Farmstrong Seeks Assistance with Shed Conversion

This volunteer opportunity has been filled as of April 14, 2016. Stay tuned!

Can Storefront help the Green Team plan a rehabilitation of the shed that would be useful and inspire pride to Armstrong’s farmers?

Farmstrong is an agricultural site in the east end located at 2300 Cool Lane on a property that is privately owned, and serves the community of Armstrong High School, which is located directly to the east of the site.

The site is currently not producing crops, but by spring will have a variety of produce, flowers, and cover crop.  The Armstrong Green Team are the primary caretakers of the Farmstrong site.  The Green Team, composed of 12 high school students who primarily live in the neighborhood of north Church Hill, Creighton Court, Mosby Court, and Fairfield Court, been working on the site for one year.

On the site sits a shed, which was once a refrigeration unit for a flower vendor on Cool Lane.  The shed is functional as a storage area for tools, however, it needs help.  It is dark, has the appearance of being full of spiders, and is not the proud shed that the Green Team aspires to use.  

mOb Design Session Spring 2016

Every semester, Storefront's community design apprentices at mOb (Middle of Broad) take on community-initiated projects under the guidance of a professional mentor, VCUarts faculty, and Storefront staff. This semester, mOb students representing Fashion, Graphic, and Interior Design departments at VCUarts will be taking on 16 projects. The projects focus on creative design strategies for new urban mobility, historic preservation, socially engaged art practices, community gardens, and more. For the first time, we will also be welcoming students from the School of Engineering. Read more about the projects below:
 

BIKES AND ______. 

Lewis Ginter Mobile Education Station
Prototype a mobile education station for Lewis Ginter Botanical Gardens that could be tested on campus and used in funding proposals.

Bibliospokes
Work with the Richmond Public Library to design a trailerable library, to be hitched to an electric bicycle, and taken to events around the city. Work on the Bibliospokes identity may also be included within the project scope.

• Here's what they're working with.

• Here's more information on the program.

Existing Bibliospokes trailer.

Rag & Bones Bike-in Theater
Transform an underutilized parking lot into a bike-in theater.

• Learn more about their programming here.

• Check out the site here.

Bike-in theater site (Rag & Bones to the left).

Bike & Pedestrian Plan for Spoonfed
Apply the principles of the bicycle master plan to the public and private spaces around Spoonfed, a restaurant in Westhampton.

• Check out the site here.

• Skim the Bicycle Master Plan here.

PARKS & URBAN AGRICULTURE

Farmstrong Shed
Work with Armstrong High School Green team to rehabilitate a former refrigeration unit — now used as a shed — to better accommodate gardening tools.

• Here's an article on Farmstrong.

• Read more about the client organization, GroundworkRVA.

Community High Greenhouse
Work with Community High Green Team to develop a plan to rehabilitate a vacant greenhouse.

• Here's the Green Team's facebook page.

• Check out the project site here.

James River Park System Wayfinding
Expand upon the outcomes from Fall 2015 to develop robust prototypes for a wayfinding system for the James River Park System.

• Here's what they did last semester.

Outcome for new signage system developed by mOb in 2015.

Poetry for Trash
Socially engaged art project that enters the conversation of litter with poetry. Build professional signs that can be installed in public space, which offer instructions for participation in the Poetry for Trash project.

• Their website explains the project far better than I do.

RECOVERY

Richmond Behavioral Health Authority
Determine the placement of posters created from last semester, oversee their production and installation.

• An article on Design Ignites Change about the program, Recovery by Design.

• Example of an outcome from last semester.
  

Rams in Recovery
Design a space in the Well for Rams in Recoevery — a student-run group for students overcoming substance use disorders.

• More about Rams in Recovery.

After-Care Dental Instructions
Develop after-care instruction for patients undergoing complex dental procedures, who often must comply with after-care instructions. This is a common problem among health care providers who serve urban populations like Richmond.

Camp Kesem Magic Booth
Create a magic booth as a fundraising tool for Camp Kesem, a camp for children who have parents with cancer.

• More about Camp Kesem here.

Grace & Holy Trinity Meditation Scrapbook
Redesign a book on meditation, which has existing content compiled by Candy Osdene.

PRESERVATION & REUSE

Cookie Factory Water Tank
Design a water tank wrap for the Cookie Factory Lofts.

Water tank at former Interbake Building at 900 Terminal Place.

Greensville County Training School
Communicate the vision of Marva Dunn to transform the Greensville County Training School into a community center.

• Citizens United to Preserve Greensville County Training School.

• Read more about the fascinating history of Rosenwald Schools here.

Remains of Greensville County Training School in Emporia, Virginia.

Pop-up RVA Recap

In September 2015, Storefront piloted the Pop-up RVA initiative, as an opportunity to test the pop-up friendliness of Richmond. The success of the project illustrates a united vision of neighbors who see pop-ups as a strategy for reactivating Richmond’s many dormant commercial corridors.

A few months after the event, we are taking a detailed look at the process we underwent to activate almost 4000 square feet of vacant commercial space at North 2nd & East Broad Streets. This recap also explains the challenges and benefits of having a pop-up in Richmond, while suggesting a path forward.

Assist JRPS with North Bank Park Redesign

THIS OPPORTUNITY HAS BEEN FILLED.

 

The James River Park System is seeking assistance with the development of a conceptual plan to improve the entrance to the North Bank Trail at the terminus of Texas Avenue in the Maymont neighborhood. While many improvements have been made along this portion of the North Bank Trail to improve connectivity to Texas Beach, the entrance is currently characterized by its parking lot, which leaves little room for paths that prioritize the many runners, cyclists, hikers that move through this entrance. We are seeking a team of landscape architects to re-envision this entrance. JRPS hopes to leverage the outcome of this consultation as they seek funding to implement this project.

 

Cards For the Snarky Urbanist in Your Life

Contribute to Storefront's Design Education program, receive a deck of Cards Against Urbanity — RVA Edition

Cards Against Urbanity is a project of the tech startup GreaterPlaces.com & DoTankDC. This group of professional planners and architects believe everyone can positively shape the places they live — and have fun at the same time. What started as people complaining about their jobs over rooftop drinks became a spinoff of the popular card game, Cards Against Humanity, which aimed to rearrange their frustration through humor, and often, accidental education.

After several packed house Cards Against Urbanity events with creator Lisa Nisenson, friends and neighbors of Storefront for Community Design were inspired to create an expansion pack tailored specifically to RVA. With the blessing of the creators of Cards Against Urbanity, Storefront is making these cards available to support our Design Education programming, which raises the awareness of designʼs potential to shape the city.

Each deck includes 234 total cards (72 black fill-in-the-blank cards and 162 white response cards). This deck is designed to mix with the original Cards Against Urbanity deck, which is available to download somewhere on the internet. Also on the internet are two great pieces from Next City and Style Weekly about the success of the cards as a way to understand the nuances of RVA urbanism. And as the instructions read, if you donʼt know what something means, you should really be paying more attention.

Make a walk-in donation to support Storefront's Design Education programming, and receive a deck.

Help Ezibu Muntu Design a New Space

This opportunity has been filled.

Ezibu Muntu African Dance & Cultural Foundation is a professional organization of dancers, drummers, and entertainers dedicated to invoking a better educated positive understanding of African culture, values, traditions, and the cultural arts. As Ezibu Muntu develops a capital campaign for their aging building in the heart of the Arts & Cultural District, they seek assistance in prioritizing improvements, which range from repairing leaks, to expanding their studio space, to improving their façade. Contact Storefront to help maintain Ezibu Muntu as a safe haven for creative expression for developing children and aspiring artists.

Design with a lively hive: Application for Spring 2016 mOb Design Session opens

Storefront's Design Session program engages professional and emerging designers to provide conceptual assistance on community-initiated projects. Through a partnership with VCUarts called mOb (Middle of Broad), Storefront offers a unique track of design assistance that engages a lively hive of 30 students representing the fashion, graphic, and interior design departments (with a handful of students from The School of Engineering and other departments). These are Storefront's community design apprentices. Each semester, interdisciplinary student teams work alongside professional mentors and directly with clients to arrive at a set of design deliverables. Projects can range in type, scale, and feasibility. Some of these projects have included:

• Identity for the Partnership for Smarter Growth
• Little Libraries of Highland Park
• Interior design for TheaterLAB's venue, The Basement
• Graphic identity for community strategist Lillie A. Estes
• Design of fences and sheds for 1st Avenue.
• A seatbelt cover for Massey Cancer Center chemotherapy patients
• And more!

When applying to become a client of mOb, consider the following:

• Anyone can apply — nonprofits, businesses, individuals, and even state and local government agencies have been clients.
• mOb is not a design-build studio. Students can, however, provide prototypes and offer conceptual deliverables to help with the initial phases of the design process.
• Projects should be compatible with a semester-long timeline (January 2016 - May 2016).
• While secured funding is by no means a prerequisite for applying to participate in mOb, some knowledge about budgetary constraints helps students make informed design decisions.
• Participants of Design Session are asked to contribute to the mOb + Storefront partnership on a pay-what-you-can basis. These contributions go toward studio supplies for drawing, printing, and prototyping, and significantly improve the quality of project outcomes.
• Applications to become a client of the mOb studio are open until January 4, 2016. Spring 2016 clients will be notified by January 11.
   

Questions? Contact Storefront's Program Director Tyler King (tyler@storefrontrichmond.org), or stop by our studio at 205 E Broad St.

Review: Richmond Speaks Building-to-Building

By Lauren Licklider

The most basic element of community design is the human-to-human relationship. A community identifies a need. The design of that need grows out of consensus, engagement, and scores of volunteers. Storefront’s usual “people first” approach was called into question (or, temporarily put to rest) through a lively panel discussion on the exhibit, “Richmond as a Work of Art,” which focused on the dynamics of the building-to-building relationship across our city’s unique landscape.

"Richmond as a Work of Art" installed in 201 East Broad Street. Courtesy of Storefront staff.

The exhibit was designed by Emma Fuller (a Richmond native) and Michael Overby, both architects and professors based in New York. Throughout the month of October the exhibit (which debuted this past summer at the Richmond Public Library) filled two empty storefronts at North 2nd & East Broad Streets through a partnership with Storefront and Cultureworks.

From left: Trask, Tsachrelia, Slipek, Martin, and Pinnock. Courtesy of Storefront staff.

Fuller assembled a panel of cultural leaders who came from a mix of backgrounds: architects Dimitra Tsachrelia of Steven Holl Architects and Burt Pinnock of Baskervill, the muralist Ed Trask, Style Weekly architecture critic Edwin Slipek, and the Valentine’s director Bill Martin. The panel led a spirited discussion that revealed a hunger for new platforms to publicly discuss design, and with that, the critiques inherent to meriting architecture that it is inextricably tied to both historic and contemporary injustices.

The location of the panel discussion at the VCU Depot building unearthed this tension early on. Before its award-winning 2014 renovation by Commonwealth Architects, the VCU Depot served as a commuter train station between Richmond and Ashland from 1907–1938. Before panelists could lament bygone rail or dote on the building’s architecture, Martin reminded the panel of the two sets of doors from the building revealed during the renovation. On one set, the words Whites Only were scrawled out. The other? Blacks Only.

The Depot in 1907. Courtesy of VCU News.

“The memories of these buildings aren’t always romantic,” Martin said. “If you were white, your experience in this building meant something very different than if you were black.” Can you appreciate the Depot’s classical symmetry without acknowledging that it served as a handy device for segregating waiting rooms? Essentially, Martin argued, buildings represent a singular moment, but great public and cultural buildings often reflect the values of a privileged class.

Flashing forward, and a block away, how does the VCU Institute of Contemporary Art reflect our values today? Tsachrelia is a project architect of the building and brought a wealth of insight to the discussion, sharing with the audience the process her team took to make decisions about how the ICA would look and what purpose it would serve. “Not everything is about the past,” she said. “The ICA is about the future, about defining what we as a community want to be through a place.”

Sketch of the ICA. Courtesy of ica.vcu.edu.

The ICA will house revolving exhibitions, performances, films, and educational programming while also serving as an incubator for the school’s renowned public arts program. Its location — a half-block of a lackluster stretch of Broad Street — is pivotal, suggested Slipek. Projects such as the ICA exist within the larger context of university and urban planning goals. Even though it has barely risen out of the ground, the downtown Arts & Cultural District thrives in anticipation of its new sculptural bookend. Coffee shops have sprung up, a neighboring gas station has been demolished, and even the VCU Depot was brought back to life in anticipation of the ICA.

Things exist the way they do because they were planned that way, Slipek mused. Everything from the uber-chic ICA to a crumbling homes a few blocks away. Nothing is accidental. In Richmond, Fuller acknowledged, our architectural works speak to one another; the cityscape has an ongoing conversation between time periods, architectural styles, and values. Add a social justice perspective into the mix, and design of the city can also be read as a physical manifestation of social struggle. Almost all of our panelists conceded that there is a natural tension between creating a vision and serving the community. That said, where does community engagement fit into the process of creating of great works of architecture?

“While no great building has ever been built by consensus, it has been built by compromise,” prompted Burt Pinnock. He’s the architect for the Black History Museum in Jackson Ward, scheduled to open in February 2016. He went on to suggest that while many buildings stem from one person’s vision, that vision only gets community support when their voice is heard. Public forums, design competitions, and open dialogues between designers and the public are all incredibly useful tools when used the right way.

The Black History Museum & Cultural Center of Virginia (housed in the former Leigh Street Armory). Courtesy of the blackhistorymuseum.org.

Another useful tool? Art, added Trask. His murals often memorialize the voices that have been lost in the shuffle of Richmond’s development. “The art I put on these walls is used as a conversation starter to bring up the untold stories and past lives of these buildings.” One of his recent projects included collaborating with a small neighborhood school to paint a mural on the entire exterior of its recently adapted building. While he brought a concept to the table, the teachers and students shared in the process of painting. The forgiving and temporal medium of paint makes more community involvement possible, and muralists can achieve results with communities at an architectural scale. 

Courtesy of edtrask.com.

Storefront's Program Director Tyler King closed the panel with a question: “Is it utopian to think that we can create beautiful works of architecture the community loves, that doesn’t also encroach on communities who have historically been ignored? Maybe,” he said. “But if great works of architecture cannot first be imagined through consensus, then how will they ever materialize?”

Architecture gives us an identity. It asks and answers important questions: Who were we? Who are we now? Who do we want to be? But perhaps the more important questions stem from something bigger at play: Who had a voice? Who didn’t?

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Lauren Licklider is the Marketing Manager at Baskervill, and at Storefront, she consults on community design projects, helps plan events, and serves as a communications committee member.

mOb on Monument

Courtesy of middleofbroad.tumblr.com.

Every semester, Storefront's community design apprentices at mOb respond to a prompt from faculty and a guest critic. These weeklong investigations, called mObjObs, are intensive, speculative, and often provocative design exercises. This year, mOb invited guest critic Burt Pinnock — a Storefront co-founder, Baskervill principal, and architect. Students adopted a fictitious design competition format as an entry point into the national debate about what to do with confederate heritage. Proposals for the Robert E. Lee statue on Monument Avenue included:

Turn it upside down.
Replace it with Maggie Walker.
Cover it with kudzu.
Envelop it with smoke.
Auction it off.
Pixelate it.
Pepper it with #blacklivesmatter signs.
Put a tutu on it.
Or just leave it.

During First Friday November, mObjOb 6 concluded with Richmond's very first public forum to unpack contemporary views on confederate heritage. A panel discussion titled, "General Demotion? General Devotion?" was moderated by the Valentine's Bill Martin, and guests included architectural historian Calder Loth, Richmond Times Dispatch columnist Michael Paul Williams, and VCU Art Education professor Dr. Melanie Buffington.

Proposals are on view for the month of November at our studio space at 205 East Broad Street. Stream or download the discussion below.

From left: Buffington, Williams, Loth, and Martin.

Design a Shed in Jackson Ward

A Jackson Ward resident is seeking guidance on the design of a shed that works with in the City Old & Historic District guidelines, which state: "Newly constructed outbuildings such as detached garages or tool sheds should respect the siting, massing, roof profiles, materials and colors of existing outbuildings in the neighborhood. New outbuildings should be smaller than the main residence and be located to the rear and/or side of the property to emphasize their character as secondary structures." Architects with experience working within Richmond's COHD's are encouraged to advise the applicant on the conceptual phases of this project.