ET313 – Activate! Community-Driven Design in D.C.'s Alleyways

Additional fee, registration required.

Challenge: Activate the alleys of D.C. and ensure these unique spaces retain their character and regain their relevance in the lives of city residents.

This tour will immerse you in Prather's Alley Activation, a reinvention of an alley via the creative efforts of the Washington Alley Project. You'll see how an ongoing community partnership helped realize advocacy work through built alley improvements: A public art walk, mobile market, and traffic calming infrastructure.

Join us to bear witness to a strategic reclaiming of public space with a project that inspires culture, commerce, and connectivity.


Prather's Alley

Learning Objectives

1. Experience the capacity of public space design to transform place, and see how Prather's Alley has become an anchor for the Mt. Vernon Triangle District.
2. Learn about the complexity of designing in a public space, and hear how the project navigated layers of municipal review bodies and funding organizations.
3. Study ways in which designing for the community is a structural commitment, and hear principles from one practice about how they built a design business that fosters community.
4. Learn how the display of historic context within a redeveloped neighborhood can make "space" into "place."

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