This Friday, November 8th from 5-7 pm, the next act of The Architecture Play is presented at the John Elliot Center for Architecture and Environmental Design, Kent State University, 132 South Lincoln Street in Kent, Ohio.The Architecture Play is a collaborative multi-annual project by the A+D Architecture and Design Museum, Los Angeles and Kent State University College of Architecture and Environmental Design.Processed as either verb or noun, ‘play,’ despite its numerous instantiations, never obscures the most crucial aspect inherent to all of its forms and shades: a raw potential whose explorative drive pushes the states of being and knowledge, as well as the pre-existent boundaries of the physical and metaphysical environment, in a constant effort to derive value from play. Intimately entwined, play has thus accompanied scientific progress since before the Enlightenment.The Architecture Play, a collaborative project conceived with these oscillating definitions in mind, similarly traces the ludic elements of the architectural discipline while projecting the potentialities of play beyond its preconceived limits. In four acts—a nod to its theatrical definition—the project constructs a complex ecology of actors and networks, of things and thoughts exchanged, transformed, and assembled to probe new avenues for pedagogy, practice, history, and theory of architecture; not simply transgressing boundaries but moving them altogether.Organized by Ivan Bernal, Clemens Finkelstein & Anthony Morey, with participants Taraneh Meshkani, Katie Strand, Jon Yoder, Irene Chin, Gary Fox, Jia Gu, Lisa L. Hsieh, Kyle May, Antonio Petrov, and Leila Anna Wahba.Produced with the support of Faith Chrostowski, Allison McClure, Benjamin Cyvas, Max Hentosh, Nick Ingagliato, Austin Keener, Vincent Noce.
Building Youth Power In Cities
How are design & planning professionals collaborating with young people to build cities for the future?Please join us for a special event celebrating five years of the CUDC's Making Our Own Space program.Tuesday, November 19, 2019 | 6:30 PM Shaker Heights Public Library, 16500 Van Aken BoulevardThe event will include the release of a new guide to youth engagement and community design, inspired by the projects created by Cleveland area students through Making Our Own Space.
It will also include a presentation by Jae Shin and Damon Rich entitled, Building Youth Power in Cities: Newark/Detroit/Cleveland at tha Crossroads. Jae and Damon are urban designers at HECTOR in Newark, New Jersey. They will discuss the triumphs and frustrations of inter-generational work to make change and build things in Newark, Philadelphia, and Detroit.Free and open to the public. All ages are welcome. Refreshments will be served. REGISTER HERE
This event is made possible through the generous support of The Saint Luke's Foundation.
Co-sponsored by APA Ohio. AICP Certification Maintenance credits (CM: 1.5 hours) available for certified planners.Image credit: Cody Rouge & Warrendale Neighborhood Framework Investigators (HECTOR, Rodney Bridges, Marnesha Davenport, Khadijah Harris, Taylin Hodges, Skylah Pounds, Mouley Yusef Sabour, LaKendra Reynolds-Smith, Lillie Reynolds-Smith, Alexcia Stoner)
Stepping out, Stepping in
Please join us for a lecture by Jennifer Birkeland on October 24 at 6 PM at the Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative, 1309 Euclid Avenue, Suite 200, Cleveland. Ring the intercom at the Euclid Avenue entrance for access to the second floor.Jennifer Birkeland is a founding partner at op – Architecture Landscape in Brooklyn New York; and an Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture at Cornell University in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. She is a licensed landscape architect in the state of New York, a LEED accredited professional and a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome. Jennifer received her Master of Landscape Architecture at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design and has a Bachelor’s of Science in Landscape Architecture from California Polytechnic State University Pomona.
Her practice approaches design problems by exploring the oppositions established by the vantage points of the two disciplines of focus, landscape architecture and architecture, developing design solutions that strive to disintegrate the subject-object relationship conventionally established between Landscape + Building. Prior to starting her own practice, Jennifer worked on a wide range of projects with the internationally renowned offices of West 8, OLIN, and Ken Smith Workshop.CEU credits (1.5) are available to OCASLA members.This event is free and open to the public. Light refreshments will be served. For more information, contact cudc@kent.edu or 216.357.3434.
River, Nahr, Río Exhibition Reception
Join Kent State University's College of Architecture & Environmental Design and the Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative to celebrate the designers who participated in River, Nahr, Río, a collection of work by Kent State architecture students, which is currently on display in the Cleveland Foundation's lobby.The project was a partnership with the Cleveland Foundation’s Creative Fusion: Waterways to Waterways Edition.When:Tuesday, Oct. 22, 20195-7 p.m.Where:Cleveland Foundation Lobby1422 Euclid Ave.Suite 1300Cleveland, OH 44115RSVP HERE
Spaces of Conflict Conference & Exhibition
October 25, 2019 | College of Architecture & Environmental Design, Kent State UniversityOur built environment has always been affected and transformed by conflict.Consequently, design professionals are directly or indirectly influencing the processes of conflict through infrastructural development, urban and architectural interventions, planning policies, and public space making. By bringing together scholars, educators, researchers, and practitioners, we aim to debate, exchange ideas, and theoretical perspectives on the role of space in relation to different forms of conflict.The Spaces of Conflict conference is organized as part of the 50th Commemoration of May 4, 1970 event at Kent State where the Ohio National Guard shot four of the KSU students and injured nine during the demonstration event against the US war in Vietnam and Cambodia. This event triggered many nationwide protests and demonstrations in other universities.Friday, October 25, 2019 | Conference begins at 9:00 AM. The day-long event is free and open to the public but REGISTRATION is required.
- Keynote Lecture: Felicity D. Scott at 5:30 pm
- Exhibit Opening at 6:45 PM in the Armstrong Gallery.
- Speakers: Silvia Danielak | Delia Duong Ba Wendel | Tali Hatuka | Samia Henni | Tahl Kaminer | Dina Khatib | Taraneh Meshkani Deen Sharp | Aleksandar Staničić | Hazem Ziada
CUDC Fall Lectures & Programs
Please join us for the CUDC's Fall Lecture Series. All events are free open to the public.
September 18 | Noon | CUDC GalleryQuilian Riano, Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative | Negotiating Bodies
September 25 | Noon | CUDC GalleryDominic Mathew, Fund for Our Economic Future | No Car » No Job, No Job » No Car
October 2 | Noon | CUDC GalleryDavid Jurca, Seventh Hill LLC | Design to TransformOctober 7 | 5:30 PM | Cene Lecture HallCollege of Architecture + Environmental Design | Kent State UniversityKaren M’Closkey + Keith VanDerSys, peg landscape + architecture | Ground Control 
October 24 | 6PM | CUDC GalleryJennifer Birkeland, OP – Architecture Landscape | Stepping out, Stepping in
October 31 | 9AM | Irishtown Bend Welcome Center, 1701 West 25th St.Malaz Elgemiabby | OUTprint/INprint: What does dignity mean?For more information, call 216.357.3434 or email cudc@kent.edu.
Squidsoup on the Detroit Superior Bridge
The Cleveland Foundation has awarded a Creative Fusion grant to the CUDC to support a publicly accessible installation on the streetcar level of the Detroit Superior Bridge.Since 2008, the Foundation has brought more than 90 accomplished or rapidly rising artists from around the world to Cleveland as part of an international arts residency program. In 2019, Creative Fusion artists will focus on the Cuyahoga River in Downtown Cleveland to celebrate the remarkable recovery of the river over the past 50 years. The Waterways to Waterways edition of Creative Fusion will bring together a group of six international and six local artists to focus on projects that connect the regenerative efforts for the Cuyahoga to global waterways. This two-pronged initiative will incorporate works that artists are doing in other parts of the world that inspire continuing progress in Cleveland and around the globe while providing lessons Cleveland can share with the rest of the world about how to revive and reimagine a river.
In the 19th and 20th centuries, the Cuyahoga River was so polluted that it caught fire 13 times. The river last burned on 22 June 1969. The spectacle of the burning river spurred federal lawmakers to establish water quality standards for US cities. In the 50 years since the last fire, the Cuyahoga River has experienced a remarkable regeneration and is now a major scenic and recreational asset in the city.
June 22, 2019 marks the 50th anniversary of the last time the river burned. The CUDC will join the City of Cleveland's Office of Sustainability and many local organizations in Cuyahoga50, a celebration of the river's recovery. We will work with Squidsoup, an arts collaborative based in the UK, to create a large-scale installation on the streetcar level of the Detroit-Superior Bridge.
Squidsoup uses light, sound, computers, digital and physical artefacts to create dynamic immersive experiences. Their work is elemental by nature. Squidsoup has worked on water, in the air and on solid ground - in tunnels, unoccupied shopping malls, forests, parks and botanical gardens, lochs, public squares and art galleries. Their works respond to the wind, to the flow of people, data and water, with digital overlays conceived as liminal materials that inhabit the same spaces as we do, yet as boundary objects and elements, straddling the real and the imaginary. Squidsoup's installation for the Detroit-Superior Bridge has not been finalized yet, but more details will be available this spring.
As part of this project, the CUDC is also updating a 2012 Transportation for Livable Communities Initiative (TLCI) plan aimed at making the lower level of the bridge a year-round public space and bike/pedestrian connection. There will be opportunities for public input into this plan as the year unfolds.
For more information, sign up for the CUDC's newsletter or follow us on social media for updates.