PLANE—SITE, a global video channel agency, has released a new documentary, showing that how students of the University at Buffalo School of Architecture and Planning learn from and rebuild the Rust Belt city around them.

Once a city that epitomized the American Dream, since the latter 20th century, Buffalo has been confronted with enormous challenges stemming from its industrial decline. In the face of sharp population loss and inequality, Buffalo is rising once again. A new kind of city is being built, and students and faculty of the University at Buffalo School of Architecture and Planning are an integral part of this process.

Interviews with key protagonists from the school, alongside documentation of the exhibition, have been captured in a short video below.

Video courtesy of PLANE-SITE

The students use the city itself as a laboratory, deeply embedding themselves in the community and the challenges it faces. Situated on the shores of Lake Erie on the western edge of New York State, Buffalo offers the parameters for intervention through design and urban planning, whether that’s working with local refugee entrepreneurs or revitalizing local fabrication and industry.

University at Buffalo School of Architecture and Planning at Palazzo Bembo in Venice

Their work is being showcased at the Time Space Existence exhibition in Venice through a new film that tells the story of how an architecture and urban planning school can be directly involved in the future of the city it calls home. Their reciprocal and symbiotic relationship is an entirely new way to rethink design and urban planning, one that remains with the trouble of its challenges.

A still from the film. Bethlehem Steel

The film, and an accompanying catalog highlighting sites of faculty and student engagement throughout Buffalo will be exhibited at Time Space Existence at Palazzo Bembo in Venice, until November 25, 2018.

A shot from the exhibition at Palazzo Bembo in Venice

Time Space Existence is an international exhibition organized by the Global Art Affairs Foundation and the European Cultural Centre and runs in parallel to the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale.

Top image: A still from the film, See It Through Buffalo, produced by the University at Buffalo School of Architecture and Planning and Paget Films. "Full Circle" is a faculty-led installation for play and community-building on Buffalo's West Side.

All images courtesy of PLANE—SITE

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