How architects can pursue social impact design [event]

When terms like “social impact” lose meaning in our vocabulary, it’s important to cut out the noise.

That’s what’s graduate students of PennDesign wanted to do with Scale / Scope, an intensive two-day symposium on the value of social impact design and how architects can pursue it in their work. The event was held in Meyerson Hall last Thursday evening and Friday afternoon, with speakers from forward-thinking interactive firms like Boston-based MASS Design Group and California-based Hyphae Design Labs.

The guest speakers included:

• Anne Trumble from Emerging Terrain
• Luis Callejas from LCLA Office
• Chris Scovel from MASS Design Group
• Brent Buckman from Hyphae Design Labs

They presented on a number of industry topics including on-site innovating, capacity building, project documentation and more. Scale / Scope also brought in members from the Philadelphia community, including Alex Gilliam from the Department of Making + Doing’s Public Workshop, to discuss their work with social impact design.

The speaker series concluded in a collaborative workshop in which 12 student teams presented their own social impact projects to faculty and guest speakers. The goal is to use the feedback to revise their projects and submit them for consideration for a fellowship made possible by Scale / Scope. The fellowship includes $4,000 and the chance to pursue their project to the fullest extent possible over the summer.

The majority of the students belong to the Landscape Architecture program within PennDesign, said one of the organizers Nick McClintock. But students’ projects ranged from a bike share program for the city of Philadelphia to floating waste receptacles for busy bays.

Another team wants to improve a solar-powered community-based radio station in Kenya, which disseminates healthy lifestyle information to a population with an estimated HIV prevalence rate of over 30 percent. Construction of the radio station was recently completed in collaboration with nonprofit called Organic Health Response.

Students have until  yesterday to revise and submit proposals, and the winner of the fellowship will be announced later this week.