ARTT 006I. ARCH Design: Civic Realm/Public Home

The design studio will work at the scale of the neighborhood to identify strategies for strengthening the civic realm. While “public space” is most often imagined to comprise parks and green-spaces set-off from the city, neighborhoods offer multiple chances for encounter, rest and gathering that play an important role in the articulation of community. Using observation and close drawing of a selected district in Philadelphia, the studio will identify small-scale transformations that can strengthen the public realm. Close drawing is here understood as a method to attend to those aspects of what is underfoot that otherwise go unexamined. This analysis and the knowledge that it builds will help to generate ideas for transformation that could address, for example, issues of accessibility, soft infrastructure, safety or transport mobility; ideas could challenge the priority of automobiles and the upkeep and design of sidewalks and elements of the street. Students will develop skills to develop these ideas using drawing and physical models into specific, situated propositions. The objective of the studio is to attend to the city in a way that recognizes that its spaces comprise a public home. As extensions of our private world, they offer the possibility of a civic realm that makes the social possible.
Arts and Humanities.
1 credit.
Fall 2025. Devabhaktuni.
Catalog chapter: Art
Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/art

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