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Notre Dame pitches urban-design workshop

Reprinted with permission of the Daily Hampshire Gazette. All rights reserved.



Notre Dame pitches urban-design workshop


By Dan Crowley

Thursday, June 5, 2008

Northampton - What would Northampton's downtown streetscapes and established neighborhoods look like if infused with classical and traditional architecture?

It's a question the city has an opportunity to explore with graduate students from the University of Notre Dame's School of Architecture next fall, an effort that could cost anywhere from $15,000 to $20,000.

Professor Philip Bess, director of the university's architecture and urban design program in South Bend, Ind., made a pitch Tuesday night to some 75 city residents and local officials about using the city as the subject of a design studio workshop.

The program is designed to help communities build consensus around difficult design and development questions. But its primary mission is to educate future architects studying at the University of Notre Dame.

"Our primary purpose is pedagogical," Bess told the large audience that packed the Council Chambers of the Puchalski Building for his presentation. "We're not here to provide services."

Bess said the architecture program seeks to work with established cities and towns with "good urban bones," environments facing threats from post–World War II sprawl.

"My intuitive sense is that Northampton fits that profile," Bess told the crowd, which included most members of the Planning Board, as well as dozens of city residents.

The program works this way: A half dozen advanced graduate students at the University Notre Dame would arrive in September and hold a week-long charrette, or community design workshop, in which city residents could critique and build consensus around actual student drawings of potential development, or infill, in areas of Northampton. All the students in the program have studied in Rome, Italy, and one who would work on the project is Aaron Helfand, of Northampton.

As Bess put it in his presentation Tuesday, "A picture is worth 1,000 words, because without shared images everyone imagines something different and (is) unhappy with what gets proposed."

City officials and Bess said it has yet to be decided what areas of the city the students would target if they are invited to work here. A few residents expressed concerns Tuesday about some city districts, such as Leeds or Bay State, being left out of the design workshop.

In mid-October, a group of representatives would travel to Indiana for a review of the students' drawings, after which time those students return to the city in December to give a final presentation of their work.

Bess delivered an hour-long presentation on the program's most recent work in Cooperstown, N.Y., then entertained questions from the audience. Some city residents asked Bess how much weight his program gives to environmental, or green design. Others, like Adam Cohen, an organizer of the North Street Neighborhood Association, wanted the professor's take on the origins of sprawl.

"We see suburban sprawl as a perversion of both the landscape and the city," said Bess, noting that the automobile was a catalyst for sprawl.

He said today there is a general aversion to growth and development because "we don't have any confidence that what is going to be built today will be any better than what was built in the past."

Bess said classical and traditional architecture will inform and characterize the graduate student drawings, which will show a concern for durability, comfort, beauty and decorum. Traditional urbanism, he said, focuses on walkable, mixed-use environments "that are beautiful and environmentally sustainable."

Mayor Clare Higgins, who attended part of the talk, said the program sounds "intriguing." However, she also said the city does not have the money to pay for the exercise. The program's costs are for overhead and travel and lodging for participants. "It comes down to dollars, and we're not fundraisers," said George Kohout, of the Planning Board, which endorses the program.

Wayne M. Feiden, director of the Office of Planning and Development, said he plans to talk with the City Council, among other local panels, for their input in the week ahead. The ideal scenario, he said, is to get donations from a broad range of people and organizations.

"We'll ask people to pledge and see where it goes," Feiden said, adding later, "The money should be coming from different places."