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Wednesday, 29 May 2013 07:29 |
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The Cultural Landscape Foundation and Pennsylvania Horticultural Society just organized a conference on Civic Horticulture in Philadelphia. Three panels of leading landscape architects discussed the organizational, aesthetic, and productive potential of horticulture. They explained how it is shaping contemporary civic spaces. They presented on three major topics: The Street, Productive Gardens, and Parks and Plazas. Through their own projects, these design leaders showed how these types of places are evolving to meet the needs of cities today.
Urban parks were originally conceived to provide an escape from the city. Today, urbanites generally consider the city an attractive and livable place. Green infrastructure is no longer developed in opposition to the urban landscape, but rather as an integrated and meaningful component of it. Panelists discussed how recent projects are rejuvenating existing parks and plazas and creating new ones for the contemporary city. Horticulture is critical to defining the function and experience of these civic spaces.
A New Civic Horticulture
Creating civic spaces for urban residents today may be a more elusive task than it was before. As Keith McPeters, principal at landscape architecture firm Gustafson Guthrie Nichol (GGN), pointed out, previous movements for civic improvement, like the City Beautiful movement, “had centralized definitions that could inform what ‘civic’, ‘beautiful’ or ‘improved nature’ might mean.” Today’s sustainability movement is less definitive. It has taken on many “different meanings expressed through confusing terminologies about nature, landscape, ecology, and habitat.” What then are the standards of a new civic horticulture?
GGN has based their civic projects on a design approach McPeters calls “contemporary picturesque.” This approach respects both the historic principles of the picturesque that are rooted in the creation of scenic spaces and the contemporary need for sustainable, functional, flexible, and community-oriented places. Horticulture is essential to realizing this vision. In their civic projects, GGN explores how plants can both define and organize a space while providing a unique experience, asking “can horticulture create (civic) spaces in the city and be more than pragmatic, like a simple flat green roof?”
GGN incorporates horticulture into civic spaces both as a device to frame and organize space, and as a way to enhance the visitor experience. For Lurie Garden in Chicago, GGN partnered with planting designer Piet Oudolf to create a perennial garden on the waterfront downtown (see image above). An abundance of planting lines the walkways and frames views of both the city and the water. These plantings create a tapestry of color and texture that provides year-round interest. Due to its spectacular quality, the park has become one of the most popular components of the larger Millennium Park.
GGN also employs horticulture in civic spaces as an organizational device for accommodating multiple competing programs within a single site. Centennial Park in Nashville is on the former site of the 1897 Centennial Exposition. In order to account for both historical and contemporary uses of the site as well as new requirements, GGN created a design that would “lend clarity while maintaining complexity.” The space had to be exceptionally scenic as well in order to showcase Nashville’s horticultural heritage. A variety of plantings throughout the site both distinguish and activate various areas and contribute to the park’s overall aesthetic.
Everything Olde is Nouveau Again
In answer to her own question, “Who’s to say what’s civic horticulture?,” Susan Weiler, FASLA, principal at OLIN, said one important manifestation is the rejuvenation of existing major parks and plazas. In Philadelphia, a rich heritage of civic horticulture dates back to William Penn’s Greene Country Towne, which carved five great squares out of the wilderness. The City Beautiful movement and other efforts subsequently led to the creation of several large civic spaces. This existing landscape and horticultural infrastructure has allowed for a “civic renaissance” over the past decade.
Since 2003, OLIN has been working on a redevelopment plan of the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. Originally conceived as a grand public boulevard in the early 20th century, the iconic parkway devolved into a highway dividing the city after the mid-century. Today, OLIN, in various partnerships with the city and private entities, is realizing a plan that has transformed the parkway into a linear park and sculpture garden that forms the spine of the Museum District and connects to the larger Fairmount Park system. The plan includes several components with a strategy aimed at “transforming a big place a project at a time.”
OLIN has created gardens for the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Rodin Museum, and Barnes Foundation. Horticulture plays a major role in integrating these museums into one continuous attractive system. Maintaining and supplementing the old growth trees lining the parkway provides shade and emphasizes the linearity and continuity of the park. Plantings in the adjacent public gardens tie into the parkway’s landscape and provide year-round interest.
Two other manifestations of civic horticulture are the improvement of disadvantaged and decaying areas, and the protection and replenishment of natural resources. Since 2009, OLIN has supported a volunteer effort at the Richard Allen Prep Charter School, helping students express their individual idea of what a garden is. This project creates access to green space and garden cultivation for those who lack it. OLIN also participated in Infill Philadelphia: Soak It Up!, a design competition to re-envision stormwater management throughout the city. Their winning proposal demonstrates how green stormwater infrastructure can conserve resources while transforming neighborhoods.
Civic Horticulture in the World of Wirtz
Peter Wirtz, Director of Wirtz International Landscape Architects, explained why it is still important to know about horticulture despite the fact that European design culture predominantly considers it “old fashioned.” Whereas horticulture used to constitute half of a landscape architect’s education, the majority of schools no longer emphasize training students in the basic knowledge of plants. Landscape architects in Europe are consequently not equipped to address warming climate demands, weakened habitats, and declining bird and insect populations. Nor do they have the knowledge of drought- and salt- resistant plants necessary for designing effectively in cities.
Wirtz himself was inspired decades ago by a trip to the Soviet Union in 1970 where he observed an appreciation for urban green space evident in the abundant plantings in street medians and the mixed use of fruiting and ornamental trees. He subsequently created a design-build practice defined by the “absolute dominance of softscape over hardscape.” Advanced construction knowledge and a respect for horticulture informs creative design at Wirtz International. Planting defines the quality of civic spaces that are created to be escapes from the “bombardment” of city life. These oases deny the orthogonal urban grid and transform bodily space in microcosms or “rooms” secluded with plantings.
The structure of the plantings reflects two main ideas used throughout Wirtz International’s work. The first is that a “simple (planting) palette can create and brand the identity of a park.” This is evident on Albert II laan, a boulevard in Brussels, Belgium, where two different species of evenly spaced trees line the the linear park’s diagonal path system.
The second is that an “organic composition with a robust planting palette can survive time.” This is evident at the Camillo Torres student housing complex in Leuven, Belgium, where a low maintenance scheme with dense plantings is still thriving more than ten years later.
This is part three of a three part series on the Civic Horticulture conference. Read part one, The Street, and part two, Productive Gardens.
This guest post is by Shannon Leahy, former ASLA summer intern and recent Master’s of Landscape Architecture graduate, University of Pennsylvania.
Image credits: (1) ASLA 2008 Professional Design Award. Lurie Garden at Millennium Park. Gustafson Guthrie Nichol / Gustafson Guthrie Nichol, (2) Centennial Park / Gustafson Guthrie Nichol, (3) Barnes Foundation / Design Philadelphia, (4) Infill Design Competition / OLIN Studio, (5) Albert II laan / Wirtz International (6) Camillo Torres / Wirtz International
 
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Tuesday, 28 May 2013 08:43 |
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The Cultural Landscape Foundation and Pennsylvania Horticultural Society just organized a conference on Civic Horticulture in Philadelphia. Three panels of leading landscape architects discussed the organizational, aesthetic, and productive potential of horticulture. They explained how it is shaping contemporary civic spaces. They presented on three major topics: The Street, Productive Gardens, and Parks and Plazas. Through their own projects, these design leaders showed how these types of places are evolving to meet the needs of cities today.
Productive gardens have become increasingly popular components of the urban landscape. Unused green space and vacant land are often repurposed to grow fresh food for urban dwellers. Panelists discussed ways to enhance these efforts and foster other productive uses of civic spaces. New partnerships provide opportunities to examine larger-scale food production, community-based development, and ecological services. The performative qualities of plants make horticulture an essential part of these explorations.
The Productive Garden
Landscape architect Elena Brescia, ASLA, partner at SCAPE/Landscape Architecture, described cities as “environmental and cultural systems where landscape, beyond formal, economic, and aesthetic interests, can generate a critical participatory effect among citizens.” Landscape offers new ways of intervening in city fabric at the local level using stewardship, grassroots participation, and neighborhood identity as generators of community-based change. SCAPE has experimented with projects both imagined and real that explore this dynamic and the broader potential of what it means to be “productive.” For Brescia, productivity stems not only from a horticultural basis but from a participatory and programatic standpoint as well.
SCAPE’s project, Oyster-tecture, part of the MoMA’s Rising Currents exhibition in 2010, proposed a self-generative, multi-layered, and multi-functional system rooted in oyster production for Brooklyn’s Gowanus Canal (see image above). Oysters are native to the canal and were once an important food source in the community. They filter water and naturally agglomerate into reefs. They have the potential to clean the canal’s polluted waters and attenuate waves, addressing issues with water quality and rising tides.
With Oyster-tecture, SCAPE proposed to transform a historically relevant food source into a tool for generating ecological resilience and community-based development. The project argues that the reef armature fabricated from a series of piles supporting woven ropes can provide the oysters with an initial place to grow and propagate. They will eventually form a series of new reef islands that will provide food and habitat for other animals as well as areas for work, research, and recreation for the surrounding community.
SCAPE’s work on the 103rd Street Community Garden in East Harlem also expands on notions of productivity. Completed in partnership with the Bette Midler’s New York Restoration Project, it’s a positive model for a community garden. The project is both a small-scale agricultural system supported by cultivation plots and rainwater capture and a series of play spaces that accommodate a variety of age groups and activities within a small site. It was a productive catalyst for block revitalization and community participation and has become a neighborhood asset. SCAPE also conceptualized and designed the project so it could be built mostly by local volunteers.
Re-imagining Victory Gardens
Mia Lehrer, FASLA, landscape planner and principal at Mia Lehrer + Associates, provided a definition of “civic horticulture” as “community gardening.” For Lehrer, who focuses much of her work on food production, horticulture is about education and empowerment. Productive gardens and their related systems and infrastructure have the potential to rectify the disconnect between disadvantaged urban communities and their food sources.
The prevalence of food deserts in urban environments has been growing. These food deserts have contributed to the escalating obesity epidemic. Unsettling statistics show the rate of U.S. children contracting chronic health conditions related to obesity more than doubling, from 12.8 percent in 1994 to 26.6 percent in 2006. A majority of these children are located in impoverished parts of the inner city, which lack access to fresh food. Many of them do not know where their food comes from or how it is made. Lehrer believes that education and empowerment are imperative to addressing this “Does ketchup grow on trees?” scenario. Landscape architects can play an important role in designing places and systems that help people better connect to their personal health because their “work is about many things, including place, making, healing, beauty, people, cities.”
Lehrer’s practice is experimenting with the “S, M, L, XL” scales of productive gardens, from residential to commercial farming, in Los Angeles. Urban agriculture in the city is moving beyond the scale of the traditional victory garden to consider the larger urban environment and regional food distribution systems. Though the vast surrounding agricultural region produces 50 percent of the fresh fruit and vegetables for the United States and Canada, the city keeps only 1 percent of it and imports the rest. Transforming this “outside-in” strategy to an “inside-out” one requires a reevaluation of the policies that currently structure food distribution, including everything from large-scale agricultural systems to zoning regulations for residential productive gardens and provisions for bartering and selling homegrown food. Lehrer’s “Small” projects include a community garden for the Jordan Downs Housing Project with enough acreage to successfully meet the needs of the entire neighborhood. MAS (“more”), an “extra large” project, is a non-profit food distribution service that designs farmers markets with a focus on providing equal access to fresh local food.
Regardless of the scale and intention, horticulture is an important feature of each project. Fresh food production brings people into contact with the plants that support their basic health. However, not all of Lehrer’s interest in civic horticulture is explicitly about food production. Unique and performative aspects of plants are utilized in other projects. A five-acre “outdoor collection” for the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles features a growing wall and an abundance of both native and non-native plants chosen to attract the most species possible. At Orange County Great Park, lima bean fields are remediating a disturbed portion of land. These “medium” and “large” projects demonstrate some of the other productive potential of plants in civic spaces.
From City Beautiful to City Functional
Thomas Woltz, FASLA, landscape architect and principal at Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects (NBW), believes that “horticultural acts are civic acts.” Attitudes toward gardening and plant cultivation vary dramatically and the methodologies used can have significant implications, both positive and negative, for communities, wildlife, and public health. It’s critical to the contemporary practice of landscape architecture to cultivate responsible management strategies, plant choices, and design goals. These can help establish new definitions of productivity that can in turn create “hybridized concepts of gardens, agriculture, and restoration ecology.”
The projects of NBW reflect a desire to respect aesthetic quality while establishing valuable habitat in order to engender a public sense of stewardship and investment in the landscape. Projects are developed with the purpose of fostering a “new form of civic horticulture combining pleasure with responsibility.” Woltz sees civic horticulture as having developed from the City Beautiful to the “City Functional.” He posits that “the next step might focus on productive gardens that operate at the scale of performative urban landscape systems.” NBW has been working with scientists, ornithologists, and conservation biologists to develop rigorous designs that are not only beautiful but also “envisioned with an idea of productivity with an ecological resonance.”
For Woltz, ecological services are a critical part of any landscape’s productivity, regardless of scale. NBW designed a small biodiversity garden for a Manhattan residence that emphasized the creation of bird habitat. Planted with pollinator attractors and nesting and feeding niches, the garden at the Carnegie Hill House is a haven for several species of birds and butterflies. It meets the family’s needs as well with features like a secluded seating area, a sandbox for children, and a green wall for herbs. The design won an ASLA Professional Design Honor Award for successfully creating “a tiny outpost of a much bigger adjacent landscape.”
A larger project at the Medlock Aimes Winery and Tasting Room in Sonoma, California combines ecological services with larger-scale food production. For the biodynamic, organic, solar-powered winery’s outdoor tasting room, NBW designed a productive garden tailored to pairings for tastings. It’s coupled with a stormwater management system. The variety of plantings include native rushes in the swales and an old-growth olive grove transplanted to the site for conservation.
NBW also designed a more traditional productive garden for a public housing complex in Charlottesville, Virginia. The Urban Farm engages residents in growing organic vegetables in the underutilized green space in their community. Residents work by the hour in exchange for tickets they can trade in for fresh produce. The surplus is sold at farmers markets. One extraordinary feature is that the plots are maintained entirely through rain harvested water capture.
This is part two of a three part series on the Civic Horticulture conference. Read part three, Parks and Plazas.
This guest post is by Shannon Leahy, former ASLA summer intern and recent Master’s of Landscape Architecture graduate, University of Pennsylvania.
Image credits: (1) Oyster-tecture / SCAPE/Landscape Architecture, (2) 103rd Street Community Garden in East Harlem / Melissa C. Morris blog, (3) Jordan Downs Housing Project Community Garden / Mia Lehrer + Associates, (4) Orange County Great Park Urban Farm / Mia Lehrer + Associates, (5) Carnegie Hill House by Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects / Eric Piasecki, (6) Medlock Aimes Winery and Tasting Room / Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects
 
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Tuesday, 28 May 2013 08:03 |
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The Cultural Landscape Foundation and Pennsylvania Horticultural Society just organized a conference on Civic Horticulture in Philadelphia. Three panels of leading landscape architects discussed the organizational, aesthetic, and productive potential of horticulture. They explained how it is shaping contemporary civic spaces. They presented on three major topics: The Street, Productive Gardens, and Parks and Plazas. Through their own projects, these design leaders showed how these types of places are evolving to meet the needs of cities today.
The Street
For decades, decentralized development resulted in automobile-centric streets, but today, cities are re-purposing their streetscapes in a variety of ways, converting them into multi-functional civic spaces. Panelists discussed how these underused or marginal areas can become integral parts of urban infrastructure, providing pedestrian mobility, valuable habitat, and other amenities. Horticulture is an important element in defining the spatial and programmatic quality of streetscapes. Planting mitigates scale, provides continuity and structure, and creates the aesthetic experience.
1111 Lincoln Road, Miami Beach
Landscape architect Raymond Jungles, FASLA, founding principal of Raymond Jungles, Inc., demonstrated how pedestrian malls can use horticulture to reintegrate nature into the built environment. Jungles helped reclaim one of America’s first pedestrian malls, historic Lincoln Road Mall in Miami Beach (see image above). He partnered with developer Robert Wennett and architects Herzog & de Meuron to convert a four-lane road back into a pedestrian space and “bring nature into the human environment.”
The main idea for Lincoln Road was to bring the Everglades back into the city. The design achieves this with an abundance of local fauna and a water system that provides both aesthetic and practical functions. Horticulture is the centerpiece of the project. The planting palette displays a variety of shade tree species including native Live Oak, Bald Cypress, and Pond Apple. Placid biofiltration pools reflect light and shadow, creating a pleasant atmosphere while performing maintenance functions with minimal energy. The planting lends a wild and casual appearance to the mall while supporting a space for retail and both planned and unplanned programs. It also provides habitat for birds and turtles. Locals have nicknamed it the “Urban Glade.”
A Street is a Landscape is a Park is a Trail
Lincoln Road may owe some of its success to contemporary attitudes toward urban space. As another landscape architect, Matthew Urbanski, principal at Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates (MVVA), pointed out, pedestrian malls were not as popular a few decades ago. When Lawrence Halprin designed Charlottesville’s Downtown Mall in the mid 1970s, retail was at that time moving out of the city centers and into the surrounding suburbs. Decentralized development did not emphasize pairing pedestrian mobility with attractive amenities. Today, as more people move back into cities and with space at a premium, developers understand the importance of grouping multiple amenities together in one place. Changing attitudes are allowing for experimentation, with hybrid streetscapes combining pedestrian paths and parks into a variety of public spaces. Horticulture is playing a significant role in defining the quality and program of these spaces.
Cities increasingly lack access to the land or economic resources to create public space in the model of Central Park. Green space is more commonly developing out of the imaginative reuse of abandoned land in former industrial areas and along major roadways and waterfronts. Streets, often solely used for vehicular traffic, have become an underutilized resource. Re-imagined to provide economic and ecological services, these “marginal spaces become critical parts of the city’s civic infrastructure or connective tissue,” argued Urbanski. They present an opportunity to develop “synergistic relationships between streetscapes, trails, plazas, and linear parks.”
In addition to providing better mobility for pedestrians and bikers, hybrid streetscapes can accommodate multiple programs, such as the farmer’s market and children’s play areas. An example is the shared space in MVVA’s design for Union Square Park in New York City. These spaces can become virtual oases and perform vital ecological functions. Plantings provide structure and continuity while lending character and interest. MVVA’s Allegheny Riverfront Park in Pittsburgh successfully transformed a highway “hellscape” into a two-tiered waterfront park. An abundance of native species fill the lower tier closest to the water. The upper tier is a transitional space planted with orderly rows of trees along paths for pedestrians and bikers. It serves as a linear plaza that bridges the city and the waterfront.
MVVA is currently developing Hudson Park and Boulevard in New York, a mid-block boulevard that is both significantly wider than the average sidewalk but narrower than a traditional park. Plantings define various programmatic spaces fragmented into islands and scattered throughout the length of the park. Connected via the continuous linear path system spanning the block, they provide shady, flexible green spaces. The park will be an important spine of pedestrian mobility and connectivity downtown. It is expected to serve as both a public amenity and a catalyst for economic development.
The Biophilic Street
Henry White, FASLA, a landscape architect and principal at HM White Site Architecture, also believes horticulture is critical to constructing civic spaces. White subscribes to the biophilia hypothesis: humans have a biological need for nature and that they are attracted to certain habitats and settings in the natural world. The structure and order of natural communities evident in, for instance, the monocultures of northeast woodlands, have an appealing and comforting visual clarity. These elements provide important clues for structuring built spaces like streetscapes.
For White, streets are the primary influence in establishing a sense of place in cities. Successful streetscapes are memorable because they provide the right combination of public amenities within a spatial framework that people can comfortably navigate. Significant streets and boulevards such as the Champs-Elysees in Paris and Las Rambles in Barcelona are notable because they successfully manage the monumentality of their expanse and create desirable civic spaces. Colonnades of trees and other organizational planting strategies emphasize the linear nature of these streets and create transitional spaces between buildings, pedestrian paths, parking, and vehicular traffic. These allees support the gridded condition of cities and are the “park of the parkway.”
White’s practice focuses on extending this design sensibility to streetscapes and other civic spaces. Trees, the “lungs of the city,” and other plantings are primary elements in these designs. When systematically laid out, trees structure spaces and calm the inherent urban visual chaos of their surroundings. Plantings provide ecological and functional services. For HM White’s design of Oriole Park at Camden Yards, double, triple, and quadruple rows of trees organize space and direct circulation. The variety of species provide shade and interest for visitors. For the upgrade of the Mosholu Parkway in the Bronx, planted bio-filtration areas function like sponges in the unused parts of the road’s shoulder. They perform a critical maintenance function while providing habitat for various species.
This is part one in a three part series on the Civic Horticulture conference. Read part two: Productive Gardens.
This guest post is by Shannon Leahy, former ASLA summer intern and recent Master’s of Landscape Architecture graduate, University of Pennsylvania.
Image credits: (1) Lincoln Road / Raymond Jungles, Inc, (2) Allegheny Riverfront Park / MVVA, (3) Mosholu Parkway / HM White Site Architecture
 
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Thursday, 23 May 2013 13:45 |
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Inspiration Kitchens in Garfield Park, Chicago, took home the Bruner Foundation’s Rudy Bruner Award for Urban Excellence (RBA) gold medal, which comes with $50,000 in support for the project. Four other projects won silver medals and $10,000. More than 90 projects were submitted from more than 30 states.
The biennial award celebrates “urban places distinguished by quality design and contributions to the social, economic, and communal vitality of our nation’s cities.” The first awards were given in 1987. Together, the Bruner Foundation has awarded 67 projects $1.2 million in support.
Inspiration Kitchens is an “entrepreneurial, nonprofit initiative” on Chicago’s west side. In an economically-challenged part of the city, this LEED Gold certified facility, with a 80-seat restaurant, serves free and affordable healthy meals.
Overlooking Garfield Park‘s lagoons, the restaurant features a “constantly changing menu of regional American cuisine with southern and soul food influences.” The restaurant prides itself on being “earth-friendly, including our use of local ingredients, solar-heated water and sun-sensitive kitchen lighting.”
There, a team organized by Inspiration Corporation, the group behind the project, offers a “thirteen-week training program that helps individuals gain skills and experience leading to food service industry employment.”
Shannon Stewart, executive director and CEO, Inspiration Corporation, said: “We are proud of our success in creating meaningful connections in Garfield Park and are grateful that the award will help us continue to engage with members of this under-served community.” Inspiration Corporation provides social services to Chicagoans hit by homelessness and poverty.
Four other projects won silver medals and $10,000:
The Congo Street Initiative in Dallas, Texas, by buildingcommunityWORKSHOP, a non-profit community design center, rehabilitated five houses and constructed a sixth for transitional housing. The housing is LEED Platinum-certified. A green street was created in collaboration with the residents. Learn more about this project at Metropolis.
Louisville Waterfront Park in Louisville, Kentucky, is an 85-acre urban park that re-purposed industrial land and connected the city with the Ohio River. The Urban Land Institute (ULI) recently named it one of the ten best parks in the country. Landscape architecture firm Hargreaves Associates created the master plan for the park and also designed the Lincoln Memorial there. Learn more about this project at Metropolis.
The Steel Yard in Providence, Rhode Island, designed by landscape architecture firm Klopfer Martin Design Group, is one of the more interesting urban parks to appear in years. The 3.5-acre park in a transformed historic steel fabrication plant won an ASLA professional design award in 2011. The non-profit that runs the site offers a range of creative classes and events. Learn more about the park.
Lastly, Via Verde in Bronx, New York, by Jonathan Rose Companies and Phipps Houses, is a 222-unit, LEED Gold certified, affordable housing development. The project has won numerous architecture awards. The landscape architecture was created by Lee Weintraub, FASLA. Learn more about this project at Metropolis.
The 2013 RBA selection committee included: Mayor Mick Cornett, Oklahoma City; Ann Coulter, Owner, A. Coulter Consulting; Walter Hood, FASLA, Principal, Hood Design; Cathy Simon – Design Principal, Perkins+Will; Susan Szenasy – Editor-in-Chief, Metropolis Magazine; and Jane Werner, Executive Director, Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh.
Learn more: A blog series on Metropolis’ web site is chronicling the 2013 RBA process, and later this year the Bruner Foundation will publish a book of case studies on the winning projects.
Image credits: (1) Inspiration Kitchen / Inspiration Corporation, (2) Louisville Waterfront Park / Louisville Waterfront Park Corporation, (3) Congo Street Initiative / bcWORKSHOP, (4) The Steel Yard Park / Klopfer Martin, (5) Via Verde / © David Sundberg/Esto
 
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Thursday, 23 May 2013 13:45 |
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Inspiration Kitchens in Garfield Park, Chicago, took home the Bruner Foundation’s Rudy Bruner Award for Urban Excellence (RBA) gold medal, which comes with $50,000 in support for the project. Four other projects won silver medals and $10,000. More than 90 projects were submitted from more than 30 states.
The biennial award celebrates “urban places distinguished by quality design and contributions to the social, economic, and communal vitality of our nation’s cities.” The first awards were given in 1987. Together, the Bruner Foundation has awarded 67 projects $1.2 million in support.
Inspiration Kitchens is an “entrepreneurial, nonprofit initiative” on Chicago’s west side. In an economically-challenged part of the city, this LEED Gold certified facility, with a 80-seat restaurant, serves free and affordable healthy meals.
Overlooking Garfield Park‘s lagoons, the restaurant features a “constantly changing menu of regional American cuisine with southern and soul food influences.” The restaurant prides itself on being “earth-friendly, including our use of local ingredients, solar-heated water and sun-sensitive kitchen lighting.”
There, a team organized by Inspiration Corporation, the group behind the project, offers a “thirteen-week training program that helps individuals gain skills and experience leading to food service industry employment.”
Shannon Stewart, executive director and CEO, Inspiration Corporation, said: “We are proud of our success in creating meaningful connections in Garfield Park and are grateful that the award will help us continue to engage with members of this under-served community.” Inspiration Corporation provides social services to Chicagoans hit by homelessness and poverty.
Four other projects won silver medals and $10,000:
The Congo Street Initiative in Dallas, Texas, by buildingcommunityWORKSHOP, a non-profit community design center, rehabilitated five houses and constructed a sixth for transitional housing. The housing is LEED Platinum-certified. A green street was created in collaboration with the residents. Learn more about this project at Metropolis.
Louisville Waterfront Park in Louisville, Kentucky, is an 85-acre urban park that re-purposed industrial land and connected the city with the Ohio River. The Urban Land Institute (ULI) recently named it one of the ten best parks in the country. Landscape architecture firm Hargreaves Associates created the master plan for the park and also designed the Lincoln Memorial there. Learn more about this project at Metropolis.
The Steel Yard in Providence, Rhode Island, designed by landscape architecture firm Klopfer Martin Design Group, is one of the more interesting urban parks to appear in years. The 3.5-acre park in a transformed historic steel fabrication plant won an ASLA professional design award in 2011. The non-profit that runs the site offers a range of creative classes and events. Learn more about the park.
Lastly, Via Verde in Bronx, New York, by Jonathan Rose Companies and Phipps Houses, is a 222-unit, LEED Gold certified, affordable housing development. The project has won numerous architecture awards. The landscape architecture was created by Lee Weintraub, FASLA. Learn more about this project at Metropolis.
The 2013 RBA selection committee included: Mayor Mick Cornett, Oklahoma City; Ann Coulter, Owner, A. Coulter Consulting; Walter Hood, FASLA, Principal, Hood Design; Cathy Simon – Design Principal, Perkins+Will; Susan Szenasy – Editor-in-Chief, Metropolis Magazine; and Jane Werner, Executive Director, Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh.
Learn more: A blog series on Metropolis’ web site is chronicling the 2013 RBA process, and later this year the Bruner Foundation will publish a book of case studies on the winning projects.
Image credits: (1) Inspiration Kitchen / Inspiration Corporation, (2) Louisville Waterfront Park / Louisville Waterfront Park Corporation, (3) Congo Street Initiative / bcWORKSHOP, (4) The Steel Yard Park / Klopfer Martin, (5) Via Verde / © David Sundberg/Esto
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