s p a c e + place C J S W 90.9fm

#49 new ideas on the ground

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This episode of s+p we cover periodicity with Oslo Pilot, a creative think tank embedded in municipal government called Laboratorio para la Ciudad, and a pedestrian strategy in the making.

A pilot project researching a format for future art events in public space is called Oslo Pilot.  Commissioned by the Oslo Agency for Cultural Affairs, Oslo Pilot is a series of artworks in public space but also workshops, talks, and even a publication. Curators Per Gunnar Eeg-Tverbaak and Eva Gonzalez-Sancho are heading the two-year research based initiative. Seeking different channels to explore public art as it meets public space, the work includes seminars,  exhibitions and a magazine that will launch in the spring with an editorial team  of architects, poets, and artists.

We move into the pedestrian realm with a discussion on a new Pedestrian Strategy that in response to a Municipal Development Plan and a Transportation Plan putting walking as top billing, we catch new developments in The City of Calgary’s Pedestrian Strategy from Project Manager Andrew King. A final information session will be held on November 24th here.

Our final interview is with Laboratorio para la Ciudad, a new think tank embedded in the Municipal Government in Mexico City. A collection of artists, architects, designers, economists and urbanists, they’ve taken up a desk in city hall in order to catalyze a different way of connecting citizens to their government. The Lab’s director, Gabriella Gomez Mont, explains how Mayor Miguel Angel Mancera approached her to start up this innovative approach to civic innovation. Part of their work is dedicated to improving the pedestrian realm, something deemed important in a city where 14 million commuters take the bus daily. Two weeks ago Mexico City closed down an elevated highway for the first time. The Lab was integral in kickstarting a sense of belonging on the street.

The link to listen to CJSW Space+Place podcasts has moved. If you’d like to catch the most recent shows, you can find them here. Thanks for listening.

#48 everyday housing

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How do we define affordable housing? And what measures are some cities taking to encourage more of it?

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio has placed housing affordability on his agenda with a 10-year plan to preserve or add 200,000 affordable units to his city’s five boroughs. Seattle’s Housing Task Force, under Mayor Murray has drafted a plan to upzone some single family housing, making room for affordable and market rate units. San Francisco’s Mayor Ed Lee has proposed a $250 million bond measure that, if voted in, would allow for 30,000 affordable units over 4-5 years. In addition, Mayor Lee announced a new $500 million plan for affordable housing, part of an ambitious $2.7 billion plan to fund affordable housing over two decades in the city.

Eric Tao, President of the real estate development group AGI Avant in San Francisco, is co-chairing the campaign for the $250 million affordable housing bond measure. Partnering with the campaign co-chairs Gabriel Metalf of SPUR and Gail Gilman of the Community Housing Partnership, Eric and team are working to raise awareness for housing need at all levels of affordability. Eric describes why a plan for middle-income earners is so essential to the overall affordability puzzle.

Last week in Los Angeles, the A+D Museum opened the show Shelter: Rethinking the Way We Live in Los Angeles. Curators Sam Lubell and Danielle Rago describe the premise behind the show including the six architects invited to address residential housing as a response to a changing city...a new Los Angeles, facing expanding population, higher land costs, and fresh access to transit. The residential proposals hail from MAD Architects, Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects, Bureau Spectacular and PAR.  We hear about a proposal for the Granny Flat by LA-Más as an affordable alternative that provides a bit of density and generated from resident-owned initiative.

wHY proposes an alternative use of infrastructure along the Metro Purple Line, exploring preconceptions of ownership, funding and shared infrastructure. We also discuss Michael Maltzan Architecture’s Star Apartments in the Skid Row neighbourhood, a transformation of a single-story commercial building into a mixed-use residential with 102 apartments for formerly homeless individuals. Nearby to this residence, the A+D museum has recently relocated downtown and Executive Director Tibbie Dunbar explains why.

Thomas Mullins,  describes the history of public housing initiatives in New York as part of the exhibition he created called Affordable New York: A Housing Legacy. The exhibition traces public housing initiatives for those in need, placing current plans, drawings and models within a context of more than a century dedicated to offering affordable alternatives of some kind. Examples of the tale of affordable housing includes photographs of housing from 1958, such as the Wagner Houses in East Harlem, and a New York City Housing Authority exhibition at the New York World’s Fair in 1939-1940.

And finally, we speak with architect and writer Susanne Schindler about affordable housing initiatives and the role that architecture plays in fostering new models. Susanne’s research is focused on the intersection of policy and housing and she is part of a multi-year research project called House Housing: An Untimely History of Architecture and Real Estate, an initiative that is exploring the link between architecture and real estate. Later this fall, their work will be available in a report called The Art of Inequality: Architecture, Housing and Real Estate.

There’s another exhibition on affordable housing at the Canadian Centre for Architecture, reviewing an experimental period in the 1970s where architects, working with local communities in Portugal, developed housing projects. The SAAL Process: Housing in Portugal 1974-76 is up until October 4th.

#47 by the public, for the public

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Marres House for Contemporary Culture, a visual arts institution in Maastricht, is producing a large scale installation that will transform the gallery into a series of experiential rooms. Called The Relativity of Matter, the installation is a sensory exploration of place and built form as the audience moves through corridors and unique environments installed inside the gallery’s four walls. It’s designed by and upcoming artist Levi van Veluw, and nominee for the Volkskrant Fne Art Prize 2015.  Filling a gap in sponsorship, the exhibition is supported by a crowdfunding campaign. Valentijn Byvanck, a critic and also the Director at Marres House of Contemporary culture, describes the work as well as the uniqueness of the crowdfunding engagement.

Moving next to Montreal, Fonderie Darling is a visual arts center inside an abandoned factory. Steel and iron were booming the 1880s, and the site is symbolic of Montreal’s industrial heritage. Today the foundry exhibits art, offers international artist residencies, and holds not to be missed street parties. Caroline Andrieux, Founder and Artistic Director of Fonderie Darling, describes a crowdfunding campaign to generate funds for an installation called Mirador that would be situated outside the gallery on the 6-metre strip of remaining sidewalk space on the street once the fire clearances have been accounted for. Le Collectif Acapulco is now at work on the installation. Caroline describes Fonderie Darling as a living organism, revealing how adaptation and social engagement within an “improving” neighbourhood keep the organization connected to its local public.

And finally, Dan Barasch, co-founder and executive director of The Lowline, describes the daunting challenge he and his partner James Ramsey took on...developing a public park in an underground streetcar station. The Williamsburg Trolly Terminal, located under Delancy Street in Manhattan’s Lower Eastside and abandoned in the 1940s, is the site of the proposed park. Plantlife being key to the park idea, they needed to come up with a daylighting option that would bring sunlight to the underground terminal. Dan describes how the design has evolved and how two crowdfunding campaigns have contributed to public engagement.

So, while crowdfunding is hardly new, the democratic nature of the medium allows for art and amenities created for the public... to be supported by the public.

note: The Relativity of Matter exhibition is taking reservations here for the viewing that will open in October. Mirador will open later this summer. The Low Line is producing a Lab for further research, development, neighbours are welcome.

#46 making process

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Labour, value, and the art of making is the topic of today’s show. We begin with an installation at the Contemporary Calgary called Three Withdrawl Movements for an ATM . Artist Dominique Pétrin spent 10 days pasting mosaic-like screen prints and collage pieces on the gallery walls, floors and flat surfaces. The process is improvisational and the work itself is in part a performance. The highly labour-intensive installation is paired with a copy of an ATM machine, pasted on the wall at the last minute, a gesture of implied labour questioning beauty, commerce and the ubiquity of products.

What meaning does the creative process hold? How does labour negotiate with the terms of production? This is Work is an exhibition and online laboratory focused on the question of working conditions in a contemporary context. Sophie Rzepecky describes Fictional Collective as a collaborative of 26 alumni of the Design Academy of Eindhoven Masters in Social Design that collaborate on research, exhibitions, and published work about design. Placing a lens on the economic value of creative production, Fictional Collective partnered with the Swiss gallery Depot Basel to generate four events and online discussions in the gallery. The work is published online at This is Work and explore the nature of work, economy, and the value of collaboration.

Continuing the process thread, we move to the urban realm to hear how documenting change might reveal underpinning social values. David Schalliol is a PhD candidate at the University of Chicago Department of Sociology. His book, Isolated Building Studies, unveils social and economic change with  photographs featuring last remaining buildings.  We speak about his social research and how the impartiality of a photograph can reveal the uncomfortable bits of change one building at a time. We also talk about his documentary film in development, an exploration into neighbourhood change and urban revitalization in Chicago. It’s called: The Area. (a trailer is linked.)

#45 sacred capital

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What identifies place? And, how does our built form meet with the DNA of a place? We begin the show with an interview with Zita Cobb, President and Founder of the Shorefast Foundation. A social entrepreneurial charity, the foundation is revitalizing the culture of an island north of Newfoundland called Fogo Island.  Rather than attracting jobs from an outside business, the foundation took an inventory of what Cobb refers to as Sacred Capital. And instead of a global business coming to the island, new jobs were created by developing artist residencies, a world-class Inn, and a micro-lending arm. The culture of the place, it turns out, was destined for hospitality. One of the happy benefits of the island’s reviatlization is furniture made on the island and sold across the nation and beyond...see Fogo Island Shop.

In the interview, Zita Cobb spoke about reductionism. Financial capital might be more more measurable but communities must seek out what they love. The cultural and artisitc fibre of a place, this is what to invest in. The money will follow.

One of Cobb’s early moves was to hire Norway-based architect Todd Saunders to design the artist residencies and the Fogo Island Inn. Born and raised near Fogo Island himself, Saunders welcomed the homecoming opportunity and took great care to touch gently the land that he knew so well. The process of working with the community armed former boat builders with new trades, helping to build the residencies and Inn while identifying with the local. Todd speaks about the outports, or the vernacular architecture balanced above the water on piers or “stages”. Sustainability, or designing with a light footprint, was integrated in the front end of the design so that a mechanical building was sized from the optimum roof siting necessary to rely on solar power.

And finally, we speak with Sam Oboh, the President of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada. Siting John Ruskin’s “The Seven Lamps of Architecture,” our conversation considers not only fairness and inclusivity as important, but also reveals how beauty is inherently connected to the civic significance of place. 

The RAIC is hosting their annual Festival of Architecture in Calgary next month. To learn more about the advocacy for excellency in the built environment that this organization undertakes, visit: raic.org. This year’s theme is (RE)Generation + Integration.  A few events open to the public will take place during the festival. For more information visit the RAIC Design Hub June 3-6th.

#44 more than buildings

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We explore the role of architecture as a response to the social and cultural fibre of a city. From the Museum of Modern Art in New York, we hear from the Curator of Contemporary Architecture, Pedro Gadanho, as he describes the current exhibition:  Uneven Growth: Tactical Urbanisms for Expanding Megacities. The show features design solutions that resulted from collaborative research and architectural practices seeking insight into the urban concerns of exploding population and inequality in cities. How might architecture respond to the physical and social injustice in cities? Some ideas are forward-thinking decades into the future with alternatives to energy, power, and water. There are islands of surplus junk, land trusts, and a local development bank. The exhibition is not short on alternatives. The result is a fresh look at design’s role in contributing to a pre-figured future for Hong Kong, Istanbul, Lagos, Mumbai, New York City, and Rio de Janeiro.

We also hear from the non-profit CoHabitation Strategies, a Rotterdam and New York based practice that is focused on the social relationships that influence the environments we inhabit. Researching the challenges to affordable housing, Miguel Robles-Duran and colleague Lucia Babina lay out the systemic complexities of the present day urban affordability.  Taking an approach they refer to as “socio-spatial”, their solutions reveal alternatives like Cooperative Housing Trusts or a review of the perceived value of land ownership.

Luica Babina also describes an earlier project she was part of, called The Cook, the Farmer, His Wife and Their Neighbour. It was a community garden and kitchen in Amsterdam that both filled a void in the built environment and served as example of informal movements in cities. Babina was part of the Wilde Westen group at the time, and the collaboration with artist/architect Marjetica Potrc seeded the project that would serve meals and grow food in a community facing development transition.

#43 between the lines

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Today’s show explores interpretation. How do we observe our built environment? What do we miss? Why do we build?

Jimenez Lai  describes his recent work, an exhibition and series of 14 individual pamphlets by architects. Called Treatise, Why Write Alone? this exploration into conceptual, discursive practice features 14 emerging architects equally engaged in the pursuit of understanding motivations that underlie a reason to build something. Jimenez Lai is the leader of Bureau Spectacular and is also the author of the respected architectural graphic novel, Citizens of No Place.

Iker Gil, Editor of the critical design journal MAS Context, explains an issue dedicated to the ordinary in design. An architect and also the director of MAS Studio in Chicago, his practice is on the lookout for what design might offer that’s not exactly in stated in the design brief. He sites Rojkind Arquitectos’ propensity for designing spaces for other things to happen. He’s interested in an architecture that traverses a glass ceiling of “service”, and seeks work that extends the brief. Appreciating what’s in plain sight but potentially overlooked is the approach. Iker Gil’s recent exhibition, Inside Marina City, revealed Bertrand Goldberg’s Marina City towers from the perspective of the inhabitants.

Creating “place” requires more than putting a building on the grid and seeing what’s left. Martin Arfalk describes what the Swedish landscape architecture and urban design firm, Mandaworks, takes seriously: the interpretation of space and the activities that can be instigated. Manda, in a meta sort of way, is a design language, but it’s also a lens to look more critically at a call for design, allowing different disciplines of design to more fluidly approach a problem. How people interact is part of the interpretation of space.

Sometimes, its the small things that make a difference in our environment. They’re right there, we just need to look.

#42 intelligence

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The late industrial designer Bill Moggridge remarked that “It doesn’t occur to most people that everything is designed.” Bill’s GRiD Compass Computer, considered the world’s first laptop, is included in a show called Beautiful Users. The exhibition, at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum and curated by Ellen Lupton, identifies the lineage of user-friendly design. What started with military engineer research, industrial designers Henry Dreyfuss, Niels Different, and Alvin R. Tilley brought the computation of the human body to product design after World War II. The exhibition reveals process, influences, and even a move to incorporate the direct participation of users into the design. Show catalog here.

Architects Simon Kim and Mariana Ibañez of IK Studio take another approach to intelligence, exploring the embodied intelligence in surface and form to realize an augmented architecture. Stable geometries might instead adapt to need, to a site, and to the environment. The POLYhouse is designed as a series of modular chains that can be linked together to create a courtyard or even a tower. In the process, buildings that move on demand might be possible. An early collaboration with Carbon Dance explores cybernetics and movement in the creation of a responsive environment.

In the book, Paradigms in Computing, Ibañez explores architecture through the lens of computing, wondering how architecture might move beyond the boundaries of buildings and cities.

#41 art in place

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The seed for the exhibition Oh, Canada was sewn, curiously, in Massachusetts. What art was the nation with the world’s second largest landmass producing? Denise Markonish, a curator at MASS MoCA, was convinced that there was more to the Canadian contemporary art scene, and headed north, visiting 400 artist studios. The exhibition, featuring 60 Canadian artists under a nine square-metre roof, was an early unravelling of preconception that artmaking is bound to established centres.  Oh, Canada was recognized for it’s exploration into cultural identity and sense of place. Opening in Calgary on January 31st, the exhibition will be shared among four institutions: The Esker Foundation, the Illingsworth Kerr Gallery, the Glenbow Museum, and the Nickle Galleries.

From the span of a nation of artistic practice, we drill down to the area of a single province. Kristy Trinier, a curator at the Art Gallery of Alberta, identifies threads of locality in the upcoming 2015 Alberta Biennial of Contemporary Art. Finding an unfinished underground downtown transit station in Edmonton as metaphor for contemporary artistic practice in the province, our discussion moves between representation and the adaptation of practice to place. Future Station was intended as a stop on the light rail transit line. Instead, it’s a platform encased within a concrete barrier. Daily commuters pass through without the awareness of the station’s existence. Similarly, the Biennial draws attention to artistic practice that is veiled in the overlooked gaze. While at the AGA, don’t miss the photography exhibition, Suburbua: A Model Life.

And finally, we narrow the gaze to the city of Calgary, where a guerrilla biennial under the moniker the Calgary Biennial takes place.Titled Atlas Sighed and curated by artist Steven Cottingham, the exhibition features a dozen works venturing into the pubic realm. Brittany Bear Hat uses the medium of the billboard to unveil place as it relates to identity. Yvonne Mullock and Mia Rushton’s medium is a classified ad, and Steven Beckley’s images will occupy a bus shelter. Regardless of medium, the works provoke pointedly at the social implications of success. Works question not only our relationship with capital and with public space, but also how place is implicated in a search for an embrace of the alternative.

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#40 main and lane

We look at main streets and laneways, exploring how vital they are to the urban fabric.

Main Street: We start the show with a look at two main streets where architectural moves have struck ground in an effort to foster neighbourhood vitality. On 9th Ave SE in Inglewood, architectural firm MoDA clad an everyday 2-story commercial building with a parametric screen that serves as both a beacon on the streetfront, but also articulates interior views. The individually-scored wooden slats, placed horizontally across the building face, reveals a subtle patterning leading to the building entrance. Developer Randy Rapaport describes the challenges faced in planting multi-family buildings on main streets, this time on Clinton Street and on Belmont Street in Portland.

Lanes: Laneway housing cracks open opportunity for a diversity of housing options. Think affordability, but also, it’s about offering multiple lifestyle choices. Brandon Donnelly speaks about The Laneway Project, and their in-between spaces summit held last week in Toronto calling attention to the laneway house. His perspective, as someone working in the real estate development industry, reveals why the laneway is one of the last opportunities for an urban fabric middle ground...one where mid-rise housing options are still possible. 

We hear from the architectural design+build practice Studio North, who has researched laneway housing extensively and in the process of building their own laneway. This aligns with the city’s main streets initiative and an investigation into laneway housing in the Hillhurst-Sunnyside neighbourhood.  Calgary City Council  will be voting on a proposal to improve city process for secondary suites on December 15th. Have your say, take action at: www.suiteyyc.ca/ and find out more here.

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#39 - the advocate

Susan Szenasy defines design, connecting the dots between design’s effects and the ethical, ecological, and social responsibility. As editor in chief and publisher of Metropolis Magazine, she has been a leading voice of design for decades. She’s often placed humans at the center, and called upon designers to advocate for the people. Her recent book, Szenasy: Design Advocate, is a collection of essays, lectures and testimonials that together reveal three decades of advocacy for better design.

We also cover the complexity of built heritage with a look at the Portland Building. Credited as “the first major monument of Post-Modernism” by historian Charles Jenks, and ranked by critic Paul Goldberger in 1982 as “the most compelling architectural event” the 32-year-old building was a product of its time, economically, politically, and socially, resulting in municipal workers that have grown tired of a dark, poor work environment. Architect Michael Graves and heritage advocate Peter Meijer discuss the building, it’s challenges, and what might be done to bring the building into the next century with a bit of grace.

image credits: 1/ courtesy of Szenasy, Design Advocate; 2/ courtesy of Peter Meijer Architects; 3/ courtesy of Michael Graves & Associates.

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#38 provisional, ephemeral

Curator Wayne Baerwaldt shares insights on Nuit Blanche Calgary, an evening festival of performance art staged in the urban core.  What’s the role of art outside of a gallery setting? What can a time-based performance offer as a record of history? These questions lead our discussion into not only what’s behind some of the performances, but how participatory the experience might be. See: September 20th 7pm - 1am. Support Nuit Blanche here.

Neil Hrushowy is the Manager of City Design Group in the City of San Francisco’s Planning Department. The group focuses on the public realm and human scale design.  Neil shares why they’re calling for ideas to turn Market Street from a major thoroughfare into a street with varying uses. He also explains what’s behind Pavement to Parks, a program that encourages the transformation of underutilized parts of the street into quick and simple pedestrian places. This includes a streamlined permitting process for the implementation of a park let. Submit an idea: Market Street Prototyping (until Oct 10th)

Matthew Passmore is a founder of Rebar, a collective of artists and designers questioning the relationship of human beings and the built environment. How much green remains in public domain was the initial question they asked, leading to a temporary installation of astroturf and chairs to transform a parking lot into a public space. Park(ing) day followed. We also discuss an Urban Prototyping Festival and what to expect from morelab.

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#37 social optimism

Justin McGuirk, in his book, Radical Cities, explores a new generation of optimists among architects, planners, and civic leaders in Latin America who are addressing the challenge of social housing. He describes a new vision, where slums are no longer a cancer that must be eradicated with a tabula rasa clearance. Instead, mobility and key urban design questions are folded into housing the poor. Insertions can be as powerful as a new building. A cable car in Caracus cuts a commute from hours to a few  minutes. The efforts, while incredibly local and not successful in the same way each time, allow slums and the rest of the city to unite as a more integrated whole.

The exhibition 10 Years of Urgency started as an urban intervention in Montreal that would bring attention to homelessness. Created by the artist organization known as ATSA, there were performances, workshops and meals on the site for five days each year. Steven Cottingham describes how this performative intervention is translated into an exhibition. Currently at The New Gallery, the exhibition is in route to the Centre Cultural Franco-Manitobain later this month.

Mark Lakeman, co-founder of Communitecture,  and behind City Repair and early contributor to13-year-old Dignity Village, speaks about creating gathering places. He also describes why Portland supported an opportunity for housing for those without. Dignity Village is a sanctioned, self-developed community that serves men and women who were previously homeless. City Repair brings place-making and permaculture the the level of the street intersection. City Repair Calgary hosted Mark last month with a workshop and public discussion.

#36 Landscape Lessons

Ciphers is a book of aerial studies of urban development by photographer Christoph Gielen. Beautiful, alluring, and incredibly geometric, each motif contains hidden code of a time when growth was unlimited. Gielen’s images are provocative, revealing how well-minded plans have become wasteful and force in-efficient ways of living.  Can the photograph call attention to a new type of zoning, particularly one unleashed from auto-dependency?

Back on the ground, and left with some difficult constraints in our existing built form, an Active Neighbourhoods Canada pilot project is trying to “better” what we have built. The aim is to link patterns of urban development with mobility options and community connectivity. Started by the Montreal Urban Ecology Centre, and furthered by Sustainable Calgary and the Toronto Centre for Active Transportation, these pilots will be working at the opposite end of the aerial photograph. Ryan Martinson and Celia Lee share what’s behind the Calgary pilot, and why they’re starting with neighbours and residents of a community.

Les Jardins de Metis(International Garden Festival)is a contemporary garden design competition started in 2000.  Landscape architect Ken Smith framed a valley, while Claude Cormier planted his blue sticks. Alexander Reford, the Director of the Jardins de Metis / Reford Gardens, reveals the history behind the gardens and what this competition can do to deepen our understanding of our landscape.

One of the winning entries of this year’s garden festival was Afterburn, a design of charred posts and post-fire plantings by Civilian Projects. Exploring the relationship of the forest fire in the lifecycle of a forest, Ksenia Kagner and Nicko Elliott’s design is a provocative take on how nature renews itself.  The ecologies are inter-dependent. The destruction of the forest is regenerated.

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Development is a verb

Community-minded developers charting new territory in our urban built form is the topic of this show. From fresh ideas like zero-parking and paths based on desire lines, and de-construction turned public engagement via an installation, to an investment in re-purposing a storage facility into a gallery, it’s clear that development stretches beyond the act of building on a lot. 

Renata Li of Westbank shares how development as city-building embraces placemaking not just for those who will be residing or working in the new buildings, but creates space for the general public to experience as well. BIG | Bjarke Ingels Group is behind the new design as well as local architects Dialog. Curator Trevor Boddy describes the architecture exhibition and salon series Gesamtkunstwerk. Rooted in the concept of Vancouverism, hear how Gwerk takes design as public engagement seriously. 

Artists Sean Mankowske, Caitlind rc Brown, and John Frosst take us behind Wreck City, an art installation that repurposed soon-to-be-demolished homes. Rising to the fore as a result was the opportunity for dialogue around the complexity of urban growth complete with heady challenges like social inclusion, heritage, sustainability and affordability, and so many difficult to answer questions. Other curators mentioned in the interview are: Matthew Mark Bourree, Jennifer Crighton, Brandon Dalmer, Andrew Frosst, and Ryan McClure Scott. Also mentioned: Bucci Developments, Ltd. and the precedent projects The Leona Drive Project in Ontario and The House Project in Calgary.

And finally, the Calgary Municipal Land Corporation master plan has a pedestrian promenade diagonally slicing through the center of the East Village. Michael Brown shares what this move means for the public ream. He also shares what has set the stage where a developer is willing to explore how a zero-parking tower might pencil out. 

#34 adaptation + resilience 

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Adaptation is difficult. We have to change. Yet as hurricanes persist and as sea levels alter, adaptation is a concept we may learn to admire. Today we delve into adaptation within the urban context.

Three students visit Iqaluit on Baffin Island and co-curator Lola Sheppard shares a bit behind Arctic Adaptations for the Canadian Pavilion of the Venice Architecture Biennale. Alexandros Washburn talks about  The Nature of Urban Design: A New York Perspective on Resilience and shares what he’s working on at The Stevens Institute. We also hear how civic virtue, or that Athenian oath to “Leave the City A Better Place," is equally about resilience.