Design : Featured Stories

This week's Line or Two looks at a web site that showcases a wide range of colorful, informal images of the Twin Cities--sketches done on site in Saint Paul and Minneapolis by local artists who belong to a worldwide network of urban sketchers.

It's weathered industry exoduses and foreclosure--but now the proud old East Side Saint Paul neighborhood is home to a hot new bar/restaurant, Ward 6, that's both a sign of, and a force in, a wider renewal. 

When Heather and Brent Fredrickson bought a modernist house in a historic Saint Paul neighborhood that was something of a midcentury architectural showcase, they had one big problem: an awkward bathroom. The remodel they did added a 21st-century environmental ethic to the whole home.

This week: A greeting card in a coffee shop sends me to a Minneapolis West Bank memorial that recalls a beloved, vanished building and honors the history and traditions of generations of West Bankers.

"Placemaking" is a powerful buzzword in 21st-century urbanism. Do we know what it actually means and whom it's supposed to serve? For Brendan Crain of New York's Project for Public Spaces, the idea that it's all about attracting talent to town and building the new economy is wrongheaded. Placemaking, Crain insists, should be rooted in the immediate needs of the people who already live here. 

In A Line or Two, I share some of my enthusiasms and discoveries as I make my way around the Twin Cities. Call it an editor's note as blog entry. This week: A design-y, extremely Parisian patisserie on Saint Paul's Grand Avenue serves up traditonal pastries--and a Franco-Minnesotan hybrid.

When globetrotting dancers and choreographers Uri Sands and Toni Pierce-Sands, formerly of the Alvin Ailey company, decided to establish a new kind of multicultural dance school in Saint Paul, they knew where they wanted it to be: along the Central Corridor in the heart of the city.

What is an art gallery? What should it do, not just for the artists it shows and the patrons who view and buy the art, but for the community as a whole? These are some of the questions Tricia Khutoretsky and her colleagues are asking as they prepare to debut a new, and rather oddly named, art space in Northeast Minneapolis.

Jay Walljasper checks in with British urbanist Charles Landry, who recaps his experience touring the Twin Cities, meeting a wide array of local urban changemakers, and applying his principles of city vitality to our reality. And Landry draws some conclusions about how our towns can thrive in the coming decades.

In this first of an occasional series of interviews with young movers and shakers in the Twin Cities, we talk with John Larsen, an architect whose personal giving, and family foundation, support deeply held personal values rooted in personal experiences. For Larsen, philanthropy needs to explore options beyond writing checks--like new partnerships with government.

On December 7 and 8, Minneapolis' Midtown Global Market turned hyper-crafty as 96 hand-makers of beautiful, funny, and freaky objects gathered to sell their wares. It was more than a holiday craft fair--it was a celebration of the Twin Cities as a leader in the new crafts movement. Our photographer, Bill Kelley, was there.

Shops that pair high-end coffee with edgy, adrenaline-boosting activities are becoming a Twin Cities hallmark. We've got coffee and motorcycles (Bob's Java Hut), coffee and serious biking (Angry Catfish), and now coffee and that artistic test of pain-endurance called getting serious tattoos.

The historic Minneapolis building, once given over entirely to commodities like wheat and rye, is turning into one of the major hubs for high-tech in the Twin Cities. Credit an ambitious coworking space as catalyst, an ideal downtown location, and (surprise!) the continuing need for techies to actually inhabit the same physical space.

From Bill Lindeke's always-worthwhile street-level urban design blog, Twin City Sidewalks: Want to make an experiment to see if reducing the number of lanes of traffic makes street life more vital? Then go to  Chicago and Franklin avenues in Minneapolis, where you can compare two street-treatments and decide for yourself.

In A Line or Two, I share some of my discoveries and enthusiasms as I make my way around the Twin Cities. Call it an editor's note as blog entry. This week: On Thursday, a scholar of public art talks about the new memorials that are springing up in America--and the challenge of memorializing victims rather than heroes.