Event Description:
Sweet Water Foundation (SWF) is a community-rooted, nonprofit organization that practices Regenerative Neighborhood Development to create safe and inspiring spaces and curates healthy, intergenerational communities transforming the ecology of so-called ”blighted” neighborhoods. Utilizing a unique blend of urban design, urban agriculture, carpentry, art, and STE(A+)M focused education, the primary objective of SWF’s work is the continued healing of the neighborhood, its land and its people, and re-rooting of the community through a unique intersection across education, agriculture, arts, culture, and housing.
Since 2014, SWF has created a series of urban acupuncture inspired installations that actively re-story and re-construct a neighborhood located at the nexus of Englewood and Washington Park, two African American communities directly impacted by redlining and long standing histories of municipal disinvestment. SWF’s headquarters site has become a dynamic, living campus now known as “The Commonwealth.” The Commonwealth spans four contiguous city blocks and includes more than three acres of urban farmland, open community gardens, a carpentry workshop, two formerly foreclosed homes transformed into live-work-learn spaces, and a timber frame barn that serves as a pavilion for a wide variety of community gatherings for public programming.
For this event with the GSD, Emmanuel will contextualize the historical degeneration vs regeneration of The Commonwealth to present date, lead viewers on a virtual site visit, and share some upcoming developments emerging across a network of value-based partners.
Speaker:
Headshot of Emmanuel Pratt, who wears a black jacket and black beanie.Emmanuel Pratt, LF ‘17, received a BArch (1999) from Cornell University and an MSAUD (Master of Science in Architecture and Urban Design, 2003) from Columbia University. From 2011 to 2019, Pratt served as the director of aquaponics at Chicago State University, and he was the Charles Moore Visiting Professor at the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Michigan until 2019. In 2016, he was named a Loeb Fellow at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. Currently, Pratt is co-founder and executive director of the Sweet Water Foundation in Chicago and visiting lecturer in the Environmental and Urban Studies Program at the University of Chicago.
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