Earth Week commemoration brings urban revitalization to Chicago ghost town
Top Row (From left to right): Phillip Karczewski, IIT Student; Dolly Sehr, IIT student; Franziska Perry, IIT Student; Melanie Kapogines, IwB Student; Michael Berkshire, Green Projects Administrator, City of Chicago; Karen Weigert, Chief Sustainability Officer, City of Chicago; Lynn Osmond, President & CEO, Chicago Architecture Foundation; Martin Felsen, Studio Associate Professor, IIT; Luigi Ferrara, Dean, Centre for Arts & Design, George Brown College; Christopher Pandolfi, Academic Coordinator, IwB Bottom Row (left to right): Aeisha Smith, IIT Student; Jennifer Doty, IIT Student.
Photo: Anne Evans, Chicago Architecture Foundation
Bringing urban design strategies to life students from the Institute without Boundaries (IwB) worked with the City of Chicago, showcased their design strategies for redeveloping a South Chicago neighbourhood.
The IwB is a graduate certificate program at George Brown College (GBC) that teaches systems design and thinking. According to Luigi Ferrera, Dean of Arts & Design the IwB is oriented towards sustainability and creating designs that engage the community.
“We worked with the city looking at neighbourhoods in the Southside of Chicago,” said Ferrera. “This is a part of Chicago where over time the neighbourhoods have been shrinking in population, where buildings have been boarded up and torn down.”
In partnership with the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT), Chicago Architecture Foundation and Cannon Designs, the IwB lead charrette showcased solutions to redesign, and create sustainability within the South Chicago community.
Earlier in April, Ferrera and students from IwB were able to tour the neighbourhoods and worked with students from the IIT and with the City of Chicago.
“Since the students had the opportunity to tour through these south Chicago neighbourhoods and experience, first-hand, the challenges faced by the communities, the charrette teams, including our George Brown College students, showed real inspiration in the development and presentation of their ideas,” said Paul Zannettos, manager of field education and partnership for the GBC School of Design.
Looking at three different strategies, urban agriculture, arts and culture, and health and wellness, students from both institutions were able to create and design projects for how to revitalize the neighbourhood.
“I was especially impressed with the charrette team that was able to leverage empty schools and facilities in these neighbourhoods,” said Zannettos. “They developed a new maker community based on the design and development of new products, including pharmaceuticals using organic plants grown in the area.”
Revolving around social and environmental innovation, one strategy involving urban agriculture, called “Southside Grown”, was to locally grow food and sell them within grocery stores with a label that could be scanned using an app, which in turn would help to reinvest in the community.
“The students worked on these projects and came up with really, really interesting ideas of how to revitalize the neighbourhood,” said Ferrera. “Other strategies had to do with recreation, and how to revitalize the many streets for better shopping and better access to resources.”
Working with partners from all over the world, students at IwB are taught how to design in a new and creative way, using a more holistic approach.
By creating a portfolio and taking part in an interview, students are able to demonstrate their openness and willingness to work hard and be part of a team as the program is quite demanding.
Through designing ideas for more sustainable communities, students are working hard and challenging themselves, to provide better neighbourhoods, to challenged communities.
