Atlanta, GA
Ramsey Ford, Co-founder and Design Director of Design Impact, present to the PIDI attendees in Atlanta.
Atlanta Public Interest Design Institute Participants
Institute Recap:
How well did we meet your expectations and provide value to you?
Please evaluate how successfully the Public Interest Design Training met your expectations for each of the following.
“5” is highly successfully?“3” is successfully?“1” is unsuccessfully
Average Score Learning Objective
| 4.8 | Understanding public interest design and how is it re-shaping the design professions. |
| 4.6 | Maximizing a project’s positive impact on a community. |
| 4.6 | Leveraging other partners and assets to address project challenges. |
| 4.5 | Moving beyond LEED to measure the social, economic, and environmental impact on communities. |
| 4.4 | Using a step-by-step process of working with a community as a design partner. |
| 4 | Learning about new fee sources and structures. |
| 3.8 | Finding new clients and public interest design projects. |
Instructors
Bryan Bell, The Academic Leader of each session is Bryan Bell, the founder of Design Corps, founder of the Public Interest Design Institute, and a co-founder of SEED. Bell has supervised the Structures for Inclusion lecture series for ten years which presents best practices in community-based design. He has published two collections of essays on the topic. Bell has lectured and taught at numerous schools including the Rural Studio with Samuel Mockbee. He has received an AIA National Honor Award in Collaborative Practice. His work has been exhibited in the Venice Biennale and the Cooper Hewitt Museum Triennial. He was a Harvard Loeb Fellow in 2010-11 and a co-recipient of the 2011 AIA Latrobe Prize which is focused on public interest design. Other speakers will be national leaders of this emerging field.
Brent Brown, AIA, LEED AP, is an architect and founder of buildingcommunity WORKSHOP in Dallas, TX, where his work has been recognized locally and nationally. Recently, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development in conjunction with the American Institute for Architects awarded his Congo Street Green Initiative the 2010 National AIA/HUD Secretary Award for “Community-Informed Design.” He was named the Director of the newly established Dallas City Design Studio in October 2009. The Studio is an office of the City of Dallas in partnership with the Trinity Trust Foundation and works daily to connect all of Dallas through thoughtful urban design. This past November, Brent represented the southwest region as part of the President’s Forum on Clean Energy and Public Health at the White House. Joining Administrator Lisa Jackson of the Environmental Protection Agency and Secretary Kathleen Sebelius of the Department Health & Human Services the forum discussed linkages between clean energy to immediate and lasting public health benefits and the role of community design toward the promotion of healthier lifestyles. He earned his Bachelor of Environmental Design and Master of Architecture from Texas A & M University where he taught design.
Barbara Brown Wilson is the Director of the Center for Sustainable Development (CSD) and an Assistant Professor of Community and Regional Planning and Sustainable Design in the University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture. She has a PhD in Community and Regional Planning and a Masters in Architectural History from UT, and her research interests include value-based building codes, sustainable community development, and green affordable housing. In addition to administering the research, education, and outreach efforts at the CSD generally, Wilson also oversees the Public Interest Design Summer Program and the Central Texas Sustainability Indicators Project. She is a co-founder of the Austin Community Design and Development Center, a nonprofit design center that provides high quality green design and planning services to lower income households and the organizations that serve them. Dr. Wilson is passionate about serving her community and recently received the Bank of America Local Hero award for her efforts in Austin.
Ramsey Ford is the Co-founder and Design Director of Design Impact. Ramsey’s experience as a leader in social innovation is rooted in his background of design, entrepreneurship, and product development. In his 10+ years working as a design consultant, he has helped several Fortune 500 companies develop and successfully market innovative and category transforming products. As a serial entrepreneur, he has developed three successful service and product-based businesses and is listed on several patents. Most recently, Ramsey has invested his efforts in co-founding Design Impact, a social venture that connects design with low-income communities in India. An award winning designer for both his for- and non-profit projects, Ramsey has worked to further the conversation on innovative design in the social sector through numerous workshops, published articles, and speaking engagements. He received an undergraduate degree in Industrial Design from the University of Cincinnati in 2003 and a Master’s of Design from the same in 2009.
Ryan Gravel AICP, LEED AP is a Senior Urban Designer at Perkins + Will in Atlanta, GA. Ryan offers an architect’s perspective to urban planning, bringing the knowledge of building dimension and design to site planning, concept development and public policy. His master’s thesis in 1999 was the original vision for the ambitious Atlanta BeltLine, a 22-mile transit greenway that transforms a loop of old railroads with light-rail transit, parks and trails to generate economic growth and protect quality-of-life in 45 neighborhoods throughout the central city. Eight years of his subsequent work as a volunteer and later in the nonprofit and government sectors was critical to the BeltLine’s success, which is now more than a $2 billion public-private initiative in the early stages of implementation. Ryan is design manager for the Atlanta BeltLine Corridor design and is also working with other clients to develop their vision, such as the South Fork Conservancy’s Watershed Vision plan for 40 miles of hiking trails along Peachtree Creek. Ryan speaks internationally about the BeltLine and has been recognized for his accomplishments including the Atlanta Urban Design Commission’s highest award in 2007 and Esquire Magazine’s “Best and Brightest” in 2006.
