Artist Jefre Manuel, who works under the name JEFRË, is a relative newcomer to public art. Three years ago, at the age of 35, the practicing designer had a heart attack and triple bypass. The experience convinced him to retire from architecture/landscape architecture and return to his artistic practice (among other places, he studied at … Read More
The evolutionary progression of a trend from insightful idea to mature realization is not always easy to retrace. Our current national movement toward supporting “creative placemaking”—or a multifaceted, art-heavy design and planning process for creating pleasurable, attractive, and interesting city spaces—may have had any number of launching pads: the imagined garden-cities of Ebenezer Howard ca. … Read More
Europe – Two ambitious placemaking projects are unfolding on a vast, long-term scale in unconventional cultural landscapes: a disused military park outside Amsterdam and an abandoned amusement park in East Berlin. Both are recent ruins of collapsed political systems, “forbidden zones” whose past uses are still visible, and whose futures are being explored by teams … Read More
From his studio in Germany, Herbert Dreiseitl designs public spaces that explore “the interaction of the individual with his surroundings.” Dreiseitl says he was first inspired to explore placemaking by his work with heroin-addicted youth. “I figured out that the way to reach young people is through their surroundings. The key question to social life … Read More