January 1, 0001

A select handful of Westphal students interested in urban design will have the opportunity to engage in an upcoming international forum, hosted by the German Marshall Fund, and a two-day charrette workshop hosted by Westphal College at the URBN Center (3501 Market Street). During the charrette on February 28 and March 1, Drexel students, with a broad range of skills and backgrounds, will be joined by students from TU Dortmund University, Germany, in an intense urban infrastructure planning and design process for Philadelphia’s Delaware waterfront.

The German Marshall Fund (GMF) forum with international experts and local leaders will take place on February 26 and 27. Both the GMF forum and Drexel’s charrette workshop will focus on green infrastructure and the adaptive reuse of industrial infrastructure, such as power plants and rail yards. The waterfront areas of focus are the Lehigh Viaduct / Port Richmond area, an overgrown area which is off limits to the public; and the Delaware Power Station site, which was recently sold to local developers and holds a largely unused 300,000-square foot power plant. The goal for the charrette will be to provide the community and investors with a starting point, and specific action steps, for successful community development and quality-of-life enhancement.

Concepts developed in the Drexel charrette for adaptive reuse of post-industrial infrastructure in these areas will be published in the German Marshall Fund’s proceedings of the international gathering. Headquartered in Washington, DC, the German Marshall Fund is a nonprofit organization that seeks to strengthen transatlantic cooperation on regional, national, and global challenges and opportunities. TU Dortmund is a German university that researches and teaches the global intersection between man, nature and technology. For more information on the Drexel charrette, please contact Harris Steinberg, Lindy Institute Executive Director and Westphal Architecture & Interiors Professor, at hms88@drexel.edu.