The Bruner Foundation team wrapped up our site visits to the 2013 Rudy Bruner Award for Urban Excellence finalists with a trip to The Steel Yard in Providence, Rhode Island. Submitted by Klopfer Martin Design Group, the Steel Yard is an ongoing redevelopment of an historic steel fabrication facility into a campus for arts education, workforce training, and small-scale manufacturing.

The landscaped courtyard—“The Yard”—provides space for fabrication and events.  Photograph: The Steel Yard

Along with Congo Street Initiative and Inspiration Kitchens, the Steel Yard incorporates the rehabilitation of existing buildings and the use of recycled materials; like Via Verde and Louisville Waterfront Park, it is a brownfield site. The unseasonably cold weather we’ve experienced on most of our trips persisted during our visit to Providence. While the outdoor courtyard was quiet, indoors, people were occupied with creative metalworking and craft making while we met with staff, board members, program partners, community representatives, and funders from the Steel Yard.

Welding classes and workshops are offered. Photograph: Bruner Foundation

Located in Providence’s Industrial Valley along the Woonasquatucket River just west of downtown, the Steel Yard occupies the site of Providence Iron and Steel Company, a 100-year old business that closed in 2001.The property was purchased by two graduates of Brown University and Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), who lived in the adjoining Monohasset Mill artists’ live/work complex. The 3.5-acre site, with its gantry cranes and rough brick and metal buildings, became an ad hoc community and gathering space for people interested in creative, industrial arts. Read more…

Congo Street Initiative, Dallas, TX. Courtesy of Congo Street Initiative

As an architect and advocate for better urban environments, I am excited about my new role as director of the Rudy Bruner Award for Urban Excellence at the Bruner Foundation (Cambridge, MA). The biennial award, founded in 1987 by architect and adaptive reuse pioneer Simeon Bruner, recognizes places distinguished by innovative design and their social, economic, and environmental contributions to the urban environment. To date, the RBA has recognized 67 projects and awarded $1.2 million to support urban initiatives.

In the world of U.S. design competitions, the RBA is unique. We ask our applicants to submit detailed written analyses of their projects—from multiple perspectives—along with descriptive images. And entries must have been in operation long enough to demonstrate their impact on their communities. Our  selection process includes intensive site visits to our finalists’ projects to help us fully understand how their places work.

Inspiration Kitchens, Chicago, IL. Courtesy of Inspiration Kitchens

The RBA selection committee meets twice: first to select five finalists and again to select the Gold Medal winner. Assembled anew for each award cycle, the committee comprises six urban experts including a mayor, design and development professionals, and a past award winner. This year’s group includes mayor Mick Cornett of Oklahoma City, planner Ann Coulter from Chattanooga, landscape architect Walter Hood from Hood Studio in Oakland, architect Cathy Simon from Perkins+Will in San Francisco, Metropolis Editor-in-Chief Susan S. Szenasy, and Jane Werner, executive director of the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh, the 2007 Gold Medal winner. The committee reviewed 90 applications from 31 states and the District of Columbia to choose the 2013 five finalists. Collectively, the projects they chose represent a diversity of creative, collaborative approaches and scales in tackling significant urban challenges:

• Congo Street Initiative - Dallas, TX - submitted by buildingcommunityWORKSHOP
  The sustainable rehabilitation of five houses and street infrastructure along with construction of a new home that provided transitional housing, in collaboration with resident families
• Inspiration Kitchens – Chicago, IL – submitted by Inspiration Corporation
  An 80-seat restaurant providing free meals to working poor families and market-rate meals to the public as well as workforce training and placement
• Louisville Waterfront Park – Louisville, KY – submitted by Louisville Waterfront Development Corporation
  An 82-acre urban park developed over more than two decades that reconnects the city with the Ohio River
• The Steel Yard - Providence, RI – submitted by Klopfer Martin Design Group
  The redevelopment of an abandoned, historic steel fabrication facility into a campus for arts education, workforce training, and small-scale manufacturing
• Via Verde - Bronx, NY – submitted by Jonathan Rose Companies and Phipps Houses
  A 222-unit, LEED Gold certified, affordable housing development in the Bronx designed as a model for healthy and sustainable urban living

Louisville Waterfront Park, Louisville, KY. Courtesy of Louisville Waterfront Park

Read more…

Hurricane Sandy has brought home the responsibility that we share to make our region more resilient in the face of severe weather and more responsive to the threats posed by climate change.

What is certain is that we will need new policies, and new investments, to reduce our susceptibility to environmental disasters. Sandy led to the death of more than 70 people in the region and caused more than $50 billion in damage and economic losses. The storm also disrupted the daily lives and commutes of nearly all of the region’s 23 million residents. Whether or not these events are the result of human-caused global warming, it is clear that we need to do much more to lessen their toll.

Hurricane Sandy and its aftermath have awakened us to an uncomfortable reality: The country’s most populated area and its largest economic engine sits on a vulnerable coastline. Yet there are many measures that would help ease the impact of storm surges.

Read more…

The concept of “making it” in the US is changing. In a post-crash, OWS world, the previous generation’s ideas of success are being reconsidered and reinvented. It used to be that if you wanted to “make it” as an artist, the most obvious thing to do was to get the heck out of Dodge (or wherever), cram yourself— along with everyone else— into a tiny apartment in New York, and cross your fingers you’d be transformed into a beautiful, shiny Big City butterfly. To be sure, this kind of metamorphosis is tried and true, and will never lose its adherents. However, a growing number of artists and activists today are taking to heart the “act local” philosophy and deciding to stay put in or move to smaller cities and towns across the country. They are taking advantage of cheaper costs of living and relying on social media and other kinds of online connectivity to get the word out about their projects to a wider audience, or simply being content with speaking to a slightly smaller one. Instead of heading somewhere else to “make it,” these individuals and groups are producing and activating right where they are—they are “making it”— whatever their it is— right at home.

Creative living has never been a centralized phenomenon. For almost a decade, a group of friends living in an intentional arts community in Providence, RI, aware of interesting projects and people in similar scale cities around the country, had been kicking around an idea for a publication. Our main idea was to explore and illuminate the arts ecologies of underexposed cities— creating a snapshot of edgy, of the moment artists, collectives and punk houses, visionary developments and arts-based community organizations. We wanted to dive both into common aesthetics, goals and methods being used as well as the unique socio-historical context and flavor of each place to discover what makes each location (and its associated output) unique.
Read more…

A few days ago in Providence, RI, a peculiar take-off on the cult hit TV show Iron Chef was taking place in the middle of an old industrial complex. The place was full up for the day with a motley assortment of tattooed gear heads, various politicos (including a candidate for governor), environmentalist art-lovers with creative facial hair, and hip young moms in Wayfarers. Instead of asparagus, chilis and beets, the “secret ingredients” for the afternoon’s competition consisted of rusty nails and old farm equipment, and in place of fancy Wusthof knives, the contestants expertly wielded torches, grinders, and chop saws. Read more…