Cities + Citizenship Workshops
Saturday, March 15, 2014
Goethe-Institut
Wyoming Building
5 E. 3rd Street (at Bowery)

This series of workshops will explore themes from the Cities and Citizenship conference and facilitate dialogue between students and professionals from a variety of disciplines including architecture, design, urban planning, and sociology. Please click here for more information on the whole Cities + Citizenship Conference.

11:00am-12:00pm
What is Zoning?
Mark Torrey and the Center for Urban Pedagogy
Zoning law regulates land use across the city and shapes buildings, blocks, and whole neighborhoods. It can be a tool for preservation or for rapid physical and economic development. This workshop will explain the zoning of density, bulk, land use, and how proposed rezonings could affect our neighborhoods. We will examine inclusionary and contextual zoning with plastic block buildings and even consider laying out a brand new city.

12:00-1:00pm
Community Organizing, Communications, and Documentary Filmmaking
Megan Sperry
From crowdfunding to social media messaging, the communications process is one of the most overlooked tools in community organizing and urban planning. In this workshop, participants will get an overview of how an independent documentary film about the former Domino Sugar Factory in Williamsburg, Brooklyn was produced and then successfully distributed through the use of various social media platforms and grassroots community organizing. Learn how to launch effective social media campaigns to engage your audience in new and exciting ways by discussing crowdsourcing, blogging, social media strategies, and more.

1:00-3:00pm
Design for an Aging Population
Matthias Hollwich
Matthias Hollwich is on a mission. The Bavarian architect focuses his energy on revolutionizing the aging experience. The founder of New York architecture firm Hollwich Kushner (HWKN) is a visiting professor at the University of Pennsylvania, and also created the well-received New Aging conference, bridging the fields of aging and architecture. New Aging investigates and applies recent advances in architecture and urbanism to age-related challenges. This workshop will investigate traditional problems with aging from a new perspective. The built environment is only a part society’s larger challenge in accommodating an increasing population of elderly citizens. Solutions will extend well beyond the drawing board to form what is effectively a manifesto that should resonate with anyone interested in the subject.

3:00-5:00pm
MoMA Midtown
Mitchell Joachim, Miodrag Mitrasinovic, Ioanna Theocharopoulou
We will attempt to supply large scale ideations for public areas that support and define Midtown in NYC. What icons, institutions, and neighboring elements serve to define Midtown at the global scale? How do these dispersed yet interconnected agents create a sense of place in the city? Where does the public occupy spaces in Midtown and how does it perceive the use of such areas? Arguably, single organizations can have a huge impact on the landscape of Manhattan’s heart: MoMA is such a place. What, if anything, does MoMA contribute to the definition of its own neighborhood context? Can MoMA lead by example and serve the greater public good? We will seek to explore answers to these queries and more in a brief charrtte-like approach.