FALL 2024 - 25th Anniversary PROGRAM series at the CUDC

Kent State’s Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative (CUDC) is commemorating our 25th year in Cleveland with a series of lectures and programs, organized around the theme of regeneration.  

Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative, Kent State University
1309 Euclid Avenue, Suite 200 | Cleveland, Ohio

MONDAY SEP 9 | 12-1:30PM | in-person / hybrid | Register here

Preserving our Future – Environmentally, Equitably, and Economically in partnership with AIA Cleveland 

Sara Zewde, ASLA, Studio Zewde and Phil LiBassi FAIA FACHA, Senior Principal DLR Group & Conservancy for Cuyahoga Valley National Park Board Member 

The program focuses on the account of preserving a tract of land within the boundaries of the Cuyahoga Valley National Park from development. This is a great example of how public-private efforts such as this can contribute to shaping our world. The program will also focus on the process, players, partnerships and plans that are making an impact in our own backyard.

The Conservancy for the Cuyahoga Valley National Park has worked diligently to save this property in the heart of the park to protect habitat as well as to create a space for all to enjoy the land and Cuyahoga River. In the fall of 2023, the Conservancy hired Studio Zewde to assist with community engagement initiatives, site analysis and a framework for development.

Studio Zewde is led by Founding Principal, Sara Zewde. She brings years of experience leading complex design processes across the Americas, with a design approach that works explicitly to illuminate the distinct cultural and ecological qualities of a place. Sara is Assistant Professor of Practice at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design and is the recipient of several awards, including the Hebbert Award for Contribution to the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at MIT and the Silberburg Memorial Award for Urban Design. Studio Zewde is devoted to creating enduring places where people belong. https://www.studio-zewde.com.

Phil LiBassi is a practicing architect with over 45 years of experience. A Fellow in the American Institute of Architects (FAIA) and American College of Healthcare Architects (FACHA), he has been instrumental in leading a successful architectural practice and was actively involved in several award-winning commissions nationally in healthcare, cultural and performing arts, higher education and government.


MONDAY SEP 23 | 5:30-7PM  | in-person 

Power + Place 

Bryan C Lee Jr, Design Principal, Architect, Colloqate 

Our values are validated through the spaces and places we design and subsequently build. Power + Place explores the privilege and power structures that have defined injustice in the built environment from America's inception. We will look at the history of the design justice movement and how the theory of practice continually advocates for the dismantling of power ecosystems that use architecture and design to create injustice throughout the built environment.

Like all institutions, design imposes its power through policies, procedures, and practice and is subject to its own inherited biases. The lasting permanence of our professional decisions requires us to pay particular attention to the injustices that result from our work and to seek Design Justice wherever possible. Architecture has the power to speak to the language of the people it serves, we as designers, are at our best when we are willing to serve the people without power.

Bryan C. Lee Jr. is an award-winning architect, nonprofit founder, and leading national voice on anti-racist and socially just design. As Founder and Design Principal of Colloqate Design, Bryan spearheads the organization’s mission to intentionally design spaces advancing racial, social and cultural equity. This encompasses community-centered architecture and planning projects, youth education/mentorship initiatives, and advocacy campaigns confronting systemic exclusion in the built environment. Deeply committed to expanding opportunity in his home city of New Orleans, Bryan previously served as the Inaugural Director of Place + Civic Design for the Arts Council New Orleans from 2015 to 2017. In this capacity, he provided vision and program management for arts-rooted community development efforts citywide.  

Nationally recognized as an influential thought leader, Bryan’s recognitions include being named on Fast Company’s 2018 Most Creative People in Business list as well as receiving prestigious fellowship designations such as Emerging Voices from the Architectural League of New York and United States Artists. As a Design Critic at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design since 2020, Bryan has brought his justice-oriented pedagogy to new generations of architects and planners. Bryan holds leadership positions with the National Organization of Minority Architects (NOMA) and the Design As Protest Collective organizing against professional exclusion. Through his career and volunteerism, Bryan embodies his belief in design as instrumental for empowerment, healing historical harms, and expanding liberation across communities. 


FRIDAY SEP 27 | 12-1PM  | in-person / hybrid | Register here

Climate Action as if the Earth Mattered: Restoring living systems as the essential foundation to solving the polycrises we face 

Brett KenCairn, Center for Regenerative Solutions 

Since the early 1970s, we have known that there were two fundamental causes of climate destabilization—fossil fuel combustion and land degradation. Over the past several decades, the role of land degradation has been largely forgotten in the focus on carbon accounting and energy systems change. Current climate action strategies will inevitably fail unless we reestablish a global-scale focus on restoring the more than 70% of the Earth’s living systems that have been deeply degraded—both in natural, working and urban lands. The good news is that we have examples of large-scale initiatives of this sort that can achieve remarkable regenerative results in the scale of just a few decades. In this talk, we will walk through the limitations to current climate action approaches and outline a broader strategy that can serve as the foundation for both climate stabilization (and a number of other aspects of the “polycrisis”) and a community redevelopment strategy that can stabilize both urban and rural communities both here and abroad. 

 

FRIDAY OCT 18 | 12-1PM  | in-person / hybrid | Register here

On Campus 

Andrew Gutterman, Sasaki Associates

Andrew brings over two decades of professional experience as a landscape architect and his understanding of natural systems to inform all aspects of the planning and design process. His background in ecology has helped foster a deep appreciation for the beauty and complexity of the natural world and a strong belief that these qualities can be brought to the built environment in meaningful ways. Andrew’s thoughtful approach is characterized by attentiveness to client needs, site conditions, and historical context. His experience spans the full spectrum of project types, with a particular emphasis on creating high quality landscapes for academic and institutional clients. Andrew holds a Master in Landscape Architecture from Harvard Graduate School of Design and a Bachelor of Science in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from the University of Connecticut. 


THURSDAY OCT 24 | 5:30-7 PM | in-person

Party Wall Common Exhibition opening & gallery talk 

Petra Kempf, Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts, Washington University 

By exploring regenerative ways of living that are based on reflective, responsive, and reciprocal relationships between human to human-, human to non-human-, and non-human to non-human agencies, what kind of spatial configuration embody a life that allows for inclusive forms of living to enable alternative forms of ownership towards a common ground without ignoring current modes of free market exchange?

Party Wall Common revolves around alternative configurations of ownership explored through the party wall of an urban townhouse. While the townhouse typology originated in both London and Paris in the 1600s, the type later flourished in other cities, such as in Amsterdam, Boston, Philadelphia, or New York City, where the first townhouses were introduced by Dutch Settlers in the mid-17th century for the upper and middle-class.

Fostered by the urban grid and its underlying legal apparatus, almost all townhouses were built on speculation. This explains why relatively standard floor plans are still visible in many townhouses today. Besides the replicated building floorplans, a townhouse generally shares a party-wall with another townhouse.

The party wall functions as a load-bearing structure that also services the townhouse with plumbing and other infrastructural support connecting it to the larger systems of the urban construct. The wall is usually also subject to cross-easements-reciprocal rights of use over the property: each owner owns half of the party wall on its property and has an easement on the other half of the wall. Because of this shared relationship, the party wall is the most peculiar element of a townhouse configuration, literally and figuratively speaking, as its legal presence allows for both the exploration of a different kind of ownership and to potential of future cooperative living and working scenarios between and among different dwelling units.

The party wall represents therefore an ideal condition between different owners to test scenarios towards new forms of ownership to generate a common ground for a collective to share and interact with one another. To test possible scenarios, this exhibition will explore how the party wall could transform into an architectural type that fosters stewardship and care to generate a common ground of localized practices.

Party wall common. Party wall as a conversion from space into place. 30 vignettes exploring what can happen at the party wall. 

Gallery hours: Monday – Friday from 9am - 4pm, October 25 through November 25, 2024 and Saturday, November 2, 2024 from 10am – 2pm.

Free and open to the public. For more information, please contact the CUDC at 216.357.3434 or cudc@kent.edu.

 
 

SPRING 2023

VIDEOS OF LECTURES

CUDC Spring 2023 Program Series Approaches to Practice

Feb 17 - Design for Displacement Lecture by Sai Sinbondit, Founding Principal & Executive Director, i_you design lab.

Feb 24 - From the Theater to the Plaza: Spectacle, Protest, and Urban Space in Twenty-First-Century Madrid Lecture by Matthew Feinberg, Ph.D, Associate Professor of Spanish, Baldwin Wallace University.

Apr 7 - Out of Architecture Workshop with Jake Rudin and Erin Pellegrino, principals, Out of Architecture.

 

fall 2022

VIDEOS OF LECTURES

Sept 9 - Mac Love: Making Art Work Mac Love is Co-Founder & Chief Catalyst at Art x Love, a creative agency based in Akron (OH). His work has been nationally recognized as a leading example for creative community collaboration. Mac shares the principles, methods, and tools that inform and guide his projects, and demonstrate how they are systemically shifting the way people, communities, and cities invest in the arts and their environment.

Oct 21  Imani Badillo: To Those Who Nourish: Farming and Environmental Health in Northeast Ohio Visit https://linktr.ee/tothosewhonourish to learn more about each of the farms, about Cooking Sections, SPACES, and about this project.

Oct 28 - Jill Desimini: Cyclical City: Stories of Urban Transformation (passcode: s9mEwc&8)

 

SPRING 2022

VIDEOS OF LECTURES

Maci Nelson Multi-Modal Design Conversations

Maci Nelson is a landscape designer focused on using multimedia and storytelling to communicate design intent and processes.

Taylor Kabeary & Eduardo Duarte Ruas, Preservation Side B Hybrid Preservation Changing the World

As the world changes, our practices of preservation, planning, and placemaking must adapt to the need for equality, equity, and inclusion. Our fields must undergo a change from traditional practices of exclusion and narrowness (Side As) to embracing more modern practices of inclusion and expansiveness (Side Bs). How can we form a hybrid between Sides As and Side Bs to form strong practices that protect, include, and serve many communities? How can we form Side Cs? This workshop will provide a guide on how to view Side As and Side Bs of preservation and adjacent fields, and theorize on what Side Cs look and feel like. 

Marlon Davis Visual Disruption: A Post-Disciplinary Practice

Marlon Davis presented a lecture on buildings and spaces that have been erased from the history of Black American experience. He will share 3D visualizations that explore creative paths for research and propose reclamations of these spaces renewing art, architecture, and design’s relation to social justice, BIPOC communities, and history. The site of erasure he will examine is Osage Avenue in Philadelphia (1985) to retell this story. He will also discuss his work with Black Architects and Designers Guild and his work at DE-YAN to discuss how he uses 3D tools to reinvent his practice.

Stathis G. Yeros Queer Urbanism in the San Francisco Bay

Stathis Yeros discussed the spaces that queer and transgender people have historically inhabited in the United States, what they reveal for cultural representations of gender, race, and sexuality, and what lessons they hold for designers and planners. In his dissertation and published work, he employs the concept of “queer urbanism” to contextualize insurgent spatial practices and discourses in effective coalitional politics, arguing that for this to be possible, urban theory and spatial practice have to account for non-binary conceptualizations of space beyond the public/private, male/female, grassroots/institutional dichotomies.

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fall 2021

VIDEOS OF LECTURES

Abigail Feldman The Land of Enchantment: Design, Water, and the Vernacular Southwest

Close your eyes for a moment and imagine being in a place where you can see rain storms one hundred miles away. Behind you dark clouds pile up against the tip of the Rocky Mountains. The high altitude light washes over the tips of Piñon trees dotted across the desert at sunset, and you wish you had chapstick. This is New Mexico, otherwise known as the Land of Enchantment. People have lived here for a long time and water is always on our minds. This lecture offers the perspective of one landscape architect's work to link "old school" green infrastructure to contemporary design, to help innovate strategies for stormwater, and to root design in the vernacular land use of this region from acequias to zuni bowls.

Ifeoma Ebo Shifting Power Through Design

Historically the urban landscape has been used as a tool to establish inequitable power/social relationships. The same tools that have been used to shape inequity can also be used to center equity and justice in our world. This lecture will use history, theory and projects centering community engagement design to explore how to shift power through design.

Jerome Haferd Dark Methods : A Geography of Practice

“Dark Matter is not the opposite of matter, but matter that behaves differently.” Working within erased or marginalized histories, neighborhoods, or sites that fall outside the ‘mainstream’ challenges us to question both the how and the what of architecture. Haferd, an Akron native, will chart a geography of his Harlem-based design practice, drawing connections between projects in the larger Hudson Valley, recent housing prototypes for Cleveland, OH and St. Louis, and beyond.

 

SPRING 2021

VIDEOS OF LECTURES

Thanks for your interest in our lecture series. Click the images below for more info and links to watch the recorded lectures.