image: The City of Red Deer with 8-80 Cities and Gehl Architects

image: City of Red Deer working with Gehl Architects and 8-80 Cities

Next, we check in with the pedestrian advocacy group Walk San Francisco to hear about the city’s brand new Pedestrian Strategy. With adjustments to their built environment, the city hopes to reduce fatal pedestrian injuries by 50% by 2021. Elizabeth Stampe, Executive Director of WalkSF, explains the strategy’s launch that coincided with the city’s Walk 2 Work Day.

image courtesy of: Walk San Francisco

image courtesy of: Walk San Francisco

image courtesy of: Walk San Francisco

Digging deeper into safety, we hear from an injury-prevention coalition Safer Calgary about their symposium called Safe and Smooth. Roxanne LeBlanc, the Provincial Injury Prevention Project Coordinator at Alberta Health Services, adds depth to our understanding of why mobility, the built environment, and public health are in fact very connected.

We round out the Safe and Smooth discussion with some case studies of Calgary by 60 Dutch students at the NHTV Breda University of Applied Sciences. Paul van de Coevering is on the faculty of the Transportation, Urban Planning, and Urban Design program at NHTV and he’s joined by Joeri Mans, a fourth year student who was part of a group of six proposing a revitalization of the Central Business District in Calgary.

image: NHTV Breda students_Safe and Smooth

image: NHTV Breda students_Safe and Smooth

image: NHTV Breda students_Safe and Smooth

Also mentioned in the show:

Kids biking to school and a Leading The Way Youth Summit that takes place May 10-12th in Calgary.

The National Music Centre groundbreaking takes place the on the 22nd of this month. It takes a village to make one and here’s how to play your part.

National Music Centre courtesy of Allied Works Architecture / MIR

Inhotim near Belo Horizonte, Brazil, inspired by landscapes of Roberto Burle Marx, gallery: by Rodrigo Cerviño Lopez, installation: Linda do Rosário (2004–2008) by Adriana Varejão, photo: © Iwan Baan

Sketch of PACCAR Pavilion at Olympic Sculpture Park, Seattle, USA, rendering courtesy of Weiss/Manfredi

And from Zurich, Christian Brändle, director of the Museum für Gestaltung describes how the idea to show plastic garbage in a design museum developed. Out to Sea? Plastic Garbage Projecthas re-opened in Hamburg and will tour throughout the year. The container-size pile of garbage in the center of the exhibition demonstrates how much plastic is released into the sea every 15 seconds.

Debris from Hawaii, Museum für Gestaltung Zurich, photo: 2010, © ZHdK

Plastic cup, a find out of the plastic debris, Museum für Gestaltung Zürich, photo: Umberto Romito, 2012, © ZHdK

Plastic in everyday life installation in the exhibition: Amount of plastic garbage an average Swiss person uses in 100 days, Museum für Gestaltung Zürich, 2012, photo: © ZHdK

Basketball, a find out of the plastic debris, Museum für Gestaltung Zürich, photo: Umberto Romito, 2012, © ZHdK

Chris Jordan, Midway: Message from the Gyre, Serie since 2009, photo: © Chris Jordan, Courtesy of Christophe Guye Galerie

Follow: Plastic Garbage Project

Talks mentioned in the show: Design Matters with Brigitte Shim and Richard Thieme. And another on Public Art.

Bonus sampler:

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episode #19: in Berlin:

We hear from Andreas Ruby of Ruby Press about the foundation of the city that makes room for creativity. The books mentioned are Machen! and Informalize!.

courtesy of realities:united

Next Jan Edler of realities:united describes Flussbad, a Global Holcim awarded design to transform an under-utilized part of the River Spree into a natural swimming pool.  Watch for their Lightspell project in Toronto and another in Edmonton.

courtesy of realities:united

image: Florian Niedermayer for Raumlabor

Christof Mayer shares Raumlabor’s penchant for architecture that activates public space and engages community. We talk about a new way of thinking about the contemporary market. There’s a renovation of MARKTHALLE IX in the X-berg district, and brief mention of Templehof, a transformation of a decommissioned airport in the city.

image: Florian Niedermayer for Raumlabor

Jurgen Siebert describes FontShop and what a Creative Mornings series in Berlin and TYPO offer.

courtesy of FontShop AG

And Sven Ehmann of Gestalten tells why change can be a good thing. A recent release is Going Public.

Gestalten space courtesy of Gestalten images

image Ken Beheim-Schwarzbach and Saunders Architecture

Todd Saunders describes the design of the new Torngasok Cultural Centre for the Inuit in Nain, Labrador. We find out why carving away angles made sense.

Sami Huksendaidda zine by Joar Nango

Fish Hooks "Indigenuity" by Joar Nango

Joar Nango explains why he launched his zine Sami Huksendaidda and why he traveled through northern Finland, Sweden, Norway and Russia to observe  ”the competence of improvisation” and the way it relates to space. The project is called “indigenuity” or the re-use of everyday things. He is speaking at the Alberta Art Gallery on Wednesday Nov 28 as part of the MADE in Edmonton Indigenous Architecture Series.

Next, we visit a Sukkah, a structure built for a Jewish celebration marking the bounty of the harvest. Inspired by a SukkahCity competition to re-imagine the centuries old structure, students at the University of Calgary designed and built “Soupka”.  The winning student entry collects soup cans to feed the hungry.

And finally, we discuss a temporary structure that will be built to bridge a Veteran and civilian divide. Commissioned by the Times Square Alliance Public Art Program, architecture firm Matter Practice designed an intimate space for conversation and listening and called it: Peace & Quiet. On another note, you can check out the Matter Practice SukkahCity - based on a thread.

In preview to a public lecture on October 12th, we speak with Vancouver-based Patkau Architects and Oslo / New York-based Snohetta Architecture Design. We attempt to understand how broad the definition of culture is and what kinds of spaces foster it. We also speak with Calgary’s incoming General Manager of Planning, Development & Assessment, Rollin Stanley, about how planning and culture intersect. And finally, Reid Henry takes us behind the vision of the new cSPACE.

With a name referencing a Norwegian mountaintop, Snohetta has a body of work that includes the Alexandria Library the Norwegian National Opera and Ballet, the National September 11th Memorial Museum Pavilion, and the recent design of the addition to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. They also designed a pavilion to observe wild reindeer from.

Craig Dykers and Vanessa Kassabian describe a series of benches they designed for Guatemala City to foster pedestrian activity and re-invest in the city’s public space at the core. The poured concrete benches were designed with space for local artists to complete with their own mosaics.

Guatemala City Bench | Snohetta Architects | photo: Daniel Volpe

Snohetta drawing for benches | credit: Snohetta

Patkau Architects has designed the visitor’s centre at the Fort York National Historic Site which is in construction, the Grand Bibliotheque in Montreal, and a High Performance Sport Centre in Toronto. Their design concept for the Cottages at Fallingwater won the first competition ever held for the reserve surrounding the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed estate.

John Patkau describes the skating shelter they designed for the Asiniboine river in Winnipeg, how the materiality evolved into thin layers of plywood, and how the project led to a commission by Comme des Garcons.

Skating shelter | Patkau Architects | photo: James A Dow