WINTER 2009

Miracle on Seventh Street

Mt. Tabor Community Education and Economic Development (Mt. Tabor CEED), a Collaborative client in 2004, cut the ribbon on the Mt. Tabor Cyber Village Senior Housing on Saturday, January 10. This new 56-unit apartment complex with community-enhancing amenties like a Cyber Café, a health and fitness center and garden will provide affordable housing for adults 55 and over.

Led by Reverend Lang and Reverend Moore, Mt. Tabor CEED, a community development corporation serving North Philadelphia’s East Poplar neighborhood, has worked over ten years to build “something very special for our seniors.” The new development is located on 7th Street between Poplar Street and Girard Avenue, next door to Mt. Tabor AME Church.  

“It took six years and weekly brainstorming sessions just to acquire the land,” recalls Reverend Lang. Once the land was acquired, things moved a little faster. In 2004, Mt. Tabor CEED approached the Collaborative about a conceptual design to illustrate their vision: an affordable senior housing complex that encourages resident interaction and connection with the community through the use of uses technology and the internet.

DLR Group/Becker Winston volunteered to do the conceptual design for the Cyber Village through the Collaborative. “It was a wonderful introduction to the community’s leaders,” says Dick Winston, a principal of DLR Group/Becker Winston. As a result of that introduction, Mt. Tabor CEED hired DLR Group/Becker Winston as the design consultant when it assembled the development team for the project.

The conceptual design illustrated how the housing could be developed on the site and demonstrated design strategies for making a relatively large building feel less imposing. The design development phase took things to a different level. Along with the exacting design and budgetary requirements of subsidized housing, the challenge was to bridge the "superblock" scale of the immediate neighborhood, much of it cleared and redeveloped in the 70’s, and the intact rowhouses a few blocks away.

The nearly blank slate presented by the block and an invitation from the Pennsylvania  Housing Finance Agency, a key funder of the project, to “raise the bar on design” freed the designers to use lots of color and contemporary design elements. DLR Group/Becker Winston broke up the building’s long façade by mixing materials and projecting pieces of the façade to capture a rowhouse rhythm. They split the building into two sections and angled each wing slightly off the city grid, creating a dynamic feel and enough extra space to make the building’s entrance especially welcoming.

Keeping with their vision for an interactive community that engages young and old, Mt. Tabor CEED’s next project an inter-generational community center.

Plan Philly's video of Jan 10 celebration

FALL 2008

Expanding Architecture: Design as Activism

On October 20, Bryan Bell spoke to Philadelphia architects about a new way to practice design, when the Collaborative celebrated the publication of Expanding Architecture: Design as Activism with a talk and book signing by co-editors Bryan Bell and Katie Wakeford. This new collection of thirty essays published by Metropolis Books contains over thirty essays on how to be both a designer and an activist, including one about the Community Design Collaborative.

 “We hope Expanding Architecture will serve as a handbook for activist designers,” said Bryan Bell, founder and executive director of Design Corps, to a multi-generation audience of design students, intern architects, mid-career practitioners, and architects active in the progressive architecture movement of the ‘60’s. “This is not a fad, but a permanent change in the practice of design… Some people have called this a movement, and I think there is enough of a critical mass to justify that claim. Ultimately, however, I prefer to think of it as the practice of architecture, just broader than before.”

 Katie Wakeford, an architect with the NC State University College of Design’s Home Environments Design Initiative, called the Collaborative an “activist as project incubator” that uses design to nurture new projects and try new approaches. She cited Cedar Park, the Woolston Child and Family Center, and infill housing for APM and The Allegheny West Foundation as examples of built projects that gained their footing through the Collaborative’s early design assistance.

2008 Community Design Collaborative Awards
Each year, the Community Design Collaborative recognizes volunteers and projects for their design excellence, teamwork, community impact, and client collaboration. will be presented the 2008 Community Design Award will be presented to volunteers Natalie Malawey-Ednie, Jeffrey Brummer, Benjamin Cromie, Terra Edenhart-Pepe, and Christine Miller and Terry Henry, President of the Overbrook Farms Club, for their work on the Master Plan Srategy for the 63rd Street Corridor at the AIA Philadelphia Excellence in Design Awards dinner. The plan included a phased improvement plan for the corridor and sketches presenting new uses, facade improvements, and cost estimates for specific buildings.

The Collaborative’s 2008 Outstanding Firm Volunteer Award goes to CDA & I Architecture and Interiors for the conceptual designs for the renovation of college access centers for the Philadelphia Education Fund. Jaquelin Anderson, Suzanna Barucco, Kevin Dalton, Tom Faranda, Gregory Hart, David Logan,  David  Marsh, George McCallister, Christine O’Brien, and Mark Silks were recognized with the 2008 Outstanding Team Award for their multidisciplinary master plan for renewal for St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Phoenixville, PA. …more on outstanding volunteers and leaders

PARK(ing) Day
The Community Design Collaborative teamed up with AIA Philadelphia, AIA Bookstore, and the Center for Architecture on September 19, 2008 for PARK(ing) Day, a one-day, global event where artists, activists, and citizens collaborate to temporarily transform metered parking spots into “PARK(ing)” spaces: temporary public parks. The team turned a parking space on Arch Stret into the "Park-A-Lounger" with straw bales and turf, one of over thirty local installations featured in Philadelphia’s first PARK(ing) Day.

Scenes from the Park-A Lounger:
...under construction
...morning meeting
...lunch time

need in deed

SUMMER 2008

New service grants
Early design asistance has a big impact. The Collaborative is pleased to announce its latest grants of preliminary design services to nonprofits …read more

Another strike!
The Collaborative's 12th Annual Bowling Ball raised over $32,000 for the Community Design Collaborative.  Many thanks to the 60 lane sponsors and 300 friends and volunteers who came out to play on Saturday, June 21, 2008.

Collaborative Receives Housing Alliance of Pennsylvania Innovation Award
The Collaborative received the Housing Alliance of Pennsylvania's 2007 Innovation Award for its role in a groundbreaking effort to promote the quality of affordable housing design in Pennsylvania... read more