The City of Cambridge, Massachusetts, released its urban forest master plan ideated by Reed Hildberbrand in 2019. Its goal is to make Cambridge more resilient to climate change, address the urban heat island effect, mitigate stormwater runoff, reduce nutrient runoff, and contribute to overall community well-being.
SHADE, a local teen-led nonprofit founded by Jeff Goldenson, is likewise helping Cambridge cool down. It empowers high schoolers to design and build shading devices in their communities.
This both adds precious respite from the summer sun, an increasingly precarious resource these days, and gives teens a reason to put phones down for awhile.
SHADE is an offshoot of Shade is Social Justice—a program funded by an Accelerating Climate Resiliency grant from the Metropolitan Area Planning Council, which has supported the construction of shading devices all throughout Cambridge, some designed by Goldenson, and other local architects like Gabriel Cira, Matthew Okazaki, and Alejandro Saldarriaga.
This August, SHADE completed a temporary pavilion in Cambridge’s Sennott Park. Its construction was a collaboration between local high schoolers and architecture students at the Wentworth Institute of Technology. Its design demanded innovation, on multiple fronts.
The Forest and The Trees
The new device by SHADE at Sennott Park is made of utilitarian materials: Scaffolding, mesh, and wood, to name a few key components. A polychromatic halo denotes the device’s defining feature.
For these temporary shading devices, it’s best not to dig into the ground plane, Goldenson has found, because this would add permitting complications, by extension lengthening construction time.
Moreover, these devices still have to withstand high winds, like any other building—an admittedly difficult task if you can’t build piles. Last but not least, it’s onerous to get insurance for temporary structures and public spaces more broadly; many times, cities don’t want to assume the risk that comes with them.
In response to these parameters, Goldenson and his team have “developed a hybrid system of steel pipe” and scaffolding, he said. “Scaffolding has its virtues, right? It goes up fast. It also has other mechanical properties I could nerd out on, but I want to emphasize how good it is for community uses,” Goldenson told AN.
With two completed projects under his team’s belt, Goldenson hopes to see more devices like the ones he oversaw at Sennott Park, and last year in Donnelly Field. Can they set new precedents?
For Goldenson, the new teen-led nonprofit (which is accepting donations) is as much about building shade as it is combating the burgeoning mental health crisis among teenagers just coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Traditionally, playgrounds and ball parks anchor parks, but I think we need to elevate leisure, comfort, and just hanging out,” Goldenson elaborated, “because that’s where socializing and community happens. So that’s our mission.”
SHADE’s fiscal sponsor is the Hideo Sasaki Foundation. It was just awarded a New England Foundation for the Arts grant.
This funding will help continue the work Goldenson started last year, when he and Kyrk Morris, Amon Millner, Will Adams, Debbie Bonilla, Kini Udovicki, Levi Bedall, August Lehrecke, Matt Muller, and Yusuke Obuchi built a shading device at Cambridge’s Donnelly Field, as part of the Shade is Social Justice program.
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