Wednesday, May 30: Welcome Reception and Panel Discussion
"Exploration in the Seattle Waterfront: Innovations in Design"

Using Seattle's new waterfront as an intriguing and innovative case study, Marshall Foster, Central Waterfront Planning Coordinator, City of Seattle, Department of Planning and Development, and Cary Moon, Director and Co-founder, People’s Waterfront Coalition, will discuss how designers can play a useful role as advocates for shaping an opportunity. How can design professionals lay the early groundwork to help define the scope, principles, and goals for a new civic space? How can advocacy and civic debate build public appetite and ultimately political will for holistic, sustainable place-making?
 

Marshall Foster is the City Planning Director in Seattle’s Department of Planning and Development. Marshall previously served as the city’s Central Waterfront Coordinator, and managed a range of planning and real estate projects on behalf of the City. Previously he worked at Mithun, a Seattle-based design firm, with a focus on integrated sustainable neighborhood planning and design. Before coming to Seattle in 2006, Foster served as Director of City Greening Initiatives and oversaw center city planning for the City of San Francisco, CA. He holds a Master’s Degree in City and Regional Planning from the University of California, Berkeley.
 

Cary Moon is director and co-founder of People’s Waterfront Coalition (PWC), an advocacy organization working since 2005 to achieve a great civic space on Seattle’s downtown waterfront. The PWC and Moon have won many diverse awards for helping guide the burgeoning new waterfront, from runner-up in Metropolis magazine’s Next Generation: Big Idea competition to Real Change’s Change Agent of the Year. Cary Moon has a MLA and Urban Design certificate from University of Pennsylvania, and a former career as a systems engineer.

Thursday, May 31: Keynote Presentation
"Urban Design to Nurture Human Potential" by Denis Hayes, CEO, Bullitt Foundation

Particular species flourish in specific ecosystems. This is true, as well, for Homo sapiens. Certain places -- Florence in the Renaissance; 18th century Edinburgh; Silicon Valley today -- have given rise to transformational creativity by large numbers of people that expanded the human prospect. The 70,000 inhabitants of Athens under Pericles did not include a disproportionate percentage of geniuses; it merely wasted the talents of fewer of them. Why are these the exceptions rather than the rule?  Only a minority of the world's current population has access to the same health, education, and general encouragement that were afforded the average citizen of ancient Athens. The air pollution now common in many large urban areas, especially in rapidly industrializing nations, not only produces lethal long-term lung disorders but also permanent neurological damage. Water pollution is an even larger global threat, especially to children. Can mankind embrace a more enlightened commitment to human ecology?  Do we know how to design and create communities in which human potential, in harmony with nature, can be fully realized? 

Denis Hayes is CEO of the Seattle-based Bullitt Foundation. At the Bullitt Foundation, Denis leads an effort to mold the American Pacific Northwest into a global model of sustainability. To walk its talk, the Foundation is currently building the six-story, zero-net energy, zero-net carbon, zero-net water, zero toxics Bullitt Center, with composting toilets and no parking garage. Denis -- who at various times has been a national laboratory director, attorney, Stanford professor, visiting fellow, and author -- is perhaps still best known as the principal organizer of the first Earth Day when he was 25.

Friday, June 1: Plenary Presentation
"Indigenous Design Emerging Gifts" by Johnpaul Jones, FAIA, Principal-in-Charge, Jones & Jones

Indigenous design requires a sort of pilgrimage to Native Cultural environments thereby becoming influenced and inspired by the rich cultural aspects of Indigenous ways, beliefs, and traditions.  It should be a proactive personal seeking of Indigenous heritage as a way to gain an awareness of the Native environment. Once one has experienced this uniqueness of place and built environment, Indigenous placemaking will evoke connections to the Natural World, the Animal World, the Spirit World, and the Human World, which are the Emerging Gifts.  The sense of place is paramount in all Indigenous Design; without it we do not exist.

Johnpaul Jones has a distinguished 40-year career as an architect and founding partner of Jones & Jones. Earning his Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Oregon in 1967, his design philosophy emerged from his Choctaw/Cherokee ancestors, which connects him to the natural world, animal world, spirit world, and human world. Mr. Jones has led the design of numerous cultural centers and museums with tribes spanning the North American continent, culminating in his 12-year engagement as overall lead design consultant for the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian on the Mall in Washington, D.C.
 

Saturday, June 2: Plenary Presentation "From the Ground Up: Strategies for Community Development and Democratic Design"

Effective participation of the design professions in community development requires professions devoted to transformational engagement with public sector institutions that shape the built environment. Examining the Neighborhood Matching Fund in Seattle and Chicago's Plan for Transportation, Jim Diers, author of Neighbor Power: Building Community the Seattle Way, Roberta Feldman, director emeritus of the City Design Center at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and Stephen Luoni, director of the University of Arkansas Community Design Center discuss tools and strategies necessary for designers to collectively become a greater resource.

Jim Diers has a passion for getting people engaged with their communities and in the decisions that affect their lives. Since moving to Seattle in 1976, he put that passion to work for an Alinsky-style neighborhood organization, a community development corporation, a local foundation, and the nation’s largest health care cooperative. He was appointed the first director of Seattle’s Department of Neighborhoods in 1988 where he served under three mayors over the next 14 years. Jim now shares the lessons from that work in his courses at the University of Washington; in international consulting; and in his book, Neighbor Power: Building Community the Seattle Way.

Roberta Feldman has been engaged in community design and research for more than 30 years. Embracing participatory design and action research practices, she has sustained working relationships with community leaders in over 50 community organizations and development corporations in Chicago's low income neighborhoods to address their visions for shaping, revitalizing and preserving their designed environments.

Stephen Luoni is director of the University of Arkansas Community Design Center (UACDC) where he is the Steven L. Anderson Chair in Architecture and Urban Studies. His design and research have won more than 50 design awards, including Progressive Architecture Awards, American Institute of Architects Honors Awards, a Charter Award from the Congress for the New Urbanism, and American Society of Landscape Architecture Awards, all for planning and urban design. His work at UACDC specializes in interdisciplinary public works projects combining landscape, urban and architectural design.