Alex Gilliam | alex@publicworkshop.us | 196 posts
Project: Landscape Prosthetics Location: Chicago Project Director: Alex Gilliam Year: Summer 2010 Honestly, this super short project (one afternoon) was simply intended to be a device for quickly engaging my brand new crop of teen apprentices, forcing them to collaborate, bond and quickly feel empowered to change the world around them. Given that I have […]
June 26, 2010
Every year the National Building Museum (here) in Washington, DC offers an accomplished practitioner or researcher the opportunity to use the full extent of the Museum’s collection to conduct research that furthers the practitioner’s work while expanding the understanding of the collection. We are very pleased to announce that the National Building Museum has chosen […]
June 18, 2010
I am really excited to be able to invite you to the Children Changing Cities panel this Saturday morning (6/19) at 9.30 at the Association for Community Design Conference (here) in Berkeley, California. The panel brings together a compelling collection of thinkers and doers who are redefining how we engage youth in making our cities, […]
June 3, 2010
You may or may not have noticed but our society has developed some pretty definite ideas where things such as play, exercise, industry or even work should happen. For a variety of reasons, over time we’ve built up infrastructures that reinforce where, when and how these things should happen. This has manifested itself in the […]
May 27, 2010
Believe it or not this image is a fake…..sort of. This is what the street really looks like. Look closely, very closely and you will notice that these are exactly the same views. That’s right, the image above is exactly the same as the one below, minus a couple of tweaks in Photoshop. At Public […]
May 20, 2010
In this day and age, Google has made satellite imagery of our neighborhoods and important landmarks an everyday reality. It’s such a pervasive part of our existence now, can you remember the day when we didn’t have ready access to such materials? Maybe it’s the lack of coffee, but I can’t. My brain inherently wants […]
May 5, 2010
‘When it snows, children take over the city: they sleigh, throw snowballs, make snowmen and are more visible than ever. But what a city needs for its children has to be more durable than snow.’ -Aldo Van Eyck A few months ago I wrote about my visit last summer to the rather amazing Kolle 37 […]
May 3, 2010
From Public Workshop’s Project Archives: Project: An Outdoor Classroom & Community Space For PS 134 Location:New York, NY Project Director: Alex Gilliam with help from Thor Snilsberg from Project For Public Spaces for the Hester Street Collaborative Year: 2006 Is it possible for children to make meaningful contributions in design processes beyond doing crayon doodles or […]
April 30, 2010
On the surface this one seems like a no brainer. When you give a building or a community project an award or some sort of public recognition, invite not only the designer to the stage but also the community partners, the funders, the developer, the builder and maybe even…….the user. Let them talk, thank people […]
April 19, 2010
If they are not meant for children, they are not meant for citizens either. If they are not meant for citizens-ourselves- they are not cities. -Herman Hertzberger Herman, quite frankly I couldn’t agree more and therefore when the Association For Community Design decided that the theme of their conference this year would be ‘Toward A […]
April 19, 2010
The see-saw is probably one of the most vilified pieces of equipment you will find on a playground. When I started writing this piece, my intention was to show some of the many examples I found last summer, while on a fellowship in Germany, of how designers have tried to make the see-saw safer. Anecdotally, […]
April 19, 2010
It’s been in the works for a couple of months now but it’s now official, Public Workshop will be working with fifteen Chicago teenagers starting in late June of this summer to design-build food carts for a local community organization. Actually, we should clarify that they may not actually end up being food carts, depending […]
April 19, 2010
How can we creatively re-imagine urban education? We’re quite excited to be presenting at the Ripple Conference (here) on April 24th at the University of Chicago and surprised to be sharing a program with none other than Bill Ayers! It’s too early to say how this is going to impact our future political careers but […]
April 15, 2010
‘Good follows good.’ –Bernard, owner of Bernard’s Wear and Stepper Store www.bernardswear.com Project: We Live Here Location: Chicago, IL Project Director: Alex Gilliam with Brenda Gamboa for Landon Bone Baker Architects Year: 2010 Some of the most striking things about Landon Bone Baker Architects (here) are their confident but humble approach to their work and the […]
April 10, 2010
‘Good follows good.’ -Bernard, owner of Bernard’s Wear and Stepper Store www.bernardswear.com Quite frankly we’re not really sure who is following whom but we couldn’t be more excited to have Brenda Gamboa join our team. A multi-year grand prize winner of Chicago’s Newhouse Architecture Competition (here) for high school students, Brenda is also an incredibly […]
March 3, 2010
Can a really smart dance company help us see the inner workings of our cities more clearly? In the midst of the tidal wave of chatter about redesigning and rebuilding cities, it is often quite easy to forget or simply miss the beauty, and the importance of the everyday. On the most basic level without […]
February 22, 2010
And Brainstorming And Then Eating The Cake Too. Oh my goodness. Last weekend was one the most amazing design-build adventures I’ve ever been a part of. Mind you, it was cake and we didn’t get to do any sort of ‘built’ imagining of possibility on the cake itself but: 1.The number of people who participated […]
February 21, 2010
Install recumbent bicycle benches at CAP Metro Bus stops? Outdoor stair climbers on Congress Ave.? In-ground trampolines on Guadalupe? Criss-crossing balance beams on 2nd Street? Concrete ping pong tables at intersections throughout town? Climbing boulders on East 5th Street? Let’s face it, many of you would consider me quite out of my mind if I […]
February 18, 2010
Can we empower citizens by making the inordinately complicated rules and processes surrounding such everyday things as housing and street vending visually more clear?
February 18, 2010
From the Public Workshop project archive: In 1976, a major earthquake devastated much of Guatemala. Fred Cuny, an American disaster relief expert, tried something novel in the world of disaster relief: instead of building new houses for and giving them to displaced Guatemalans, he and his staff trained them to build their own. They trained the Guatemalans to build earthquake-resistant houses and then helped these new master builders train others in villages throughout the region. After this humanitarian crisis had passed, much to the horror of Fred Cuny and his team, these master builders were murdered or forced to leave Guatemala by the government. These master builders were seen as community leaders and a threat to the dictatorial power structure because not only were they helping build homes, but by sharing their knowledge they were helping build stronger communities. The carpenters were valuable to their communities. Save for people such as Sambo Mockbee, Maurice Cox, or Brian Bell can we say the same of architects?
July 22, 2010
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