Wound up about design
September 4, 2008
Last night, the Wind-Up Space, a bar on North Avenue in central Baltimore, hosted the city’s first “Design Conversation”—a meeting of architects, artists, planners, designers and all sorts of like-minded folk to discuss issues pertinent to the “built and visual environment of cities in general and Baltimore in particular,” according to Elizabeth Evitts-Dickinson, one of the event’s organizers. The ultimate goal of these meetings, which will occur every month, is to foster a community of creative people who might contribute to a dialogue about “design with a capital D — everything from architecture and buildings, to street signs and sidewalks.”
I showed up about 45 minutes late, but the crowd of about 50-60, mostly in their early-to-mid 30s, by my estimate, were sipping beers and listening to Evitts, the former executive editor of Urbanite magazine and current blogger for Metropolis magazine’s website, talk about a recent trip to the west coast and some lessons she gleaned about open space planning in San Francisco.
Other topics discussed were the rising popularity of “green” building practices, the city’s newly-established office of sustainability, a “green map” of Baltimore and affordable green design in Baltimore neighborhoods. William Evitts, a history professor and father of Elizabeth, decried class inequalities among the city’s well-designed vs. poorly-designed neighborhoods, saying, “The areas [of Baltimore] that we want to hide are generally where poor people live.”
Brad Rogers, a principal with Baltimore Green Construction, expressed frustration at builders of pre-fab housing, which he equated with vinyl-sided, “crappy, nonsense houses in Harford County.” Many such builders, he said, are unwilling to enter the 21st century in terms of architectural design: “If you talk to them about anything like advanced framing techniques…they get this deer-in-the-headlights look and say, ‘Tell us what you want, and we’ll price it.’”
The question is, where is all this leading?
Reached via e-mail after the event, Evitts wrote:
“My hope is that we can move these beyond just a networking opportunity to become a place of focused and creative design exchange. It’ll be tricky figuring out how to keep all of these disparate areas of design engaged in one overall conversation, but I think the very fact that we had such a diversity of professions in one room — all interested and passionate about the design of Baltimore’s built and visual environment — is a hell of a good start.”
For more info on the Baltimore Design Conversation, check out its Facebook page.
ROBBIE WHELAN, Business Writer
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