Designing Activism

Storefront:Syracuse

Almost nothing influences the quality of our lives more than the design of our cities. Syracuse and many other cities share a common problem of vacancy and disinvestment. These spaces, primarily storefronts, are the figurative and literal face of the city.

Our purpose is to turn an abandoned storefront, a source of blight and negativity, into a vibrant and active space that is home to progressive thinking and action for the future of Downtown Syracuse. In addition, we hope that this investment and positive activity will attract a long term occupant for the space, allowing Storefront:Syracuse to repeat this process in vacant storefronts throughout the neighborhood.

Located in historic Hanover Square Storefront:Syracuse is operating out of a decades vacant storefront in the State Tower building. The project’s objectives are to overcome disinvestment and host programming that reaches out to people from communities which usually have nothing to do with architecture or urban revitalization in order to involve them in these processes. Once completed the Storefront will be a public place for a city wide conversation about the future of our City.

Storefront:Syracuse is a center for design, a forum for public engagement, and a space to imagine and realize the city’s latent potentials. It is a place to connect designers and the populations they design for through the transformation and occupation of a vacant storefront. Revitalizing the storefront through construction and programming is not only important for improving the beauty, marketability, and pride in the neighborhood but it will also increase residents’ confidence and inspiration to complete similar projects on their own.

We want to actively engage new groups of people, or new communities entirely, to become part of the ‘public’ which is invoked when new development programs, economic schemes, or legislation related to the growth and future of our City is developed. Through education about the vital importance design and the built environment play in citizen’s lives, we hope our project results, even if in some small way, in a better educated and engaged citizenry.

The Storefront is an urban laboratory for the City of Syracuse to engage in conversation and debate with one another and with those in a position to make meaningful change regarding the issues that construct the physical and social spaces of the city. The Storefront’s programming will include a series of exhibitions, lectures, forums for outreach, roundtable workshops, design-build projects, a design library and social events. Beginning on November 17, 2011 the Storefront will host an exhibition on the history and future of master planning in Syracuse, publicly exhibiting for the first time all of the past and present visions for Syracuse and their effects on the city.

The Storefront for Syracuse
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The Front is a community engagement initiative of The American Institute of Architecture Students at Syracuse University. The Front is a physical and virtual venue for architecture and design students and young professionals to engage in the social and political issues of their community to affect positive change while promoting civic engagement, cultural development, and urban revitalization. Defined by a series of projects that address architectural agency The Front puts students at the front of their profession and their work at the front of their community.

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