Edmund N. Bacon Urban Design Student Competition Pauses for 2021 for Strategic Evaluation
By Rebecca Johnson on Oct 27, 2021
How Can Competition Center Community Voices and Perspectives?The Center for Architecture and Design has hosted the Edmund N. Bacon Urban Design Competition (formerly the Better Philadelphia Challenge) for 15 years. Founded in 2006 in memory of Philadelphia’s iconic 20th century city planner, Edmund N. Bacon [1910-2005], this annual program honors both professionals and students whose work epitomize excellence in urban design.The Edmund N. Bacon Urban Design Committee has decided to pause the student competition for 2021,…Read Full Story
TICKETS ARE AVAILABLE HERE.The founding principals of KieranTimberlake, Stephen Kieran and James Timberlake, designers behind the widely acclaimed U.S. Embassy in London, the transformation of Dilworth Park, the master plan for Central Delaware, and hundreds of other projects worldwide, will be honored by the Center for Architecture and Design with the 35th Louis I. Kahn Award. The ceremony, which will include a presentation by the architects, will be held at the University of Pennsylvania’s Museum of Anthropology and…
The Center for Architecture and Design is seeking a Program Coordinator for the Architecture and Design Education Program (ADE). The Center for Architecture and Design is a charitable foundation that focuses on engaging, educating, and exciting the public about the built environment and design and its impact on all of us. The Center has prioritized K-12 design engaging thousands of Philadelphia school children through its in-class, out-of-class, and individual workshops. The Center believes and has set an organizational goal…
As fall approaches, Michael Spain, the Center’s director of architecture and design education, prepares partner schools and volunteer design educators to launch the Center’s Architecture and Design Education in-class instruction program. All that planning comes on the heels of a busy spring and summer activating partnerships, spreading the word about the ADE program, and expanding the Center’s mission to provide every student access to design education. In the spring, Michael teamed up with Laura Casaccio of Cicada to…
Using wood from Fairmount Park to create prototype furniture for Philly Pools The Center for Architecture and Design (“Center”) today announced a call for submissions for a furniture design competition in partnership with Philadelphia Parks & Recreation (PPR) and Mayor Kenney’s Rebuild initiative to bring this opportunity to local designers and fabricators.The competition challenges designers to design and/or fabricate pool furnishings using urban wood from PPR’s Fairmount Park Organic Recycling Center. The…
I have had the privilege of being the Chair of the Center for Architecture and Design since 2017. During my first year, it was a priority for the organization to complete a strategic plan, and to make reigniting its languishing Architecture in Education program (now the “Architecture + Design Education Program”) a significant element of that plan. It was clear to me that we needed a strategic plan that clarified our values and streamlined our existing programs so that our small, yet mighty, staff could find the time,…
The Center for Architecture and Design Looks to Expand Design Education Curriculum to Reach More Students in PhiladelphiaThe Center for Architecture and Design (Center) is pleased to welcome Michael Spain, Associate AIA, NOMA, as the new Director of Design Education. In this role, Michael will be responsible for expanding and implementing the K-12 student design education programming throughout Philadelphia. The Center has a 40-year history of offering design education in various forms. Still, in the last three years, the…
Over the past three years, the Center for Architecture and Design has shifted its programming priorities in order to expand our K-12 educational program offerings. As part of our Strategic Plan, we asserted: We believe every student deserves access to design education. And we've been working hard to live up to our beliefs. We expanded our in-class Architecture in Education program, we offered more Saturday Family workshops on all types of design, and we strengthened our partnerships with other student-focused…
2020 has been quite a year thus far. It has shown the worst of us and the best of us. Thank you to all of you who have supported and continue to support your neighbors during this trying, yet illuminating, time in our history. We have a lot to learn and we have a lot of work to do. We are holding ourselves accountable to our organization’s recent statement and we are committed to doing better at dismantling and calling out systemic racism when we see it. If you have ideas – please reach out, we’d love to hear…
On behalf of the Board of Directors of both AIA Philadelphia and the Center for Architecture and Design, we jointly issue the following statement:WE ARE OUTRAGED! We are outraged by the blatant murder of George Floyd and so many others before him. We are outraged that countless filmed murders of black people by the police over the past several years was not enough to move our country to action and commitment to lasting change and healing. Mostly, we are outraged for the black people in our communities- our neighbors, our…
Thank you to all who joined our call last week to hear about our “Plan B” for DesignPhiladelphia 2020. In case you missed the call, here are the highlights: What We Are Planning:The Festival is still happening, October 7-18, 2020. The programming will be all virtual. If we can gather, then we will re-evaluate, but for now. It’s all virtual. Programming Deadline to Submit is June 29, 2020.Collaboration with other organizations and design festivals around the world.Focused Virtual Best in Emerging Design…
Help us continue our programming this fall and keep our doors open and accessible to everyone.Dear Friends,Over the past month, all of us have been adapting to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on our lives, our work, and our homes. We have talked with hundreds of you and will continue to hear your stories and share ours because although it's perhaps cliché at this point...it is true. We will only get through this together. We certainly miss seeing all of your faces at the Center for Architecture and Design - over the…
It’s been a few months since we wrapped the 2019 DesignPhiladelphia Festival, and we are already well underway planning for this upcoming October festival. As all of our event partners and designers start brainstorming what their programming will be for this year, I felt it was important to share some important statistics about last year’s festival. In particular, how having Cherry Street Pier as our second festival hub, has created new opportunities for our festival and our local designers.Festival attendance was a record…
This year’s Edmund N. Bacon Urban Design Awards honored the Bronx-based urban revitalization strategist (and MacArthur Fellow) Majora Carter and the Student Design Award winners from Leeds Beckett University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Massachusetts. Two hundred people attended the Awards Ceremony at the Center for Architecture and Design on February 11th, including the award winners and Philadelphia’s community of developers, urban planners, architects, and urbanophiles. The student winners…
This year’s On The Rise exhibition (January 23 – March 5, 2020) honors the 2019 Philadelphia Emerging Architect (PEA) winning firm Studio 6mm, founded by Brian Szymanik and David Quadrini, as well as the 2019 Young Architect Award winners Fátima Olivieri of KieranTimberlake and Drew Lavine of Re:Vision Architecture. The PEA Prize is awarded to a promising firm less than ten years old producing high-quality design and thinking within the Philadelphia region. The Young Architect prize honors architects under 40 who…
Have a passion for architecture, urban planning, and design? Join our crew of volunteers to inspire the next generation of thoughtful designers! Over the past two years, the Center has worked to increase design educational programming for K-12 students in Philadelphia. Our activities took place in public school classrooms, as part of summer camps at Philly rec centers, at the Center for Architecture and Design, and in partnership with other child-focused groups from around the city. Since 2018, we’ve engaged approximately…
The Center for Architecture and Design has been approved for an Art Works grant to support an exhibition celebrating the Women’s Suffrage Centennial. This project will celebrate and interpret the Women’s Suffrage from a multidisciplinary design cohort of Philadelphia women designers in collaboration with Philadelphia’s young women and future design talent. Overall, the National Endowment for the Arts has approved 1,187 grants totaling $27.3 million in the first round of fiscal year 2020 funding to support arts projects…
MIS Capital Returns as Presenting SponsorPhiladelphia, PA, January 24, 2020 – The Center for Architecture and Design (Center) will host a talk by Peabody Award-winning broadcaster, Majora Carter, as the recipient of the 2020 Edmund N. Bacon Urban Design Award. Most known for her work as a real estate developer and urban revitalization strategy consultant, she is responsible for the creation and successful implementation of numerous economic developments, green-infrastructure projects and policies, and job training and…
We are excited to announce that we have launched a pilot for DesignPhilly News to share the stories about our local design community all year long, not just during the Festival. Thanks to our initial underwriting supporter, Thomas Jefferson University, we will bring you fresh news items every week. We are hopeful that using this platform we can continue to highlight the awesomeness and depth of our local design community and that we can connect to one another to expand our collective audiences and advocate for great design…
Millésimé a Design Showroom in Old City, is hosting an event to benefit the local animal shelter – PAWS. Designs, books and pets come together for a very special event. Millésimé and Ligne Roset will host the Philadelphia launch of Mr. Waffles Loves Design, the new book by design writer Lisa S. Roberts. During the event, PAWS, the Philadelphia Animal Welfare Society, will be onsite at the Millésimé design store with adoptable cats and dogs.Lisa will be signing copies of her book and all profits from the sales…