Matthew Lennon
Civic Design Programming: a work in progress
A city’s Civic Art Team (CAT) needs to develop a comprehensive Civic Design Program (CDP) and be viewed as an essential member of the planning and economic development of the city/region; collaborating with various design teams; and engaged on a long-term, full-time basis with neighborhood development schemes. This is not about consultation but accepting culture as a fully functioning partner employed to design, build and reanimate our cities as a creative capitals.
Working with designers, artists and architects CAT should be vital in facilitating a series of deliberately varied works for the core or a neighborhood. All design actions are meant to create a useable and responsive public realm informed by regional aspirations, local knowledge and international standards of quality design. Commissions are meant to tie the municipal collection and the city’s aspirations to the international cultural dialog.
More importantly the CDP should contribute at key levels of decision-making. As partners in the planning and design of the city’s public realm the CDP has the capability to exert some influence at the early stages of developments and inform the city of vital infra structure and development requirements necessary to the establishment of the region as a leader in the creative economy. The CDP provides the momentum for risk and excellence generally lacking in municipal planning and development.
The fundamental idea is to develop a more intimate and integral harmony between our cultural actions and the cityscape. In this sense a CDP is asking creative practitioners in the fields of art, architecture, science and energy to reveal their practices in, and in response to, the physical environment of the region.
Civic design is not about responding to the built environment or placing objects in public spaces. It is about including artists and their unique approaches in the shaping of the public realm; creating places that support community activities; making places that reveal our memory, imagination and aspirations. The primary drive of the CDP is to activate an urban design that reaches beyond economic and architectural considerations (function), and presents a cohesive means of facilitating distinction, innovation and pleasure throughout the city.
