Every year, the Community Design Collaborative recognizes one of its many compelling Design Grants for excellence in design, collaboration, and community impact with its Community Design Award. We’re pleased to announce our three finalists for 2015. The Collaborative will announce the winner at AIA Philadelphia’s Excellence in Design Awards on Wednesday, October 14th at the National Museum of American Jewish History.
Edwin M. Stanton School Advisory Council/SOSNA | Greening Stanton
E.M. Stanton Elementary School in Southwest Center City has become the focus of a neighborhood campaign to recognize and enhance a strong community school. The Collaborative’s volunteer team worked with the community to develop a plan for greening Stanton’s crumbling asphalt schoolyard, adding a entrance pergola, stage, a nature play garden, and a science garden. Stanton has since received a grant of over $300,000 for green stormwater improvements from the Trust for Public Land.
Hope Partnership for Education | Conceptual Design for Community Open Space
Fairhill’s Hope Partnership for Education changes lives by educating middle schoolers and adults. Using “the power of light” as a guiding concept, the Collaborative volunteer team developed a toolkit to revitalize a large vacant lot across from the school and re-engage the community step by step with lighting, colorful graphics that span street and sidewalk, plantings, and light-reflective paving, seating and fencing. The community engagement that began with the design process continued with Hope Partnership’s first community cleanup day in June 2015.
Nicetown CDC | Nicetown Sports Court
North Philadelphia’s Nicetown CDC plans to use an empty, 3-acre right of way beneath the elevated Roosevelt Boulevard to make the neighborhood more walkable, active, and fun. The Collaborative's conceptual plan lays out a lively community sports court with basketball courts, a soccer field, a skate park, rain gardens, a public green, and a plaza for food trucks and seasonal farm stands. Along with managing stormwater and creating new neighborhood opportunities for physical activity, the sports court will reanimate a quite section of Nicetown’s Germantown Commercial Corridor.
We couldn't do what we do without our committed volunteers. Click on the titles above to see who served on each volunteer team and the value of services they contributed to further the goals of nonprofits and neighborhoods.
