Negotiating Crisis, Color and Culture
By Kenneth Mata, Assoc. AIA Architecture and urban design are continually reshaped by crises. Natural disasters, climate change, war and conflict, pandemics, economic turbulence and migration patterns constantly transform public space and collective identity. Crises do more than displace people; they disrupt cultural identities and social formalities tied to space. In such moments of turmoil, […]
Mapping the Way: Navigating Workflows Between Experiential and Geospatial Data on the Naugatuck Trail
By Elyse Cote One of the most defining features of 19th century New England mills are their prime location. Harnessing kinetic energy to fuel production, their initial proximity to rivers and lakes positioned them well to serve as economic catalysts for their time. As the nature of industry evolved however, many such sites have languished […]
Lock Nine Park officially opens
Thursday, July 18 marked the official ribbon-cutting for Lock Nine Park in Piqua, Ohio! The three-acre riverfront park excavates a 19th century lock which had been buried below ground for over a century. Part of the Miami and Erie Canal, the trail passage forms a new connection between downtown and the Great Miami River. A […]
Drawing on experience
By Heba Shoaib, PhD My understanding of cities and the chaos of urban life is deeply rooted in my sketchbook. It is through drawing where I understand design not just as a tool for representation but also as a means of discovery and transformation. During my formative years as an architecture student, sketching was my […]
Perspectives on contemporary practice at MIT
Perspectives on Contemporary Practice is an urban design seminar offered in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at MIT. The course exposes graduate-level students to contemporary design practices and ways of working across scales. Class discussions and visiting lectures are augmented by visits to local (Boston or NYC-based) architecture, landscape architecture, urban design and […]
Antonia Medina Abell promoted to associate
We are thrilled to announce the promotion of Antonia Medina Abell to Associate at Gamble Associates. Antonia brings over seven years of architectural experience in a wide range of scales and geographies; from industrial architecture projects in Chile, commercial and city projects in the Midwest and interior design in the Boston region. Originally from Santiago […]
Run of the Mills
How do former industrial complexes or estates transform when they have been deprived of their original function and contemporary market demands are not immediately apparent? We are delighted to begin work this spring on three vast brownfield remediation and adaptive reuse projects in collaboration with Weston & Sampson (engineering) and RKG Associates (market analysis). Union Hardware […]
Signs of the times: clutter, culture, and corridors
By Antonia Medina Abell, Urban Designer Design Guidelines are typically crafted by municipalities and consultants to introduce a sense of order and a common language of design to otherwise chaotic urban spaces. They can address a multitude of issues and scales, ranging from the massing of a buildings to the spacing of fenestration. While not […]
Bridging the gap: overcoming infrastructural obstacles in neighborhood planning
By Tania Bronsoiler Seemingly overnight, but actually a generation in the making, the Rindge neighborhood in Cambridge has experienced significant growth and development, with an influx of thousands of units of residential development and new commercial activity. The growth is due, in part, to the proximity to the MBTA’s busiest subway train, the Red Line, as well as the wealth of […]
Shifting from a zero-sum game to a spectrum of possibilities
by Antonia Medina Abell Even before we set foot in Rochester, we were warned about the “Legends building”. If the name sounded fantastical, the details were far more pedestrian: a humble yellow-brick, one-story building (which we later discovered were two separate constructions, enmeshed in a maze of doors and insensitive renovations) from the Great Depression, […]