The School of Architecture is proud to announce that “Acupuncture for Community Forge” playscape is ULI Pittsburgh’s 2019 Placemaking Award Winner in the category of Community Places. The winner was announced at the 7th Annual Placemaking Awards for Excellence ceremony hosted by the Urban Land Institute on Friday 18 October. Jackie Cameron from Community Forge, Associate Professor Stefan Gruber, and student representative Mounica Guturu accepted the award on behalf of the studio team.
In Spring 2019, the Urban Collaboratory Studio led by Professor Gruber worked with Community Forge, a citizen-led initiative that is transforming a former vacant school in Wilkinsburg into a community and youth center, co-working space, and much more. Community Forge is committed to youth empowerment, community collaboration, organizational incubation, and neighborhood wellbeing.
Together with community members, both young and old, the studio is redesigning the center’s outdoor spaces and transforming the former schoolyard into a shared resource for the wider neighborhood. In a participatory design process that included weekly youth workshops, the studio supported the development of ideas and their translation into a coherent design strategy. In a collaborative setting, within 15 weeks, the studio went from exploring and analyzing the urban milieu of Wilkinsburg, to facilitating participatory design workshops with the community, to developing and implementing a strategic design intervention that promises to act as an urban catalyst for the neighborhood revitalization, or urban acupuncture.
The resulting urban design framework proposes an archipelago of islands programmed for diverse activities. The islands will be implemented incrementally over time based on the funding and volunteers. With the aim of setting the transformation in motion, the studio realized the first and largest island, “the field,” which integrates games and sports in an educational landscape. The “playground island” is currently being implemented by the Fall 2019 Design-Build studio under the leadership of professors Stephen Lee and Liza Cruze. This fall’s studio is also developing the design of a porch for Community Forge.
Project Team
Professor: Stefan Gruber
Students: Ghalya Alsanea, Fon Kornrat Euchukanonchai, Mounica Guturu, Min Young Jeong, Ritchie Ju, Rachel Park, Mariana Alberola Rezza, Shariwa Sharada, Gautam Jagdish Thakkar, Scarlet Nga Chin Tong, Chitika Vasudeva