Rose Architectural Fellowship

Context:

Developing and reimagining communities requires deep partnerships with residents and local governments – skills which are not always taught in design schools. For those visionary designers who are interested in the public interest, the Enterprise Rose Architectural Fellowship, a program of Enterprise Community Partners, Inc., provides a unique opportunity to build skills, networks, and experience.

The Rose Fellowship is a two-year program that partners emerging architects with community development organizations to achieve positive change. The Fellowship is built around three core principles:

1. Design excellence
2. Community Engagement
3. Sustainability

Grant Description:

Enterprise’s sustainability and design team works in Boston and nationally to address built environment strategies that improve people's lives by integrating intentional, functional and inspiring design with the goal of creating stronger, thriving communities. Through their Rose Architectural Fellowship program, Enterprise will match new Rose Fellows with Boston-area organizations for a two-year period. In addition, Enterprise will integrate its national climate and cultural resilience program into the Boston area which integrates creative placemaking with sustainability efforts. Through convenings and the placement of a Rose Fellow and Climate & Cultural Resilience grantees, Enterprise will ensure that the Boston region is engaged in creating equitable, healthy communities.

Outputs and Outcomes:

• Fully staffed Enterprise Rose Architectural Fellows will be placed with Boston-region host organizations to accomplish two-year work plans.
• The Climate and Cultural Resilience program strategy will be implemented with a deep connection to Boston.
• Rose Fellowship host organizations will have systems in place that value and promote design thinking and effectively leverage design for impact.
• New affordable housing developments that use Green Communities Certification will be more resilient, equitable and healthy.

Meet some of Boston's Rose Fellows:

Irene Figueroa Ortiz—A Better City, 2016-2018

Irene is a Rose Fellow with A Better City (ABC), a nonprofit organization committed to improve the quality of life and economic competitiveness of the greater Boston area through transportation, land development and environmental initiatives. Along with ABC and the Boston Transportation Department, Irene works on conceptual design case studies and implementation strategies to introduce creative public realm planning into transportation projects in the city. She also examines regional trends and identify locations for future initiatives. Irene’s prior professional and academic work has focused on improving municipal permitting processes for temporary public space projects; advocating for inter-agency collaboration in public space management; devising placemaking strategies to repurpose underused public infrastructure; and designing networks of green infrastructure.

Michael Chavez—Fairmount/Indigo Line CDC Collaborative, 2013-2016

As a Rose Fellow, Michael worked with the Fairmount/Indigo Line CDC Collaborative to spearhead a sustainable, smart growth agenda along the 9-mile Fairmount commuter rail line in Boston, MA. The line runs through some of the City’s most impoverished and predominantly minority neighborhoods in Dorchester, Mattapan and Hyde Park. Michael worked to increase the Collaborative’s capacity to engage its constituent neighborhoods in the design process for the transit-oriented development and helped demonstrate the positive impacts of holistic design on low-income neighborhoods to funders and policy-makers. Michael is currently the Project Development Manager at YouthBuild Boston, Inc. (YBB) leading development & management, oversight of YBB's Designery program, sustainability initiatives, and overseeing international projects and relationships. Michael worked at YBB from 2009-2013 before his fellowship and then returned to this leadership role in 2017. Born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Michael Chávez combines his passion for social activism and architecture in Boston, Massachusetts. Michael says Boston is a learning laboratory where he can mix urban community development and empowerment with sustainable and innovative architectural design.

Mark Matel—Nuestra Comunidad Development Corporation, 2012-2014

Mark spent his Rose Fellowship at Nuestra Comunidad Development Corporation (NCDC) in Roxbury, Mass., from 2012-2014. He was deeply involved in the development of Bartlett Place, re-visioning a former transit yard into a “creative village” that is a sustainable residential and commercial node in Roxbury. He has worked with local residents to plan temporary events that bring awareness to the Bartlett Place site and test programming for the proposed public plaza on the site. Mark has engaged with the community at all levels, from residents to the city redevelopment authority. Since completing his fellowship, Mark has served as a development project manager for Nuestra, a project manager for TS3 Architects in Virginia, and is currently the new Program Director of the Rose Fellowship where he is able to bring his experiences in the fellowship and his passion for sustainable design and community engagement to the future leaders of the fellowship program.

Learn more and apply for the Rose Fellowship