March 4-8: The World of Buckminster Fuller | A History of Future Cities | Designing for the Planet | DAG on Camden Children’s Garden | Soak It Up Awards

Movie: Architecture in Film: The World of Buckminster Fuller

Monday, March 4, 6:30pm, film starts at 7pm. Center for Architecture, 1218 Arch Street. Architecture in Film, hosted by John DeFazio, architect and Associate Professor at Drexel University continues this month with The World of Buckminster Fuller, a 1974 film by Baylis Glascock and Robert Snyder. $10 donation requested at the door.

Author Talk: Daniel Brook on A History of Future Cities

Tuesday, March 5, 5:30-7pm. Storefront for Urban Innovation, 2711 West Girard Avenue. Daniel Brook’s recently published book, A History of Future Cities explores four cities where East meets West and past becomes future: St. Petersburg, Shanghai, Mumbai, and Dubai. Brook is coming to Next City’s Storefront for a chat and will be signing (and selling) books. Free.

Lecture: Medard Gabel: Designing for the Planet

Tuesday March 5, UArts, CBS Auditorium, Hamilton Hall, 320 South Broad Street. You are in charge of a very large spacecraft and something very serious has gone wrong. What are you going to do? When Medard Gabel poses this question to audience he’s talking about Earth. Gabel (who co-founded The World Game Institute with Buckminster Fuller) will deliver the second of DesignPhiladelphia’s “Creating with Constraints” lecture about a program that turns audiences into problem solvers. Free, reserve your spot online.

Meeting: Design Advocacy Group: Camden Children’s Garden

Thursday, March 7, 8am (sharp). Center for Architecture, 1218 Arch Street. The Camden Children’s Garden is threatened with demolition by the State of New Jersey in the name of expanding the aquarium. Joining DAG for this discussion will be Mike Devlin, founder and executive director of the Camden Children’s Garden and Tim Kearney, who was the garden’s project architect for Ventury Rauch and Scott Brown in 1999. Free.

Awards: Soak It Up

Thursday, March 7, 6-9pm. Academy of Natural Sciences, 1900 Benjamin Franklin Parkway. See what the future of green infrastructure projects could look like in Philadelphia as nine finalist design teams compete for top honors in the Infill Philadelphia: Soak It Up design competition. The finalists will share their reconceptualizations of three sites – a warehouse in Hartranft, a shopping plaza in Gray’s Ferry, and the intimate grid of Queen Village – and give rapid-fire presentations of their ideas, competing for $10,000 in three categories.  $100 for individuals, ticket sales online finish on Monday.