The AIA Cleveland Activism Award recognizes local emerging leaders who are influencing a sustainable future of the profession by making architecture/interior design accessible and relevant to the public while both educating and learning from the broader community.David Jurca has dedicated his professional career to enhancing the built environment through meaningful engagement with the local community. As Associate Director of Kent State University’s Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative, David guides the office’s professional practice, research projects, and graduate teaching with a commitment to equity.David is a relentless advocate for his students. He aims beyond expectations to create recognition opportunities for aspiring leaders in Kent State’s Cleveland programs. Students led by David received Honorable Mentions in the International ULI Hines Competition, Second Place in Miami’s DawnTown Mobility Competition, the Excellence in Student Planning Award from the American Planning Association, as well as Merit and Honor Awards from AIA Cleveland.In 2013, David launched COLDSCAPES.org to spur creative design in winter cities. He also co-founded Design Diversity, an initiative to promote people of color in architecture and design professions in Northeast Ohio. Design Diversity has organized local networking events, national speaking engagements, and the soon-to-be released Design Diversity Index, an online tool to track diversity data for design schools and professional affiliations in Ohio. In support of Design Diversity’s mission, David leads Making Our Own Space (MOOS), a youth design program that trains students to envision and build their own public space improvements. MOOS was awarded the 2017 Place Planning Award from the Environmental Design Research Association.Beyond his professional commitments, David contributes to the Greater Cleveland community through dedicated volunteer service. He served on the Franklin-West Clinton Landmarks Advisory Committee, Friends of the Romanian Culture Garden Committee, Bike Cleveland advocacy campaigns, and the Gateway District Public Realm Advisory Committee. David has been a member of the City of Cleveland’s Near West Design Review Committee for over four years, currently serving as Committee Chair. This year, David was also appointed to the Board of Directors for Canalway Partners.Congratulations David!
Cleveland Public Library: Community Vision Plan Wrap-Up!
We’re happy to announce the final publication of our CPL150 Community Vision Plan!
For the past three years, CUDC staff have been working with the Cleveland Public Library (CPL) on their Community Vision Plan. One of CPL’s strategic priorities is to prepare the library system for its 150th anniversary, in 2019. CPL150, the name of the engagement process, involved 13 of the system’s 27 branch communities to ask what they need from their local library branch.CPL faces a challenge familiar to many institutions serving communities in Cleveland: How can we best meet the needs of our patrons in a changing context of new technologies, aging facilities, and declining population? How can each branch custom-tailor its library experience to meet the specific needs of its community?For each group of branches, the team engaged community members in a series of public meetings, surveys, open houses, advisory committee meetings, and targeted focus groups, for a three-year total of over 1,500 points of engagement. The team then produced a report for each group, summarizing the engagement feedback and the final recommendations. These recommendations included physical improvements, like interior reconfiguring or exterior seating areas, but also ideas for improving services, as well as larger neighborhood connections which can better integrate each branch into its surroundings. We summarized this overall branch experience into four distinct, nested levels: library building; library grounds; neighborhood; and library services.
The final reports, from all three years, are on our CPL150.org site, available for perusal or download:Group 1 (2015): Fleet, South, Sterling, and Woodland branches (Purchase report on Amazon)Group 2 (2016): Brooklyn, Mt Pleasant, and South Brooklyn branches (Purchase report on Amazon)Group 3 (2017): Eastman, Hough, Union, Walz, and West Park branches (Purchase report on Amazon)
In addition, we’ve assembled a Summary Report which outlines some of the major themes we heard across most or all branches studied (Purchase Summary Report on Amazon). The design team found that far from becoming obsolete, our neighborhood libraries are more important than ever for the many ways they continue to serve their local population. Our library branches are information centers, community work spaces, workforce assistance centers, after-school gathering spots, and more.Please visit cpl150.org for more information on our three-year collaboration with the Cleveland Public Library!
Kristen Zeiber Lecture | October 6
Lecture: “Scaling Up: Design with People and Places”Kristen ZeiberFriday, October 6th12(noon) — 1pmCUDC, 1309 Euclid Avenue, Suite 200Free and open to the public
RSVPs encouraged on Facebook event page: https://www.facebook.com/events/573039656153285/
In her talk, Kristen will speak about navigating scales, from architecture to urban design to regional design, in her exploration of the connection between people and the places they live. Work presented ranges from small-scale design/build to watersheds, from the post-Katrina Gulf Coast to post-coal Pennsylvania. She argues that across all scales, designers should work for people, and with respect for their relationship to the landscapes where they have chosen to live—even if those places have environmental or economic risk.
Kristen Zeiber is a Project Manager, Urban Designer, and Adjunct Faculty at Kent State University’s Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative (CUDC). She has been with the CUDC since 2013, and contributes to the organization’s neighborhood planning, research, mapping, and student advising. She also teaches the annual Midwest Urban Design Charrette for Masters students in Architecture and Urban Design in collaboration with several other universities. She is on the Board of Directors and co-chairs the Scholarship Committee for the Cleveland chapter of ACE Mentors, a nonprofit extracurricular program which introduces high school students to the Architecture, Construction, and Engineering professions.
Kristen’s previous Community Design Center and Design/Build experience includes over four years post-Katrina at Mississippi State University’s Gulf Coast Community Design Studio in Biloxi, MS, with founder David Perkes; and short internships with the Center for Urban Pedagogy in New York and the Yestermorrow Design/Build School in Vermont. She holds a MS in Architecture Studies (SMArchS-Urbanism) from MIT, and a Bachelor’s of Architecture from Penn State University.
Greggor Mattson Lecture | September 29
Lecture: “Who Needs Gay Bars? Why Planners Should Care And What You Can Do”Greggor MattsonFriday, September 22nd12(noon) — 1pmCUDC, 1309 Euclid Avenue, Suite 200Free and open to the publicRSVPs encouraged on Facebook event page: www.facebook.com/events/118361948853908/The high profile closures of gay bars over the last five years have brought to public attention what the gay press has worried about for years: the geographical focus of LGBTQ life is changing. Popular and scholarly attention have blamed our "untethered," "ambient," "post-Gay" landscape on two factors: geolocating smartphone apps such as Grindr or Tindr, and the growing social acceptance of LGBTQ people. This talk challenges these assumptions for all but the most metropolitan gay cities. Almost everything we know about LGBTQ placemaking in the U.S. comes from four major cities with iconic gay neighborhoods, global financial institutions, international tourist draws—and only 15% of the U.S. population.
This talk examines the gay bar as an institution in its own right, focusing on the role it plays in secondary cities such as Cleveland, Fresno, or Oklahoma City, and outpost bars that are the only gay bar within an hour's drive of another. In these small cities, often in red counties of red states, smartphone apps are of little use and social acceptance is more elusive. Data include 50 interviews with gay bar owners and managers, site visits to over 80 gay bars in 27 states, a new national dataset of gay bar listings from 1977-2017, and a longitudinal study of San Francisco's three gay bar districts. Mattson shows that bars in general have been squeezed in recent years, and that gentrification, changing leisure patterns, and corporate chain competition are more relevant to the challenges facing gay bars than narratives of technological or social progress. Mattson reports on several ways that urban planners, municipalities, Chambers of Commerce, and Convention Bureaus could support gay bars, and argue why they should start doing so. And he argues that we need to abandon planning stereotypes of LGBTQ people as the shock troops of gentrification or canaries of the knowledge economy, and start treating regional gay bars as social institutions in their own right.Greggor Mattson is Associate Professor of Sociology at Oberlin College and the Director of the Program in Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies. With degrees in sociology from Oxford University and the University of California, Berkeley, his research lies at the intersections of the sociology of sexuality, culture, and urban studies. The author of The Cultural Politics of European Prostitution Reform: Governing Loose Women and Before It Was Hingetown, listed among the best writing from and about Northeast Ohio from 2016 by the Cleveland Scene. He is currently working on a book about changes in American gay bars over the last twenty years. He blogs at greggormattson.com and @GreggorMattson on Twitter.
Publication Release: NEW LIFE FOR OLD HOMES
We’re happy to announce the publication of New Life for Old Homes: Design Guide for the Low-Cost Rehab of Vacant & Affordable Housing!New Life for Old Homes is a user-friendly guidebook of low-cost, high-impact ideas for the rehabilitation of vacant and abandoned houses that would otherwise be demolished. The project was conceived in tandem with our Design/REbuild initiative, a vacant brick home in the St Clair-Superior neighborhood that was rehabbed by students from KSU’s College of Architecture and Environmental Design (and lots of community volunteers). While Design/REbuild could only address one house at a time, New Life for Old Homes captures the larger design ideas around refreshing Cleveland’s vacant houses to make them vibrant again.Cleveland’s historic neighborhood fabric is threatened by the 1,000+ demolitions that take place every year. These houses form the basis of our traditional city neighborhoods and, while they may not have dramatic architectural or historic significance, they contribute to the familiar scale and character of Ohio’s cities. The goal of New Life for Old Homes is to repair, rather than demolish, and to rediscover the unique appeal that older houses have to offer. We hope the guide inspires Clevelanders to look again at our sturdy homes that are too good to throw away.
New Life for Old Homes was generously sponsored by the Ohio History Fund, which supports innovative historic preservation projects across the state. We’re deeply grateful for the support of the OHF in creating this publication.Please feel free to browse the publication below, and if you’d like to purchase a print-on-demand copy for yourself, you can find our Amazon link here. We also have copies of the printed book available for free at CUDC. If you'd like to pick up a copy, just stop by the CUDC office between 9am - 5pm and ask for the New Life for Old Homes book.
Ben Herring Lecture | September 22
Lecture: "Source Material: Identities in Architecture"Ben HerringFriday, September 22nd12(noon) - 1pmCUDC, 1309 Euclid Avenue, Suite 200Free and open to the publicRSVP on the Facebook event page.Join us at the CUDC this Friday, September 22nd for a talk by Ben Herring, project manager at redhouse studio architecture. His interactive presentation will explore meaning through materiality in architecture. The applications of architectures are no longer simple, nor simply for providing shelter. The uses of architecture include identities as concrete as defining the face of business (Facebook Headquarters, Gehry Partners), as personal as defining home (Incremental Housing Complex Quinta Monroy, Elemental), and as controversial as redefining our memory (Vietnam Memorial, Maya Lin). These projects are young. However, architecture is prehistoric. In turn, many well established views on the state of the art of architecture have been declared and deconstructed throughout architectural history.The aim of this presentation will be to review an abbreviated collection of these influences on architectural history. This survey of trademark architectural definitions, agendas, and identities will then be used to provide a groundwork for discourse on how we approach architecture today.
Clifford Benjamin Herring is a designer specializing in new materials and architectures for public good. 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 PBS and NPR member stations in Southern Indiana and is currently seated as the executive board treasurer for the Refresh Collective (the organization responsible for the Fresh Camp). Ben is a project manager at redhouse studio architecture where his work includes new material developments and various non-for-profit and commercial architectures. As a workshop director for the CUDC's Making Our Own Space (MOOS) program, Ben works with youth throughout Cleveland, Ohio to influence their neighborhoods through design and construction.Let us know you're coming. RSVP on the Facebook event page and please spread the word!View the CUDC's full 2017 Fall Lecture Series.
Kent's CAED receives four applicants from ACE Mentor Program
For almost three years, the CUDC’s Kristen Zeiber has participated in the local Cleveland chapter of the ACE Mentor Program, representing Kent State University as a Board Member and member of the Scholarship Committee.ACE stands for Architecture, Construction, and Engineering. High school students at eight Cleveland-area schools (7 in the Cleveland Metropolitan School District plus one in Warrensville Heights School District) participate in this after-school program every two weeks with industry professionals, learning about the design and construction of the built environment around them. These industry mentors introduce students to the many career paths in the ACE industries and take them through a design project of their own to demystify the process.ACE chapters exist all over the country, but Cleveland’s chapter is one of the largest and is notable for its close relationship with CMSD and for providing significant scholarships for ACE students to go on to higher education. High school seniors in ACE apply for scholarships through a series of essays and letters of recommendations, and local companies and institutions (including Kent State, plus the Cleveland AIA chapter) support their continuing education through donations.
At the end of each school year, ACE holds a banquet to award scholarships and allow each team to present the year’s projects. On April 26, 2017, nine ACE teams presented their responses to the RFP, which called for new ideas for making healthy places. Each team had to come up with a design, figure out some preliminary materials and construction techniques, and even sketch out an overall budget, and then present to a panel of local practitioners.This year, ACE distributed a four-year total of over $118,000 in scholarships to 21 graduating seniors. Most excitingly for Kent State, though, was that the College of Architecture and Environmental Design had FOUR applicants from this year’s ACE class. We’ve had two CAED students from ACE for each of the past two years, but four is our highest number so far. This year’s recipients are:
- Anais Harris – Architectural Studies
- Michael Mascella – Architecture
- Cesar Sandate – Construction Management
- Isidro Villa – Architecture
Kent State has an agreement with ACE to match any scholarships for up to four incoming Architecture, Interior Design, and Construction Management students up to $1,500 / year each. In addition, Michael Mascella and Isidro Villa split the prestigious Cleveland Foundation Ward Scholarship, for students from the Cleveland area intending to study architecture. We’re looking forward to adding these energetic young students to our college and hopefully continuing to grow our involvement with ACE further in the future.Congratulations to our four CAED ACE students, and all the ACE scholarship recipients!For more information on the ACE Mentor Program, check out the national website or the Cleveland chapter Facebook page.
The Student Perspective : CUBA
This year's Spring Studio, The International Design Exchange (INDEX) Studio is a graduate design studio established to build an understanding of global urban issues.The studio explores strategies for urban regeneration revealed through a comparative analysis of Cleveland, Ohio and Havana, Cuba. The studio functions as a timely conduit for the exchange of ideas between the two cities. As part of the studio, four graduate students traveled to Cuba, during spring break, to strengthen the research and relationships established with architects and architecture students and the University of Havana. Two of the students, Reuben Shaw II and Randy Hoover, shared their experience and work with us. Here is their perspective:Reuben Shaw II, Master of Landscape Architecture
Cuba was never on my list of countries to visit. Stories about the taboos of the society and the government subconsciously blocked this island nation from my view. I’ve visited a few of the Caribbean Islands but still, Cuba was invisible. During my stay in Havana, I realized that Cuba was one of the most unique and beautiful places I have ever been, not only aesthetically, but culturally and socially. The proverb, “Better to see something once than hear about it a thousand times” became a reality.
Fanguito neighborhood in Havana, CubaWhile working on the Havana studio project in Cleveland, it was a challenge to really grasp our site with aerials; as landscape architecture students, most of our taught site-analysis techniques were void. Flying to Cuba and walking the streets of the Fanguito neighborhood really gave us a perspective that added to our repertoire. We discovered a sense of place that was generated by the people and an empirical expression of culture that you could only get by asking questions and adopting the lifestyle of the residents.This opportunity to travel to Cuba was truly inspiring and has fueled my desire to travel and experience other cultures. I believe when you travel you learn as much about yourself as you do about the place. Knowledge of self not only enriches your being but that of the people around you.
Proposed wetland preserve and aquatic bird habitat along the Almendares River in Havana, CubaRandy Hoover, Master of Architecture
Five days is a short time in which one can be expected to engage with the unique cultural and economic values in a city like Havana, but I believe this trip was successful in that regard. Stepping out onto Cuban soil was not, as some of my friends back home predicted, like stepping back in time to a land where technology and science ceased to progress. Once you look past the aesthetic value of colorful old cars on the road you begin to see Cuba’s development over the last decades as an alternate timeline, similar to our own, where resources are more scarce but vitality and variety of life are never sacrificed.(Now don’t get me wrong, riding from one side of Havana to the other in a candy-coated Pontiac is something that should be experienced by every visitor to the island.)Our studio design/research project for the semester focused on an intervention near the Almendares River in El Vedado district of Havana. This land is known as the less affluent part of town and in every way but its social structure can be considered a slum. In order to operate from thousands of miles away with little on-site experience, our group focused on projective interventions that could be built by accretion and overlay of infrastructural services. By developing a simple self-built housing prototype that connected its infrastructure to a central square, we could game out the look of our neighborhood intervention in abstraction without bulldozing over the existing social and economic complexities of the neighborhood.
Cuadriculita 008: The central concrete pad provides infrastructural connections for surrounding residents.The realistic conditions of a site are, of course, more complex than what can be assumed from a satellite image or journal article. When we walked through the neighborhood of El Fanguito we were greeted by complete strangers with smiles and welcome conversation with our inquiring minds. Narrow alleyways and informal sidewalks contributed to a set of streetscapes that functioned almost identically to the winding paths we suggested in the Cuadriculita proposal, except of course that it was constructed with more care, personality, and efficiency. Once we walked out of the neighborhood and up the hill to a grand vista that overlooked all of the informal housing, my perspective of the project completely shifted.
A small cluster of housing built against the peculiar topography separating El Fanguito from El Vedado.I expected this moment, of course, but maybe not in such an instantaneous fashion. The infrastructural connections were not perfect in every way but formed its own artistry out of the imperfections. Overlap of aesthetics and use-value with the homes were most apparent with bright blue water storage barrels and pigeon cages on some of the rooftops feeding PVC piping down into the invisible pathways and living spaces below. Our project’s assertion that an interior courtyard or open space was required in order to have a vibrant and connected lifestyle for each resident was dissolved after seeing this.This INDEX studio travel opportunity is something that I will remember for the rest of my life. I was able to meet Cuban architectural contemporaries, sample the passionate lifestyle of residents, and bond with my trip-mates in sharing this experience of infinite value. I’d like to thank David Jurca, the CUDC, and Kent State University for this amazing opportunity. The INDEX: CLExHAV Studio is part of the 2017 Creative Fusion program supported by The Cleveland Foundation. During the 2017 Spring Semester, the Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative (CUDC) will continue a partnership launched by Kent State University last year with Havana-based architects Sofía Márquez Aguiar and Ernesto Jiménez of Fábrica De Arte Cubano (Cuban Art Factory), a vibrant community arts space housed in a repurposed cooking oil plant in Havana. The architects will work with the KSU Urban Design and Landscape Architecture graduate studio and a Cleveland Institute of Art Interior Architecture studio on design proposals for two neighborhood projects: one in Havana’s Vedado neighborhood, where Fábrica De Arte Cubano is located, and another in Cleveland’s Glenville neighborhood. In early April, Márquez Aguiar and Jiménez arrived in Cleveland to review the students’ design proposals for Vedado and will remain in Cleveland for one month as they work with students to generate and fabricate the project to be built in Glenville. A public Pop Up Event is scheduled at the Glenville site (1470 E. 105th, Cleveland) on Friday, May 5th from 6-9pm. All are welcome. Learn more and RSVP on the Facebook event page here: https://www.facebook.com/events/532579883796334/
Hingetown Tour | April 28 | 12-1 PM
For our last "lecture" of the Spring Series, we will be going on a tour of Hingetown to view and discuss the community projects happening in this neighborhood in Ohio City. Join us April 28, 2017, at 12 PM. The tour will begin at the corner of 29th & Detroit Ave. and will last about an hour. Our tour guides will be Marika Shioiri-Clark & Graham Veysey both residents and developers of this neighborhood. Stops on the tour will include the Striebinger block, the Print Shop buildings, few of the Creative Fusion murals, as well as, the new Spaces Gallery and the Transformer Station.
Marika Shioiri-Clark and Graham Veysey spend their days in a 140-year-old firehouse in Hingetown – part of the Ohio City neighborhood. As neighborhood developers and designers, Marika and Graham converted the vacant Ohio City Firehouse into a vibrant mixed-used building with a coffee shop, florist, and collection of offices. Graham and Marika developed the block kitty-corner from the Firehouse into a vibrant retail and residential building just completed a third project called the Print Shop, and have been involved in planning numerous public events in the area. Called Hingetown, their work often focuses on connections and collaborations through the arts to promote public space and walkability across the near west side of Cleveland.
Photo credit: Peter LarsonHingtown TourApril 28, 201712-1 PM29th & Detroit Ave.Cleveland, OH 44113
Mapping the Design Journey
by Jacinda WalkerFounder, designExplorr.com
Design Journeys: Strategies for Increasing Diversity in Design Disciplines from Jacinda Walker on Vimeo.
The journey to a career can be met with great success or great struggle. When a traveler is prepared for the journey, they typically cover more distance and the experiences they encounter become quick stops along the way— moments of pause that, with rest and refueling, allow them to begin again. However, for a traveler who is less prepared to face the bumps, twists, and turns of the road, minor challenges become major roadblocks. Those minor challenges become permanent barricades that ultimately inhibit travel and one’s likelihood to continue on the path of success. Unfortunately, the latter path described here is all too common among young African American and Latino youth who seek a design-related career.This line of inquiry led me to visualize what the journey to becoming a designer looks like and analyze what tools are needed to obtain a design-related career. My research work entitled, Design Journeys: Strategies for Increasing Diversity in Design Disciplines (2016) explores diversity in design disciplines and presents fifteen strategic ideas to expose African American and Latino youth to design-related careers. This solutions-based thesis introduces a map charting a design career from grade school to a seasoned professional. The “Design Journey Map” contains four color-coded passages: foundations, proficiency, workforce, and influence. The passages overlap with career competency components to cultivate soft skills together with the hard skills youth learn along the journey to a design career.
Figure 1: The Design Journey Map in fullThe Design Journey Map is a simple navigational tool that can be used as a framework to better inform students, parents, professionals and organizations which strategic ideas are needed and where to place them along the career path to increase diversity in design disciplines.This framework is important because it shows the journey to become a designer and provides four principles of a strategic solution for closing the diversity gap in the design industry. The principles address the complex problem of a lack of diversity in design by identifying characteristics of a strategic solution needed for helping to close the diversity gap in design. They are labeled as comprehensive, collaborative, local, and scholastic. These Design Principles help to ensure long-term success for programs and initiatives whose intent is to expose African American and Latino youth to design-related careers.
Figure 2: The four Design Principles for a strategic solutionThe process of closing the gap in design is especially complex due to underlying problems at both ends of the career path. Problems on one end of the career path relate to access and exposure, which impacts course offerings and instruction for African American and Latino youth in their local community schools. The problems on the other end relate to the opportunities provided to professionals of color, which are limited due to systemic prejudices, especially among those who monitor the distribution and application of funding for education. 
Figure 3: The Multiple Problems in DesignIn Designing for Diversity: Implications for Architectural Education in the Twenty-First Century (2002), Dr. Kathryn H. Anthony, Distinguished Professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, suggests that in order to guarantee long-lasting and continuous improvement, schools and organizations need to work strategically by developing more diversity-building initiatives. Developing diversity-building initiatives will improve industry experiences for novice African American and Latino designers, ensuring that they meet greater career success and create more opportunities along the pipeline. One such diversity-building initiative in northeast Ohio is Design Diversity.
Figure 4: Design Diversity logoDesign Diversity is an initiative launched in late 2013 by the Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative (CUDC) and led in partnership with a multidisciplinary advisory committee. Through self-initiated projects and in collaboration with existing organizations, their goal is to foster learning, influence growth, and promote people of color in the design professions in Northeast Ohio. As a researcher, I am pleased to partner with the advisory committee by working in tandem to help bring their latest project to fruition.The Design Diversity Index is a tool for measuring progress toward achieving diversity goals. The index will collect, maintain and aggregate data on the number of African Americans and Latinos from design schools, programs, and professional organizations and integrate a range of disciplines that include architecture, landscape architecture, graphic design, industrial design, interior design, and urban design. The Design Index benefits students, parents, and organizations by providing access to aggregated state-based data from regional educational institutions and creates opportunities for reminding other stakeholders about the necessity to increase diversity in design disciplines.Addressing the lack of diversity in design is not a simple problem. The issue is that many are trying to solve a single problem when there are actually multiple problems on both ends of the journey. The challenge many African American and Latino youth face in the beginning of the journey is they simply do not know what to look for. In addition, parents of these creative youth also do not have adequate information to make informed decisions. Lastly, organizations can benefit by having such information centralized. This challenge continues to be recognized as a complex problem, but it still exists because there is a lack of access to the information available to solve it. Tools such as the Design Journey Map in conjunction with the Design Diversity Index are sorely needed to help stabilize the multiple problems along the journey. This initiative seeks to provide aggregated data to give students, parents, and organizations more information to make better decisions about design-related careers. To learn more about Design Diversity, future events and to receive the latest news on the Design Diversity Index log onto designdiversity.org.
About Jacinda WalkerJacinda Walker is the founder of designExplorr, an organization that celebrates design learning by creating opportunities to introduce youth to design and partners with professionals, parents, and teachers who are passionate about bringing diversity to the industry in a powerful way. With over 20 years as a designer, entrepreneur, and instructor, her work ranges from designing corporate communications to developing educational programs and event management. She earned both her A.A.B. and B.F.A. in graphic design from the University of Akron and a M.F.A in Design Research and Development with a minor in Nonprofit Studies from The Ohio State University. Her research explores diversity in design disciplines and presents strategies to expose underrepresented youth to design-related careers. Her future goals include working with organizations to establish design education initiatives and developing design programs for underrepresented youth.
Samantha Ayotte | April 07
On April 7, 2017, we welcome Samantha Ayotte to our Spring Lecture Series. Her talk, "My Birthright", will present findings from her cultural exploration through Israel for her Birthright trip. There will be a discussion about how cultural, political, and religious experiences can differ and how they can provide solutions for contemporary living.
Samantha Ayotte is a second-year dual degree (M.Arch, M.UD) candidate from Cleveland, Ohio. She holds an undergraduate degree in Architecture from Kent State University. She enjoys the opportunity to design and understand urban design challenges and solutions for cities like Cleveland through contemporary means of investigation. She believes communities and shared experiences can positively impact urban design, and her work thus far has aimed to implement those elements.
Please join us from 12 PM - 1PM, Friday, April 7th. This event is free and open to the public.Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative1309 Euclid Ave., Suite 200Cleveland, OH 44115
Lithuanian Architect Aurimas Širvys presents at Cleveland State University
Levin College Forum Brown Bag Lunch Program Recovering Lithuania’s Architectural Cultural HeritageA Presentation from Lithuanian Architect Aurimas ŠirvysMonday, March 13, 201712:00 – 1:30 p.m.Bonda Board Room 2541717 Euclid AvenueCleveland, Ohio 44115Jointly Sponsored By the Levin College Forum Program and the Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative
Wooden synagogue in Ziezmariai, Lithuania under restoration. Photo: Aurimas ŠirvysDuring nearly 50 years of Soviet occupation, buildings that were part of Lithuania’s cultural heritage, such as churches, monasteries, synagogues, and manor homes, were “re-purposed,” destroyed, or neglected. Furthermore, news and education were highly controlled and politicized so that the public only heard a view of the country’s past that was distorted to serve the Soviet state. As a result, much of the country’s cultural heritage was not known or well understood, especially by younger Lithuanians.Since Lithuania regained its independence, architect Aurimas Širvys has advised individuals and organizations who have undertaken projects to restore the condition of existing buildings of cultural heritage. He has also made studies of images of “lost buildings” and made two- and three-dimensional representations of those buildings so that the memory of such buildings can endure.Mr. Širvys will discuss how he became interested in helping Lithuania recover its architectural cultural history and some of the restoration projects in which he has participated.Please RSVP to m.s.schnoke@csuohio.edu
Mabel O. Wilson | Feb 09
On Thursday, February 9th, we welcome Mabel O. Wilson to our Spring Lecture Series. Mabel's talk, "Building Racial States", will address race and nation-state formation and its implication in current social movements.Mabel O. Wilson is a Professor of Architecture at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation where she co-directs the Global Africa Lab and appointed as a Research Fellow at the Institute for Research in African-American Studies. She has authored Begin with the Past: Building the National Museum of African American History and Culture (2016) and Negro Building: African Americans in the World of Fairs and Museums (2012). Exhibitions of her work have been featured at the Art Institute of Chicago, Istanbul Design Biennale, Wexner Center for the Arts, and the Smithsonian’s Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum’s Triennial. She is a founding member of Who Builds Your Architecture?—an advocacy project to educate the architectural profession about the problems of globalization and labor.Mabel will also be speaking at the College of Architecture & Environmental Design at the Cene Lecture Hall at 5:30 PM, in Kent, OH. Her evening lecture is titled, "Notes on the Virginia Statehouse: Slavery, Race, and Jefferson's America".This event is free and open to the public. RSVP isn't required, but it is requested. Please RSVP HERE.Thursday, February 9, 2017Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative1309 Euclid Ave., Suite 200Cleveland, OH 44115
Macy Nordhaus Banghart | Feb 03
We're very excited about our Spring 2017 Lecture Series. We start off with Macy Nordhaus Banghart from Aerotek. Marcy is a recruiter for Aerotek Architecture & Engineering. She specializes in full-time permanent placements in the field of Architecture. She works with firms all over Ohio to fill their open positions. She has been recruiting for just over 3 years and graduated from Kent State University with a Bachelor of Arts in Communication Studies.Macy will be speaking about hiring trends in the field of architecture, what firms are looking for in a candidate, and helpful interview tips that aren’t so obvious. If you are a recent graduate, graduating this spring, or just looking for tips from a professional recruiter this is a lecture you will not want to miss.
"Over the past three decades we’ve built an unrivaled culture and our unique, people-focused approach yields competitive advantage for our clients and rewarding careers for our contractors. Today we serve virtually every major industry, and we’ve placed exceptional people in hundreds of thousands of roles and positions. Everything we do is grounded in our guiding principles to build and nurture quality relationships that allow us to place quality people in quality jobs." -AerotekJoin us, Friday, February 3rd, from 12 -1 PM. As always, this lecture is free and open to the public.Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative1309 Euclid Ave., Suite 200Cleveland, OH 44115