About the Project

Common Boston invite submissions of photos that tell the story of how places and physical communities are built. Part of Common Boston’s mission is to open up Boston and tell the stories of neighborhoods and design, and the goal of this year’s photo project is to showcase the often invisible process behind the building of our physical landscape. This prompt is of course open to subjective interpretation, but we are specifically looking for construction photos – those that suggest how we connect with buildings on a visceral level through their making. The best photos will ideally demonstrate how the making and construction of buildings strengthens community within their neighborhoods.

Location: Photos must be from somewhere with an address in Boston (photos will ultimately be linked to a map in our online gallery) and preferably from the neighborhoods that we will be featuring during Common Boston Week 2010 – Chinatown, East Boston, Fort Point Channel, Jamaica Plain, Lower Roxbury, and Uphams Corner.

What is Common Boston?

Common Boston is a committee of the Boston Society of Architects, comprised of a core of volunteers that organize Boston’s only free, public festival of communities and design.

Each year, we feature events around a number of “common points” which are areas of activity, typically focused within one of Boston’s many neighborhoods. Programs are centered around neighborhoods to enable the general public to explore good design that has benefited their communities, while also allowing designers to connect with specific communities regarding their ideas for future projects. We organize active programming with the goal of upholding our mission to inspire people who live and work in the Boston area to collectively and effectively shape a sustainable, equitable, and beautiful built environment.

We coordinate walking tours, open buildings, public art displays, and neighborhood forums in partnership with community organizations in order to raise public awareness of the built environment and to encourage informed public involvement in the design process.

What is the Carpenters Center?

The New England Regional Council of Carpenters is the regional governing body for the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America and its Local Union affiliates in New England. 22,000 members and 2735 signatory contractors provide a superior construction experience from concept and planning processes through the completion of construction. Together, the union and its signatory contractor partners establish training programs that balance the needs of both the construction industry and workers. Training programs established and administered by labor and management provide apprentice level and career-long upgrade training to develop the highest skilled craftsmanship in the industry. The NERCC's mission is to use its new home (the "Carpenters Center") to host events for its related trades, industries, and communities. The NERCC has reached out to Common Boston to assist in engaging the community in creating content for their new media wall during the month of June.

The Carpenters Center is the new home of the New England Regional Council of Carpenters (NERCC). Their new building, designed by ADD Inc and built partly by members of the carpenters union, features an incredible LED media wall facing Interstate 93. The sign is a "transparent" LED sign, meaning the pixels are not directly adjacent and you can see through it from behind, and thus photos considered for this juried competition will need to be adapted for display by the art staff of the NERCC.