CPPLA Virtual Field Study Program (VFS): Long Beach Civic Center-Scape | Fall 2021

LONG BEACH CIVIC CENTER

CAL POLY POMONA LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE | VIRTUAL FIELD STUDY Translating Urban Connections: Long Beach Civic Center-Scape

PROGRAM | FALL 2021

LA 2111L : Design III: Spatial Design Studio with EPT DESIGN

FS PROGRA

Monday | September 13, 2021 INTRODUCTION | 8:00AM-8:15AM

Ray Senes | Lecturer, Landscape Architecture Cal Poly Pomona - Pomona, California

ONE | 8:15AM-9:15AM Fred Kent | Co-Founder The Social Life Project + PlacemakingX - Brooklyn, NY

Build Back Better, Together: 11 Transformative Agendas to Restore Social Life in Your Community

TWO | 9:30AM-10:30AM Margot Jacobs | Design Director NBBJ: Urban Environments Studio - Los Angeles, CA

Design with Life

THREE | 10:45AM-11:45AM Alex Wilson | President The Resilient Design Institute - Burlington, Vermont Addressing Resilience in the Design of Public Spaces

BREAK | 11:45AM-12:30PM FOUR | 12:30PM-1:30PM Philip Winn | Director, Parks & Place San Francisco Parks Alliance - San Francisco, CA It's the People: How Empathy and Imagination Transform Public Spaces

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FS PROGRA

FIVE| 1:45PM-2:45PM April Walker | Project Management Officer The City of Long Beach, Public Works - Long Beach, CA

How the City Navigated the Civic Center Project for Staff and the Community

SIX | 3:00PM-4:45PM David Malda | Principal GGN (Gustafson Guthrie Nichol) - Seattle, WA

Reinterpreting Civic: Designs for the Long Beach Civic Center

Allen Compton | Owner / Principal SALT Landscape Architects - Los Angeles, CA On the Beach in Long Beach: Pushing the Limits of Play in the Public Realm

SEVEN | 5:00PM-6:00PM Jeff Hou | Professor / Author University of Washington - Seattle, WA

Making Public Spaces for All

CLOSING | 6:00PM-6:15PM

Andy Wilcox | Dept. Chair, Landscape Architecture Ray Senes | Lecturer, Landscape Architecture Cal Poly Pomona - Pomona, California

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PEAKER BIO

Fred Kent: The Placemaking Fund (The Social Life Project and PlacemakingX), Brooklyn, NY | Co-Founder https://www.sociallifeproject.org/ , https://www.placemakingx.org/ The foundations of the Placemaking movement, and of Project for Public Spaces, were built on a set of experiences that Fred had starting 50 years ago. In 1968, he founded a Street Academy (Academy for Black and Latin Education) for high school dropouts in what was once an abandoned building in Manhattan Valley. Michael Bloomberg was one of its early funders. Fred’s public spaces career was most powerfully shaped by William “Holly” Whyte, who would be 100 this fall. Whyte's humanist and user-centered views on public spaces would change them forever. With systematic observations of how people move and interact within a space, Whyte began a conversation around what makes a plaza, or a park work for people, and what causes some to remain lifeless.

After meeting Whyte during Earth Day, Fred worked closely with Whyte on his Street Life Project starting in 1972.

In 1969, Fred led the planning for the first Earth Day in New York City, starting his career as a builder of movements. Today, Fred is applying his community organizing skills to lead a global placemaking movement that is connecting and supporting public space innovators, advocates, and professionals across the globe. Fred has facilitated thousands of community-based projects that have demonstrated a new paradigm for shaping public spaces, including leading ongoing transformations of high-profile places from Houston to Harvard Yard, Perth Cultural Centre to Downtown Detroit. Perhaps his biggest impact is building the capacity of hundreds of local placemaking organizations, and city-wide placemaking campaigns, from Cape Town to Kuala Lumpur, San Diego to Mississauga.

Margot Jacobs: NBBJ: Urban Environments Studio - Los Angeles, CA | Design Director http://www.nbbj.com/ As NBBJ's Landscape Design Director, Margot brings a passion to designing meaningful spaces with and for people. Drawing on her background in art, design, and research, Margot designs and advocates for sustainable systems-based solutions to strengthen the resiliency of our communities. This includes public parks, waterways, green infrastructure and mixed-use developments in the US as well as Asia, Central and South America, most notably leading the design for several projects along the LA River and in the Los Angeles Arts District. Committed to work that improves quality of life, she is active in water conservation, environmental justice, and pro-bono efforts with a special emphasis on urban watershed improvement projects. Her writing on the benefits of multibeneficial infrastructure has appeared in the LA Times, Flaunt Magazine and the Stockholm World Water Week Proceedings. Margot has lectured and exhibited at educational, cultural, and research institutions worldwide including the Tate Modern London, Harvard University Graduate School of Design and the Royal College of Art in London.

Alex Wilson: The Resilient Design Institute, Burlington, VT | President https://www.resilientdesign.org/ Since the late 1970s, Alex Wilson has been a writer on topics of green building, energy efficiency, building technology, renewable energy, and the environment. He served for many years as Executive Editor of Environmental Building News and the GreenSpec Directory, published by BuildingGreen, Inc. He is the author of Your Green Home (New Society Publishers, 2006) and Green Development: Integrating Ecology and Real Estate (John Wiley & Sons, 1998). Alex is the president of The Resilient Design Institute, a nonprofit organization committed to advancing resilient buildings and communities in the face of more intense storms, more frequent flooding, drought, extended power outages, and potential shortages of heating and transportation fuels. RDI has worked on resilience guidelines for municipalities, produced materials on enhancing the resilience of multifamily affordable housing, and lead the creation of pilot credits on Resilient Design for the LEED Rating System of the U.S. Green Building Council.

Philip Winn: San Francisco Parks Alliance, San Francisco, CA | Director of Parks and Place https://sanfranciscoparksalliance.org/ Philip Winn joined SF Parks Alliance as Director of Parks and Place in April of 2020. Philip previously served as Vice President at Project for Public Spaces (PPS) where he developed, designed, managed, and implemented a broad variety of projects and programs. While at PPS, he helped lead the Southwest Airlines Heart of the Community Program, an initiative that provided direct grants and technical assistance to public space activation projects in over 20 cities in the United States and Mexico. Philip has developed, designed, managed, and implemented a broad variety of projects and programs. He brings a special expertise in facilitating community-led public space activation projects, as well as his skills as a facilitator, project manager, and advisor to projects around the world, from Providence and Detroit to Kuala Lumpur and Mexico City.

As a public speaker and session leader, Philip has facilitated workshops and presented at conferences for Walk/Bike/Places, Placemaking Week, the Placemaking Leadership Council, Net Impact, New Partners for Smart Growth, Future Cities Collaborative, and multiple municipal governments and community groups. Philip also worked as a project manager at OpenPlans where he coordinated a series of transportation advocacy projects in collaboration with founder Mark Gorton and the staff of Streetsblog and Streetfilms. Philip has also worked as an Art Director and Art Department Coordinator in the New York film production community. Philip achieved his bachelor’s degree at Columbia University in the City of New York and later attended Yale University’s School of Architecture.

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PEAKER BIO

April Walker: City of Long Beach/Project Management Officer, Public Works https://www.longbeach.gov/pw/ April Emmsley Walker is a Long Beach native, resident, and dedicated civil servant. April has worked for the City of Long Beach since 2015 within the Public Works department. Joining the City as an Analyst, April has grown through the organization as a Community Projects Officer and most recently, Project Management Officer. Within her current role, April manages the City’s Energy Efficiency Infrastructure program, delivering capital projects in the areas of renewable energy, battery storage, EV chargers, and facility retrofits. As a member of the recent Civic Center project team, April led the Change Management and Move Coordination efforts. Currently, she supports Civic Center operations, ensuring a safe and efficient environment for employees, visitors, and public meetings. April is well versed in City policy, operations, and priority projects, initiatives, and programs. Outside of work, April is involved in various community organizations within Long Beach. April is a member of Leadership Long Beach Board of Directors, Board Member for Long Beach Management Association, and Membership Director for Long Beach Council PTA. April has a Master’s in Business Administration from the Paul Merage School of Business and continues to work through certifications in project and energy management. April and her husband Brandon have two young children and enjoy weekends outdoors at any of the City’s playgrounds or water attractions. They also enjoy discovering new restaurants and coffee shops. .

David Malda: GGN (Gustafson Guthrie Nichol), Seattle, WA | Principal https://www.ggnltd.com/ David Malda is a key design leader at GGN. His work explores the potential for landscape to transform how we experience and observe the world around us. Recent and current projects include the Master Plan for John Treviño Jr. Metropolitan Park in Austin, Texas, the Civic Park at Hemisfair in San Antonio, Texas, and Lincoln Park at the Long Beach Civic Center in California. David’s articulate understanding of narrative and engagement informs his designs, resulting in projects with impacts that extend beyond their sites. David’s emphasis on drawing and making throughout the design process is central to his role within the office, and he shares this knowledge in numerous studio reviews and student engagements throughout the year. David holds a Masters in Architecture and a Masters of Landscape Architecture from the University of Virginia.

Allen Compton: SALT Landscape Architects, Los Angeles, CA | Owner / Principal https://www.salt-la.com/ Allen Compton is the founder and principal of SALT Landscape Architects, a studio recognized for designing insightful landscape projects that respond to their context and connect people to the site. He is a licensed landscape architect in the state of California where his clients include Los Angeles Unified School District, the County of Los Angeles, California Institute of the Arts, Pepperdine University, Los Angeles Council District 14, the Trust for Public Land, Snapchat, and the Riyadh Metro in Saudi Arabia. SALT, as part of Agence Ter and Team, recently won the competition to redesign Pershing Square in downtown Los Angeles. He is a member of ASLA and has served as the vice-chair of the Los Angeles Department of Transportation Pedestrian Advisory Committee. He is currently providing pro-bono consulting to the Take Back the Boulevard initiative, where he is helping community leaders shape a plan to bring Complete Street improvements to Colorado Boulevard, in the Eagle Rock neighborhood of Los Angeles. He is also a member of the Council District 14 Median Advisory Committee, where he is helping to develop a sustainable, low-water, and low-maintenance planting strategy for medians in the district. Allen is also the co-founder of Los Angeles Landscape Architects (LALA), a programming and networking group focused on landscape issues.

Jeff Hou: University of Washington, Seattle, WA | Professor, Author https://larch.be.uw.edu/ Professor Jeff Hou has taught in the landscape architecture department at UW since 2001. He is the Director of the Urban Commons Lab and previously served as Department Chair and Graduate Program Coordinator for the UW Department of Landscape Architecture. Prof. Hou’s research, teaching, and practice focus on community design, design activism, public space and democracy, and social and environmental justice. In a career that spans across the Pacific, Jeff has worked with indigenous tribes, farmers, and fishers in Taiwan, neighborhood residents in Japan, villagers in China, and inner-city immigrant youths and elders in North American cities, in projects ranging from conservation of wildlife habitats to design of urban open space. He has written extensively on the agency of citizens and communities in shaping the built environments, with edited, co-authored, and co-edited books, including Insurgent Public Space: Guerrilla Urbanism and the Remaking of Contemporary Cities (2010), Transcultural Cities: Border-Crossing and Placemaking (2013), Greening Cities, Growing Communities: Learning from Urban Community Gardens in Seattle (2009), Now Urbanism: The Future City is Here (2015), and Messy Urbanism: Understanding the “Other” Cities of Asia (2016). Professor Hou is a recipient of the 2019 CELA Award for Excellence in Research and/or Creative Work and the 2011 CELA Award for Excellence in Service-learning Education. His publications have won the EDRA Great Places Book Award in 2010, 2012 and 2018. Hou’s community engagement work in Seattle’s Chinatown International District has also been recognized with a Community Builder Award, a Golden Circle Award, and a Community Stewardship Award from WASLA. Jeff is also a coordinator for the Pacific Rim Community Design Network, which he co-founded in 1998. Professor Hou has a multidisciplinary background in architecture, landscape architecture, planning, and public art. He received his PhD in Environmental Planning and MArch from University of California, Berkeley, MLA from University of Pennsylvania, and B Arch from the Cooper Union.

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HANK YOU

Andy Wilcox Dean Lauren Bricker Kris Penrose Adam Trujillo Paulina Forgette Chris Valenzuela Josh Silver Michelle Frier Steven Chavez Phil Pregill Ben Roush Kurt Culbertson Robin Mark Ethan Kent Rogelio Flores Christopher Koontz Betty Lynn Senes KK Clark Kelly Olson

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