Whether you became a design activist with sideburns, a Mohawk, or a tattoo, be assured that pro bono design never goes out of style! At Thursday’s Urban Energy Kick-Off, five speakers with deep roots in pro bono design, a ‘70s-era documentary, and an audience of 200 design professionals, community leaders, and community development experts sparked a conversation that spanned the past and the future of community design.
Alan Greenberger, AIA, Philadelphia’s Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development, recalled his first taste of pro bono design as a Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute architecture student at Troy Professional Assistance. His takeaway lesson from that early experience was, “Community involvement is how cities must run. For moral and practical reasons this how things must work.” “Quality design has not been seen in this country as something that lower-income neighborhoods deserve… this organization reminds people that yes, you deserve it,” he added.
Don Matzkin, AIA, also recounted his own first pro bono design experience working with a community group in Lancaster, PA, “There was nothing I could do for them independent of what they could do for me.” Don, who offered the Collaborative’s founding committee his conference room table, copious amounts of popcorn, and good advice, said that his guiding concept for the practice of pro bono design is mutual aid. “Maybe this is my anarchistic tendencies coming out,” Don admitted, “but we’re all in it together no matter where we are or who we are. People have to tell us what’s going on to help us design.”
Emanuel Kelly, FAIA, echoed the theme. He helped build a relationship between community leaders in North Philadelphia and local architects through a Regional/Urban Design Action Team (R/UDAT) in 1989. This community-based design charrette program brought a team of experts to the neighborhoods surrounding North Philadelphia Station. Through the R/UDAT, Kelly says, “we got to know community leaders and a trust developed… After all the ideas were generated and the guests went home, we asked ourselves, ‘how do we continue all this energy? We eventually realized that we could take that enthusiasm and rejuvenate a community design center.”
Susan Frankel, the Collaborative’s first executive director, noted that “community design takes a lot of time and effort.” She still recalls the impressive energy of the volunteers who started the Collaborative, “They were always willing to give more, do more, and it seems like that is still the case!” Susan urged the audience to appreciate the value of direct contact, even as social media emerges as a new advocacy tool. “It’s great to see you meeting face-to-face, talking eye-to-eye.”
John Kromer, Senior Distinguished Scholar at the Fels Institute and former director of OHCD, advised pro bono designers to “think about new opportunities.” He predicted that the next wave of development energy will be focused on urban places. “All the trends that people associate with urban places—population loss, dying industries, and empty downtowns—have reversed themselves,” John noted. “As we emerge out of the recession, we’ll see that central cities present the most development opportunities.”
As the audience and the panelists shared their thoughts on the future of design activism, they identified several areas of untapped potential in Philly: nonprofit board service, a more robust design advocacy effort via social media, attention to neglected parts in the region such as inner ring suburbs, and increased political involvement by designers. John Kromer, who emphasized the opportunities for new appointments to local boards and commissions in this election year, closed by saying, “we can take a giant step if we’re ambitious about it.”
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