WPA is excited to be collaborating with the town of Herndon, VA to update their Heritage Preservation District Guidelines.
The WPA + Commonwealth Preservation Group Team held the first Public Outreach Meeting in Herndon on October 19th and 20th. The team met with the Historic Preservation District business owners, city officials and residents to give an overview of the process for developing updated guidelines and to hear suggestions and ideas for these revisions.
presented by popblossom
208 East Plume St, Norfolk, VA 23510
Showing: Oct 12—Dec 28, 2018
Opening: 6:30-8:30pm, Friday, Oct 12
popblossom is pleased to present, Vegetable Valley, recent works by Katherine Tzu-Lan Mann. Please join us for the Opening Event, Friday, October 12 from 6:30 – 8:30pm at WPA Studio + Gallery, located in The Monticello Arcade in Downtown Norfolk, VA.
With roots in the traditions of Chinese landscape painting, DC based artist, Katherine Tzu-Lan Mann’s paintings and installations evolve a fantastic, abstract vision of the natural world. Monumentally scaled, Mann chooses to paint her lush, densely patterned landscapes on paper, a tradition in Chinese painting. Mann regards paper as “a medium of vulnerability and expansiveness, susceptible to crease and tear as well as to collage and collation;” these qualities are palpable throughout her large exuberant compositions, layered with paint and paper and brimming with motifs of vining ribbons and delicate flora entwined with broad meandering bands of color.
Katherine Tzu-Lan Mann is a graduate of Browne University in Providence, RI and the Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, MD where she received her MFA in 2009. She is the recipient of numerous awards and residencies. Her paintings have been widely exhibited in the US and abroad and are held in private and public collections. Mann is currently an instructor at the Maryland Institute College of Art.
Join us on Wednesday, August 29th to hear about the most iconic riverfront trail in the country, Elizabeth River Trail. This 10.5 mile trail stretches along Norfolk’s waterfront and includes some of the City’s most beloved treasures, including Waterside Marina, Town Point Park, The Pagoda, and Nauticus. We will meet at the pier BEHIND Nauticus. Attendees will need to walk down the path between Half Moone Center and Nauticus to get to the pier. PACE bikes will be available for those interested in riding the trail at the end of the tour. The PACE bike share app is required for use. If you do not have the app downloaded, please visit the Apple App Store and Google Play. Use promo code SOCIALCNFK for a free credit for first time users.
Special Thanks to Work Program Architects for sponsoring this event!
Parking is available at three nearby paid parking garages: Town Point Garage, West Plume Garage, or Main Street Garage.
Sometimes we are so focused on our own practices and communities that we don’t stop to think that there may be worthwhile messages to share with others.
Practitioners who traveled to CNU 26: Savannah (Congress of the New Urbanism) in May learned about Norfolk’s Vision 2100. A multi-disciplinary team led and in-depth discussion on efforts to address sea-level rise and resilience to protect the city’s sweeping tidal landscape from recurrent flooding. The Ohio creek Watershed project, funded by a grant as a result of the National Disaster Resilience Competition, was featured. Presenters included Stephanie Bothwell, Urban and Landscape Design, Washington, D.C., Ann P. Stokes, Ann P. Stokes Landscape Architects, Norfolk, and WPA’s Mel Price.
WPA then headed to New York City for the AIA National Convention, June 21-23. WPA helped make eight videos for the Small Firm Exchange, dealing with such issues as attracting and retaining talent.
After three days of lively charrettes, residents of Norfolk’s Tidewater Gardens community are closer to a new envisioned future.
WPA participated in the mid-July event for the Choice Neighborhoods Initiative HUD Grant with the City of Norfolk, NRHA, The Communities Group, Ray Gindroz, and the lead architect and planner, Torti Gallas + Partners.
Meeting at the Basilica of St. Mary’s, participants advanced a plan for the St. Paul’s Area Redevelopment Phase 1 that creates a framework for new development that meets the needs of the community. The next round of community input is expected in August.
The plan includes new street connections, flooding abatement and a range of housing options from mid-rise apartments to single family, along with an enlivened Church Street to include new retail.
This most recent charrette, as with all planning efforts for the community, is guided by seven planning principles:
– Create a park system to protect from flooding and provide recreation amenities
– Create a community-wide campus with educational opportunities for all ages
– Restore church Street as the heart of the community with shops, food stores, health and medical facilities
– Create pedestrian Scale connections to opportunities in the larger community
– Build a pattern of neighborhood streets and blocks to create a framework for a mixed-use, mixed income community
– Provide a diverse mix of residential development ranging from single-family and town homes to small and large scale apartments
– Provide employment opportunities at the edges of the community for residents
If we were to write an essay, “My Summer Vacation,” a highlight would be attending the opening of JT’s Camp Grom on June 10. This new Virginia Beach adventure park was created especially for wounded veterans and their families, the families of fallen military heroes, and children and adults with disabilities.
This unique experience, a vision of the YMCA of South Hampton Roads and the Virginia Gentlemen Foundation, is a place for fun, healing and hope, allowing those in wheelchairs and with other special needs to engage in a full range of outdoor activities. WPA is proud and honored to have been part of the team helping to bring this idea to life.
Located on a 70-acre parcel of land on Prosperity Road, the camp includes a Welcome Center, Wellness Center, Amphitheater, Cafeteria and Tiki Café, lake with fishing pier, Adventure Ropes Course, and an Aquatic Center featuring a Splash Park and Flowrider – surfing/body boarding attraction.
WPA designed the Welcome Center and Canopy Connections, contributing more than $130,000 in pro-bono design services to the project.
The 4,000-square-foot Welcome Center houses offices for the YMCA and Virginia Gentlemen Foundation, a boardroom, reception area, first aid center, and locker rooms.
BRITTON + SAUNDERS | WABI-SABI Alternative Perspectives
presented by popblossom
208 East Plume St, Norfolk, VA 23510
Showing: July 6—Sept. 1, 2018 Opening: 6:30-8:30pm, Friday, July 6th
popblossom is pleased to present, WABI-SABI (Alternative Perspectives). Please join us for the Opening Event, Friday, July 6th from 6:30 – 8:30pm at WPA Studio + Gallery, located in The Monticello Arcade in Downtown Norfolk, VA.
Sculptor May Britton and popblossom’s Lorrie Saunders have come together in a collaborative effort to explore exhibition as medium. Seeking an alternative to the traditional mode of art and exhibition-making, Britton and Saunders blurred the lines between artist and curator by eliminating prescribed or defined roles—their goal, to create a co-authored and co-produced exhibition as a single work of art. With creative energies fused and armed with a non-traditional approach, Britton and Saunders thought it fitting to construct an installation inspired by an unconventional point of view—they settled on wabi-sabi—the Japanese art of finding beauty in imperfection and profundity in nature.
Turning to the natural world for inspiration as well as material—wild grape vine and flowers—Britton and Saunders’ installation reflects the rustic simplicity of the wabi-sabi aesthetic while acknowledging beauty in imperfection.
May Britton is a fine artist whose figurative and abstract sculptures and site-specific installations have been exhibited widely with many works held in both public and private collections in the US and abroad. A registered Yoga Teacher (RYT-500), yogic philosophy and teachings continue to influence her life and approach to art-making.
Former gallery owner Lorrie Saunders is the founder and director of popblossom. She has curated over 50 successful exhibitions of various media by artists of regional, national and international acclaim and whose works are held in public, private, and museum collections.
popblossom is pleased to present THE ARCADE, selected works from the series, ITINERANT ARCHITECTURES, by Elizabeth Dorbad. Please join us for the Opening, Friday, April 6, 6:30-8:30pm at WPA Studio + Gallery, located in The Monticello Arcade in Downtown Norfolk, VA.
In the ongoing series, Itinerant Architectures, Elizabeth Dorbad ponders the impermanence and mutability of architecture while engaging the notion of architectural time. Using abandoned architecture as subject matter and material, Dorbad produces works across a range of media including, photography, drawing and video as well as sculpture created out of the rubble of discarded mobile home trailers.
Dorbad considers architecture a transient sculptural system and recreates the structural identities of buildings through what she calls, architectural intervention, “the direct actions of cutting, superimposing or adorning,” the resulting sculpture or installation is then captured in a photograph.
Based in San Francisco, Elizabeth Dorbad’s work has been exhibited internationally in museums and galleries. Her global project, ITINERANT ARCHITECTURES, with iterations in Memphis, Baltimore, San Francisco, Oakland, Berlin, Kassel, New York, and Los Angeles, continues with the latest iteration, THE ARCADE, in Norfolk.
BIG TIME The film follows young Danish architect Bjarke Ingels, one of architecture’s biggest stars, during the course of five years, while he struggles to finish his biggest project so far. We are let into Bjarke’s creative processes as well as the endless compromises that his work entails, and we are on the side when his personal life starts putting pressure on him, too. Bjarke Ingels’ company Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) has been given the task of designing and building one of the skyscrapers that will replace the Twin Towers. The film offers an intimate look into the innovative and ambitious Danish architect, whom the entire world is celebrating as a young genius. (93 mins) big time trailer and website
Introduction by Thom White and Jacob Combee of Work Program Architects in Norfolk.
“Somewhat incredibly, the buildings come to life: Kaspar Astrup Schröder puts Ingels’s remarkable communication skills to work through a series of sketches and chats, and then shows us the finished products.” – Alex Bozikovic, The Globe and Mail
“Director Kaspar Astrup Schröder’s gorgeous film is informed by that same charm and intelligence the way a sailboat is informed by 7 knots of westerly breeze.” – Chris Packham, Village Voice
