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, January 25, 12 noon
More than Just a Pretty Place: Re-imagining Historic
Preservation in Boston
Speaker: Sarah Kelly, Executive Director, Boston Preservation Alliance
The values and approach of the historic preservation movement are shifting in Boston and throughout the nation. Sarah D. Kelly, executive director of the Boston Preservation Alliance, will discuss how the organization is embracing new ways of thinking about our city’s built heritage, engaging new demographic groups that have traditionally been overlooked, addressing new building types that were once viewed as “anti-historic”, and confronting new challenges from climate change to social equity. This session will highlight the Alliance’s novel approaches to bringing people and resources together to influence the future of Boston’s buildings, landscapes and communities.
The meeting is free and open to all. Continuing-education credit is offered at many BSA programs. Visit www.architects.org/news for details. Lunch/dinner will be provided to those who RSVP by 9:30 am on the day of the meeting to rsvp@architects.org with "PN 11/23" in the subject line.
Monday, February 22, 12 noon
The Metrics of Place vs. Space – What I (Re)Learned on Vacation
Speaker: Robert Tullis, Vice President - Director of Design, GID Urban Development Group
Rob Tullis, architect and developer, has been on vacation to some interesting cities lately. This October he made his first pilgrimage to Rome; and he’s visited London, Edinburgh, Paris, Venice, Florence, Los Angeles, Savannah, and Charleston in the last few years. He’s also been reading some of the great thinkers on urban placemaking. Somewhere between sipping an espresso in Piazza Navona and re-reading Kevin Lynch’s “The Image of the City,” he’s gained new insight on what he’s been practicing in years of creating mixed-use developments. Equal parts travelogue and lecture, Rob will talk about the urban spaces he’s seen lately, offer some thoughts about what makes them distinctive places for people, and discuss how we might measure our efforts as designers of such places.
Monday, March 22, 12 noon
Defining Memory and Place in California
Speaker: Donna Graves, Loeb Fellow, Harvard Graduate School of Design
Donna Graves is a social historian, cultural planner and writer based in Berkeley, California. Her areas of expertise encompass strategies for using historic preservation, art, urban design and community engagement to explore local histories and the significance of place. She served as project director for the Rosie the Riveter Memorial: Honoring American Women's Labor During WWII in Richmond, California where she oversaw the development of the first national monument to women's contribution to the home front. Graves was a key collaborator with National Park Service and City of Richmond in conceiving Rosie the Riveter/WWII Home Front National Historical Park and has continued to conduct significant research on Richmond’s history and develop public projects that involve the community in telling the City’s history and connecting it to current issues. In 2008, the National Park Service and Richmond’s Historic Preservation Advisory Committee awarded her their inaugural “Home Front Award”. Graves is currently project director of Preserving California’s Japantowns, a statewide research project funded by the California State Library that documents pre-WWII Japanese American communities across California. The project’s efforts to catalyze local awareness and stewardship of these often forgotten landmarks were recognized by the Vernacular Architecture Forum’s inaugural Advocacy Award in 2008.
Monday, April 26, 12 noon
Worcester, the Creative City: A Case Study of Cultural
Urban Development
Speakers: Erin Williams, Cultural Development Officer for the City of Worcester and Executive Director of the Worcester Cultural Coalition, and Adele Fleet Bacow, President of Community Partners Consultants, Inc.
Adele Fleet Bacow author of Designing the City: A Guide for Advocates and Public Officials, will speak about her firm's work in creating the Worcester Arts District Master Plan and Economic Development Strategy. This award-winning project represents a most unusual and productive partnership among 24 public and private agencies and organizations in the city. Erin Williams, will speak about Lessons in Creative City Making: The Worcester Cultural Coalition’s philosophy is to cultivate, nurture and reward creativity anytime, anywhere. Through creative thinking and problem solving a partnership between the city of Worcester and sixty eight cultural organizations has resulted in an old industrial city transforming itself into one that encourages innovation.