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.

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.

"Richmond as a Work of Art" takes residency at 2nd & Broad

Storefront is excited to welcome guest curators Emma Fuller and Michael Overby, New York based designers of the exhibit "Richmond as a Work of Art." The show makes its second appearance after opening at Richmond Public Library in summer 2015. Throughout the month of October, the 12 panel installation will hang in empty storefronts facing the street at the intersection of 2nd & Broad Streets.

Read more about the exhibit in this Style Weekly review by architecture critic Ed Slipek:

By any measure, Richmond is distinguished physically by two factors — the James River and a collection of highly-textured and distinctive neighborhoods. That’s the take-away from most books, articles or exhibitions produced here during the past few decades that examined our city’s long history and continuing development. While few would argue the significance of the river or leafy locales, “Richmond as a Work of Art,” an exhibit now at the Richmond Public Library downtown, offers a refreshingly different and highly enlightening lens through which to view infrastructural RVA. Read full article.

The exhibit opens this Friday, October 2, at Storefront for Community Design, from 5 – 9pm. Stay tuned for more events related to the exhibit throughout the month.

Slipek notes in his review, "Wittingly or not, Fuller and Overby include a number of major engineering and landscaping projects and landmarks that, while defining the city, are currently under fire. These include the Diamond, a minor league ballpark, and Kanawha Plaza, an urban park that straddles atop the Downtown Expressway in the financial district."

Storefront to host Public Art Master Plan Meeting

You are invited to attend an open meeting for designers interested in discussing the future of public art in Richmond. Your ideas about what Richmond is and what it can be are important! This event is being held in support of Richmond’s effort to create a comprehensive plan for public art in the city.

Earlier this year, the City of Richmond's Public Art Commission embarked on the process of developing a Public Art Master Plan with the purpose of creating a five-to-ten-year plan that will provide a clear vision for the future of public art in Richmond. The plan will include goals for Richmond's public art, define priorities and artistic approaches for the program, identify strategic partnerships and possible sources of alternative funding, and provide direction for ongoing program development and management. The plan will also address opportunities for ongoing public engagement, support increased opportunities for public art, and celebrate art as an essential element for a thriving community.

Wednesday, October 14
6:00pm - 8:00pm

Storefront for Community Design
205 E Broad St
Richmond, VA 23219

Design a Processing Kitchen for Community Garden

Storefront's volunteer landscape architects are working with VSU's Harding Street Community Garden initiative to create a variety of garden types along a corridor of vacant lots. Anchoring the block is a community center, which will be used as an educational space and processing kitchen for produce grown along Harding Street. The head of the program Duron Chavis is seeking assistance from an interior designer or architect to make the kitchen more efficient for processing vegetables.

Fall 2015 mOb Projects

NOTE: The deadline to become a mentor has passed. Contact Storefront if you're interested in mentoring in the future.

Under the guidance of a professional mentor, VCUarts faculty, and Storefront staff, mOb will be taking on 15 community projects in student groups of 2-4. mOb mentors spend between 5-10 hours over the course of the semester providing feedback and guidance to the student team as they develop their deliverables. If you're interested in any of the projects below, use the form below to sign up as a mentor. The mOb session begins on Tuesday, August 18th. After projects are assigned to students, a project lead will contact you.

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Institute for Contemporary Art
Designing a series of actions to create a presence for the ICA while the building is under construction.

Lillie Estes Mayoral Campaign
Designing an identity for community organizer Lillie Estes, who seeks the office of Mayor.

Recovery by Design
Developing a workshop for Storefront’s NEA-funded Recovery by Design series, and working with Richmond Behavioral Health Authority clients to curate an exhibit of outcomes from summer workshops.

VCU Office of Sustainability
Continuing to refine the design of a community garden on VCU’s campus.

Byrd Theater
Prototyping a uniform for staff based on film history, to enhance the Byrd experience.

Crystalis Institute
Transforming a basement with white cinderblock walls into a sacred space for nonprofit that promotes spirituality without organized religion.

Epiphany Preschool
Designing a variety of playhouses for 1-4 year olds, inexpensive and modern.

Friends of Riverview Park
Identifying community events that would be desirable to residents and creating a conceptual design for a skatepark, community garden, and playground.

Grace Inside
Working with a state prison chaplain to redesign an office.

Maymont Civic League
Helping to cultivate neighborhood pride through a flag, beautification projects, and developing programs to help residents with minor repairs and improvements of homes and properties, blighted/abandoned properties.

Richmond Anti-Violence Project
Create an identity for the VAVP, which works to address and prevent sexual and intimate partner violence within, and hate/bias motivated violence against, the LGBTQ community.

Saving Our Youth
Design a yearbook for this youth safety community organization.

Richmond City Health District
Creating architectural designs that could help customers make the "healthy choice the easy choice" and also experience the environment of the store as healthy and safety.

Valentine
Design an exhibit that explores — from Robert E. Lee to Arthur Ashe — what is a southern man?

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mOb is a  partnership of three design departments of VCUarts, Graphic Design, Fashion Design and Interior Design and one department of the Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs, Urban and Regional Planning. These departments operate an design lab that realizes the potential of design to shape the City of Richmond.

mOb + Storefront is a collaboration of mOb and Storefront for Community Design that combines the energy, enthusiasm and expertise of VCU students and faculty with Storefront’s community involvement. mOb + Storefront operates on the principle that good design makes a healthier city where citizens participate more fully in their environment, their government and their culture.

Byrd Park Community Engagement

The Friends of William Byrd Park and Storefront for Community Design would like to use your feedback to help prioritize park improvements and to learn what park users enjoy. When referring to Byrd Park we mean the whole park including: Dogwood Dell, the Carillon, the trails behind the Carillon down to Pump House Drive, the three lakes (Fountain/Boat, Swan, and Shields), the VITA course, the tennis courts, the baseball and softball fields, Barker Field, the Roundhouse, the Landing, the Shields Lake shelter and picnic area, and all of the open green space in between.

Three public meetings are scheduled:
9/3/15 from 7pm-9pm at the Roundhouse in Byrd Park: Following the regular meeting of the Friends of William Byrd Park, survey results will be shared and prioritization will begin.

9/10/15 & 9/16/15 from 4pm-9pm at the Virginia Home, 1101 Hampton Street: Open prioritization voting will take place.  Stop by for 20 minutes anytime during the open hours to vote on your top priorities for the park.

The following 30 questions should take you about 10 minutes to complete.  This survey will be open from June 22, 2015 - September 1, 2015 at 5pm EST.  All users of the park, regardless of geographic location, are invited and encouraged to fill out this survey and share it with their friends. If you have any questions, comments or concerns, please contact Ryan Rinn (ryan@storefrontrichmond.org).

Image (banner): Dementi Studios: Swimming at Shield’s Lake shields shield bathing suit suits water park summer sun bathing bikini diving board.