The Roxbury Love Project
Client: The Roxbury Cultural District
The Problem: Insufficient artist housing and creation space within the district in addition to space for residents to congregate and celebrate local talent
The Solution: Provide options for placemaking toolkits and housing modules that could be utilized to rejuvenate parts of the city center
My Role: Marketing Intern and Team Leader
The idea of interdisciplinary design sounds fantastic. It only makes sense that in an effort to produce a desirable product for a diverse population, the team who creates it should be just as varied. The Sasaki 2017 Intern Charrette was built on this principle, combining twelve strangers with a wide range of talent, from urban planners and interior decorators to novice marketers to come together and practically work magic in just two weeks.
If it was not difficult enough to even remember everyones names, the team was tasked with collaborating with the community in Boston's Roxbury neighborhood to generate affordable and implementable placemaking ideas that connected and integrated living, working, and promoting the arts within the Roxbury Cultural District.
After splitting into three groups: Placemaking, Working/Showing, and Housing/Living, the team took a field trip into Boston to check out precedent sites that could inform their design process, as well as locations in the heart of Roxbury’s Dudley Square, the focal point of the project.
Precedent Site Images: Nikon 35mm
Site Images: Nikon 35mm
While each group focused on a specific area, the whole team collaborated closely to accomplish their main goals for the charrette:
- To celebrate the Cultural District of Roxbury by identifying its cultural and physical assets and connecting them through people, infrastructure, culture, history, businesses, and institutions;
- To make places for people to create art, foster community, and build connections;
- And to encourage Dudley Square to be seen and utilized as the unifying cultural heart of Roxbury.
Through research into precedents; rapid ideation; and consultation with local artists, makers, business owners, and producers, the three groups were able to generate recommendations that would creatively enhance existing conditions while speaking to the real concerns and aspirations of the district’s community. Recommendations ranged from new prototypes for affordable artist residences to urban design approaches for creating active, pedestrian-friendly streetscapes along many of the district’s main boulevards.
Placemaking: This group was tasked with cultivating a sense of place for the district by knitting together the neighborhood’s rich arts and cultural assets. After visiting the SoWa Art and Design District, the Placemaking team was motivated to create toolkits for programming related to arts, greening, community, and events. The interns saw opportunities to create arts plazas, sculpture parks, pop-up art installations, and community gathering spaces filled with locally-produced art. Greening programming would increase access to community garden space, urban forests, as well as urban farms. Community programming would utilize more public spaces as outlets to express Roxbury's diverse identity and encourage gathering and activities for all ages. Finally, events programming could manifest in pop-up farmers markets, craft fairs, fashion shows, and concerts for everyone in the community to enjoy.
Working/Showing: This group was charged with supporting artistic production and exhibition by considering a toolkit for activating underutilized spaces essential to the cultural fabric of the neighborhood. Zeroing in on a building and mixed-use plaza in Dudley Square, the working/showing group explored how underutilized spaces in Boston can be enhanced through design strategies to foster the natural growth of artist communities and local businesses over time.
Housing/Living: This group was asked to generate ideas for increasing the supply of affordable, functional space for local artists to live and work in the district. Wanting to provide housing solutions for a variety of residents, from young artists in need of mentorship, to older more established artists, the housing/living team landed on a modular system of design with three unit sizes. They envisioned spaces for all kinds of artists, including visual, musical, spoken word, and fashion designers, and tried to keep in mind that some people would prefer isolated work and living spaces, while others would thrive in a communal setting.
After several pin-ups and practice presentations, the team delivered a presentation in June that got the whole office involved. Using large-scale boards and an on-screen presentation, the interns showcased their design to the Sasaki office in addition to representatives from the Roxbury Cultural District and the Inner Sanctuary for the Arts, a social and event space located in Dudley Square. Following the presentation, the office got a taste of Roxbury’s vibrant, multi-faceted culture with spectacular performances from musicians The Trendsetters, a spoken word artist, a hula-hooper extraordinaire, and D.J. Pink Flamingo.
After a bit of fine tuning with the presentation materials, the team was able to bring their ideas to a Roxbury community meeting in the Bruce C. Bolling Building and get feedback from local residents on initial ideas.
While Sasaki is continuing to work with the community to research and envision the future of the Roxbury Cultural District through an inclusive and iterative process, the experience gained from this rapid Charrette project was some of the most integral to the beginning of my passion for design.
To view the blog post I wrote for this project click here
