All You Can Eat - Recap

photo cred: POST (someone with a camera)

Last weekend the Sculpture Center hosted an event named "All You Can Eat", billed as "a buffet of architectural ideas for Cleveland". The exhibit received 46 submissions, some traveling all the way from Georgia, of proposals for our fair city.

Opening night (Friday) saw a pretty impressive turnout and conversation topics mostly stayed on the positive aspects of the city and this exhibition in general. If anything the overall vibe was that there isn't enough attention paid to our built environment locally and it will take many events such as this to carry the movement forward. Everyone seemed starved for new ideas and, well, interesting solutions in lieu of the local pedestrian proffering typically construed as "ground-breaking" (or even "good") architecture.

Saturday's round table discussion (from what I hear) was pretty interesting. I didn't make it, however Ferringer did capture the first hour on video and it should eventually find it's way onto the Post webbernet site.

Some of my favorite submissions were from a third year studio class at Kent State CAED by Professor Charles Fredericks. The student's projects were part of a presentation made earlier in the day to the Fairfax Redevelopment Corporation. The projects, entitled "Curbside Urbanism" explored utilizing residual space for garden paths and pavilions to create public space interventions and redefine neighborhood characteristics.

Granted some of the submissions were not "ground breaking" or "innovative" but their application locally would definitely be, at the very least, amusing. To be honest their is nothing wrong with offering a tried and true solution to be experimented with locally however my attention is drawn more to the suggestions from the absurd to the over analytical is the suggested solution is experimental enough to create interesting results. My caveat to this was the board of "S.L. Brainard House @ 4107 Denison Ave." where the local chapter of the Institute of Classical Architecture and Classical America suggested a complete historic renovation of the residence. The drawings and photographs made the offering completely reasonable in scope and scale but also historically necessary to understand the regional built history.

It will take many more exhibits and calls for work to move architecture and design forward enough to overcome much of the static complacency the region suffers from (education is usually the best weapon). I believe the All You Can Eat exhibit, coupled with the Cleveland Design Competition has made Cleveland a blip on national architecture/design radar. I would argue we are almost a quarter of the way there, but to be truly successful it (the need for and exhibition/celebration of thoughtful design strategies and innovative ides) needs to be so overpowering as to be happily annoying.

resource:
All You Can Eat
All You Can Eat on Facebook