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Placemaking in Action: EPIC Making in the Classroom

3/15/2018

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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.
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Lunchtime Conversation on Placemaking

3/13/2018

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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. 
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Kinetic Facades: Inventive Architecture, Design, Fabrication at ABX Greenbuild

11/3/2017

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Boston Exhibition and Convention Center
Wednesday, November 8, 2017, 11 am – 12:30 pm
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​Architecture is typically associated with a sense of permanence, solidity and the perception that it stands still. At the same time, architects and engineers have been intrigued for centuries by more flexibility. They have attempted to mobilize elements, to create responsive facades that react to site conditions, microclimate and the users’ desires. Site conditions such as wind, sun and shadow or movement and the presence of spectators might be processed and visualized in moving parts as a process of kinetic response. Kinetic mechanisms are used in the engineering world to satisfy increasingly complex requirements of sustainability and in the art world to engage with buildings and the city. An interdisciplinary panel representing the fields of architecture, engineering, public art and fabrication will investigate case studies as well as the present and future of kinetic applications in facade design. Explored will be kinetic façade design, such as Logan Airport’s Central Garage West Expansion and insights on select projects by Arrowstreet, EXTECH, Ned Kahn, Asif Khan and soma, among others. The focus will be on projects that involve kinetic mechanisms, explore potential already realized and evolving visions. This panel is sponsored by the Placemaking Network of the Boston Society of Architects/AIA.
Kinetic Facades: Inventive Architecture, Design, Fabrication

Presenters
Christina Lanzl, Urban Culture Institute​ & BSA Placemaking Network (moderator)
David Bois, Arrowstreet
Anne-Catrin Schultz, Wentworth Institute of Technology
Kevin Smith, EXTECH

​
Session Objectives
• Examine the physical, environmental, social or
   psychological impacts of kinetic facades in the context of
   placemaking.
• Learn about the design, technology and fabrication of
   kinetic façades.
• Explore the integration of moving elements into
  architecture, such as features animated by the elements
  (wind/air, water), software and/or mechanics.
• Discuss the potential of kinetic facades for the future of 
  design.
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Placemaking Manifesto Issued November 2017

11/1/2017

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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
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Urban Culture Institute Wins Award

9/28/2017

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The Urban Culture Institute is the proud recipient of a 2017
Businesswoman Award from CV Magazine for Best Woman-Run Arts & Culture Initiative 2017 in the Northeastern United States. 
The dedication and hard work of the entire team at the Urban Culture Institute contributed to this achievement. Many thanks to Dieta Sixt, Stephanie Sherman, Ricardo Barreto and Anne Marie Purkey Levine for all their hard work.

The Urban Culture Institute stands out because it is deeply rooted in community. Christina Lanzl's philosophy is to "listen and enable". The Institute's practice is creative and multidisciplinary, working with diverse clients, communities and institutions, artists, design teams and professionals in the creative and service sectors. Expertise and projects range from advisory services and public art facilitation to cultural planning and public engagement. Projects typically bring together a range of diverse partners and communities, offering opportunities to come together and find consensus, an undertaking that is often delicate and fraught with challenges. Lanzl observes that keeping the goal in mind is crucial to achieve a positive outcome, for the greater benefit of all.
Through its work, the Urban Culture Institute brings together and enables people of all backgrounds and abilities to fulfill the desire for an improved quality of life, the enhancement of cultural economic development and creative placemaking. The Institute facilitates the development of high quality arts and cultural assets, helping others by bringing expertise and resources to the table: a unique combination of curatorial expertise, savvy and efficient process with an eye towards positive outcomes for the built environment and economic impacts.
​
CV Magazine notes that its Awards are based on merit: ​
​"To ensure this, our in-house research team will go in-depth to find the industry firms and leaders who deserve acknowledgement for their outstanding performances within the sector. Winners of this award can rest assured that their win was one that was truly deserved."

Read the editorial on page 11 of the Award Supplement.
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HUBweek Panel on Creative Placemaking

9/15/2017

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HUBWEEK 2017 | Oct. 10-15, 2017
Join HUBweek to explore the future being built in Boston at the intersections of art, science, and technology. HUBweek will kick off with events taking place all across the city, and land on Boston’s City Hall Plaza, which transforms into a
first-of-its-kind festival site. Filled with 80 shipping containers, dozens of art installations, and 6 geodesic domes, The HUB is where thousands of artists, innovators, and creators will come together from across Boston, and the globe. Sign up for the entire festival or an individual pass, such as the panel:



Creative Placemaking
A View on Tactical Urbanism

​
Sunday, October 15, 3:30 pm – 4:30 pm
HUBweek – Red Dome, 1 City Hall Square, Boston, MA

This 2017 HUBweek panel is free and open to the public. Registration is required. Tickets are limited. Register here.
 
Moderator
Christina Lanzl, Director, Urban Culture Institute

Presenters
Julie Burros, Chief of Arts and Culture, City of Boston
Christine Dunn, Chair of Arts & Culture, Sasaki
Janet Echelman, Artist
Christopher Janney, Artist/Composer
David Nagahiro, Principal, CBT Architects – Master Planner of HUBweek's The HUB on City Hall Square (see rendering)
We are in the midst of a public art paradigm shift. Most cities struggle to afford investment in monumental public art and new high quality public realm designs. Often time, public spaces are missing the vital programs that aid in full activation potential.

Planners, architects, landscape architects, artists in collaboration with community members, cities, policy makers, private entities and grassroots organizations are working to transform these spaces through “creative placemaking”. The maker movement, tactical urbanism, readily-available tools of digital production, and other cultural drivers are steadily chiseling away at the prominence of iconic public art.
​
Discuss with us how HUBweek transforms Boston’s City Hall Plaza into a first-of-its-kind centralized festival site “The HUB”; how a curated art program activates the Rose Kennedy Greenway; and how a temporary flex space like “Lawn on D” becomes the new urban and hip place to be. Join our esteemed panelists from the HUBweek Change-Maker series, which showcases the most creative and inventive minds in art, science, and technology making an impact in Boston and around the world.

​
Hosted by HUBweek in partnership with the City of Boston and the Boston Society of Architects/AIA. 

​
Register here.
​
 ​
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Ridership Engagement Roundtable at Metrorail Congress Americas

6/28/2017

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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.
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Time, Space and Material

2/15/2016

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Book Review of Time, Space, and Material: The Mechanics of Layering in Architecture by Anne-Catrin Schultz
Dr. Christina Lanzl
​
In her new monograph, Time, Space, and Material: The Mechanics of Layering in Architecture (Edition Axel Menges, 2015) Anne-Catrin Schultz deepens her inquiry into spatial layering of the built environment. Schultz delved into the subject with the publication, Carlo Scarpa–Layers (Edition Axel Menges, 2007), an examination of the 20th century Italian architect, whose vocabulary and inventiveness is closely related to traditional craft and the knowledge of materiality. Scarpa’s design thoughtfully integrates historic structures with contemporary materials. Time, Space, and Material covers the concept of layering in architecture, its mechanics, a wide array of uses and narrative in architecture and urban design in an overview survey. The book offers an insightful, scholarly view of layering, an important topic because “cities and buildings are continuously exposed to additions and subtractions according to changes in social structures, use patters, technology, transportation, and economy (p. 7). “
​The author presents a useful, interdisciplinary discourse on architecture understood as a continuous process based on the concept of layers. Clear definitions of layering in several scientific fields examining the physical environment are introduced and serve as structure of the entire book with chapters on:
• Temporal layering: sedimentation, additive or subtractive process over time;
• Spatial Layering: simultaneous perception of spaces; and
• Material Layering: additive configuration of planes.
More recently, Schultz has expanded her scientific scope to include cultural placemaking, thus adding the dynamics of the immaterial, i.e. human memory and narrative, which inform the meaning of place.
 
Laid out are layering processes in geology, archaeology, engineering, graphic design and the visual arts. The key to Schultz’s approach is an examination of sections beyond a structural or stylistic understanding, ultimately aimed at dissecting, analyzing, and folding a period, a city, or a structure into a system of data. In the literature the ‘monolith’ dominates up to the 18th century. A layered approach enters the conversation beginning in the 19th century.
 
A thoughtful connection is made to visual artists intense experimentation with layering starting with modernism. Prominent examples showcased are early 20th century Cubism, developed by George Braque (and Pablo Picasso, though not mentioned) with collages of single objects that are defined through simultaneous, coexisting planar layers. In the 1960s and 1970s, Robert Smithson’s minimalist geometric forms introduce repetitive layering and serialization in this minimalist vocabulary, further developed by Gordon Matta Clark in his ‘building cuts’. The link to contemporary art is established by the large-scale installations of Japanese artist Nabuko Nakanishi, comprised of hundreds of successive images in his Layer Drawings. Also mentioned might be the infinite mirrored assemblages of Josiah McElheny.
 
The phenomenon of layering in architecture is painted in broad strokes beginning with a review of Vitruvius, followed by insights on the temporal layering of important historic buildings through the centuries with their evolving architectural styles. A subchapter is dedicated to the important discovery of polychromy and its connection to textile design in Greek temples beginning around 1800.
 
Outstanding recent, featured examples of layering include the Santa Catarina Market in Barcelona and the transformation of this former convent to a covered market by architects Enric Miralles and Benedetta Tagliabue who collaborated with artist Toni Comella on a dramatic colorful roof mosaic.
 
A comparison of fifteen case studies in contemporary architecture that measure both the effective depth and the chronology of layering in building envelopes reveals surprising insights. The exteriors of notable designs by Foster + Partners, Morphosis, Sauerbruch Hutton and Peter Zumthor range in depth from over four up to eight feet. Others, such as Duiker, SANAA and SOM, designed walls of less than one foot in depth. Interestingly, it is revealed, intense layering clearly is a preferred architectural practice rather than an evolving trend.
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Fort Point Tech & Art Tour

9/18/2015

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Thursday, Oct 1, 12-1pm
Meet at the
Fort Point Arts Community Gallery,
300 Summer Street, Mezzanine, Boston, MA 02210

Have you ever wondered about how the arts and technology intersect? Join us for a behind-the-scenes tour of the firms LogMeIn, Blade and WeWork in historic Fort Point locations to find out. These companies are high tech and incubator firms that have partnered with the Fort Point Arts Community (FPAC) on a corporate art program that brings original art into offices as a placemaking effort and to contribute to a workplace environment that stimulates creativity.
LogMeIn is a well-known provider of Software as a service and cloud-based remote connectivity services for collaboration. Blade is looking to build the next great travel company, in Boston, while WeWork is a platform for creators that provides office space, community, and services for start-ups.
FPAC enriches the Fort Point area with a resident live/work artist population that contributes to the district's and the City of Boston's cultural life. Co-sponsored by the Fort Point Arts Community and the Friends of Fort Point Channel. This is a program of ArtWeek Boston.

The tour will be led by Christina Lanzl of the Urban Culture Institute who also serves as Project Director for the Fort Point Arts Community.

The event is free. A limited number of tickets is available. Register on EventBrite.
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    Urban Culture Institute

    The Urban Culture Institute works to promote excellence in culture, planning and strategies for the public realm.

    Das Urban Culture Institute entwickelt und koordiniert Exzellenzprojekte mit
    Schwerpunkt Kultur, Planung und Strategien im öffentlichen Raum.

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