The Placemaking Network at the Boston Society of Architects/AIA is dedicated to interdisciplinary dialogue and education on an integrated public realm. The Network investigates ways to enrich the built environment through discourse among urban planning, landscape design, architecture, public art and design professionals. Ongoing programs include a monthly seminar series and project-based initiatives.
For more information contact chair Christina Lanzl at 617-879-7973 christina.lanzl@massart.edu.
Events are free and open to the public. Lunch will be provided. RSVP to the BSA at 617-951-1433 x221 or rsvp@architects.org by 9:30 am on the day of the meeting. Unless otherwise noted, events take place at 52 Broad Street, 5th Floor, Boston, MA.
Monday, September 27, 12 noon
Multi-Disciplinary Placemaking
Speaker: John Seeley, Principal, Selbert Perkins Design
Why do certain places attract people? What creates a meaningful place? What makes a place intelligent? What makes a place memorable? How do we create sense of place that responds to its inhabitants? Architects and landscape architecture have traditionally worked toward these goals. However, increased importance of information and technology in our complex urban environments has expanded the creative opportunities to a broader range of design disciplines including graphic, industrial, and environmental design
Build Boston
November 17, 2010
Seaport World Trade Center, Boston
Life In The Square: the role of the public plaza in urban placemaking
A43, Wed, Nov. 17, 1:00-2:30pm
Drawing from the Greek agora and acropolis, from the Roman forum and campus, and from the medieval walled city and twisting street; western urban designers from the Renaissance through the Industrial Revolution and the City Beautiful movement have used the basic forms of the street, block, and square to build up the town and city. Modern free plan precepts and a dominant focus on high-speed movement threatened this tradition in the mid twentieth century, but by the close of the 1970’s there was a shift back to these traditional forms; combining them with studies of human perception, behavior, and active use to focus on the making of “place.” This program will focus the elemental social urban space, the square or plaza, as the vessel for vibrant urban life and will attempt to remind us of the concerns that we should have for the space between buildings, the tools that we should employ there, and the metrics for evaluating our success in place-making.
MODERATOR
Christina Lanzl
Founding Chair, BSA Placemaking Network
Project Manager, Urban Arts Institute at Massachusetts College of Art and Design
PRESENTERS
Kathy Madden, Senior Vice President, Project for Public Spaces, New York. NY
Joshua Simoneau, Architect, Bertaux + Iwerks Architects, BSA Rotch Traveling Scholarship 2008
Robert Tullis, AIA, LEED AP, Vice President - Director of Design, GID Urban Development Group, Boston, MA