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Placemaking: The Latest Architecture and News

Gentrification's Image Problem and How It Has Been Villified

The idea of revitalizing a public space by bringing improvement that brings people together should not generate suspicion or fear. However, specific examples of places that have seen the cost of living greatly increase after their revitalization have been creating paradoxes. After all, does this "new villain" called gentrification have any relation to placemaking?

The answer, unfortunately, is yes. Although it's not a direct relation of cause and effect, it is impossible to deny the tenuous line between the two concepts. By definition, gentrification, or "ennoblement," refers to the social, cultural, and economic improvement of a neighborhood or, on a larger scale, of an entire region. Placemaking is the process of planning quality public spaces that contribute to the well-being of the local community. The concepts may be similar, but the methods and consequences of the two are very different.

Knight Cities Challenge: Open Call for Civic Innovators around the Country for Their Best Idea

From Charlotte, North Carolina, to San Jose, California, cities around the country are looking to address major challenges and build more successful communities. The Knight Cities Challenge, which opens today, is an invitation to engage in that process. It asks civic innovators to answer the question: What’s your best idea to make cities more successful?

2017 Rudy Bruner Award for Urban Excellence: Call for Entries

The Rudy Bruner Award for Urban Excellence (RBA) celebrates transformative urban places distinguished by their economic and social contributions to our nation’s cities. Winners offer creative placemaking solutions that transcend the boundaries between architecture, urban design and planning and showcase innovative thinking about American cities. One Gold Medal of $50,000 and four Silver Medals of $10,000 will be awarded. 

Call for Entries: 2017 Rudy Bruner Award for Urban Excellence

The Rudy Bruner Award for Urban Excellence celebrates urban places that are distinguished by quality design and their social and economic contributions to our nation’s cities. Winners offer creative placemaking solutions that transcend the boundaries between architecture, urban design and planning and showcase innovative thinking about American cities.

One Gold Medal of $50,000 and four Silver Medals of $10,000 will be awarded. Projects must be a real place, not just a plan or a program, and be located in the 48 contiguous United States.

2016 Design Matters Conference presented by the Association of Architecture Organizations

The Design Matters Conference presented by the Association of Architecture Organizations is the world’s only dedicated annual meeting that seeks to bring top designers, journalists and civic leaders into exploratory dialogue with those not-for-profit professionals and volunteers charged with creating cultural programs (exhibitions, tours, lectures and symposia, festivals and films, youth outreach) to spur broader public interest in architecture and design.

Call for Entries: Ship Point Pop-Up Design Competition

The City of Victoria invites teams and individuals to submit creative design concepts to temporarily transform Ship Point Plaza, an underutilized paved plaza space along Victoria’s downtown waterfront, into a magnetic and memorable ‘pop-up’ public space during the 2016 summer season.

Open Call: Santa Monica LAGI 2016: Powering Places in Southern California

The Land Art Generator Initiative is delighted to announce that LAGI 2016 will be held in Southern California, with the City of Santa Monica as site partner. This free and open call ideas competition invites individuals or interdisciplinary teams to design a large-scale site-specific work of public art that also serves as clean energy and/or drinking water infrastructure for the City of Santa Monica.

The complete Design Guidelines along with CAD files, photos, and more will be available on January 1, 2016 at http://landartgenerator.org/designcomp

The design site includes the breakwater adjacent to the historic Santa Monica Pier and offers the opportunity to

PUBLIC Platform | What's Your Big Idea ?

In 2016 PUBLIC ideas go into action with FORM’s PUBLIC Platform taking creativity for the common good out into the streets and laneways. PUBLIC Platform invites you – the diverse creative minds from all parts of our community – to create installations and activation prototypes to enliven Claremont town centre during PUBLIC’s annual takeover on 2 & 3 April. Prototypes for citizens and by citizens will reimagine our public spaces and activities, and engage the public to participate, explore and play in their own city. Your big idea could bring our streets to life. Entries are due by January

From the Desert to the City: An Interview with Wendell Burnette

Since childhood, growing up on a farm outside of Nashville, Wendell Burnette has been inspired by nature; indeed, the amplification of the natural site has highlighted his body of work. In the following question and answer by Guy Horton of Metropolis Magazine, the Pheonix-based architect speaks about memories, inspiration and experience.

Wendell Burnette’s journey through architecture has taken him from Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin to some of the most beautiful landscapes in the world, where he has designed a type of architecture that resonates with the power of natural surroundings. It has also taken him to one of the world’s fastest growing cities, Phoenix, Arizona, where his practice, Wendell Burnette Architects, is based and where he calls home. More recently it has brought him to Los Angeles where he is the current Nancy M. & Edward D. Fox Urban Design Critic at the USC School of Architecture. He is also Professor of Practice at The Design School at Arizona State University's Herberger Institute of Design and the Arts.

I spoke with Burnette about his approach to architecture, the importance of direct experience, and the meaning behind his current USC studio, “Earth Curvature”.

Ten Ways to Transform Cities through Placemaking & Public Spaces

In 2011, UN-HABITAT and Project for Public Spaces (PPS) signed a 5-year cooperative agreement to aspire to raise international awareness of the importance of public space in cities, to foster a lively exchange of ideas among partners and to educate a new generation of planners, designers, community activists and other civic leaders about the benefits of what they call the "Placemaking methodology." Their partnership is helping to advance the development of cities where people of all income groups, social classes and ages can live safely, happily and in economic security and in order to reach these ambitious goals, the duo recently released 10 informative steps that cities and communities can take to improve the quality of their public spaces.

To find out what these steps are, read on!