17.

Orange People Project

1.

Illustrating “Death and Life of Great American Cities”

A Creative Response to Diversity, Equity and Social Justice in Urban Design 

Curated by students from the School of Architecture at Marywood University under the direction of Professors Dr. Miguel A. Calvo Salve and Russel B. Roberts.

Location: 321 Spruce Street, Scranton, PA 18503 

Exhibit Hours: Friday, May 7, 5-9 PM | Saturday, May 8, 12-5 PM

It will be a visual expression of the problems of city planning and the strategies planners followed throughout most of the 20th century. The relevance, importance and implication of this project has never been more necessary to the fields of Urban Planning and Design in 2021 given the political and social unrest in our country. We hope these illustrations lead to a greater understanding of these complex issues.

Marywood University’s Truth, Racial Healing, & Transformation Campus Center (TRHT) provided support for this exhibit.

2.

Electric Jane - Attached Housing AH - Solar Decathlon

Curated by: Jodi LacCoe and Lizz Andrzejewski

Location: 233 Oakford Court, Scranton, PA 18503 

Exhibit Hours: Friday, May 7, 5-9 PM | Saturday, May 8, 12-5 PM

Many people know of Scranton as the home of The Office, an immensely popular television comedy. More recently, Scranton made headlines as President Joe Biden’s “working-class” birthplace. Built above hundreds of coal mines, Scranton is also known as “The Electric City” for its early adoption and wide-spread use ]of electric street lights and interior lighting powered by the local mining industry. As in many so-called Rust Belt cities, income and populations have declined steadily in the last century with the collapse of mining and manufacturing jobs. Vacant buildings have been torn down,  leaving neighborhoods dotted with ecologically and socially detrimental surface parking lots. Gritty, tough, and funny, Scranton also gave birth to tenacious urban activist Jane Jacobs. Through her influential protests and widely read books, such as The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961), Jacobs upended prevailing attitudes about urban renewal, shifting the focus from large-scale developments to what works for city-dwellers: diverse neighborhoods, front porches or stoops, eyes on the street. 

This exhibit demonstrates plans to revitalize Scranton’s residential neighborhoods by infilling vacant lots with affordable, net-zero-energy rowhouses that integrate Passive House principles for energy efficiency, improve conditions for Scranton’s blighted flora and fauna, and provide desirable, safe, functional, and healthy homes to sustain families in a vibrant community. 

3.

Celebrating Inclusion: A Retrospective

Curated by: Michelle Pannone, Kate O’Connor, Tau Sigma Delta Honor Society for Architecture and Allied Arts

Location:  335 Adams Ave, Scranton, PA, 18503

Exhibit Hours: Friday, May 7, 5-9 PM | Saturday, May 8, 12-5 PM

This exhibit aims to promote awareness within Marywood University’s student body through research and presentation. This topic emerges from society’s current advocacy and need for awareness of minorities in the profession of architecture and the allied disciplines. As a result, we aspire to create awareness and advocacy for increased inclusiveness, diversity, fellowship, equity, and excellence in design. 

Marywood University’s Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation Campus Center (TRHT) provided support for this exhibit. 

4.

How Can Future Designers Empower Youth Through These Four Lenses? Racial Injustices, Sexual Identity, Mental Health, Gender Equality

Curated by: Michelle Pannone, Kate O’Connor, Tau Sigma Delta Honor Society for Architecture and Allied Arts

Location: 518 Lackawanna Ave, Scranton, PA 18503

Exhibit Hours: Friday, May 7, 5-9 PM | Saturday, May 8, 12-5 PM

Placing empathy at the center of design, the competition brief prompted students to discuss and consider how architecture can act as a mediator for advocacy. The brief asked students to use their design thinking skills to respond to the statement, “How can future designers empower youth through one of the following lenses: racial injustices, sexual identity, mental health, or gender equality?” 

This exhibit features eight unique community discussions, with both fact and experience-based exposure informing the conversations taking place with each design team as they worked together throughout the week. The student body submitted more than 100 thoughtful entries which were reviewed by an invited jury.

5.

Scranton Lace and the Center for the Living City 

Curated by: Maria MacDonald

Location: Radisson Lackawanna Hotel Scranton Lobby & Lounge | 700 Lackawanna Ave, Scranton, PA 18503

Exhibit Hours: Friday, May 7, 5-9 PM | Saturday, May 8, 12-5 PM

Senior interior architecture students in the self titled “The Observation and Empathy Studio” spent a comprehensive year studying the redesign and reweaving of Scranton Lace, a century-old complex at the edge of downtown Scranton along the Lackawanna River. 

By understanding how Jane Jacobs developed her powerful observational skills, the students gained new knowledge about cities. These elements include those which may cause concern or joy, inform a sense of history, address problems of housing, mobility, food justice, access to education, or a host of other problems witnessed through their observations. With their design thinking, students propose ways to preserve, celebrate, heal or transform an area they discovered. In each case, their discoveries open pathways for creative action and a working vocabulary of the ecology of cities. Guided by the Center for the Living CIty each student developed skills through the powers of observation, empathy and action to identify a community stakeholder. The resulting work is an empathetic response to interior architecture. 

6.

Dwell: Global Settlements

Curated by: James Eckler // Lizz Andrzejewski // Liyang Ding

Location: 200 Adams Avenue, Scranton, PA 18503

Exhibit Hours: Friday, May 7, 5-9 PM | Saturday, May 8, 12-5 PM

Third-year architecture students of the Marywood University School of Architecture examine informal settlements of the world to explore place, identity, customs, and the politics of representation. They study everyday practices of people living in settlements existing outside legal constraints to find critical connections between architectural space and ritual. 

These animations represent the first steps in a line of inquiry seeking strategies that position architecture as a source of empowerment for communities often marginalized or forgotten. They will use this research to advance an agenda that develops without erasure; that provides economic capital without displacing populations; that enfranchises communities without homogenizing neighborhoods. 

7.

Camp Archbald and Girl Scouting 100 Years

Curated by: Kate Crowley

Location:  Lackawanna County Children’s Library | 520 Vine St, Scranton, PA 18509

Exhibit Hours: Opening Friday, May 7, 5-8 PM | Gallery Hours during normal library hours Monday-Thursday 9 am - 7 pm, Friday and Saturday 12-5 pm

Supporters of Camp Archbald (SoCA) celebrate the 100th anniversary of Camp Archbald, the second oldest Girl Scout camp in continuous operation within the United States. To showcase this anniversary, the supporters’ group has put together a collection of Girl Scout and Camp Archbald memorabilia. This collection features the rich history of Girl Scouts and Camp Archbald. Many of the pieces in this collection show that a girl’s experience at Camp Archbald, whether in 1920 or 2020, has a profound experience on the rest of her life, as it did for Jane (Butzner) Jacobs and her sister, Betty. Most of the display items are on loan from current SoCA members. The collection’s oldest item, a journal from a former camper about her adventures at camp, dates to 1930. Other items include camp guides, postcards, pictures, and mess kits. The Children’s Library is the perfect place to share with everyone the last 100 years of fun and leadership at Camp Archbald. 

8.

Interactive Exhibit

Curated by: University of Scranton and United Neighborhood Center of NEPA with the Center for the Living City

Location:  Observe Scranton HQ | The Scranton Life Building | 546 Spruce Street, Scranton, PA 18503

Exhibit Hours: Friday, May 7, 5-9 PM* for Interactive Exhibit.

During First Friday at event HQ with the University of Scranton 

Share your thoughts: What do you love the most about Scranton

9.

Weave: South Scranton and the Silk Mills

Curated by: Catherine Armezzani

Location:  343 N Washington Ave, Scranton, PA 18503

Exhibit Hours: Friday, May 7, 5-9 PM | Saturday, May 8, 12-5 PM

Industrial advancement grew quickly in the early 19th century across the Great Lakes region through western New York and into Pennsylvania. Scranton, Pennsylvania's economy prospered with immigrants coming to work within coal mines and new industrial factories. As the population grew the workers settled into towns and developed neighborhoods with strong connections to community. The towns grew until the mid to late 1900's when factory owners outsourced work for cheaper compensation, new global competitors and technology changes began to restructure and factories closed down within the small towns. The Rust belt industry then inherited its name due to the large scale buildings decaying overtime. These industrial buildings not only were places of work, they represented new beginnings, hope, and brought a connection for their new communities. They were engineered for tough, long lives and they make a great starting point for new uses.

The third year interior architecture studio selected the silk industry that along with coal and iron made Scranton so prosperous. The students researched and diagramed how the silk industry once operated in these large scale buildings. They studied the physical effects, emotional effects and psychological effects the workers went through after the industry left the area and how the community changed after these industrial buildings once filled with people were now abandoned. The students wanted to understand the layers of the past, the industry, the development and the people. They selected the site, 300 Brook Street where the Lackawanna Mills, a prominent former silk factory, was once located to investigate and to respond to. This studio has sought to come up with an intervention or architectural response that must not necessarily be seen as a building or object, but as a series of experiences and opportunities within the abandoned factory. The semester goal is to bring the community a developed program of gathering spaces, residential living and a chosen wellness rituals that can be seen as a catalyst for revitalization within the city of Scranton. The idea to "weave" community and wellness back into South Scranton after all of these years.

10.

Exploring Memory

Curated by: Students of Marywood's IARC 399E / 599I and Joshua Berman

Location:  343 N Washington Ave, Scranton, PA 18503

Exhibit Hours: Friday, May 7, 5-9 PM | Saturday, May 8, 12-5 PM

Exploring memory through design focuses on the architecture of experience. Through an investigation of individual and collective memory students identify artifacts, characteristics, and boundaries of identity and the way these layered narratives define place. Inspired by the work of Mindy Thompson Fullilove, MD, students utilized the Stroll n’ Scroll method to observe and construct a visual record of the pockets of space through the Downtown Scranton area and their own hometowns.

11.

Dwelling on the Elemental

Curated by: Emily Pellicano, Joshua Berman, and Sean Ritter

Location: Scranton Life Building | 544 Spruce Street, Scranton, PA 18503

Exhibit Hours: Friday, May 7, 5-9 PM | Saturday, May 8, 12-5 PM

Second-year architecture students of the Marywood University School of Architecture were challenged with the definition of, ‘what is a house?’ The question may be answered in as many ways as there are people to ask. How might a house differ from a dwelling? What are the essential elements of a house, or a dwelling? Are they the same? Students researched and developed theories and methodologies for mapping and choreographing a unique occupant experience based on various source content stemming from elements of traditional and historical precedents and landscape typologies resulting in a dwelling based on an informed tectonic and contextual narrative.

12.

Art of Living v.09

Curated by: Stephen Garrison

Location: Leonard Theater | 335 Adams Ave, Scranton, PA

Exhibit Hours: Friday, May 7, 5-9 PM | Saturday, May 8, 12-5 PM

In this 9th installment of ‘The Art of Living’, MUSOA second year Interior Architecture students referenced their own bodies and experiences as ‘site’ to develop prototype furniture concepts within a given set of material constraints determined by 3 industry Design Challenges.  

Through the use of themselves as site the students gain an understanding of how to better serve humanity as a whole in their everyday interactions at a furniture/product/object scale.   

13.

Observe Scranton: Portraits by Sam Barrese

Curated by: Sam Barrese

Location: Adezzo | 515 Center Street, Scranton PA, 18503

Exhibit Hours: Friday, May 7, 5-9 PM | Saturday, May 8, 12 - 5 PM | This exhibit will be on display May 7 - May 30

Regional portrait artist Sam Barrese displays a unique collection of his original portrait work including the world unveiling of a new Jane Jacobs portrait, commissioned exclusively for the 2021 Observe Scranton festival. This exhibit's host venue, Adezzo, is a cafe/art space that encompasses urbanization practices that superbly connect with our mission and values.

14.

View Port

Curated by: The Pop Up Studio

Location: 428 Sprucet, Scranton PA, 18503

Exhibit Hours: Friday, May 7, 5-9 PM | Saturday, May 8th

Virtual Exhibits

15.

Chhav

Curated by: Gunraagh Singh Talwar, Ipsita Choudhury, and Eish Ahlawat, 2020-2021 Observation and Action Network (OAN) Fellows

Location: Delhi, India

Chhav seeks to provide a spatial solution for the people of Rajiv Nagar - an informal settlement around the Bhalswa Landfill - one of Delhi’s 3 major landfills. Understanding the context and community, the authors realize a lack of dignified open space for the community. Chhav realizes ‘lost space’ in the settlement and attempts to activate it with an intervention designed around existing infrastructure.

16.

Cities for Play

Curated by: The Urban Design Collective // Vidhya Mohankumar, Srivardhan Rajalingam, Vidhya Venkatesan, and Nawin Saravanan

Location: Chennai, India

Cities for Play is a vision rooted in the realization that very little has been done in the public realm to fulfill the needs of children especially in low income settlements. Children typically spend sixteen hours or more in a day in their homes and community settings. Also, one in eight children in urban India live in slums where infrastructure is insufficient and living conditions are poor. The constraints of their home unit sizes in low income settlements entails an added pressure to the performance of the commons to satisfy their needs as growing children. Effecting change in these settings through play can therefore contribute positively to their cognitive and motor skills and becomes an endeavour to level the playing field for these children.

17.

Orange People Project

Curated by: Karra Rutwik Reddy and Parnavee Pathak, 2020-2021 Observation and Action (OAN) Network Fellows

Location: Nagpur, India

Orange People Project embraces the idea of public participation in the transformation of a city, which was always missing. It is done by letting people pin out on their city map. The idea was to inculcate a conversation between the people and the city, (and that’s how a liveable city of the people is possible) and letting the concerned authority know of the public pulse — to create an impact. The project touches the physical and social aspects of city but in a different light. A common man’s narrative of the city when transformed into an analytical map of the region, can work wonders in understanding the common urban nuances.

The project is one of its own kind, providing an alternative approach through analytical maps in city evaluation, yet a pilot attempt to make a bigger difference.