presentations

City on the Wall demo at IAP2

We attended and presented at two conferences recently:   Elevation: Reaching Higher Ground. 2012 AIBC Annual Conference:  "From the Ground Up:  The Social Art of Architecture".  and also at the  International Association of Public Participation Spring Symposium:  Creative Engagement:  "Youth Engagement" 

Feedback and summary of the IAP2 BC presentation by participants were blogged, tweeted and storified here and here.

Co-designing sustainability education

Last week we were involved with two separate projects that inter-weaved ecology, agriculture and educational activity.

We visited a Sustainable Architecture class in a secondary school as guest speakers.  The teens designed their future school day .  Their ideal day took place in outdoor classrooms, in community gardens and in their schoolyard, They socialized in outdoor spaces and their indoor spaces had abundant natural light.   We colour coded some of their activities with post-it notes.  Note that on their "Day in the Life" timeline, the yellow "moving about" category and the white "eating/preparing food" category appear frequently.  A few days later, we attended a separate event where we co-designed an educational space for a park.

In this educational space, the paths of school children, professional farmers, "intern" farmers, researchers, community gardeners and bird watchers would  co-exist and enhance the experiences of all the other groups.  I found it interesting that the park drawings supported what the teens wanted for their ideal learning environment.  I will post the drawings when they are publicly displayed later.

Earthmakers Art Project

With the Camosun Bog Restoration Group, I will be engaging the Killarney Community to envision the ghost of a bog that once thrived in this neighbourhood.   Artist Pat Beacon, organizer of Earthmakers,  will then lead a community art project where participants create prints for a community mural.  For details on this free event,  click on the picture below:

Pedestrian City Memory Maps

 

Natalie Ethier is the director of Pedestrian City, an organization that helps youth to create memory maps of their environments in order to analyze and reflect on how to create more pedestrian-oriented spaces.  She attended the Plan-It Earth conference as a workshop leader.  Her methods are very much in tune with ours, focusing as it does on gathering data from youth perceptions. 

Co-design is a key example of citizen design in a TED talk

Jess McMullin gives a TED talk on the importance of citizen participation in design - especially for public space.  The VIVA Vancouver Co-design street party is a key example of recording desired experiences as a starting point of design.  Furthermore, we engaged the public where they are:  on the street.   

Ecology and Codesign

Architecture and planning, ideally,  supports a great diversity of integrated human activity.  Stanley's co-design is about sensitively inquiring into a citizen's round of life and their desired environmental stimuli.  As an educator, I help youth respond to their environment by experiencing it as organisms within a living ecological system.

Together, we are currently developing methods to fine tune the connection between ecology and co-design.   I prepared some graphics to illustrate some ecological principles for teens so that codesigning their environment can be a part of their ecological education.  Some basic ecological concepts are illustrated below.

Institute for Environmental Learning k-12 Sector

We facilitated a dialogue for the k-12 committee within the Institute for Environmental Learning to help visualize potential collaborative activity.  Not surprisingly, the ideal day for environmental educators involves spending the entire day in the outdoors with youth.

Christopher Small, on hand sketching

Christopher Small is a co-design artist who helped out at some of the youth events.  He was featured in the latest edition of Design Quarterly.  Read about it here, on page 91:  This article illustrates why hand sketching is here to stay as a tool for communication...

DQ#43, "Between the Lines - The Role of Sketching" by Peter Sackett"

Wilderness in a City

We trained teachers in youth manual techniques at the Camosun bog pro-D event.  Camosun bog is an ancient ecosystem imbedded in the heart of a busy city.  It contains an extraordinary biodiversity of species such as carnivorous sundews and arctic starflower, cloudberry. On a wet, cold west coast monsoon, this bog glows with beauty and colour: The perfect location for demonstrating how a city emerges from the wilderness.

Susan, wilderness chick, enabled participants to learn 10 bog species in just 10 minutes, using silly memory tricks, one participant is being a little teapot and holding labrador tea.  

Stanley, city dude, led a City on the Wall activity to demonstrate the effect of urbanization on a pristine wilderness setting

RAIC BC Advocacy for Architecture Award Dinner, Oct 12

Thank you Architecture Canada

We are very grateful to Architecture Canada, the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada, BC Chapter, for acknowledging the work of promoting architecture as ecological education so youth can respond creatively to ecological challenges.   RAIC BC held their annual Advocacy for Architecture award dinner. They presented a RAIC BC Community Advocate for Architecture award to Susan Chung, teacher.  And they acknowledged Stanley King, MRAIC, with a Volunteer Recognition Award.   Other winners of the Advocate for Architecture award:  Cheryl Cooper, director of the Arthur Erickson Conservancy;  Greg Bellersby, Director, Curator of the Charles Scott Gallery, Emily Carr University; Robert Lemon, MRAIC, Heritage Architect;  and Dianne Watts, mayor of Surrey.  (Download the  Architectural Awards Event Photos)

From co-design to breaking ground: Project BUG work party

photo credits: Ian Marcuse

A year ago, GWFC asked us to help engage teens in the design of their school garden. Community organizer Ian Marcuse led this process which included the participation of UBC SCARP and Evergreen. Recently, GWFC organized a workparty and the youth who participated in the co-design all pitched in. In all, about 100 youth participated in the build party, assisted by Environmental Youth Alliance.


"When commenting on their experience, students highlighted that they enjoyed the drawing out or “co-designing” of the project, helping with the design, and in particular “the collaborative effort with members of the community and other students within their community schools”. For students, the planning process was one of “creation of the gardens, just watching them come to life”, which leads directly into the hopes and aspirations these students have for the garden in the future. There was a resounding hope from students that they can see this garden to completion in the near future."


Project BUG final report , prepared by Ian Marcuse, Grandview Woodland Food Connection
Zsuzsi Fodor and Erica Lay, UBC School of Community and Regional Planning June, 2011

False Creek South: It's near perfect, and it's mine - Vancouver Sun article by Daphne Bramham

Forty years ago, Stanley facilitated the community engagement for many neighbourhoods in Vancouver.  Two of these places were formerly devoted to cars:  Robson Square used to be a huge parking lot, and False Creek was a "car graveyard".  His data revealed that ordinary citizens preferred to turn these areas into car-free spaces.   Daphne Bramham interviews Stanley in the Vancouver Sun:


Stanley King tours his neighbourhood of False Creek in Vancouver with Vancouver Sun columnist Daphne Bramham.Photograph by: Jenelle Schneider, Vancouver Sun More images from this article here
"It’s hard to believe that not that long ago serious consideration was given to filling in False Creek and paving it over with homes and roads.  Architect Stanley King was among the first to challenge that idea and to imagine a residential community with a public market as its centrepiece built along the creek’s south shore on derelict industrial land..."Read more: False Creek South: It's near perfect, and it's mine - Vancouver Sun article by Daphne Branham

click on the above image to get the Vancouver Sun photo gallery of drawings used in the image survey.  many of these images look like False Creek today.

Kelp Forest Diversity Youth Forum Sketchbook

Kept a sketch journal of this fabulous conference with very talented teens, all exploring marine biology in a pristine wilderness setting.  On the last day, we hiked through a bog transitioning into a forest.  Amongst the cedar, hemlock and lodgepole pine, there were ferns, and a forest understory.  Below, bog plants such as sphagnum moss, sundew, labrador tea grew. Dr. Hana Kucera showed us a "culturally modified tree", a cedar where first nations people practiced the sustainable harvest of bark.   After a 3 hour hike on mud and tree roots, we heard pounding waves:  Keeha beach.  Many thanks to the youth forum leaders, Dr. Hana Kucera and Ali Griffiths for making this forum so special.  

Kelp Diversity Youth Forum

Kelp Forest Diversity Youth Forum Co-design Drawings

Co-design drawn by youth participating in the Kelp Forest Diversity Youth Forum at Bamfield Marine Sciences Centre.

Exploring a Kelp Forest

I helped out at the Bamfield Marine Science Centre for the Kelp Forest Diversity Youth Forum.  Bamfield is a remote location on the wild west coast of Vancouver Island.  Ten youth participated, Together with our instructors, Hana and Ali, we dove into a kelp forest and explored the biodiversity within. The program was packed with activities such as an invertebrate lab, kelp lab, snorkeling, beachcombing, hiking, using an underwater camera.  We were honoured to listen to a lecture by Dr. Louis Druehl, an authority on kelp.  Within this packed program,  I facilitated some co-design activities such as a "city on the wall" activity and also a co-design dialogue.  The co-design drawing included many of the activities we participated in.  The dialogue encouraged youth to consider their future ecological web as they return to the urban environment.  This forum was organized and led by Dr. Hana Kucera and Ali Griffith, two very talented environmental educators and dedicated researchers in marine biology.

Bamfield is accessible by logging road, boat or float plane. I took my first exhilarating trip on a small plane to get here.

we explored a kelp forest;  sea anenome, crab, seastar, a school of herring, seals, sea lion.  This coast is overflowing with biodiversity.

the city on the wall

Biodiverse-City at the Beaty Museum

Beaty Biodiversity Museum had their Urban Festival today. Their flagship specimen is an enormous blue whale skeleton.   Imagine your city respects biodiversity.  What would you be doing? Families, teens, toddlers, and fellow Beaty volunteers co-designed "biodiverse-city".  Two 17 year old visitors from Ontario expressed great concern for their ecological future.  They were interested in biology, ecology and art. One drew a mermaid on the "Day in the Life" timeline.  The conversation made me reflect on how a combination of passion, leadership, creativity and technical expertise will be required of youth to face challenges they never chose for themselves.  They were fascinated by the museum, biodiversity and the challenge of designing a biodiverse-city.  

 

Little Mountain Co-design Video

This video is great for describing the philosophy and rationale of co-design.   A 20 minute video of the Little Mountain co-design, facilitated by The Co-Design Group.  Co-design images are created by citizens and therefore, the citizens feel a great sense of ownership of the drawings.  The artist is only the hand for the mind's eye.  When the drawings are done, the design team analyzes and prioritizes all ideas to create a design solution from the complex and rich compilation of vignettes.  This co-design workshop was the start of an extensive consultation process.  A summary of their concepts can be found here.


Little Mountain Redevelopment: Meeting #1 The Stanley King Experience from David Vaisbord on Vimeo.

Viva Vancouver youth artists

These photos were taken by Reanne Li, youth artist for Viva Vancouver Co-Design

Hobson of Prime Earth Environment Association, Tessica and Veronika.  These three youth were in charge of Plan-it Earth.  

Stanley King, Ben Ostrander, of the Co-Design Group and Hobson Lin

Susan Chung, Co-Design Group  and Tesicca, youth artist

Drew Ferrari, Co-Design Group, and Stanley King

Viva Vancouver Co-Design Images, Photos

Viva Vancouver Co-design was an outdoor demonstration involving drop in participants and pedestrians.  Sometimes we had two participants and sometimes five or six.   And occasionally people made their own drawing!  We would ask "Would you like to make a drawing?"   More than one participant who had "only 10 minutes" stayed for more than an hour!   Down the street there was Brazilian dancing and street food.  Cyclists and skateboarders passed us as we drew.  It was a lively party!  The Theme of the co-design was Transportation.  Images were collected as part of the Vancouver 2040 transportation plan.   A Flickr set of photos from a planner is here

photo left and above, Celia King

Stanley King

photo left and above by Yoko Nishiyama

Drew Ferrari, Co-Design Group, photo Reanne Li

Philip Chung, co-design artist

photo Celia King

Co-design Demo at the Viva Vancouver Street Party

There will be Brazilian martial arts, dance food and... co-design! Click on the image below to get the schedule.  photos of event here.

Early work, 1970s

Some photos of early co-design work pioneered by Stanley King.  In this case, the site was a huge parking lot in downtown Vancouver.  Stanley organized a "City on the Wall" and also a "Design- in". During the site walk, teens analyzed the car lot for sight, smell, sound, movement and circulation.  The resulting drawings illustrated public desire for activities supported by abundant green space, a dome with a skating rink, outdoor eating, water features.  

People asked for car-free pedestrian spaces for relaxing, socializing, eating.   The ideas, drawn from ordinary citizens, demonstrate how co-design can sensitively tap into citizen's desires for how they wish to live.  Drawings were given to the design team led by Arthur Erickson who designed Robson Square.  Erickson asked Cornelia Oberlander to design the landscape:  the first roof garden in North America. 

These still shots are from Chairs for Lovers, a documentary film directed by Barrie Howells for the National Film Board of Canada.

Robson Square Before

Robson Square (after) designed by Arthur Erickson

children ask the artist to draw a dome with skating underneath

the parking lot that became Robson Square: view of the law courts, now the Vancouver Art Gallery

Stanley King starting the "city on the wall": "imagine you were here when the land was new...."

Stanley encourages kids to draw anything they want in a city