University to host two-day conference on urban revitalization

Speakers, workshops will focus on urban transformations through art and design

A conference on “Urban Revitalization: Transformations through Art and Design” will be held Friday and Saturday, Oct. 28 and 29, at the Warehouse Auditorium, 360 W. Fayette St. The events are free and open to the public.

The conference kicks off with a keynote lecture, followed by Q-and-A with Kyung-Won Chung, deputy mayor and chief design officer of Seoul, South Korea. Chung is the winner of the 2011 INDEX Award, which honors designs that target and solve the challenges and problems of human life; he is also a professor of industrial design at the Korean Advanced Institute of Science and Technology. During his lecture, Chung will present his work on various design projects in Seoul, demonstrating how implementing good design into the city’s policies and infrastructure has aided in urban revitalization. The talk begins at 5 p.m. and will be followed by a reception.

The second day of the conference, which starts at 9 a.m., features workshops geared toward revitalizing Central New York. The first workshop will be a 90-minute envisioning session with industrial and interaction design professor and Senior COLAB Faculty Fellow Don Carr. Attendees will be divided into teams that will develop practical, user-friendly design solutions for the city, using lessons learned from Chung’s lecture the evening before. Policymakers from the city will be present to judge the ideas generated in this session.

At noon, Rust2Green, Cornell University’s research action initiative, will present a report on its work in the Central New York area. The organization explores, designs and implements strategies that promote urban sustainability in rust-belt cities.

The final event of the day begins at 2:30 p.m. with an interactive dialogue and performance from the D.R.E.A.M.3 Revival of Greater Central New York (“Dr. Reverend Ebenezer Abernathy’s Mellifluously, Melodious and Medicative Freedom Revival of Greater Central New York”). Directed by Imagining America Associate Director Kevin Bott, the performance is a character-driven, community-based musical theater project that is inspired in part by the 19th-century evangelical revivals that were prominent in Central New York, which draws on the region’s rich history and legacy of freedom. It is intended to promote and encourage meaningful participation in the local issues that affect people’s lives in Syracuse and Central New York.

Breakfast and lunch will be served on Saturday.

“Urban Revitalization: Transformations through Art and Design” is sponsored by The CNY Humanities Corridor, which is generously supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, in conjunction with Imagining America: Artists and Scholars in Public Life; SU’s College of Visual and Performing Arts; and the Maxwell School‘s Program for the Advancement of Research on Conflict and Collaboration.