 2022 from noon-1pm

In person event at the CUDC, 1309 Euclid Avenue, Suite 200, Cleveland.

Free and open to the public. Light lunch will be served. This event will also be livestreamed over Zoom

Please join us for the first event in the 2022 Fall Lecture Series at the CUDC.

Mac Love will be giving a talk entitled Making Art Work. He recently presented the opening lecture on Equity & Social Justice: Community & Youth Engagement at the 2022 ESRI User Conference in San Diego, focusing on his work in Akron and Cleveland.

As the Co-Founder & Chief Catalyst at Art x Love, a creative agency based in Akron (OH), Mac’s work with @PLAY and Steps to Equity have been nationally recognized as a leading example for creative community collaboration. Mac will share the principles, methods, and tools that inform and guide these projects, and demonstrate how they are systemically shifting the way people, communities, and cities invest in the arts and their environment.

Great Lakes Climate Migration

The impacts of climate change could displace many people in parts of the United States. Cities in heavily impacted areas could lose residents and tax revenue as people relocate to safe havens. Other cities will receive displaced people, perhaps suddenly and without warning, in the wake of a climate disaster. There is a pressing need to prepare for these population shifts in an organized and equitable way.

Cities in the Great Lakes region have already experienced periods of population growth and decline. The Great Migration, from 1910-1970, was one of the largest movements of people in U.S. history. Approximately six million Black Southerners moved to cities in the Northern, Western, and Midwestern parts of the US to escape racial violence and pursue economic and educational opportunities.

Many people moved to Detroit, Cleveland, Buffalo, and other cities in the Great Lakes where industrial jobs were plentiful. As deindustrialization took hold in the 1970s and 1980s, these cities lost residents and businesses—a pattern that persists to the present day. However, the Great Lakes region may begin to experience climate-related in-migration as people rediscover the area’s stable climate, abundant fresh water, and available land.

If Great Lakes cities begin to attract new residents, what factors will motivate people to move and when might this happen? Will in-migration bring jobs, ideas, and money to help revitalize the Great Lakes region? Will new residents displace people who are already here? Will population growth be concentrated in existing cities, or will it result in an expanded development footprint in suburban and rural areas? How will in-migration affect the ancestral claims of Indigenous people on the land and water of the Great Lakes basin?

In an effort to spark conversations about these and other questions, the CUDC and the University at Buffalo partnered to produce a guide to scenario planning for climate migration in Great Lakes cities. The guide aims to assist Great Lakes cities in making climate-responsive land use decisions, planning for population gains and losses, and developing scenarios about where to focus future development and where to protect land for green space and green infrastructure.

Download the GUIDE TO SCENARIO PLANNING FOR GREAT LAKES CLIMATE MIGRATION

Further reading:

Tim McDonnell & Amanda Shendruck. It’s time to prepare cities for people uprooted by climate change Quartz 9/1/2020

Kelly Lielani Main, Why the Great Lakes need to be at the center of our climate strategy Fast Company 6/10/2021

Abrahm Lustgarten, How Climate Migration Will Reshape America, New York Times Magazine 9/15/2020

Director of Design Entrepreneurship and Inclusion

Kent State’s Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative is hiring a Director of Design Entrepreneurship & Inclusion. With support from the Cleveland Foundation, the CUDC created this new leadership position to foster the development of new design firms and expand the diversity of design practice in Northeast Ohio.

We’re looking for someone who can cultivate a national network of Black and Latinx design practitioners and firms and assist local design firms, developers, and organizations in building diverse teams for design and development projects in Greater Cleveland. The new Director of Design Entrepreneurship & Inclusion will also provide coaching and technical assistance for designers looking to start their own firms.

This is an opportunity to radically shift the nature of community design practice and open up the design fields to new voices and ideas. For more information and to apply, please visit Jobs.Kent.edu

Designing the Food Economy

In March of 2022, the CUDC and graduate students in Kent State’s College of Architecture and Environmental Design conducted a Community Design Charrette in Cleveland’s MidTown neighborhood. The charrette explored Cleveland’s established and emerging food sectors and discovered new ways for food related-investments to enhance city neighborhoods. Cleveland Central Kitchen and MidTown Cleveland were key charrette partners, helping the charrette team understand and respond to community needs and opportunities.

The students’ work highlights the presence of food-related businesses on Cleveland’s east side and envisions opportunities for business expansion in ways that benefit nearby neighborhoods. The charrette team planned for a complete neighborhood with convenient shopping, appealing parks and green spaces, walkable streets, and a strong sense of identity.

A proposed market plaza across the street from Cleveland Central Kitchen would provide a place for start-up food businesses in the Central Kitchen to sell their products and create a central gathering space for neighborhood residents

A climbing wall, slide, and seating based on the MidTown logo would reinforce the neighborhood’s identity.

The proposed Color Corridor is an appealing pedestrian linkage and public space between Carnegie and Euclid Avenues, connecting the Cleveland Central Kitchen and Euclid Avenue workers and residents through to Gallucci's Italian Foods & Market, E. 66th Street, and the vineyards at Chateau Hough.

Public art along the Color Corridor would create a lively pedestrian experience.

Community residents and local stakeholders offered input into the charrette process. The charrette team worked closely with MidTown Cleveland and Fairfax Renaissance Development Corporation to align their ideas with existing neighborhood plans.

For more information, please download the final charrette report, Designing the Food Economy.

Special thanks to our partners for their help with the charrette: Cleveland Central Kitchen, MidTown, Inc. Fairfax Renaissance Development Corporation, and Angie’s Soul Cafe. We’re also grateful to NAOIP Commercial Real Estate Development Association Northern Ohio and The 4M Company for their financial support of the charrette.

Neighborhood Food Futures - CUDC at the 2022 Oslo Architecture Triennale

The Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative’s work is featured in the Neighbourhood Index at the 2022 Oslo Architecture Triennale!

With a theme of Mission Neighbourhood – (Re)forming Communities, the Triennale explores how we form the places we share. Mission Neighbourhood is an invitation to broaden the collective imagination regarding the spaces of everyday life.

The CUDC’s project, Neighborhood Food Futures, documents Cleveland’s existing and emerging food sectors and proposes a framework for integrating a diverse range of food enterprises into a robust and resilient foodscape. We envision a future where food entrepreneurs are nurtured across the spectrum–from home-based businesses to local start-ups to national/international food enterprises. In addition to providing sustenance in a hungry city, Neighborhood Food Futures lays the groundwork for advanced food manufacturing operations such as lab grown meat, 3D printed foods, and zero-waste food packaging.

Future food tech innovation hub along Opportunity Corridor

Food manufacturing can add value to urban neighborhoods through flexible production facilities. Spaces and places for food production can be designed as urban infrastructure, encompassing all stages of the food supply chain: growing food/urban farming, food processing/making; shared kitchens and production spaces, food retail; and food waste recycling/composting. 

Neighborhood Food Futures aims to incubate innovative food businesses and agro-industries for a more prosperous and healthy city. Food operations integrate more easily into city neighborhoods than other forms of industry since they are cleaner and more compatible with residential areas. Neighborhood residents are a nearby work force and an underserved consumer base. Neighborhood Food Futures reconnects food production to consumption and makes food systems legible in city neighborhoods.

Vision for food production and community access centered around Cleveland Central Kitchen on Carnegie Avenue.

Neighborhood Food Futures expands upon the CUDC’s work over the past twelve years on issues of urban food production and vacant land reuse, and also features work from a recent Community Design Charrette conducted in partnership with MidTown Cleveland and the Cleveland Central Kitchen.

Making Our Own Space is on the Move!

Making Our Own Space (MOOS) the CUDC’s design/build program for middle and high school students is back in full force this summer, with new MOOS programs in Cleveland’s Old Brooklyn and Slavic Village neighborhoods and returning programs in Glenville and Shaker Heights.

Making Our Own Space Coordinator Ben Herring and the MOOS Rapid Response Team in Old Brooklyn

The logistics of MOOS workshops were complicated during the pandemic, but MOOS students persevered, creating seating and structures to help their neighbors interact safely outdoors during the challenging months of lock-down and remote school. Now, as things are returning to something like normal, the MOOS program is moving in exciting new directions.

The new MOOS Rapid Response Team (MOOS-RRT) is a smaller group of students working intensively on planning and design issues in Cleveland’s Old Brooklyn neighborhood. The MOOS team is designing and building outdoor structures, but also conducting urban research and experimenting with new technologies. The goal is to keep a core team of students working together for 18 months to enhance the Old Brooklyn neighborhood and Brighton Park, while exploring future careers in the design fields.

Brighton Park, a new community park on Pearl Road, across from the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo, was built on a former landfill site. MOOS students are envisioning ways to help their neighbors discover the park’s natural beauty and connect to a larger regional green space network.

Another MOOS team is operating out of the Stella Walsh Recreation Center on Cleveland’s east side. This team spent three weeks developing design ideas for Mural Park, 5742 Broadway Avenue in Cleveland. This project was featured in Rooms To Let, a two-day temporary art exhibit and community celebration in Cleveland’s Slavic Village neighborhood held in July, 2002.

MOOS Team building seating structures for Mural Park in Slavic Village. (photo: Helen Liggett)

MOOS Glenville, our largest ever MOOS team with over 20 participants, has big dreams of creating a temporary pavilion that can be used for fundraising events and as a shelter.

The Glenville team with MOOS Coordinator Ben Herring (at left) and MOOS Intern Luke Manning (supervising the chop saw). (photo: Helen Liggett)

In Shaker Heights, MOOS team members are contributing their ideas to a commercial corridor plan for the Lee Road.

Shaker MOOS team touring and mapping the Lee Road corridor.

MOOS team meeting with Kara Hamley O’Donnell, Principal Planner for the City of Shaker Heights.

For more information about MOOS, visit www.wearemoos.org or contact us at cudc@kent.edu

ULI Hines Competition - INTRAChange

Students from Kent State and Cleveland State partnered in a student multidisciplinary Urban competition in the January of 2022. The ULI Hines Competition happens every year, gathering students from all over the world to devise a development program for a real site, and engage in a challenging exercise in responsible land use in a North American city. 

The teams are composed of five students pursuing degrees in at least three different disciplines. And this year, they had two weeks to design and present a new proposal for a site in downtown Oakland, California. 

Rendered image - INTRAChange

“Oakland is the county seat of Alameda County, California, and its largest city, as well as the eighth-largest city in California. The position as a port city in the East Bay, and its relationship to the city of San Francisco across the San Francisco Bay, have guided its fortunes in significant ways. [...] The city was a major employment center due to the booming shipbuilding and automotive industries before and during World War II and continues to be a significant regional employment hub. [...]. Employment opportunities and migration patterns have created a diverse, culturally rich community in Oakland. [...] The important history of racial disparities, activism, and urban development in Oakland merits a thoughtful look at the vision and goals the city has outlined for its future.“ - Urban Land Institute

Based on these reflections and other previous research about Oakland and its current situation, our team proposed a development plan that has the goal to dismantle the barriers that we create in our urban environment. In addition to prioritizing pedestrians and public transportation, adaptive reuse, and enhancement and creation of green public spaces.

Rendered Scene - INTRAChange

IntraCHANGE provides a perspective into the connections communities can make when past and present barriers are dismantled. The project shows what opportunities we can face with the removal of the two existent freeways, much like their neighbors in San Francisco did with the Embarcadero Freeway. 

The project shows a vision of a community where the transformation of two of the highways (I-980 and I-880) could be developed into a significantly more pedestrian-friendly boulevard. Additionally, the project expands the transportation system for public transportation with the creation of a new BART station that will connect four different lines and act as the closest transfer station to downtown with that number of lines. 

Rendered Scene - INTRAChange

IntraCHANGE, as opposed to “Inter”change, places an emphasis on the change that can happen WITHIN the community instead of UPON the community. 

Through adaptive reuse techniques, the students proposed a renovation of existing important buildings on the site, buildings that were seen as oppressors, are now symbols of art, freedom, and expression. 

The old sheriff’s tower acts as a mixed-use recreation and gallery space. A courthouse becomes a contemporary library. And what once was a jail becomes a parking garage, which acts as a platform for the newest gemstone of the city, a philharmonic concert hall. 

The proposal includes space for farmland for local agriculture as well as the inclusion of an orchard that would provide a greater level of publicly accessible food. Unsheltered individuals will have access to housing, fresh fruit, social services, and wellness. 

With the dismantling of the freeways and the new opportunities that IntraCHANGE provides, we are able to foster a community where everyone is offered a chance to breathe.

Site Plan - INTRAChange

The intraChange development is projected to occur in three phases to provide land conversion, building adaptation, new development, ecological enhancements, and a rebirth for the study area. 

Phase I - Focus is given to transforming the former police jail, administration building, and courthouse into the library and community space, hotel rooms, luxury condominiums, a fine dining restaurant, and a new Oakland Orchestra performance and administration space. Affordable rentals and affordable condominiums will be added. High-speed rail coupled with a new BART station will provide the means for former automobile drivers to switch modes, or even relocate to the area.

Phase II -  Homeless individuals need access to social, health, financial, and food services. The former Sheriff’s administration building will become a wellness center focused on physical, mental, and emotional thriving. A new fruit-bearing orchard and greenhouse facility. An urban farm will operate with skill-building opportunities for those interested in working in the field. 

Phase III - The conversion of the highways has been completed and the interchange will create affordable housing, improved green space, retail, and office.

Programmatic Circulation Scenario - INTRAChange

The proposal for the ULI Hines Competition 2022 was created by the students: Justin Byler (Kent State - Master of Architecture), Jonathan Ciesla (Cleveland State - Master of Urban Studies), Zuzana Kubisova (Kent State - Master of Architecture), Saba Tajali (Kent State - Master of Landscape Design) and Evan Bluemel (Kent State - Master of Architecture). Advisors: Maira Faria and Ken Kalynchuk. Faculty support: Roby Simons, Cleveland State University and Terry Schwarz, Kent State University.

Queer Urbanism in the San Francisco Bay

CUDC Spring Lecture Series - Stathis G. Yeros

18 March 2022 from noon-1pm

Virtual lecture - Zoom link

The San Francisco Bay has been a hotbed for LGBTQ+ activism in the United States since the 1950s. Neighborhoods such as the Castro, Folsom, Mission, and the Tenderloin have become symbolic sites for the development of homosexual and transgender politics and queer aesthetics with global significance.

Stathis G. Yerros will present a historical account of queer urban spaces and highlight their distinct physical and cultural attributes. He will demonstrate how physical environments contributed to shaping modern queer and transgender identities and why specific groups felt the need to create their own spaces, which in turn reflected new identity formations. He will present queer urbanism as a historical process, introducing the Foucauldian notion of “histories of the present” and explore how we can overcome gaps in archival records that are the result of exclusionary practices in the built environment. Finally, the talk will trace the emergence of a discourse on queer space in architectural scholarship since the mid-1990s through key contributions to the field and examine their relevance for non-binary design practice.

Stathis Yeros is an urban historian, designer, and architectural theorist. He completed his PhD in Architecture - History, Theory, and Society at the University of California Berkeley, where he is currently a Teaching Fellow. He researches how space affects and is affected by struggles for social justice.

To be determined

CUDC Spring Lecture Series - François Sabourin

8 March 2022 from noon-1pm

In-person event at the CUDC, 1309 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland

While flexibility is a ubiquitous claim of contemporary architectural projects, it remains an ambiguous term and an under-examined topic.

This discussion will consider the managerial aims of flexibility in architecture. How we can provide an alternative to this framework by repurposing some of its tools: can we rethink flexibility outside of its usual role as a system that reins in uncertainty, and instead employ it as a way to resist control and inject indeterminacy into fixed spaces?

François Sabourin is the Schidlowski Emerging Faculty Fellow in the College of Architecture and Environmental Design at Kent State. He is a designer, educator, and half of the collaborative project yyyy-mm-dd with Kate Yeh Chiu. His research seeks to conceive architecture within the loose conditions of instability and indeterminacy, with work ranging from software tools to structural installations and architectural robotics.

This in-person event at the CUDC is free and open to the public. Lunch will be provided.

For more information, please call 216.357.3434 or email cudc@kent.edu.