Public Square

I just wanted to mention that as Cleveland's Public Square is currently under construction, with Ontario and Superior being all screwed up with traffic being blocked it dawned on me just how wonderfully walkable the square has become. I can quickly cross to the square from Tower City (after arriving on the train) and hustle on over to East 2nd on my way down Euclid without hardly any worry. In fact, I find the whole experience much more enjoyable then it was before all the construction began. It makes me wonder if keeping Ontario and Superior either one way or bus only could connect the entire square into one big pedestrian friendly area with the hope that pedestrian level businesses could move in (similar to the one already existing to the south east of the square - granted some re designing of the surrounding area would be needed) which could help pull more people to the square itself.

That is assuming that Cleveland wants people in it's public square. Who the heck knows what the intentions of anything downtown are anymore? Maybe the shadow knows.

Anyway, just a passing thought I wanted to share.

Cleveland Loves Local Produce

...and if you need further proof then the recent plans to zone certain locations as community gardens or greenspaces or the recent discussion on Cleveland Magazine's Silver Spoon Awards on 90.3 at noon today in which there was some discussion on local restaurants who strive to purchase local foods (I don't believe that Lucky's Cafe was mentioned but you can't have everything) then maybe you should read about one Carl Skalak's mission to start his own organic urban farm on East 72nd between I-90 and St. Clair. Carl plans to serve not only the local community as a farm but also as an educational tool for youth to learn about agrarian techniques (he has already participated in the City Fresh Program.

I am very excited about the developing local food market, not only as it will provide fresh and tasty food stuffs to our community but also will help reconnect ourselves to nature and perhaps help shift the image of the city as a self sustaining one.

Special thanks again to MarJ for this one

Cleveland Competition - Exhibition Save the Date

June 7th, 2007
Spaces Gallery

The Cleveland Design Competition recently released their 'Save the Date' notice.

Anyway, mark your calendar and don't you dare make plans for June 7th, 2007. You should all be at Spaces Gallery looking on what some people are imagining for our beautiful Cuyahoga River.

If you see any typos on mine don't tell me. It is too late anyway.

Street Sections

One of the pure joys of architecture school (besides the model building and celebrations that followed such milestones) was the creation of simple sections to exhibit proportions of spaces so as to examine how the space would 'feel' when occupied. I remember doing tons of sketches, coloring in solid building and structure while trying to make the space in between have whatever feeling I was attempting for it.

Now, with my move to Cleveland I have noticed that there are quite a bit of 'streetscape' plans being bandied about, some with the requisite street section however these sections are typically pastel and colored and concentrate too much on strict representation to be useful study tools. In fact one could begin to doubt that any study went into it more then the following of a simple 'building-sidewalk-tree lawn-parking lane-road lane-planted median-road lane-parking lane-tree lawn-sidewalk-building' formulation that pays no mind to within what context the street scape is attempting to fit.

Enter Street Sections, a 'charrettecenter web tool' designed to collect and exhibit photos and cross sections of street scapes that work in an attempt to study and explain why some streets just 'feel right'. Currently they are a little short of their gallery goal which is where you can come in. You can register and become a contributor and share your examples of working streets with the world. If anything it could become a very powerful tool for when explaining to people (clients) why some familiar streets feel so comfortable and are so successful.

It is also surprisingly easy to create a streetscape. First you upload a photo from ground level, then there is an editor that allows you to recreate the street in section with a variety of pieces so that each section has a standardized look and layout for easy comparison.

I think it actually quite fantastic and will no doubt put plenty of time aside to play with it.

Save the Tower - Cleveland Planning Commission meetings

June 1st, 2007
June 8th, 2007

The Cleveland Planning Commission will meet to discuss (and listen to arguments) upon whether to give the green light to the County to raze the Breuer Tower.

After all the hackneyed arguments for the razing and the confusing and sometimes hypocritical reasoning behind saving the tower I would hope that this last hurrah allows some succinct and cohesive discourse on why the tower COULD be re-used and why it SHOULD be saved.

For more reasons you could even search this blog, or check out The Design Rag, Green City Blue Lake or even one called savethebreuertower.com. Heck, there are plenty of sites out there arguing their reasons for the tower.

If you care about preserving historic or iconographic structures, attempting to do some environmental good or just think Jimmy Dimorra is a corrupt putz then take some time, read up on the topic and take this last chance to voice your opinion.

See you there.

Happy Mother's Day

Happy Mother's day to all those mom's out there.