Baltimore Design School ‘creating a national model for design thinking’: Steve Ziger

In recent years, Steve Ziger is probably best known for his firm’s work on the Baltimore Design School, a 120,000-square-foot architecture, design and fashion school for grades 6 through 12 on Oliver Street in Station North. (While classes have been happening, the school’s official grand opening at its space in the renovated Lebow Building is Aug. 26, with an event to celebrate on Oct. 6.)
“We’re creating a national model for design thinking,” Ziger, a partner with the Ziger/Snead architecture firm, told WhatWeekly. “There are three or four design public high schools in the country, but we’re the only curriculum that starts in the sixth grade.”
Perhaps what’s most interesting about Ziger’s WhatWeekly interview is what he’d like to see happen in Baltimore over the next five years: a doubling of the population. (That means 1,242,684 people living in Baltimore city by 2018, or thereabouts.) Granted, the WhatWeekly interview stipulates that Ziger would be given a “magic wand” prior to bringing about this “Fantasia”-like transformation of Charm City in five years.
Read the full interview here.
And for some context, here’s a graph from LiveBaltimore showing Baltimore’s population loss since the 1950s.

Graph from LiveBaltimore.com.