The Mission
The Urban Workshop is an interdisciplinary social impact design collaborative that engages underserved communities in creating environments that are beautiful, just and sustainable. Our process is human-centered, building on our disciplinary expertise and the vision and imagination of our community partners.
The Urban Workshop was formed by Architecture and allied place-making disciplines to undertake research and design that would advance key projects in urban neighborhoods and non-profit organizations. Through this work we offer our students a framework for community-based learning and a model of ethically driven professional practice. Together we research and plan neighborhood space, design buildings and landscapes, and make public art. These diverse undertakings are interconnected and holistically conceived. By employing multiple points of view and scales of impact, we can weave together what is small, tangible and local with the systemic patterns that form the ecology of the neighborhood environment.
The Urban Workshop is well situated to address the complexity of urban regeneration and to explore the critical challenges of how we live together in the contemporary city. The changing physical environment of Philadelphia and its environs calls for broad speculation and on-site action that can build new models for humane neighborhoods for the 21st century.
The Goals
The Urban Workshop has three major goals:
1. To offer a collaborative academy-community practice in design, urban research, building, and art-making that addresses in a holistic way, key projects in under served neighborhoods and organizations
2. To create curricular opportunities for students; providing depth and humanity to their creative education through unique interdisciplinary and community-based experience
3. To advance knowledge in the area of sustainable urban place-making.
Community Partners, Projects and Collaborators
TRIANGLE CDC
Organizational and Urban Development Planning
SOMERSET NEIGHBORS FOR BETTER LIVING/ NEW KENSINGTON CDC
Brownfields Area-Wide Plan
ASOCIACIÓN PUERTORRIQUEÑOS EN MARCHA (APM)
6TH and Susquehanna: Urban Research and Design
Tactical Urbanism, 6TH and Susquehanna: Proposals for short-term interventions (Architecture)
VILLAGE OF ARTS AND HUMANITIES
Campus Master Plan: Implementing the Next Generation Village
Environmental Center Teaching Pavilion: Design-Build
Digging Deeper: Programming, Site Visioning
Baobab Park Exhibition: Site Plan and Design-Build
Education Building Addition: Programming and concept
Shared Prosperity/ Germantown Avenue Urban Design Study
NORRIS SQUARE CIVIC ASSOCIATION
The Kensington Depot Walkway: Site analysis and Design
7 Acre Site Plan
Neighborhood Art and Design Projects
HABITAT PHILADELPHIA
Looking Back: Post occupancy assessment for Project 1800
Habitat North Philadelphia Neighborhood Change Study
Project 1800: Design and documentation for 20 new and renovated houses
Awards
Honor Award, AIA Pennsylvania Design Excellence Awards, for Digging Deeper
Honorable Mention, SEED International Competition for Public Interest Design, or Digging Deeper
Citation of Merit Award, AIA Pennsylvania, Architectural Excellence Awards Program, for “Shared Prosperity and Beyond: A University-Community Partnership”
Exhibitions
Where If not Us? Participatory Design and its Radical Approaches, Graham Foundation, Chicago,
AIA Pennsylvania Design Excellence Awards: Digging Deeper, Barnes Foundation Philadelphia
Towards a New/Old Architecture, AIA Pennsylvania Design Excellence Award, Susquehanna Art Museum, Harrisburg, PA
“The Urban Workshop,” Architecture Lobby, Tyler School of Art and Architecture, Philadelphia
Art in City Hall, “Reimagining the Village” in “The Village of Arts and Humanities -- 25 Years of Neighborhood Revitalization Through Arts, Education and Social Activism”, City Hall, Philadelphia
“Project 1800 Habitat Philadelphia” in Social Impact Design, AIA Philadelphia
Festival Architettura 5, “The Craft of Inefficiency: Habitat in North Philadelphia 1999–2009”, Parma, Italy
Academic and Professional Collaborators
Temple University: Tyler Architecture, Community Development, Sculpture, Landscape Architecture and Horticulture; Fox Social Entrepreneurship; College of Liberal Arts Center for Sustainable Communities, Geography and Urban Studies, Anthropology
University of Pennsylvania: Planning
University Community Collaborative of Philadelphia
Rowan University: Geography, Planning, and Sustainability
Professional Collaborators
Jacobs/Wyper Architects
WellsAppel Landscape Architecture.
Funding
Urban Workshop is supported both by external project grants and by grants from the Temple University Office of Research.
External funders include: Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Norris Square Civic Association, Heritage Philadelphia Program of the Pew Charitable Trusts and Wachovia Regional Foundation via The Village of Arts and Humanities, the Non-Profit Finance Fund, and the University Community Collaborative of Philadelphia
Contact
Sally Harrison, AIA, Director and Professor of Architecture / sally.harrison@temple.edu / 215.850.4433