Rudy Bruner Award for Urban Excellence Silver Medal

The Bruner Foundation Inc., sponsor of the Rudy Bruner Award for Urban Excellence (RBA), has announced its 2013 Gold and Silver Medalists, marking twenty-five years of honoring innovative urban placemaking. 

The Bruner Foundation Inc., sponsor of the Rudy Bruner Award for Urban Excellence (RBA), has announced its 2013 Gold and Silver Medalists, marking twenty-five years of honoring innovative urban placemaking. Founded in 1987, the biennial award celebrates urban places distinguished by quality design and contributions to the social, economic, and communal vitality of our nation's cities. A selection committee of six urban experts determined the winners from among five finalists, naming Inspiration Kitchens-Garfield Park (Chicago, IL) the Gold Medalist and recipient of $50,000 to support the project. bcWORKSHOP congratulates Inspiration Kitchens on this accolade recognizing both its innovation and replicability.

Inspiration Kitchens—Garfield Park – Chicago, IL - submitted by Inspiration Corporation. An entrepreneurial, nonprofit initiative on Chicago’s west side that includes an 80-seat restaurant. The LEED Gold certified facility serves free and affordable healthy meals in an economically challenged neighborhood and offers a thirteen-week training program that helps individuals gain skills and experience leading to food service industry employment. “We are honored to have been chosen from the outstanding finalists to receive this award,” says Shannon Stewart, executive director and CEO, Inspiration Corporation. “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 underserved community.”

The four 2013 RBA Silver Medalists each receive $10,000 to support their projects:

Congo Street Initiative - Dallas, TX - submitted by buildingcommunityWORKSHOP. The LEED Gold or Platinum-certified rehabilitation of five houses and the construction of a sixth for transitional housing, as well as a green street designed in collaboration with residents.

Louisville Waterfront Park – Louisville, KY – submitted by Louisville Waterfront Development Corporation. An 85-acre urban park developed over more than two decades that repurposed abandoned industrial land and reconnected the city with the Ohio River.

The Steel Yard - Providence, RI – submitted by Klopfer Martin Design Group. A 3.5-acre historic steel fabrication facility transformed into an environmentally responsible campus for arts education, workforce training, and small-scale manufacturing.

Via Verde - Bronx, NY – submitted by Jonathan Rose Companies and Phipps Houses. A 222-unit, LEED Gold certified, affordable housing development in the Bronx designed as a model for healthy and sustainable urban living.

“Our twenty-fifth anniversary Rudy Bruner Award winners highlight the diversity of innovation in our cities today,” says Simeon Bruner, founder of RBA. “They show us urban excellence at all scales and inspire us with their optimism.”

buildingcommunityWORKSHOP led the Congo Street Initiative in the transformation of a small forgotten street in the Jubilee Park neighborhood of Dallas, and in doing so presented a model for community revitalization. The initiative was built on close collaboration with residents and the successful coordination of partners, funders, and volunteers. "We are honored to have been selected as a finalist and continue to be humbled as we receive a 2013 silver medal," states Brent Brown, bcWORKSHOP's founding director.

Dallas' Streetcars

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Can public, transit-oriented infrastructure be both market-driven and sustainable? Join TJ Bogan Tuesday, November 19th, as he shares how the history of streetcars in the city of Dallas (1872 - 1956) tells us a rich story of civic development and urban expansion driven by private investment for private gain. Before automobiles and publicly funded transportation networks, street rail was the key to urban growth. Benefiting from an era of weak government, foresighted individuals were able to buy up previously exurban land and make it accessible from the urban core, reaping a profit on the increased property value. What was good for them was good for the city.

In the first half of the twentieth century, government regulation increased, and the new accountability proved an insurmountable burden. New modes of transportation were introduced, and automobiles took precedence on the city's streets.

In Dallas, the streetcar rose and fell as a privately funded public amenity. Through analysis of our past, we are now in a position to critique our current subsidized transit infrastructure.

Turtle Creek Corridor

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Isaac Cohen shares his explorations of the Turtle Creek Corridor and how the layering of use, management, and development has created an urban landscape that provides highly variable and often unexpected experiences. Turtle Creek is often seen as a natural object within the urban fabric; as a visual backdrop to the activities of the city. In reality, Turtle Creek is a dynamic and highly manipulated urban waterway that supports a wide variety of recreational, economic, and ecological activity that reveals to us varied ways groups value and use a shared public space.

Join us in exploring the historic and contemporary use and development of Turtle Creek from the scale of the watershed to the development of George Kessler’s plan for the Turtle Creek Parkway.

POP Neighborhood Stories a Place by Design Finalist!

The POP Neighborhood Stories initiative was recognized this past week by SXSW Eco in Austin, TX as one of 15 finalists from 75 applicants in the Place by Design competition. The competition honors good design “having the ability to reflect a community’s culture and values and compels people to engage with their everyday surroundings.” See all of the Place by Design finalists here, and congratulations to the four great winning projects: Ballroom Luminoso, From Blight to Bright, INSITU, and The Looper.

Over the last year, POP Neighborhood Stories has hosted six celebratory events in the Dallas neighborhoods of La Bajada, Dolphin Heights, Wynnewood North, Tenth Street, Mount Auburn, and the Dallas Arts District, reaching over 1,400 total participants. Each event temporarily transforms space in historic neighborhoods into a celebration of each neighborhood's unique culture and development and provides a platform for dialogue about the history and future. This series of events was made possible in part by funding from the National Endowment for the Arts.

We would like to extend our thanks to all of the community members and volunteers that participated in and contributed to these efforts and who make this work possible.

3313 Beall receives AIA Dallas Jury Commendation!

3313 Beall Street, bcWORKSHOP’s first completed sustainABLEhouse in the Dolphin Heights neighborhood, received a jury commendation from the 2013 AIA Dallas Built Design Awards in recognition of outstanding architectural design and achievement. Jennifer Mayfield of bcWORKSHOP was present to accept the award at the Dallas Museum of Art on October 9th. Juror comments included:

“It is important to never lose sight of the social obligation that we have to frame architecture for the public...To have a group of people who are working diligently to create something that would make housing available, to include an extensive participation process, I think is of great importance, and is something we should all be proud of and encourage here in Dallas. I think we have a worldwide problem with housing and this is one way that we can address it successfully.”
— Dan Rockhill, of Studio 804 at the University of Kansas

New sAh Underway

Read about other sustainABLEhouse projects.

Construction drawings have been completed for the first client-driven sustainABLEhouse in Dallas. The client, an 81 year old resident of the Frazier and Bertrand neighborhoods, was brought to the bcWORKSHOP through a partnership with Frazier Revitalization Inc.  FRI enlisted bcW to provide the engagement + design services for the new 750 sf home and its wooded site just blocks from the client's existing home of 29 years.

Engagement + design occurred onsite and at the client's current home over a three week period in July 2013. The client responded very well to the design process, eagerly filling out the initial homework assignment following the first meeting, to help bcW understand his family structure, how he uses his current home, and any specific needs that the forthcoming design could help address.  In subsequent design meetings, the client was whole-heartedly engaged and his growing excitement was clear. Throughout the process, the client was very attentive to considerations such as durability, maintenance, functionality, and budget.  After participating in the design process, the resulting home design will be one that is most suited for the client's personal and family needs.

Over the course of the month, a design was developed that reflects the client's family-focused life and love for his wooded site. The home will sit gently on the site behind an enormous pecan tree and among a mixture of a dozen established bois d'arc and hackberry trees.  A small open porch at the front of the home will greet the street, originally designed at the client's request to host his frequent domino matches. Since design has begun, however, this porch has shifted to become the "card porch" as client's gaming taste has changed (according to the doctor, playing dominoes gives him high blood pressure). The "L" shaped home will wrap around a fenced backyard where the client's grandchildren will be able to safely play away from the street, while additional family members gather in the wide open living, dining, and kitchen space.

Bidding for the construction of the home will now ensue and construction will follow. The goal is to have the client in his new home by the end of the year.

Mount Auburn Stories

Read more about Neighborhood Stories and POP Dallas.

On Saturday, August 17th Neighborhood Stories celebrated the community of Mount Auburn. Since the start of its development in 1907, Mount Auburn has remained a stronghold for East Dallas’ working class residents who have consistently campaigned for the retention and betterment of single-family homes, streets, and parks. Culturally and economically diverse, Mount Auburn’s population has gradually shifted from predominantly Anglo to predominantly Latino. This shift has brought change to the historic neighborhood, with renovated homes and businesses expressing the culture of its current residents. Not immune to inner city problems, the neighborhood has rebounded from the city’s suburban migration in the 1960s and the subsequent increase in crime in order to emerge as a stable, active neighborhood. Though not a historic or conservation district itself, Mount Auburn has certainly benefitted from city ordinances that protect the character of the surrounding areas; however, its success can mainly be attributed to its residents. The strong advocates of years past established, protected, and improved the parks, schools, and quiet connectivity that lend Mount Auburn the peaceful vibrancy it enjoys today.

As part of the Neighborhood Stories series, activities included a bike/walk paseo through the neighborhood, exploring exhibit stations that showcase the physical and social history of Mount Auburn; a community meal with food from local residents; and a sunset screening of the neighborhood film. 

Watch the Mount Auburn film.

Announcing Activating Vacancy

Check out future Activating Vacancy posts here.

Activating Vacancy will explore how design and art can re-imagine the forgotten or neglected spaces in the Tenth Street community as part of a dialogue about what the neighborhood is, was, and could be. Up to six collaborators will be commissioned by bcWORKSHOP to immerse themselves in the community, working with residents and stakeholders to develop and execute six projects. Together, these works will challenge common public perceptions of vacancy in Tenth Street and critically consider historic preservation, among other urban conditions, as they relate to the neighborhood.

A vacant shotgun house retains some of Tenth Street's history
A vacant shotgun house retains some of Tenth Street's history

Diverse artistic media will be applied throughout Tenth Street, exploring sites and issues critical to the neighborhood’s past and future. Through creative interpretation, Activating Vacancy will enable both community members and the larger city to rediscover this culturally and historically significant place. Artists, designers, and arts educators are encouraged to respond to an open Call for Collaboration and submit qualifications to be a part of Activating Vacancy.

Recognized by both the National Register of Historic Places and the City of Dallas Landmark Districts, Tenth Street was founded as a freedman’s town shortly after the Civil War. As a result of segregation, the neighborhood was driven to self-sufficiency, and African-American businesses, churches, and families thrived. When integration opened opportunities in newer suburban areas and South R.L. Thornton Freeway (I-35E) was forced through the heart of the area, the aging Tenth Street neighborhood began to decline. Today, it is both one of Dallas’s oldest and most culturally significant neighborhoods, and one whose history is at greatest risk.

The Initiative begins Fall 2013 and is produced and curated by bcWORKSHOP, a Dallas-based community design center, in partnership with the Dallas CityDesign Studio who will be developing a policy framework and guide for future development for the historic district. Based on this partnership, Activating Vacancy will be part of a unique environment where art can influence, not respond to, policy creation.

Activating Vacancy is made possible through generous funding by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Trinity Trust Foundation, the Dorothea L. Leonhardt Foundaiton and local arts patrons.

Design Sketches

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July 25, 2013: Design Sketches

Reception begins at 5:00 PM, with talks at 5:30. Please RSVP.

Speakers will offer short talks about their work, how it intersects with design, and what they believe is essential to make Dallas a healthier, more vibrant, livable city for all. Confirmed speakers: Ann Bagley, Rob Colburn, Bang Dang, Wanda Dye, Omar Hakeem, Anna Hill, Tipton Housewright, Christa McCall, Cynthia Mulcahy, and David Preziosi.

Presentation themes: What is the true value of preservation in revitalizing communities? How can public art serve as a mirror and amplifier of community identity? When are physical design solutions needed to meet social needs? How can grassroots organizing booster the work of local governments?

Visibly Making an Impact

Learn more about sustainABLEhouse in the RGV.

Still in its first year, sustainABLEhouse LRGV, in partnership with Community Development Corporation of Brownsville (CDCB), has worked with 23 families (totalling 64 people) from 17 different neighborhoods throughout Cameron County. Each family is an integral part of the design process, helping to guide design decisions beginning with the layout of their house and ending with the selection of colors and finishes.

Seven homes are currently under construction, ranging from foundation preparation to final energy efficiency inspection. Two more homes are scheduled to begin construction by the end of July with a steady stream of construction start dates to follow. bcWORKSHOP staff in both the Dallas and Brownsville offices have been working on this effort. We share the responsibilities of design, design reviews, construction drawings, and refinement of program goals and practices. Client meetings and construction administration are carried out by the Brownsville office.

Our design process is initiated by the clients. They elect to work with us by agreeing to complete a brief homework assignment before we sit down to focus on design. The homework is a booklet of questions asking the client such things as general family information, how they use space inside and outside their home, and specific needs that the design can help address. The design process varies depending on if the client chooses a catalog home design or the custom design process.

After our design process and after bcWORKSHOP has completed the construction drawings, we meet with the client and the contractor to discuss the goals of the design, the construction drawings, and the construction process. Once construction begins, bcWORKSHOP regularly visits each home with CDCB’s construction manager. Together we look over the work with the contractor and address any issues. In addition to checking progress, construction visits are an opportunity to document and share how a house comes together. Photos from these construction visits serve as a communication tool for our clients on how their home is constructed and as a teaching and learning tool within bcWORKSHOP.

The immediate goals for sustainABLEhouse LRGV are to continue expanding and evolving our home design catalog, assist CDCB in their outreach strategies, and help more families throughout the Lower Rio Grande Valley.

Dallas City Grid(s)

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by Aaron Benjamin

Every new bcFELLOW arriving at buildingcommunityWORKSHOP receives a small research assignment. It serves partially as an introduction to bcWORKSHOP, and partially as an introduction to the city of Dallas. Most FELLOWs study the development of a single neighborhood, often one with some other link to the work of our office. But instead of studying one neighborhood, my assignment was to study the entire Dallas street grid. Not really a small research assignment. Did I mention I had never even been to Dallas before joining bcWORKSHOP?

GridJuly7_5_Banner.jpg

Whenever I told anyone I was studying the Dallas street grid I always received the exact same two-word response. “What grid?”, he would reply, half joking, half serious. And it’s true. Dallas does not have the nice clean street layout like Manhattan, or even Washington D.C. (which makes a lot more sense from the air then when you actually have to navigate through it). Heck, even Los Angeles, where I had been living, had nice numbered streets and something resembling order. In Dallas, I have taken the wrong street many times. Or a street has taken a bend and gone a completely different direction than the one I was intending to travel. And I still have not figured out how that Exposition Avenue intersection works, even after this project.

However, it was my job to make sense of this mess. And the truth is, if you break it down and look at the individual pieces, it is really not all that complicated. Every street was laid out by some (reasonably) rational individual, even if that reason is no longer obvious. With a few exceptions, most streets follow one of three grids, each older than the city itself:

  • A grid at 45 degrees to the cardinal directions, laid out by a man named Warren Ferris for settler John Grigsby. This covers areas like Old East Dallas, Oak Lawn and South Dallas.
  • A grid aligned to the cardinal directions laid out under businessman W.J. Peters for the Peter’s Colony venture, which covers a portion of North Texas about the size of the state of Maryland. This is all the large square sections as you move away from the center of Dallas to the north and into Oak Cliff.
  • The grid laid out by John Neely Bryan aligned with the Trinity River. That is the streets like Commerce, Main and Elm, that spread northeast through downtown into Deep Ellum.

Throw in about a dozen railroads, competing real estate interests (a surprising number of which were settled in the Supreme Court of Texas), the Trinity River, and a gaggle of freeways, you end up with the street layout Dallas has today.

The streets of Dallas account for a huge portion of our city, both in terms of the physical land and the way we experience our city. So instead of resigning ourselves to jokingly asking “What grid?”, let’s see if we can gain something by actually discovering what is going on.

Public Design in the Crescent City

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June 20, 2013: Public Design in the Crescent City

Maurice Cox is an urban designer, architectural educator and civic leader. Cox serves as the Associate Dean for Community Engagement at Tulane University, School of Architecture and Director of the Tulane City Center where he oversees a wide range of initiatives with Tulane architecture faculty and students throughout the New Orleans community. He joined the faculty of Tulane from the University of Virginia where he was an Associate Professor of Architecture, and served as mayor of the city of Charlottesville, Virginia from 2002-2004. Cox also served as Design Director of the National Endowment for the Arts from 2007-2010. In that capacity, he led the NEA’s Your Town Rural Institute, the Governor’s Institute on Community Design, the Mayors’ Institute on City Design, and oversaw direct design grants to the design community across the United States.

Over his 17-year career at the UVA, Cox merged architecture, politics and design education to define a new role for the designer—that of civic leader. Nationally respected for his ability to incorporate active citizen participation into the design process while achieving the highest quality of design excellence, Fast Company business magazine named him one of America’s "20 Masters of Design" in recognition of his practice of "democratic design." A founding partner of RBGC Architecture, Research and Urbanism from 1996-2006 the firm was acclaimed for its partnerships with communities traditionally underserved by architecture. Their design for a New Rural Village in Bayview, Virginia received numerous national design awards as well as being featured on CBS’s "60 Minutes" and in the documentary film "This Black Soil". A recipient of the 2009 Edmund Bacon Prize, the Harvard University Graduate School of Design 2004-05 Loeb Fellowship and the 2006 John Hejduk Award for Architecture, Cox received his architectural education from the Cooper Union School of Architecture.

At Tulane, in addition to directing the Tulane City Center, Cox works with the highly successful programs of URBANbuild, the Tulane Regional Urban Design Center, the preservation program and the school’s new Master of Sustainable Real Estate Development program, all which are community outreach design initiatives of the university.

Tenth Street Stories

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On Saturday evening, June 15th, the bcWORKSHOP team got together with the Tenth Street community for the fourth Neighborhood Stories event. We partnered with two churches founded in the neighborhood, Greater El Bethel Missionary Baptist and Elizabeth Chapel CME Church, for a choir performance. Neighbors and visitors enjoyed a potluck BBQ dinner, followed by a sunset screening of a film featuring interviews with current and former residents and those who have been involved with the neighborhood over the years. A gallery exhibit and booklet communicated Tenth Street's rich history and strong culture through photos and maps. Approximately 150 people attended the event, sharing their memories and dreams for the neighborhood on an interactive map and a rope line that stretched across the site.

Watch the Tenth Street film.

CDCB Construction Standards

Learn more about our work in the RGV.

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bcWORKSHOP is developing residential construction standards for the Community Development Corporation of Brownsville (CDCB) in partnership with CDCB’s team of advisors. Residential construction standards are a customized set of best practices intended to regulate and elevate construction quality, improving the overall quality of life for their clients.  Construction standards will ensure that CDCB residential projects are planned, designed, and constructed to promote sustainable development and best practices for the Lower Rio Grande Valley.  These standards will create continuity and equity between products and will standardize process, policies, and procedures.

In order to achieve the above goals, construction standards will incorporate recommendations from local and national performance standards that address healthy, affordable, constructible, low-tech, sustainable building practices appropriate for South Texas and CDCB.  Currently, all projects built under these guidelines will qualify for:

  • ENERGY STAR 3.0
  • Indoor airPLUS of the Environmental Protection Agency
  • LRGV Low Impact Development
  • RGV Green Built

Construction standards will be complete and ready for implementation by the end of summer 2013.

Rapido 2.0

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On June 6th 2013, bcWORKSHOP submitted a response to the LRGVDC Rapid Housing Recovery Pilot Program (RHRPP) RFP as part of a team including the Community Development Corporation of Brownsville (CDCB) and Austin Community Design and Development Center (ACDDC).  Building off of previous research, community engagement activities, design work, and a prototype home completed in 2012, the team - comprised of both local stakeholders and national experts - will complete the following:

  1. Design of a locally informed and driven Rapid Housing Recovery Pilot Program to be used throughout the State of Texas as described in HB2450.
  2. Demonstrate and test the feasibility of implementing a plan for the large-scale production of replacement housing for survivors of federally declared natural disasters through the construction of twenty prototype homes in Cameron, Hidalgo, and Willacy counties.
  3. Provide analysis based on RHRPP system monitoring that indicates program successes, challenges, and recommendations for improvements that will inform the GLO’s disaster housing delivery plan statewide.

If selected, the team is expected to receive a contract at the end of June and will immediately begin process and policy design work.  It is anticipated that the construction of all twenty prototype homes and program reporting will be completed by November of 2014.

RGV Affordable Housing

Learn more about our work in the RGV.

A family's income defines its available choices in housing. In the Lower Rio Grande Valley (LRGV) of Texas, very low-income families have little to no choice available to them. The predominant type of very low-income housing is substandard, isolated from public institutions, and often negatively impacted by stormwater. These isolated communities do not fall within municipalities, and it is up to the counties to adopt Subdivision Regulations that may require a minimum quality of housing development. Counties currently spend their planning capital on bringing public infrastructure to new and existing neighborhoods located in such isolation. This causes counties to continuously search for outside funding to address these critical issues.

bcWORKSHOP Planning Associate Justin Tirsun has been leading an effort to catalogue all existing Federal, State of Texas, Hidalgo County, Cameron County, and local plans that address critical issues in substandard developments both directly or indirectly in the Lower Rio Grande Valley. The recommendations put forth in these plans are categorized by issue, and analyzed on the following criteria:

  1. Do the recommendations act in contradiction to or work in support of existing plans?
  2. Is there the potential for alignment between planning goals and measures of success between multiple agencies?
  3. Is the issue one that would have been rectified if zoning required the subdivision in an non-isolated region of the county?

The resulting catalogue is organized by the issues that have been identified by the state, counties, cities and local organizations that contribute to the cost of affordable housing:

  • Available Quality Housing
  • Poor Development Patterns
  • Access to Potable Water
  • Access to Sufficient Sewer Infrastructure
  • Adequate Drainage and Stormwater Management
  • Access to Transit
  • Access to Healthcare Institutions
  • Access to Education
  • Access to Jobs

The catalogued planning efforts affect a population of more than 100,000 residents in Hidalgo and Cameron counties. The catalogue will serve as a regional resource providing LRGV agencies and the public a single library of all plans that affect quality of life issues. It will be a single source for policy implementation addressing critical issues of housing, and how collaboration should occur between agencies when working on affordable housing choices. Finally, it will address an argument that providing the counties with zoning capacities will alleviate much of the same quality of life issues in future county development.

The catalogue will be shared with stakeholders on June 24, 2013.

SMU deploys POP Toolkit

Learn more about POP Dallas.

testing sensors
testing sensors
creating power source for sensor node
creating power source for sensor node

In February 2013, Southern Methodist University’s Innovation Gymnasium and bcWORKSHOP began talks about a partnership to bring engineering students into neighborhoods to develop socially engaged technology solutions. The Innovation Gymnasium regularly runs Immersion Design Experiences (IDEs), intensive ten-day interdisciplinary engineering design projects for real clients that allow students to build skills with client relations, research, prototyping, finance, and marketing. During the last week of May 2013, the IDE began work within Dolphin Heights. Seven engineering students were presented with an unwieldy problem: how can you measure healthy living environment, connectivity, and cohesion, three of the Measures contained in the POP Toolkit? They brainstormed a number of possible solutions including: a wireless sensor network that could detect noise, light, weather, and air quality and relay the information to a website to host and display collected data; an interactive Neighborhood Board to display sensor-gathered data and also collect qualitative data; and a Wi-Fi bench to serve as a gathering place for the community while providing Wi-Fi to the neighborhood. Due to the budget and time constraints, the students decided to focus on producing the wireless sensor network and the website to display the collected data.

By tracking levels of sound intensity at sensors scattered throughout the neighborhood, students hypothesized that they could map movement and pinpoint circulation patterns (connectivity), gathering places (cohesion), as well as ambient noise (healthy living environment). Tracking light with photosensors at night and during the day would identify light pollution and available shade, two more components of a healthy living environment. An additional single sensor recording weather and air quality would help understand pollution (healthy living environment).

presentation of prototype to bcWORKSHOP and Ms Hill
presentation of prototype to bcWORKSHOP and Ms Hill

The students did a commendable job working hard under pressure with a great deal of sensitivity to the neighborhood’s interests and perceptions. Their technical success compares with their enthusiasm to extend their short-term solution into a long-term project complementing the POP Toolkit’s mission: assisting grassroots planning by preparing the community as advocates for change.

Many thanks to engineering students Kate, Greg, Elizabeth, Eric, Jeff, Lauren, Matt, Austin, and Alex! We are already looking forward to future collaboration!