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Baltimore-Rotterdam architecture exchange 2023

Morgan State University Students March 2023 Trip to Rottrdam in the Nethelands, the City of Architecture. Logos of MSU SA+P, Baltimore-Rotterdam Sister Cities, RAvB. Photos of Erasmus Bridge and Kop van Zuid; Depot Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen (designed by MVRDV); Rotterdam Central train station.


Students and faculty from Morgan State University School of Architecture + Planning (MSU SA+P) will travel to Baltimore’s sister city of Rotterdam in the Netherlands during March 12–19, 2023. The trip includes visits to architecture / landscape architecture / urban design firms such as OMA and MVRDV, visits to architecture schools, architecture tours, lectures, and more. Side trips are planned to other cities such as Amsterdam or Antwerp in Belgium. Environmental sustainability will be a focus during the trip. The students will also participate in activities at Rotterdam Academy of Architecture and Urban Design (RAvB).

In April 2023, RAvB students will reciprocate the exchange by coming to Baltimore to study infrastructure sites similar to the Rotterdam site in their design studio, and learn about Baltimore’s efforts to heal the divides caused by past infrastructure projects. The 2023 exchange continues an ongoing collaboration between MSU SA+P Professor Cristina Murphy and RAvB since 2019.

Related events

February–March 2023: Baltimore-Rotterdam Designing Cities webinar series
Coordinated by Professor Cristina Murphy, with speakers from Baltimore and Rotterdam; it is part of MSU SA+P’s spring lectures. AIA Baltimore continuing education credits are available for these webinars.

March 17, 2023: Baltimore lecture & reception at Rotterdam Academy of Architecture and Design
17.00-18.30 CET at Pieter de Hoochweg 129 in Rotterdam. A talk about Baltimore’s cityscape presented by Klaus Philipsen from Archplan, followed by an informal reception — free and open to the public. This special event is held during the visit of Morgan State University School of Architecture + Planning’s faculty and students to Rotterdam. Come meet architects and architecture faculty and students from both Baltimore and Rotterdam!
To register: Event page

Sponsorship opportunities

We invite your firm to become a sponsor to help cover the costs of Morgan State University students and faculty’s participation in this educational travel exchange program to Rotterdam. There is also an opportunity for sponsors to join us on the trip to experience the culture and innovative architecture in the Rotterdam region. Sponsors welcome to stay longer than the dates of March 12–19 and visit even more cities, such as Brussels, Delft, and Utrecht.

Experiential travel education is an impactful opportunity for students to gain global understanding and exchange ideas about architectural design, planning, resiliency, and sustainability. Students who attended past Baltimore-Rotterdam exchanges shared that it was “eye-opening” and appreciated the “exposure to different environments and design” and the “opportunity for creative dreaming.” Morgan State is a leading HBCU (Historically Black College / University). The architecture and urban design profession suffers from a longstanding lack of diversity — your support will help enrich these students’ education and thereby help bring more Black students into this profession.

The Baltimore-Rotterdam Sister City Committee is leading this fundraising campaign on behalf of the students and faculty.

Why be a sponsor?

  • Your support ensures that students and faculty will be able to travel abroad.
  • Opportunity for you to meet potential interns and new hires through this program.
  • Great visibility — reach people in the architecture and real estate industries in Maryland and internationally.

Sponsorship levels & benefits

Sponsorship levels: Bronze $300; Silver $500; Gold $1,000; Platinum $1,500. All levels receive: Promotion on social media and post-trip report; ticket to event in April 2023. Silver, Gold, Platinum levels also receive: CityScape sculpture made by the students*; recognition in the webinar series. Gold, Platinum levels also receive: opportunity to participate in the trip to Rotterdam in March 2023 **. Platinum has opportunity for custom meetings in Rotterdam ***.

* Sister CityScape sculpture  — Students are creating laser-cut sculptures of Baltimore and Rotterdam landmarks and city skylines as thank yous for the sponsors! For a $1,500 sponsorship your firm even has the option of requesting a unique building, e.g. one that your firm has designed.
** Opportunity to participate in the trip — Sponsors may take part in our customized tours and visits. You will be responsible for your own airfare, accommodations, and meals; we will be happy to point you to inexpensive options. This is a unique opportunity to partake in a low-cost architecture-focused overseas trip!
*** Custom professional meetings — If you have a special request for a meeting or sightseeing, we will do our best to help arrange it for you.

For more information

See our Sponsorship Benefits PDF

Contact us to become a sponsor

Email .

The Baltimore-Rotterdam Sister City Committee (part of Baltimore Sister Cities) is leading this fundraising campaign. Baltimore Sister Cities is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit; donations are tax-deductible to the full extent of the law.

The Morgan students are also doing fundraising!

The faculty and students have been creating charming Baltimore-themed “CityScape” ornaments and magnets to sell at holiday market tables and other events this winter.



THANKS FOR YOUR SUPPORT:


Trip Sponsors

PLATINUM

Logo for Penza Bailey, a studio of PRIME AE

PLATINUM

BSC Design Group

PLATINUM

VectorWorks logo (a Nemetschek company)


GOLD

Quinn Evans logo

GOLD

Twopoint Studio logo

Present Company logo

GOLD

Gary A. Bowden FAIA, Architect Emeritus

SILVER

brennan+company architects
CallisonRTKL
Jerome C. Gray Architect
Unknown Studio

BRONZE
hord | coplan | macht
Vertical Architecture


Promotion Partner

AIA Baltimore logo

Donor

The Doctrow Family Endowment Fund

Baltimore+Rotterdam: Designing Cities

Baltimore+Rotterdam: Designing Cities - Conversation Series 2023. Baltimore Inner Harbor and Rotterdam waterfront by the Erasmus Bridge, looking towards Rotterdam Zuid. Logos of Baltimore-Roterdam Sister Cities, AIA Baltimore, RAvB, and Morgan SA+P.

A webinar series all about designing cities — spanning Baltimore and Rotterdam!

This series is a sequel to the previous webinar series from spring 2022. The spring 2023 theme is: Infrastructure as a Barrier: The scar that divides communities and breaks the very heart of the city. The 2023 series is intended to critically look at the theory gained through the 2022 series and provide practical input to current urban challenges.

Architects, designers, and researchers from Baltimore (Maryland, USA) and Rotterdam (the Netherlands), discussed “How do architects design spaces for people?” together with the audience — in 4 round tables facilitated by international moderators. Each round table dynamically explores designs that value infrastructures, cities, public spaces, communities, and individuals. Each webinar explores a specific theme. This is a unique opportunity to hear how different types of firms approach design in two cities with similar historical legacies (working class cities with port industries).

The Baltimore+Rotterdam 2023 series was part of Morgan State University School of Architecture + Planning’s Spring 2023 Lecture Series. The Baltimore+Rotterdam series was designed and coordinated by Cristina Murphy, Assistant Professor at Morgan State University School of Architecture + Planning (MSU SA+P) and Adjunct Professor at Virginia Tech School of Architecture + Design’s Washington-Alexandria Architecture Center.

Dates: Every Tuesday from February 14 to March 7, 2023
Format: Online webinar — moderated panel discussion and Q&A
AIA continuing education credits: 1.0 AIA LU|HSW per webinar

The series has ended, but you can watch recordings of each webinar below!


WEBINARS:

Jump down to:

Webinar 1

Webinar 2

Webinar 3

Webinar 4

WEBINAR 1

Photos of buildings designed by some of the speakers, plus a neighborhood that is the research focus of the one of the speakers. Headshot photos, names, and titles of each of the speakers and the moderator.

FEBRUARY 14, 2023

Video recording: youtube.com/watch?v=FeSNoK-B0wc

Event info page

THEME
Urban Ecology: Approaches for Environmental + Social Justice
A discussion on urbanization based on ecological knowledge and sustainability approaches

SPEAKERS
Paul Riley & Cara Versace Marshall Craft Associates (MCA) (Baltimore)
Amelle Shultz Ayers Saint Gross (Baltimore)
Jaqueline Bershad National Aquarium (Baltimore)
Jan Jongert Superuse Studios (Rotterdam)
David ter Avest Urban Geographer; Lecturer, Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences (RUAS) (Rotterdam)
Moderated by Thijs van Spaandonk Program Director for Urban Design, Rotterdamse Academie van Bouwkunst (RAvB)

ABOUT
Urbanization is domesticating our ecosystems. Cities are spatially heterogeneous, complex adaptive systems. Furthermore, contemporary cities tend to be big in size and ecological footprint, fast in growth in population and land, and irregular in landscape configuration. Although the dynamic trajectory of cities can never be controlled, its evolution can be guided toward desirable directions through planning and design that are based on urban ecological knowledge and sustainability approaches.


WEBINAR 2

Photos of buildings designed by the panelists' firms. Headshot photos, names, and titles of each of the speakers and the moderator.

FEBRUARY 21, 2023

Video recording: youtube.com/watch?v=yzCjIl5kbQE

Event info page

THEME
Collective Reuse: The Art of Reuse through Community Participation
A discussion about the roles of adaptive reuse in the urban environment, focusing on repurposing in order to (re)define the city

SPEAKERS
Megan Elcrat Present Company (Baltimore)
Evan Wivell EastWing Architects (Baltimore)
Duzan Doepel DoepelStrijkers (Rotterdam)
Jan Knikker MVRDV (Rotterdam)
Moderated by Sinisha Brdar Professor, Université du Québec à Montréal

ABOUT
Adaptive Reuse is the use of buildings and materials for purposes other than originally intended. Although adaptive reuse has a long tradition in arts and crafts, more recently environmental awareness and design for sustainability have revitalized the role of a trash-to- treasures approach, providing a wide array of contemporary urban design which is an important part of today’s city sustainability. In this session, we will explore the roles of adaptive reuse in the urban environment, focusing on repurposed objects (also) found in urban public spaces in order to (re)define the city.


WEBINAR 3

Photos of buildings designed by the panelists' firms. Headshot photos, names, and titles of each of the speakers and the moderator.

FEBRUARY 28, 2023

Video recording: youtube.com/watch?v=aaIH9fWqObI

Event info page

THEME
The Generous City: Infrastructure and the Highway to Nowhere
A discussion on claiming back spaces historically divided by infrastructure

SPEAKERS
Jerome Gray Jerome C. Gray Architect (JCGA) (Baltimore)
Scott R. Vieth Design Collective (Baltimore)
Maarten van Bremen GROUP A Architects (Rotterdam)
Kees van Casteren Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) (Rotterdam)
Moderated by Selina Abraham Doctoral Researcher, University of Amsterdam

ABOUT
Cities and infrastructure can have an incredible impact on the lives of people. In the 1950s, the United States undertook an ambitious national interstate highway project with the goal of building roads to connect American cities. The design was, however, intertwined with racial prejudice creating segregation and impoverishing communities. In the Netherlands, cities like Rotterdam were rebuilt after the war and focused on cars as opposed to people. Urban highways have largely had a negative impact on urban life. This is the opposite of a “generous city”. In this session, architects from the Netherlands and the US will discuss how cities and their infrastructures can consciously contribute to empower people through generosity-by-design.


WEBINAR 4

Photos of buildings designed by the panelists' firms. Headshot photos, names, and titles of each of the speakers and the moderator.

MARCH 7, 2023

Video recording: youtube.com/watch?v=6ZzmVBNW0PE

Event info page

THEME
The Power of Design! Working with Stakeholders to Design Human Spaces
A discussion on co-designing and co-creating to confront big issues in urban design

SPEAKERS
Tyler Miller Gensler Baltimore (Baltimore)
Jason Neal J.Neal Design (Baltimore)
Elina Karanastasi ExS Architecture (Rotterdam)
Zico Lopes Spatial Codes – Studio for Architecture & Inclusion (Rotterdam)
Moderated by coleman a. jordan [ebo] Assistant Professor at Morgan State University School of Architecture + Planning (MSU SA+P)

ABOUT
In order to improve the way we live, we ought to design healthier and safer cities and smarter buildings. To do so, collaboration is key. Our world faces challenges that are too great to be tackled by a single discipline. Baltimore and Rotterdam, like many cities around the world, face challenges related to food segregation, water resiliency, and poverty (also connected to homelessness), to name a few. More than ever, inviting users, customers, governance, and other stakeholders into the process of design is fundamental. These “new” stakeholders need to be brought in as active co-designers, to confront the big issues and develop actionable ways to improve experiences and to co-create new solutions. How can we, the designers, guarantee the welfare of citizens, through the creation of the built environment? Collaboration is discovering and using unique perspectives and benefiting from collective exploration.


PREVIOUS WEBINAR SERIES

2022 webinar series

2021 webinar series


RELATED: SPRING 2023 EXCHANGE

Several of the above speakers are also participating in the spring 2023 architecture student exchange. Students and faculty from Morgan State University School of Architecture + Planning (MSU SA+P) will travel to Baltimore’s sister city of Rotterdam in the Netherlands in March 2023 and visit several architecture firms and infrastructure sites in Rotterdam. In April 2023, students from Rotterdam Academy of Architecture and Urban Design (RAvB) will reciprocate the exchange by coming to Baltimore. More information about this exchange.


Webinar partners

Logos of Baltimore-Rotterdam Sister Cities, AIA Baltimore, Rotterdamse Academie van Bouwkunst, Morgan State University School of Architecture + Planning

Thank you to the sponsors!

PLATINUM

Logo for Penza Bailey, a studio of PRIME AE

PLATINUM

BSC Design Group

PLATINUM

VectorWorks logo (a Nemetschek company)

GOLD

Quinn Evans logo

GOLD

Twopoint Studio logo

Present Company logo

GOLD

Gary A. Bowden FAIA, Architect Emeritus

SILVER

brennan+company architects
CallisonRTKL
Jerome C. Gray Architect
Unknown Studio

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Baltimore Sister Cities, Inc. is a qualified 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization and donations are tax-deductible to the full extent of the law. No goods or services were provided for this gift. Please consult your tax advisor regarding specific questions about your deductions.

 

Web site copyright © 2023 Baltimore Sister Cities, Inc.

logo-baltimoreBaltimore sister city committees operate under the auspices of the City of Baltimore’s Office of the Mayor.

 

Brandon M. Scott, Mayor

 

Previous mayor’s Dec 2015 press release about Baltimore Sister Cities.

 

Baltimore Sister Cities, Inc. is a 501c3 organization incorporated in the State of Maryland.
Member of  Sister Cities International, Maryland Nonprofits, World Trade Center Institute, Visit Baltimore, & affiliate of Maryland International Education Consortium.
Recipient of 2016 Innovation Award from Sister Cities International.