We are pleased to be heading to sunny Columbus, Ohio on Sunday to help the fine folks at Prototype Camp do wonderful things and generally be a part of the design adventure that they’ve assembled. Particularly unique because it is a youth design charette focused on the future of education in the midst of a […]
January 29, 2011
It’s taken a little bit to make the leap to Facebook. I’ve hemmed and hawed over whether it’s a step we should make but absent a massive international potluck dinner, Facebook is the best place to have a conversation with people like YOU about our work, to get helpful feedback and hear about the great […]
January 21, 2011
We are pleased to announce that Alex Gilliam is going to be regularly contributing to Metropolis Magazine, writing about projects, tools, programs and ideas that help us fundamentally rethink how we participate in and learn about design. Have a look at his first article on some of his research at the National Building Museum (here).
Can a building toy help homebuyers make better decisions about the style, location & financing of their house while teaching children how to be better community planners? Apparently H.O. Stone and Company, a prominent real estate developer in Chicago from the mid-19th to mid 20th century, thought so. Manufactured in 1928, their Model Home City […]
One portion of the National Building Museum’s impressive building toy collection that I have been particularly interested in during my Field Fellowship at the Museum, are the instruction manuals. How do toy manufacturers describe design and what do they do to help others build great things? How can we learn from this to teach better […]
January 7, 2011
I couldn’t be more honored or excited to be asked to share my skills, and work with a collection of people doing the most innovative work in social entrepreneurship in the United States, if not the world. Echoing Green supports exemplary individuals from around the world who have developed ingenious ideas, programs and solutions for solving […]
December 24, 2010
It’s been an incredible year and we couldn’t feel more lucky and grateful to have such a wonderful bevy of friends, collaborators, cheerleaders and clients. Thank you so much. Here’s to more, much much more in the New Year. Next week? A recap of the year and a preview of great things to come. In […]
The Constructioneer Metal Building Set No. 4 with 19 distinct pieces, 1947 Metal and rubber Urbana Manufacturing Company, Urbana, OH [1521] Construction Toys Make Better Boys. And girls, learning, buildings and cities? I think they do. Every year the National Building Museum (here) in Washington, DC offers one accomplished practitioner or researcher the opportunity to […]
November 22, 2010
Holy cow. We couldn’t be more pleased to learn that we won the DIY division of the Playable International Playground Design Competition. Apparently the judges really liked our entry even though it is much more of a how-to for developing a youth-led culture of civic ‘doing’; public space testing, exploration and innovation; and playground building […]
October 29, 2010
Okay, we didn’t exactly win the Heisman Trophy but thanks to your support, Shadelab, a project we created for the fantastic folks at Landon Bone Baker Architects (here) and their community partners has won a Project Prize from the Metro Chicago Information Center. This prize is a service grant in which MCIC (here) will put their tremendous experience making […]
October 21, 2010
How healthy is your neighborhood, your schools, your housing, your public spaces and streets? We gather data and stories that help communities, organizations and city leaders make better decisions about how they can improve the health, well-being and efficiency of their neighborhoods through design. Say hello to Shadelab. We are so excited that Shadelab, a […]
October 21, 2010
What sorts of ways can Chicago teenagers simply and easily have a positive impact on the delivery of healthy food Chicago through design? How about designing an apron-mitt that meets the very unique and challenging needs of a local artisanal baker who routinely finds her forearms covered in burns due to the incredible dexterity required […]
August 5, 2010
Without a doubt, one of our favorite times of the year is the one week we get to spend every summer at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin in Wisconsin, designing and building amazing structures with six incredibly talented teenagers from throughout Chicago’s public school system. Over the past three years, Public Workshop has been redesigning the […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
October 18, 2009
Want to see the original article and comments? Click (here) —— How far were you allowed to travel alone when you were a kid? Are you per chance Vicky Thomas, from Sheffield? If by some very unusual fluke you are from Sheffield, England and your name is Vicky, you are now in your late thirties, […]
October 7, 2009
We’re almost there ladies and gents. The front page still has a few tweaks and the individual blog post pages need some serious reprogramming but the Public Workshop redesign is almost complete. A little re-framing here, a couple of pieces of sheet rock there, a liberal dabbling of caulk and we’ll be ready to go. […]
January 29, 2011
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