Save the Harbor / Save the Bay bestowed its annual Boston Harbor Heroes awards at a gala evening held in the grand ballroom of the Seaport Hotel on March 29, 2018. Among others, the South Bay Harbor Trail Coalition was honored for its "vision, tenacity and commitment to connecting Boston's neighborhoods to Boston Harbor and each other." Under the leadership of coalition founder, Michael Tyrrell, the team of David Giangrande, Christina Lanzl, Ann McQueen, Tom Parks, the late Bill Pressley and his wife Marion, Candelaria Silva and Bob Wells envisioned the South Bay Harbor Trail (SBHT) ​as part of a larger trail network that connects the Southwest Corridor Park from Jamaica Plain to the Boston Harborwalk downtown and in South Boston. Buoys salvaged and reconditioned by the US Coast Guard serve as markers and a playful reminder of Boston's rich maritime history. Main goal is to reconnect communities divided by major traffic arteries via an easily accessible, multi-use bicycle and pedestrian path. The first of a series of SBHT Buoys was dedicated along the Harborwalk in Fort Point Channel in November 2008. Funding for public art planning along the trail was provided by the Edward Ingersoll Browne Trust Fund of the City of Boston. Other funders include the ISTEA program, MassDOT, the New England Foundation for the Arts as well as private donors. Overall construction of the SBHT is underway as of spring 2018.

About the South Bay Harbor Trail
The South Bay Harbor Trail Coalition, in partnership with Save the Harbor / Save the Bay, municipal and state agencies, partnered to plan and build the 3.5 mile-long, multi-use South Bay Harbor Trail which, when completed, will connect Roxbury, the South End, Chinatown, Fort Point Channel and South Boston to each other and to Boston Harbor.

The South Bay Harbor Trail is one of the most important and exciting initiatives in the city connecting our inland neighborhoods to Boston Harbor. The Trail will link people to the recreational resources of a revitalized Boston Harbor and to the economic opportunities of a prospering waterfront. Residents from Boston’s diverse neighborhoods will have the opportunity to share in a cultural exchange.
 
The South Bay Harbor Trail will provide an important link in the larger transportation network by connecting with existing streets and trails such as the Southwest Corridor and Melnea Cass Boulevard. It will also serve as a critical link in a citywide greenway, connecting trails from Fenway, the Southwest Corridor, Charles River Park, Broadway Bridge, Fort Point Channel and the Rose Kennedy Greenway.
 
The South Bay Harbor Trail Coalition includes community groups, environmental organizations, the City of Boston, property owners, developers, and residents. It is governed by a steering committee which is comprised of coalition members representing every neighborhood through which the Trail will pass. The Coalition receives organizational, fundraising, and technical assistance from Save the Harbor/Save the Bay. 
 
The Coalition worked together with Pressley Associates, a Cambridge-based landscape architecture firm, and Design Consultants Inc., a Somerville-based engineering firm, to develop the engineering and design master plans that will link various completed segments of the trail into a contiguous, single trail system/experience.

Wentworth Institute of Technology | Spring 2018 Faculty Showcase
Watson Hall | March 15, 2018

Wentworth Institute of Technology organizes the annual Faculty Showcase to celebrate and recognize the accomplishments of  faculty. Fifty faculty showcased 34 examples of excellence and creativity with teaching, scholarship, EPIC, grants, sabbaticals, and interdisciplinary collaborations. Organized by the Provost Office and Learning Innovation & Technology, participants hosted information tables to illuminate services and resources.

Dr. Christina Lanzl, Adjunct Professor of the Department of Architecture and Director of the Urban Culture Institute presented Placemaking in Action: EPIC Making in the Classroom. The exhibit offers documentation, outcomes and insights in the power of interdisciplinary, collaborative learning. Surveyed are three seminars from the past two years that focus on placemaking and art-in-architecture, an investigation of urban placemaking within a hands-on learning platform that combines theory with the making of successful places on and off campus. Focus and outcomes are cultural mapping, idea competition and exhibition projects developed by Wentworth senior and graduate students (two funded by EPIC Mini Grants).

Architecture student Shuxin Huang, Dr. Lanzl's spring 2018 co-op student, assisted. Thank you to Don Tracia, Tes Zakrzewski and the entire Provost Office and Learning Innovation & Technology team for incredible support.

Christina Lanzl and Anne-Catrin Schultz presented a faculty lecture on placemaking, which introduced the Placemaking Manifesto, which they co-authored and issued together with Robert Tullis and members of the Boston Society of Architects/AIA Placemaking Network in fall 2017. Lanzl and Schultz highlighted placemaking principles outlined in the Manifesto by discussing a series of case studies from their professional practice.​

The Lunchtime Conversation faculty lecture series is coordinated by Associate Professor Antonio Furgiuele, Department of Architecture within the College of Architecture, Design & Construction Management at Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston, Massachusetts. 

Placemaking is about sense of place. Everybody – people of all backgrounds, ages and abilities – can participate in creating successful public places. Everyone can serve the agenda of excellence in design, healthy communities and thriving neighborhoods. Our built environment is a common good that comes alive through an understanding of how humans instinctively relate to space, design leadership that leverages it, and activity programming that capitalizes on it. The BSA Placemaking Network celebrates its 10-year anniversary with the release of the Placemaking Manifesto. To solicit community input the Manifesto was launched at a public writers' workshop with the co-authors, Christina Lanzl, Robert Tullis and Anne-Catrin Schultz at BSA Space in Boston on October 23, 2017. 

The Placemaking Network explores what it takes to further the creation of high-quality, distinctive public places. Participants of the public Placemaking Manifesto review at BSA Space on October 23, 2017 were Placemaking Manifesto co-authors Christina Lanzl, Robert Tullis and Anne-Catrin Schultz as well as Polly Carpenter/BSA Foundation, A. Vernon Woodworth/AIAMA Board of Directors, Anthony Clayton, Deborah Fennick, Kathryn Firth, Júlia Hilário, Marek Jacisin, Victoria LaGuette, Doris Martinez, Neil McCann, Stephanie Osser, Sergio Arturo Perez, Coco Raynes, Eric Reinhard, Renata von Tscharner, Sara Wermiel, Douglas Wohn and Claudia Zarazua
 
​The Placemaking Manifesto
Placemaking transforms space into place. Our public realm is a common good that comes alive through an understanding of how humans instinctively relate to place, design leadership that leverages it, and active programs for and by communities as a civic benefit for everyone. Placemaking activates our built and lived environment. We acknowledge and actively work towards improving hard as well as soft quality of life factors. 
Placemaking = Quality of Life
 
Placemaking engages the five senses. It is about developing and continuing identity, distinctive, specific and memorable character in our public spaces. It’s about fostering a sense of place: our body-mind’s positive kinesthetic, emotional and cognitive experience in, and in relationship to our public surroundings.  It’s achieved by putting the importance of our shared, exterior spaces between buildings above that of our private, interior spaces within them. We recognize that storytelling gives meaning to our lives and is therefore an important narrative device of human civilization.
Placemaking = A Sense of Place
 
Placemaking is about the benefits that accrue to us, our neighbors, our community, and even our culture when we engage with each other in a high-quality and healthy public realm.  Including public participation in its design and use helps create community identification. Active programming, public events, and public art are powerful tools that help foster community pride.
Placemaking = Caring About the Community
 
Placemaking integrates the individualized focus of disciplines such as architecture, urban design, landscape architecture, public art, and community cultural programming; and supersedes their boundaries by focusing on collaboration, communication and place instead of isolated projects, bringing together individuals of all backgrounds, interests and talents.
Placemaking = Collaboration and Communication
 
Placemaking embraces inclusivity by offering a universal platform for discourse. Everyone is a maker of place. Everyone can serve the agenda of excellence in design, supportive environments, healthy communities, and thriving neighborhoods. In a high-quality public realm, we shed our individual bubbles and participate in a life of greater civic engagement.
Placemaking = Active Participation
 
Placemaking combines an awareness of tradition with an embracing of new and emerging technologies. It respects time-tested rules of form and space, but also employs the research, development and innovation along with contemporary digital and social media tools to further community building.
Placemaking = Tradition and Innovation


Download the Placemaking Manifesto
Download the Oct. 23, 2017 Writers' Workshop Notes
Download the Authors' Biographies
See the Jan. 2, 2018 article on ArchDaily
Download the Letter to the Editor of ArchDaily

The World Metrorail Congress Americas took place at The Inn at Penn Station in Philadelphia on June 28 and 28, 2017. The conference surveyed strategic discussions related to light rail planning and management in metropolitan areas. Sandra Bloodworth, Director, MTA Arts & Design, Metropolitan Transit Authority in New York City chaired the roundtable, Ridership Engagement: The essential role of art and design in engaging your ridership and communities. Presenters included Katherine Dirga, Program Manager Arts Administration of MARTA in Atlanta GA, Elizabeth Mintz, SEPTA Director of Communications, Philadelphia artist Ray King as well as Caitlin Martin, Media Communications Manager of the Association for Public Art in the conference city. Christina Lanzl of the Urban Culture Institute’s contribution to the conversation focused on questions related to placemaking in transportation planning:

• How can public transportation agencies work towards better services and policies in the U.S. that support placemaking and a high quality public transportation environment?
• What is the future of digital applications in public transportation art and placemaking projects? Can an overload of visual and sound/noise stimulation deteriorate the ridership experience?

Lanzl laid out the benefits of an integral, holistic perspective and multi-disciplinary approach that leverages placemaking, the arts and culture to enhance abutting communities through collaboration. The goal is to improve quality of life and to create opportunities for neighborhoods, businesses, organizations and individuals/residents.

Common Boston is accepting volunteers through May 15, 2017.

The Urban Culture Institute is Community Partner and proud co-sponsor of Common Boston, the annual architecture and design festival of the Boston Society of Architects/AIA, a program of the BSA Foundation. Common Boston will provide free, open access to buildings throughout Boston's diverse neighborhoods during the weekend of June 3 and 4. By doing so, the public will be inspired to discover why design matters, and learn the stories of Greater Boston's many dynamic communities. Since 2006, Common Boston has hosted over 250+ events for thousands of attendees in 35 greater Boston neighborhoods. 
​
Please help make Common Boston possible, and volunteer your time during the festival weekend! Meet interesting people,
​go behind the scenes of some of the city’s greatest places, and become more involved in your community.
The 2017 Common Boston Festival already includes over 50 sites! View the current Common Boston sites at commonboston.org.

Common Boston is accepting volunteers through May 15, 2017.
For sponsorship opportunities please contact msalvatierra@architects.org.

Among the 2017 site partners are Arnold Arboretum | Ayer Mansion | BNN Charles J. Beard ll Media Center | Bolling Building | Boston Architectural College | Boston Harbor Distillery | Boston Nature and Wildlife Center | Boston Public Market | BPL: Central Library in Copley Square | BPL: East Boston | BPL: Honan Allston | BPL: Hyde Park | BPL: Jamaica Plain | BPL: Mattapan Branch | Cambridge City Hall | Carpenter Center for Visual Arts | Church of the Covenant | Community Boat Building | The Ethelbert Cooper Gallery of African & African American Art | Cooper Frost Austin House | DHS: Capt. Lemuel Clap House | DHS: James Blake House | DHS: William Clapp House | District Hall | Eliot Burying Ground | Eliot School of Fine Arts | Emerald Necklace Conservancy | Ether Dome and the Bulfinch Building | Eustis Street Firehouse | Fenway Victory Gardens | First Baptist Church of Boston | First Church of Roxbury Meetinghouse | Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site | Grain Wood Shop | Hibernian Hall |  Kendall Square Roof Garden | L Street Power Station | Loring-Greenough House | Lunder Arts Center, Lesley University | Metropolitan Waterworks Museum | MIT List Art Center | The Museum of African American History | Northeastern University’s Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering Complex | Old North Church | Otis House, Historic New England | Shrine of Our Lady of Good Voyage | Paul S. Russell, MD Russell Museum of Medical History & Innovation | Saint Peter's Episcopal Church | South Street Farm (Groundwork Somerville) | Vilna Shul, Boston's Center for Jewish Culture | Trinity Church | Union Press | YMCA of Greater Boston | Y2Y | ZUMIX