The Urban Workshop, formed in 2003 by Architecture and Environmental Design faculty at Tyler, is an interdisciplinary research and design collaborative that works with underserved communities to create places that are socially vibrant, healthy and resilient.
Where theory connects with lived experience
The Urban Workshop brings together students, faculty and community partners to address critical issues in the lived environment.
Dedicated to a community-engaged process, our faculty and students employ innovative research and design methods that fuse local expertise and professional skill. Together, we create architecture and landscape designs, neighborhood plans and installations that advance the aspirations of the community, and through scholarly production we contribute to the knowledge about building urban resilience.
Students are part of design and planning teams and learn from the participatory experience, which is an insightful and impactful co-curricular part of their educational experience. Immersed in the complexity of real-world situations, they experience a new model of ethically driven practice that will serve them as they enter their professional lives.
Community-Based Learning + Practice
Students discover a framework for community-based learning and a model of ethically driven professional practice.
Community partners benefit from an interconnected and holistically conceived solutions. Together, we research and plan neighborhood space, design buildings and landscapes, and make public art.
- We offer a collaborative academy-community practice in urban design, research, architecture, and art-making projects for underserved neighborhoods and organizations.
- We create curricular opportunities for students to deepen their creative education through unique interdisciplinary and community-based experience.
- We advance knowledge in healthy and sustainable urban place-making.
Research
Our research builds new knowledge about formal and informal place-making practices that are underrepresented in mainstream scholarship. We focus on how resiliency can be advanced in contexts worldwide where environmental and economic conditions impact the quality of life for urban dwellers.
Visioning the Future at Corona Plaza
Informal vending in Queens, New York
The first of two projects sought to co-produce affordable vending units that would pass Department of Health and Mental Hygiene requirements for informal vendors. We worked with vendors to co-design solutions that met basic food-safety standards, while also maintaining affordability, maneuverability and convenience.
The second project provided assistance to a recently formed non-profit of informal vendors in Corona Plaza in Queens, New York. Incorporated as Asociación de Vendedores Ambulantes de Corona Plaza, the organization fighting expulsion from Corona Plaza by the city. Members of AVA spent time brainstorming the future of the market.
Design
Drawing on engaged research we envision spaces where community needs and aspirations intersect, emphasizing access, sustainability and beauty. Creativity often begins in community-centered courses, and as projects are formed and funded, they are developed in a faculty-led design process.
Brownfields Transformation
Based on substantial engagement from the local community, the plan proposes an urban design framework and new development for five brownfields sites in a neighborhood that has experienced disinvestment and decay. The goal is to create human-centered spaces where industrial uses once dominated. These include senior housing and a gateway park, family housing, a community business incubator and a health and literacy center.
Engage
Engagement is central to all our activities. In workshops, charrettes, and public forums we build productive relationships with our community partners. Through a process of shared learning and creative inquiry, we seek to draw out the deep cultural knowledge and aspirations embedded in the communities with whom we work.
Remembering and Storytelling
Engaging community and students
Dr. Lynn Mandarano partnered with Asociación Puertorriqueños en Marcha, a community group in North Philadelphia, to help strengthen community identity during the redevelopment of Germantown Avenue. From 2019 to 2022, students in a capstone course researched local history and interviewed residents. They used this work to create walking tours and activities for community events, encouraging neighbors to share stories, reflect on changes and imagine the area’s future.
Install
Installations of full-size spatial works energize the longer temporal arc of revitalization. These range from art works to temporary placemaking structures to site furnishings to prototypes of larger constructions. Both useful and engaging, these tactical interventions inspire belief in future transformations.
Southeast Asian Market
Market stall prototype for Philadelphia's Southeast Asian Market; installed at Temple Ambler campus
In the spring and summer 2024 Urban Workshop partnered with the Southeast Asian (SEA) Market at FDR Park in Philadelphia. Through a process of collaborative community design, the SEA Market vendors and Tyler students then designed and built three options for vending stalls as the market’s planned future home.
Garden Pavilion
The pavilion serves as shade structure and teaching space for the urban gardening program at Philly Earth. Built in modules with simple materials, it can be moved and reconfigured according to programmatic needs.
Associated Tyler Faculty
Academic and Professional Collaborators
- Rowan University
- Jefferson University
- University of Pennsylvania
- University-Community Collaborative of Philadelphia
- JacobsWyper Architects
- WellsAppelSikora Landscape Architects
Funding
Urban Workshop is supported by both external project grants and grants from the Temple University Office of Research.
External funding has been provided by the National Endowment for the Arts, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, Wachovia Regional Foundation, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, U.S. Department of Education, John and Kira’s Chocolates, The Village of Arts and Humanities, and the Norris Square Civic Association.
Contact
Sally Harrison - sally.harrison@temple.edu or 215.850.4433
Director and Professor of Architecture