Culture Now

How can we catalyze post-industrial cities with arts and culture?
Can culture bring new identity and competitiveness to shrinking cities?

The Now Institute provided strategic planning and cultural consulting services for mid-size American cities through the Culture Now Project, advising on issues of urban revitalization, masterplanning and cultural assets.

Initiated by Thom Mayne, Karen Lohrmann and UCLA Architecture and Urban Design in the summer of 2010, the project expanded in the fall of 2011 into a collaborative academic and civic engagement platform, supported by 13 schools of architecture across the country in total, including:

Participating Institutions
1. Columbia
2. Cornell
3. Harvard
4. University of Kentucky
5. University of Pennsylvannia
6. Pratt
7. MIT
8. Princeton
9. Rensselaer Polytechnic
10. Rice University
11. Syracuse
12. UCLA
13. University of Michigan

The Culture Now Project operated as an immersive investigation into the intersection of public policy, urbanism, contemporary culture and its spatial manifestations. This study of social, political, and cultural evidence extended and expanded the dialogue across disciplines and encompassed institutional and political models of the public.

The Culture Now Project instigated a critical dialogue about the nature of art and culture in the American city. Art in itself functions to expand discourse; yet today, the very nature of this conversation is in question. Therefore, the goal of the project was to advance the conversation throughout society—beyond the sphere of institutions—and to study the significance of the arts to this country and to the identity of our cities. These operations identified existing systems, correlations, dependencies, initiatives, and interactions, and examined spatial, communal, economic, and ecological instruments of change.

The Culture Now Project reconfigured the traditional architectural view of the city beyond the boundaries of built matter to reactivate the complexity inherent in the city. Ultimately, the attempt to define, establish, program, and implement the material and immaterial substance that drives contemporary urbanity and culture was the goal. The search for new possibilities also demanded embracing the actual challenges, changes, and potentials of the architectural profession.

The first study of the Culture Now Project, the Midsize America SUPRASTUDIO, focused on medium-sized American cities with population sizes smaller than 400,000 people. These cities are the grounds for possibility; their transitional state (between growth and decline) holds transformative potential. It is in this point in time that mid-sized American cities need change the most. These are the cities that can most immediately manifest the results of such change. The study culminated in a comprehensive publication including both the proposals from this studio as well as contributions from diverse thinkers and practitioners that was released in March 2012.

View Summer 2010 Research.

View Summer 2011 Research (Part 1).

View Summer 2011 Research (Part 2).

View Summer 2011 Research (Part 3).

View the presentation to the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities.

Read the UCLA Newsroom Press Release.

Read the UCLA A.UD Press Release.

100 Points of Public Space Cleveland, Ohio