Students study real-world issues in design, building

Hammons School of Architecture’s Center for Community Studies is new to Drury University, but its purpose is not.
Though the center was formally established Jan. 1, the school has educated
students in real-world problems since 1984.
“It’s a mandatory requirement in the fourth year,” said Professor Jay G. Garrott, director for Community Studies. “Last fall, we pulled together all the activities into a design-build studio and pulled it under a new entity. We had been doing it separately, and now all the projects are under one umbrella, providing one voice.”
The center focuses on projects of benefit to the community. Students help community members form a vision and clarify their problems and needs.
“We give them direction,” Garrott said. “We’re as proactive as we can be to help them improve. We formulate early background information and propose how that area can be improved and how the service area can be more efficient for landowners, tenants and residents.”
The center works with the Southwest Missouri State University School of Planning, holding all-day workshops and involving the community to identify a problem statement. While one class will help establish the problem statement, the next semester’s students will take the next step, resolving it or forming a vision.
The Center for Community Studies is overseeing six projects.
One of them, for third-year architecture students and nontraditional adult communication students in Drury’s College of Graduate and Continuing Studies, is the design, construction and promotion of a pavilion for the Commercial Street Farmers Market.
Students are developing the farmers’ market project under the oversight of Traci Sooter, assistant professor at Hammons School of Architecture, and Myra Miller, adjunct faculty in graduate and continuing studies at Drury University.

Farmers Market project
“We’ve always had the goal of an outdoor pavilion since we opened the market in 1998,” said Leah Bonebrake, an area vegetable, eggs and honey farmer who volunteers for the Farmers Market. “Until now, we’ve held the market outdoors with temporary tents.”
The project is funded by a $14,000 grant from the Community Foundation of the Ozarks and by private donations raised through the Friends of the Market campaign. The total project cost is $30,000.
“We’ve gotten materials donated from Acme Steel and Cedar Creek Wholesale. We still need concrete and hope to get that donated,” Sooter said.
The 30-by-100-foot pavilion will be multifunctional. In addition to the Farmers Market, it will house picnics, reunions, club meetings, arts and
entertainment, art shows and garden clubs.
There are also 19 students planning an awareness campaign. The highlight of their efforts will be at the May 13 grand opening.
“The benefit of doing a design-build project is basically bonding with the class in a way, learning the ins and outs and how they work and designing a project in a real world experience,” said Chad Thompson, one of the design students who is planning the pavilion. “We learn to deal with clients and it gives us the opportunity to be able to design and work from drawing the building to completing the site.”
Liz Aiello, also a student, agrees. “It gives you a lot more freedom (than) a classroom setting. It’s also a reality check. Can you actually build that?”

Downtown Design Guidelines
Another project, Downtown Design Guidelines, has the students producing design guidelines that address buildings around the square. Ideas regarding new awnings, signage, lighting, sidewalks and street structure will be presented to the city.
“The city of Springfield is excited to work with Drury on downtown design guidelines. It’s an excellent opportunity to brainstorm and create partnerships in the community,” said Hillary Taylor, senior planner, urban design for the city. “The students have great capacity to inspire creativity and energy into the project.”
Assistant Professor Aurora Robinson considers her students a “think tank” that has the luxury of daydreaming. “It affords both parties a unique opportunity to explore realities,” she said. The group has taken field trips to Evansville, Ind., and Nashville, Tenn., to study streetscapes and obtain ideas.

Heart of the Westside
In addition, the Heart of the Westside Project covers boundaries from Kansas Expressway on the east, Fulbright Avenue on the west, Division Street on the north and Chestnut Expressway to the south. “There are 70 to 100 blocks to look at. This project is a chapter on what we’re creating as a larger group of pattern books,” Robinson said. The students study the types of development that will promote use of existing characteristics for designs that should be created in that area. “That includes elements in housing stock, streets and existing elements we should shy away from as well, such as open ditch drainage, sidewalks against the street and inadequate buffer zones.”
The city will then incorporate the students’ ideas.

SoEl project
An additional project funded by the city includes the SoEl project, which covers the area bounded by South Avenue, Elm Street, Grand Street and Campbell Avenue. Taylor is the project coordinator,
Robert Weddle, Ph.D., AIA, assistant professor of architecture, oversees the student project. “We were approached by the city over the last year to look at the neighborhood,” Weddle said. “We spent half the semester doing research on the neighborhood design. We took a field trip to Kansas City for ideas for analyzing the neighborhood in Springfield.”
A planning and development class at SMSU is helping with the project. “Our students held collaborating meetings with that class to discuss issues with neighborhood planning, which culminated at the recent community planning charette and neighborhood tour,” Weddle said. “We met with property owners regarding 270-plus properties and other institutions that were invited. They worked with the students to look at the positives and negatives of the neighborhood. In the afternoon, the groups worked together to generate ideas. From here on out, we take the information and generate proposals that will improve the area for the next 15 to 20 years.” The project will go to the city for inspiration on how the area might look in the future. Classes in the spring term will refine those projects, while students in the fall classes will create a document that includes further inventory for the community.
“It will broaden the community awareness of what could happen and how. In 10 to 15 years you will see a transition in that area,” said John Odom, a fourth-year student who is working on the SoEl project.

Jamaica design-build project
Robinson also is heading a storm relief design-build project for Jamaica. Rebuilding Experiential Exchange Program – or REEP, will provide affordable housing that will be able to withstand the hurricanes that plague Jamaica from August to October.
“We look at sustainable and affordable housing, using indigenous materials that will hold up during a severe storm,” Robinson said. “Jamaica is the first country. We plan to help other countries with sustainability in the future.”