Designing a Better Chicago
Designing a Better Chicago
Designing a Better Chicago (DBC) is a partnership between the Design Museum, theMART, NeoCon, and the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events. The goals of the program are two-fold: to commission and renew a design installation on the Chicago Riverwalk every year and to provide Design Impact Grants to people using design to advance the civic good in Chicago. Each of these activities are timed around NeoCon, the world’s leading platform and most important event of the year for the commercial design industry. Learn more about how to apply here.
DBC offers annual, project-based grants focused on work that uses design or design principles to address pressing issues in Chicago communities. Artists and designers must be nominated and then are invited to apply for these competitive grants. Each year, a panel of artists, designers, civic leaders, and educators will review and select the Design Impact Grant awardees.
2019 was the first year of Design Impact grants, and we received nominations and applications from both well-known and emerging thinkers around the city, for projects around the city. The review panel selected two 2019 awardees, Chicago Mobile Makers and Maplewood Housing for the Visually Impaired (Friedman Place), and seven projects to receive special recognition. (To see the full list, see designingabetterchicago.org). The two awardees utilize design in very different ways and serve very different audiences, although both are doing work towards making Chicago a more inclusive city for all.
Maplewood Housing for the Visually Impaired
Friedman Place is developing an awareness campaign of design best practices based on the design of Friedman Place, their supportive living community for adults who are blind or visually impaired. The campaign will be made available to design students, educators, and current designers and will feature how incorporating senses other than vision into design can be low cost, simple to implement, and incorporate more thoughtful ways to create inclusive communities in Chicago and around the world.
Chicago Mobile Makers
Founded by architect Maya Bird-Murphy, Chicago Mobile Makers transformed a USPS delivery van into a classroom, tool shop, design studio, gallery, and community gathering space for Chicago youth. The facility on wheels allows for design workshops anywhere a truck can go! The project's long term objective is to help create the next generation of civically minded and responsible designers, architects, makers, and doers for a city built by, and for, all.
While the ongoing pandemic continues to create challenges, both Maplewood and Chicago Mobile Makers embody the spirit of DBC, and we cannot wait to see the influence the Design Impact Grant will have on their efforts in the city.