Alec Hawley | IDEAS

What can a “crowd” often do better than the government, financial institutions, or a corporate entity? It can become a tool for genuine community empowerment, replacing accepted avenues of development whereby funding or employment typically comes through fixed economies such as the government, NGOs, corporations, or financial institutions. “Crowdsourcing,” as we know, is an enterprise driven by the expanded online presence of much of the earth’s population that taps the global marketplace and its associated pool of resources for solutions to challenges both personal and with worldwide relevance.

Crowdsourcing was originally defined as the ability of an individual or group to outsource work to the online crowd or mass, however, this idea has rapidly become a portal of hope for governments, companies, and communities seeking aid from further afield than standard financing footsteps and ballot measures.

This idea of crowdsourcing as a contemporary practice springs from our globally wired community, where a group occupying a small fraction of a town can become a linked network capable of great impact. The concept certainly owes a great deal to our slowly recovering economy, and the reality that organizations still seek every angle and opportunity to remain flexible while gaining valuable insight into success via competitive and less costly experimentation. But no longer simply the spawn of the recent global financial crisis, this emerging trend offers successful examples in our own discipline, from garnering finances to developing innovative projects: New York City’s High Line, the Market Street Prototyping Festival in San Francisco, and Toronto’s Projexity effort are just a few recent high-profile examples.

The High Line, possibly the most iconic landscape yet of the 21st century, began with a community group named Friends of the High Line founded by Joshua David and Robert Hammond, residents of the Chelsea neighborhood, to advocate for the abandoned elevated rail line’s preservation and reuse as public open space. Their group of interested community members has become a nonprofit financial power that ultimately developed one of the most innovative spaces in New York City.

Closer to home is the Market Street Prototyping Festival, an upcoming temporary installation event on San Francisco’s Market Street. Spearheaded by the SF Planning department, the effort bypasses standard protocol and operations of master planning and development by a government or corporate entity traditionally considered capable of handling such a massive project in lieu of an open-sourced and community-driven competition to re-invigorate San Francisco’s most vital street. This project is branding itself as a fresh, flexible and “crowd” driven approach to aid various organizations and communities in illuminating possible avenues for future success in their public space.

Projexity, a nonprofit company based in Toronto, has recognized the broader opportunity and implications of crowdsourcing and begun organizing competitions on behalf of governmental organizations, NGOs, and communities large and small that hope to find and fund projects in the private and public spheres. Most recently, together with the Toronto Region Conservation Authority, Projexity spearheaded a competition to aid one of the most underserved communities in North Toronto, garnering very innovative ideas to help them fundraise and develop a new landscape master plan for low-income, high-rise housing that could become a global paradigm for social housing.

Clearly, with all of these high-profile results, crowdsourcing is a concept that can be utilized toward great ends both by ourselves and the communities with whom we engage.

Image of the High Line by Todd Meyer; overlay by Alec Hawley.

http://www.thehighline.org/

http://marketstreetprototyping.org/

https://projexity.com/

Collapse post

Cancel

Posted by Alec Hawley
in Community, Landscape Infrastructure
on 26 September, 2014

Be the first to comment

Share this post
Facebook
Twitter

SWA Group has announced the 2012 winners of our Patrick Curran Fellowship program, an internal research award that seeks to further the art and science of landscape architecture. We received 29 applications and selected 10 proposals (two were merged into one) that support our fellowship mission as well as contribute to the firm’s reputation as a world leader in the landscape architecture field. Fellows will receive paid time off to work in their project in addition to up to $10,000 in expenses. Here are the Fellowship Winners:

Beyond the Bayou — Pavel Petrov

The goal of Beyond the Bayou is to produce a documentary on landscape architecture that highlights the landmark Buffalo Bayou, Brays Bayou and the entire Houston Bayou waterway network. This project will serve as a catalyst for change in an effort to rehabilitate similar struggling ecosystems.

Digital: Real — Mandana Parvinian and Don Xu

The “design process” is undergoing significant change as a result of the new tools of advanced 3D modeling software. This new process offers designers new forms with sophisticated patterns and spatial curvatures that surpass conventional geometric forms. Visually intriguing, these forms are both difficult to represent in technical drawings and manufacture with conventional methods. This project will explore how these forms become a reality.

SWA Graphic Library — Zane Busbee and Jean Casillas

The goal is to collectively strategize and develop a digital library that would speed up the process of rendering illustrations. The idea is to create an updated and expansive library of graphic materials to assist in the efficiency of creating the renderings and other illustrations. The development of a graphics library will greatly improve the production time of rendering in plan, section, elevation and perspective.

Beyond the Green Myth — Youngmin Kim

This project seeks to revisit current sustainable planning and design methods that the field of landscape architecture has regarded as established principles. Recent scientific articles have refuted these practices, but this project seeks to verify current sustainable planning and design methods based on the most recent scientific data and facts. It also will examine how landscape architecture can incorporate new scientific knowledge to the design.

Hope Initiative — Huicheng Zhong

The goal of this project is to design a courtyard and prepare design development drawings for the Gongxing School, a Hope School in the Sichuan Province. The project also seeks to promote a sense of social responsibility for Chinese young professionals through the media. YOUTHLA, a nonprofit organization cofounded by Zhong, will recruit and direct volunteers to support the project.

Material Research in China — Shuang Yu

The goal of Material Research is to determine materials, local manufacturers and suitable construction methods for the most common material in China. The research will also emphasize on finding construction potentials for local/traditional materials as well as for the use of new contemporary materials in China. Following the research, an open database with this data will be accessible for SWA staff.

Material Reuse — Michael Hee and Alec Hawley

Material Reuse is geared towards providing a better understanding about reuseable material availability/sourcing, costing and implementation. The project seeks to create a template that can provide valuable information to SWA employees regarding investigated materials as well as a structured format for further investigation and reporting in an effort to streamline and encourage greener practices within SWA.

Social Entrepreneurship — Andrew Watkins

As the world’s population shifts to urban cities in the developing world, how can SWA develop a business model that is flexible enough to interact in this exploding market, a market that is 2.5 billion people strong and growing? As designers, we have skills that can affect change in these environments. This project seeks to develop a business model for SWA that can engage in a profitable practice of social entrepreneurship, effectively responding to challenges faced by cities in the developing world.

SWApp and Place App — Yu-Peng Hu and Jihyun Qu

Originally two submissions, the following project is a combination of two similar submissions. The goal of both projects is to connect SWA to the community, professionals, clients and potential clients.

The SWApp seeks to create an app exclusive to SWA that will provide a map service of all SWA projects around the globe. The app will act as an interactive projects tour guide, helping potential clients who seek to visit the firm’s public projects but do know how to get there.

The Place App will allow you to browse through the firm’s current portfolio of design and architecture. It will provide exclusive access into its award-winning buildings in the form of interactive guides when visiting the buildings.

Urban Villages — Judy Qu

This project seeks to observe the changes of urban villages in Guangzhou under the background of urbanization. This project will entail visits to redeveloped and under-redeveloped urban villages, develop case studies on urban and landscape design and create potential business opportunities in China for SWA.

Collapse post

Cancel

Posted by Sarah Peck
in Social Impact
on 17 August, 2012

Be the first to comment

Share this post
Facebook
Twitter

Posts Tagged: Alec Hawley

Does Crowdsourcing Hold Promise for Landscape Architecture?

Leave a Reply