What is worth preserving? Who are we preserving for? How can preservation act as a catalyst?
This three-year series of public events and publications challenging the status quo of relationships between old and new buildings was funded by the Pew Center for Arts and Heritage. The project included a catalog of innovative design work, a curated dinner and film event, and an interactive card game designed for self-directed use by community organizations. The Gray Area project was featured in the By the People: Designing a Better America exhibition at the Cooper Hewitt in NYC in 2017, and traveled to the Museum of Art and Design at Miami Dade College in FL in 2018.
GRAY AREA
Pew Center for Arts and Heritage / ISA + Elise Vider / Philadelphia PA / 2011 - 2014
The first Gray Area project was an ISA-curated and edited brochure that cataloged built, unbuilt and imagined preservation projects representing the innovation in the Philadelphia design community.
Gray Area 2: The Feast, was a dinner for 100 people that involved a short film of sidewalk interviews asking Philadelphians a series of questions about preservation and neighborhood change. This served as an introduction to a community meal that featured table questions and discussions alongside each course. The event brought together designers, city officials, developers, community leaders and other stakeholders.
Gray Area 3, the last project of the series, was a card deck designed to promote productive conversation in communities facing change about the complexities of historic preservation in contemporary cities. The self-guided game put the power in the hands of stakeholders rather than meeting leaders, opening honest and challenging conversations to tables of diverse participants.
The card game attracted the attention of the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum curators in NYC and led to ISA’s involvement in the Process Lab. The Gray Area project was featured in the museum’s By the People: Designing a Better America exhibition in 2016, and the card deck is part of the Cooper Hewitt’s collection.
