Please join us for a lecture by Landscape Architect Jeff Knopp on Friday, March 8 at noon at Kent State University’s Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative, 1309 Euclid Avenue, 2nd Floor.
Jeff Knopp PLA, ALSA, CID is Principal and President of Behnke Landscape Architecture in Cleveland.He will will discuss his experience in participating in the Historic American Landscape Survey (HALS) challenge co-sponsored by the National Park Service and American Society of Landscape Architects. In particular, he will discuss his 2018 submission documenting the history of Liberty Row.This event is free and open to the public. You are welcome to bring your lunch. Light refreshments will also be served.
Student Teams Create Development Plans for Cincinnati Riverfront
This January, three teams of graduate students from the Kent State CAED and Cleveland State competed in the Urban Land Institute Hines Student Competition. Running two weeks, the competition asks students to analyze an existing site in a North American city and develop a 10-year urban design & financing plan for the area. The competition is an opportunity for students in design & development to work together and understand how cities are developed in real-life scenarios.
This year's site was in Cincinnati, along the Ohio River but disconnected from the CBD by a major highway, Fort Washington Way. The students were charged with creating a cohesive mixed-use district that successfully wove this area back into larger urban and regional systems.
Team "Syn City" harnessed urban agriculture & autonomous transportation to develop a scheme to grow and provide food for Cincinnati's local urban neighborhoods in the heart of the city.
Team "Over the Vine" extended Vine Street into a riverfront pier to make a strong connection with the Ohio River and through the CBD into the growing neighborhood of Over the Rhine.
Team "Cincinnati Greenway" emphasized pedestrian-scale green connections throughout the development area, encouraging wandering and discovery.The Cleveland chapter of ULI generously supports the student competition each year. Professionals from the local design & development community volunteer their time to assist on evening reviews & critiques. We're grateful to all our professional partners for their support.Congratulations to all our students for their hard work!
Phenomenology and Ideation
Free public lecture by James A. Garland, founder of Fluidity Design Consultants18 March 2019 | 5:15pmKent State University's Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative1309 Euclid Avenue, 2nd FloorHow does phenomenological awareness and a practiced optics skill set inform the design process, and what are their conceptual limits? How does symbolic meaning relate to design today, and how might poetic integrity be distinguished from pragmatic ‘truth’? How can the regular analysis of historic examples relate to a vibrant contemporary practice? How are the issues of social equity, healthfulness and sustainability applied to contemporary water design in the public realm? Finally, how might a freshly minted ‘water idea’ provide a narrative and activate space? Jim Garland will briefly survey these topics with archetypal examples and current designs.
James A Garland founded Fluidity Design Consultants in 2002 after twenty years of practice in water design, architecture and urbanism. He holds a Masters degree in Architecture from UCLA, with a focus in architectural design and urban design. His undergraduate degree, also in architecture, was obtained from the University of Louisiana. James interned at Urban Innovations Group under Charles W. Moore, FAIA, an internationally celebrated architect who was known, among many things, for his enthusiastic and skillful use of water in architecture.Fluidity was established to create a new generation of water features conceived, crafted, and engineered for a more sustainable century with a fresh, invigorating aesthetic.Concurrently with directing Fluidity’s design efforts, Jim is writing two books about fountains, one covering a 2,000 year history of best examples, and the other focusing on Fluidity’s projects, with speculations on the future of water design.Organized by the Kent State University Landscape Architecture Program, College of Architecture and Environmental Design, and Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative.
Kent State's Master of Landscape Architecture I program was awarded full accreditation status from the Landscape Architecture Accrediting Board (LAAB) in the Spring of 2018. The program is intended for individuals who have a bachelor’s degree with a major other than a design profession. Offered at the Kent State University's Cleveland Studio located in the urban core of Cleveland, Ohio at Playhouse Square, an urbanized landscape edging the international waters of Lake Erie, the program offers students a local laboratory to study global landscape issues including: reclamation of urban vacancies, infrastructure systems, living architecture, natural resources and water quality for landscapes of health and social justice through inclusive and interdisciplinary design methodologies and community engagement while adapting to the demands of change brought on by the nature of the region and global practice.
Black Agrarianism & Access to Land in Cleveland
Ohio City Farm (GreenCityBlueLake, Cleveland Museum of Natural History)Please join us for a lecture by Justine Lindemann on Friday, March 1 at noon at the Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative, 1309 Euclid Avenue, second floor.Justine Lindemann is a PhD candidate at Cornell University and a lecturer in political science at John Carroll University. Her work explores the food system in Cleveland as a lens on racial inequalities in the city, and the ways in which communities work within the food system to create more equitable spaces (both figurative and literal).Food production in Cleveland has become part of the political landscape, with everyone from members of City Council, Community Development Corporations, and Ohio State Extension investing in urban agriculture in some capacity. However, this does not necessarily translate to increased rights for mostly low-income communities of color to produce food (and spaces) within the city, or to have a voice in the political decisions around food production, urban development, and urban change.This research is a foray into a particular moment in Cleveland's history and geography. It is contextualized by both police violence and the spectre of black power activism; by a shrinking population and uneven capitalist development to bolster select neighborhoods; by an expanding 'food scene' and continued grocery store closings in predominantly black, historically redlined, neighborhoods.The ways in which black residents engage with power hierarchies, the institutions within the city, the various communities and neighborhoods, and the limited resources available to produce (food) spaces within the city represent a powerful insight into the claims made for rights to and in the city.This event is free and open to the public. You are welcome to bring your lunch. Snacks will also be served.
CUDC Spring Lecture Series
The Spring lecture Series at CUDC opens on Feb 1 at noon with a presentation by Jane Goodman, Executive Director of Cuyahoga River Restoration and Halina Steiner, Landscape Architecture Professor at Ohio State's Knowlton School. Jane will talk about the Habitat for Hard Places initiative--an innovative project to restore fish habitat in the Cuyahoga River ship channel. Halina will share some of her students' design ideas for both people and fish at the river's edge. This program will take place in the CUDC Gallery, 1309 Euclid Avenue, Suite 200 in Downtown Cleveland.
On Feb 5 at 5:30pm, Anthony Rowe of Squidsoup will give a presentation entitled Immersive Experiences in Mixed Reality Spaces. This program will take place on the main campus of Kent State University in the Cene Lecture Hall in the College of Architecture and Environmental Design.
Other upcoming programs include:
March 1 at noon | Justine Lindemann John Carroll University | Black Agrarianism & Access to Land in Cleveland (at the CUDC)
March 8 at noon | Jeff Knopp Behnke Landscape Architecture | Historic American Landscape Survey for Liberty Row (at the CUDC)
March 18 at 5:15pm | James Garland Fluidity Design Consultants | Phenomenology & Ideation (at the CUDC)
April 5 at 5:30pm | Walter Hood Hood Design Studio | Hybrid Landscapes (at the College of Architecture & Environmental Design, Kent State University)
April 12 at noon | Elizabeth Ellis Toledo Design Center | Dialoguing Toledo (at the CUDC)
All events are free and open to the public.
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.
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