Luoni Places Public-Interest Design as Center’s Focus

Combining urban design with methods of thinking

This fall, Steve Luoni marked 10 years as director of the University of Arkansas Community Design Center. When he arrived there, he recalls, urban design was viewed as beautification or an illustration of policy rather than a method used to rethink how places are made.

The center’s work had not yet examined the structural issues of place and the role of urban design in creating the “triple bottom line” – advancing economic, environmental and social measures simultaneously.

The center is located off campus, a block from the downtown Fayetteville square. It is an outreach program of the Fay Jones School of Architecture, where Luoni is also a Distinguished Professor and the Steven L. Anderson Chair in Architecture and Urban Studies.

Back then, the center’s staff was housed in cubicles, with the director in his own office. As the new director in 2003, Luoni instilled a horizontal organization in which everyone shares a similar sensibility about design, teaching and advocacy. Plus, they all work at the same long table in a room with an open floor plan.

With a team approach, each person brings his or her own talents to bear. “The work and the cognitive demands of project approaches drive things rather than job classifications,” Luoni said. “It’s a very fluid, nimble process where what you’re doing from day to day can change dependent upon what the process requires.”

Because the projects primarily address urban scales, many remain as designs that spark and inform public conversation and advocacy for policy change.

“We don’t pursue things for innovation’s sake,” he said. “We take on the difficult, unglamorous problems, and we try to find design’s role in solving for complex issues within the built environment.”

They are actually better known outside the state by public officials and design colleagues who inquire about their ideas and how those can be used in other places.

They recombine issues otherwise examined separately into nine areas of design inquiry – such as low-impact development, transit-oriented development, context-sensitive street design, pocket neighborhoods, watershed urbanism and agricultural urbanism. They’ve even published an award-winning book in one area, called Low Impact Development: a design manual for urban areas.

In the pocket neighborhood concept, housing is clustered around shared space, such as a community lawn and playground, community gardens, a shared street and a low-impact development stormwater management system. The approach invites community revitalization and employs low-impact development concepts, in a housing template that delivers more services at affordable levels.

The pocket neighborhood concept, which was used for the Habitat Trails, Porchscapes and Pettaway projects, has won a combined 25 awards. However, not all of these affordable housing projects are being built, so the center’s staff is exploring the prospect of becoming a developer.

The second design area, transit-oriented development, involves intercity rail, which ranges from regional light rail for northwest Arkansas, which would connect Fayetteville and Bentonville, to a seven-mile streetcar plan for Fayetteville. When the center started working on this concept eight years ago, no one in the region really understood it.

Now, staff members are seen as consultants and experts on the topic.

“Most people don’t get excited by a transportation project; let’s face it, it’s not very glamorous,” Luoni said. “So, by integrating ordinary infrastructural processes into urban design and making infrastructure work even harder in addressing urban livability, we can craft a robust idea about place.”

Earlier this year, the Northwest Arkansas Regional Planning Authority undertook a yearlong alternative transportation analysis to determine light rail feasibility.

For the past few years, the center’s focus also has turned to local food production. They’ve done scenario planning to imagine how the issues of food again can be tied to place making and city making. Food production is certainly part of northwest Arkansas’ history and legacy. For that matter, so are rail transit and urban neighborhoods.

“Everything we look at is really just recalling lost intelligence, more than it is any kind of breakthrough innovation,” he said. “It’s more driven by a kind of thinking rooted in the humanities than it is in technology or science.”

For the staff, 50-hour weeks are typical, and 70-hour weeks aren’t uncommon when a deadline approaches. The work requires issues-driven people who possess a combination of passion, design talent and curiosity, and who are willing to put in that time and want to be in the mix of national discussions.

The center’s staff teaches one studio a semester, with a different focus each time. They encourage students to be curious and diligent enough to try many solutions as part of the design process.

Luoni said that, in a perfect world, the center would have plenty of money and sponsorships to do the work that needs doing. “However, a big part of what we do involves making a case for design because neither the public nor the private realms understand how to connect what they do with design and how design could advance their interests.”

And that, he said, is why the awards they consistently win for their design work are so important. Their projects have won 68 national and international awards so far. Though they don’t typically come with a monetary prize, the awards do bring attention and lend legitimacy to the design concepts.

Like the awareness and clout brought to books and movies that win awards, people pay more attention to things that others in positions of authority have noticed. “It creates symbolic capital,” he said. “It focuses public attention, not just on the work, but on the issues of that work.”

For example, a recent project in Rwanda has gained notice in several awards programs. The project and resulting manual provide designs for holistic neighborhoods that would transition the capital city of Kigali from informal to formal settlements. That manual is now informing policymakers in Rwanda, where it’s being vetted by the government.

At its core, the center always will be about design, Luoni said. He sees them focusing even more on affecting policy and decision making, particularly in the form of scenario planning.

“It’s really about creating a more robust decision-making community so that, whatever design direction they do embark upon, there’s a deeper discussion about ramifications and, most importantly, how to allocate resources.”

Community Design Center Project Wins 2013 Unbuilt Architecture and Design Award

Trailhead Complex to be built along Maumelle River

The University of Arkansas Community Design Center’s design proposal for the Trailhead Complex at the Maumelle River Nature Center has won a 2013 Unbuilt Architecture and Design Award from the Boston Society of Architects. This is the sixth project by the center to receive an award from the society in its international awards category over the last 10 years.

The Trailhead Complex project, commissioned by Central Arkansas Water as part of a larger land conservation effort, covers 10,000 square feet and will cost about $3 million. The complex will consist of five basic components – a low-impact development parking garden, visitors hall, outdoor classroom, meadow walkscape and lookout tower – each of them demonstrating features and exhibits that support environmental conservation.

“The Trailhead Complex will be a signature project in Central Arkansas Water’s growing portfolio of watershed protection and education measures, as well as a new direction for the role of design in general reforestation programs,” said Steve Luoni, director of the Community Design Center and a Distinguished Professor in the Fay Jones School of Architecture.

“The U.S. Forest Service has taken a special interest in the Arkansas project because the proposal recasts generic environmental education as an art park. Hopefully, the national recognition will facilitate a successful capital campaign for Central Arkansas Water to build what could be a trend-setting project,” he said.

Stephanie Liechty, stewardship coordinator for Central Arkansas Water, said the organization purchased the 915 acres that is the Winrock Grass Farm, located on the Maumelle River. The river is the largest tributary to Lake Maumelle, which is the main drinking water supply for central Arkansas, with 400,000 customers in Little Rock, North Little Rock and 15 other communities.

The purchase prevented the land from being developed into a subdivision that would have placed septic tanks in a floodplain that flows into the water supply. The property connects with land already owned by the Central Arkansas Water.

To help fund the purchase, the organization secured a Forest Legacy Program grant from the U.S. Forest Service. The grant requires that 75 percent of the property be in forest – “so we knew we wanted to conserve this property and restore it to what it was historically before the grass farm came along,” Liechty said.

The Community Design Center was part of the team, with the Chicago office of Geosyntec Consultants, creating an overall site plan for the space, which is about 30 minutes from Little Rock near the Pulaski/Perry county line.

“We wanted something different from the typical nature center or walking trail project. We wanted to have sustainable design and something out of the ordinary and something that fits in with the scenery,” Liechty said. “Their design fits in with all of that.”

The Trailhead Complex design is an exhibit landscape intended to create memorable experiences that reenergize visitors’ regard for environmental systems. The design of the components amplifies the educational functions through “strangemaking” approaches that emphasize contrasts between the natural and the artificial. Strangemaking is used by artists and educators to encourage discovery by making something familiar strange.

A Visitors Hall is tucked within the forested hillside of a meadow-forest area, re-creating the effect of a forest canopy and serving as a sheltered, multipurpose gateway between highland and lowland. The Outdoor Classroom is a modified amphitheater that navigates the 30-foot elevation drop to the Meadow Walkscape, a wildflower meadow that contains micro-lawns for lounging and picnicking, children’s play areas and public art displays.

The Lookout Tower marks the limits of the trailhead complex and is used as a landmark to guide visitors throughout the park. The parking garden is a low-impact development stormwater treatment landscape bordered by walls made from river cane and grounded with pervious surfaces of granulated rock, porous pavers and rain gardens.

The Community Design Center’s scheme provides a facility where visitors can gain “more appreciation of where their water comes from, while having a nice outdoor experience,” Liechty said. One of her favorite elements is the lookout tower, which will provide visitors a “bird’s eye view” of the landscape.

“We hope to educate people on overall water quality, but also about paying attention to what’s happening upstream from where you are because that affects everyone downstream,” Liechty said. “And how all the pieces of the puzzle fit together for a healthy landscape.”

Planners will work with conceptual drawings and plans created by the Community Design Center and spend the next two years raising funds to start the project. The grass farm’s lease on the land expires in 2015, which is when the restoration will begin, Liechty said.

Geosyntec Consultants are helping to determine the planting schedule for trees and grasses. Liechty said there are plans to reforest much of the property. They have handwritten notes from when the land was first surveyed in the 1800s, which document the types of trees on the land: bald cypress, cherry bark oak, other oaks and pines. The landscape will be layered, with lower levels of dogwood and persimmon trees.

The native grass restoration will include little blue stem, big blue stem and sideoats grama and will serve populations of quail and neotropical migrant birds. For that, planners are working with native grass experts at the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission.

The jury for the 2013 Unbuilt Architecture and Design awards program received 62 entries, of which five received an award. The winning projects will be displayed and presented at ABX (ArchitectureBoston Expo) at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center in November.

The Boston Society of Architects was established in 1867 and is a chapter of the American Institute of Architects. The organization is committed to professional development for its members, advocacy on behalf of great design, and sharing an appreciation for the built environment with the public at large.

The University of Arkansas Community Design Center was founded in 1995 as part of the Fay Jones School of Architecture. The center advances creative development in Arkansas through education, research and design solutions that enhance the physical environment. It has provided design and planning services to more than 45 communities and organizations across Arkansas, helping them to secure nearly $65 million in grant funding to enact suggested improvements. In addition to revitalizing historic downtowns, the center addresses new challenges in affordable housing, urban sprawl, environmental planning, and management of regional growth or decline. The center’s professional staff members are nationally recognized for their expertise in urban and public-interest design, and their work has received more than 90 design awards.

‘Townscaping’ Design Wins Honor Award from American Society of Landscape Architects

Farmington project emphasizes pedestrian experience

The University of Arkansas Community Design Center’s project for Farmington, “Townscaping an Automobile-Oriented Fabric,” has won a 2013 Honor Award in the Analysis and Planning category from the American Society of Landscape Architects. It is the center’s fifth ASLA award and the fourth that they have received in this category.

The awards honor the top public places, residential designs, campuses, parks and urban planning projects from across the United States and around the world. Thirty-three award-winning projects were selected from more than 534 entries.

The project will be published in the October issue of Landscape Architecture Magazine. It also will be featured at the 2013 ASLA Annual Conference and Expo in Boston in November.

The Community Design Center’s project involved restoring pedestrian use to Farmington, an automobile-focused town bordering Fayetteville in Washington County, through transformation of its five-lane commercial highway into a multiway boulevard. The boulevard’s right-of-way would feature “urban agricultural” components or edible landscapes, combining a demand for food security with traditions of civic street design to “retrofit suburbia,” said Steve Luoni, director of the Community Design Center and a Distinguished Professor of architecture in the Fay Jones School of Architecture.

The townscape plan proposes a new town green with a year-round farmers market, tree-lined sidewalks that promote outdoor dining, traffic circles, and large-scale public art projects that recall Farmington’s agricultural legacy – all delivering more urban and ecological services along U.S. 62, he said.

In the last 80 years, streets have been engineered exclusively to serve motorists, Luoni said, “when, historically, streets sponsored so many other non-traffic functions.” The goal was to transform this “traffic sewer” – where the only level of service is defined by the number of cars moved per lane per hour – and return important measures of livability through great public space and a sense of place.

Roads are the largest category of public space, though most people consider them a mere utility, he said.

“It’s the public space that determines the health of a community, and precisely what we aimed to restore in this context-sensitive highway design,” he said.

“While our work in Farmington has received recognition from the architecture and urban planning professions, we are especially pleased that the landscape architecture profession has awarded this project since our solutions are interdisciplinary and aim to solve for multiple challenges in the built environment,” Luoni said. “We hope that this kind of affirmation will give the next Farmington administration the confidence to eventually move forward with this model project, which has extensive community support.”

The UACDC received a $20,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to work on this design scenario.

The University of Arkansas Community Design Center was founded in 1995 as part of the Fay Jones School of Architecture. The center advances creative development in Arkansas through education, research and design solutions that enhance the physical environment. It has provided design and planning services to more than 45 communities and organizations across Arkansas, helping them to secure nearly $65 million in grant funding to enact suggested improvements.

In addition to revitalizing historic downtowns, the center addresses new challenges in affordable housing, urban sprawl, environmental planning, and management of regional growth or decline. The center’s professional staff members are nationally recognized for their expertise in urban and public-interest design, and their work has received more than 90 design awards.

Creative Corridor Project Short-Listed for 2013 World Architecture Festival Award

Little Rock project in masterplanning category

A collaborative project between the University of Arkansas Community Design Center and Marlon Blackwell Architect has been chosen for final consideration in the 2013 World Architecture Festival Awards, the world’s largest architecture design awards program serving the global community. 

More than 300 projects from almost 50 countries were short-listed across 29 individual award categories for the festival, to be held this week in Singapore.

The Creative Corridor: A Main Street Revitalization for Little Rock is one of eight short-listed projects in the Future Projects – Masterplanning category. This project represents the United States in this category.

The Creative Corridor project retrofits a four-block segment of historic Main Street in downtown Little Rock. The proposal features economic development driven more by the cultural arts than the street’s traditional retail base.

The project is intended to spur comprehensive revitalization of historic buildings and transform a segment of Main Street’s streetscape into a visual and performing arts district in Little Rock, which has a metropolitan area population of about 700,000. The city of Little Rock is the lead partner, and additional partners include nonprofit arts organizations, such as the Arkansas Repertory Theatre, Ballet Arkansas and the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra, as well as the Little Rock Downtown Partnership and Reed Realty Advisors.

“Little Rock’s Main Street was a classic American urban icon and the central destination for the nation’s largest streetcar system in cities of its size category in the early 20th century,” said Steve Luoni, director of the Community Design Center and a Distinguished Professor of architecture in the Fay Jones School of Architecture. “Rather than mimic historic precedents to create continuity, our organizations devised a ‘townscaping’ approach that recombines architectural frontages, landscapes, public art and signage, and shared street geometries to ensure compatibility in the built environment.”

“Townscaping as a tactic inverts the hierarchy between buildings and their urban ornaments to create pedestrian-oriented urban rooms from a traffic corridor,” he added. “It makes a virtue from the unevenness between old and new, and posits an exemplary human-centered design approach applicable in urbanizing environments globally.”

For this project, the Community Design Center partnered with Blackwell’s Fayetteville-based firm. Blackwell is also a Distinguished Professor and head of the Fay Jones School’s architecture department.

The initial phase of the Creative Corridor project is slated for implementation in early 2014 with construction of the 500 and 300 blocks of Main Street. These blocks integrate low-impact development technologies for the ecological management of stormwater runoff, featuring a tree-lined allée and landscaped gateways with rain gardens. A $1.5 million capital grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Arkansas Natural Resources Commission support this Phase 1 implementation. Since the beginning of the design process in 2011, more than $60 million in building renovations have occurred or are under contract, including the introduction of loft condominiums and apartments to Main Street.

Through integrated and inclusive planning, this design develops brand identity; connects the Creative Corridor as a cultural hub to the rest of downtown; and generates iconic, destination architectural design.

Project planning was partly funded by a $150,000 Our Town grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and by the city of Little Rock.

Large and small firms will compete as equals when presenting their designs to international judging panels and festival delegates at the World Architecture Festival in Singapore from Oct. 2-4. Luoni will travel to Singapore to present this project. The winner of each category will advance and give a presentation Oct. 4 to the festival’s superjury for the two overall festival awards, World Building and Future Project of the Year.

The Community Design Center was founded in 1995 as part of the Fay Jones School of Architecture. The center advances creative development in Arkansas through education, research, and design solutions that enhance the physical environment. It has provided design and planning services to more than 45 communities and organizations across Arkansas, helping them to secure nearly $65 million in grant funding to enact suggested improvements. In addition to revitalizing historic downtowns, the center addresses new challenges in affordable housing, urban sprawl, environmental planning, and management of regional growth or decline. The center’s professional staff members are nationally recognized for their expertise in urban and public-interest design, and their work has received more than 90 design awards.

American Architecture Awards Recognize Two Community Design Center Projects

Little Rock, Fayetteville designs shine in competition

Two projects by the University of Arkansas Community Design Center have received 2013 American Architecture Awards from The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design and The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies. Out of hundreds of submissions from the best architecture firms across the United States, the 65 award winners were new buildings, commercial and institutional developments, and urban planning projects designed or built since 2010.

The Community Design Center collaborated with Marlon Blackwell Architect for the first project, The Creative Corridor: A Main Street Revitalization for Little Rock. The project retrofits a four-block segment of historic Main Street in downtown Little Rock. The proposal features economic development driven more by the cultural arts than the street’s traditional retail base.

Project planning was partly funded by a $150,000 Our Town grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and by the city of Little Rock.

The second project, Fayetteville 2030: Transit City Scenario, poses the question: What if 80 percent of the city’s future growth was given an incentive to locate around a six-mile streetcar system for Fayetteville’s now auto-dominated commercial arterial? Since 50 percent of the built environment projected to exist in Fayetteville by 2030 has not yet been built, this project envisions changing the direction of growth from sprawl to high-value urban neighborhoods.

Project planning was partly funded by a $20,000 Access to Artistic Excellence grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, along with support from the city of Fayetteville.

“We hope the international recognition that both projects have received over the past year gives the cities of Little Rock and Fayetteville the confidence to move ahead with their projects,” said Steve Luoni, director of the Community Design Center. “Both projects are urban regeneration proposals which underscore the quality of cities in Arkansas – though underutilized as in most mid-American cities. Both proposals offer urban design concepts that are universally appreciated and capable of implementation everywhere. The Fayetteville proposal features new retrofit concepts for suburban neighborhoods, while the Little Rock proposal illustrates how a traffic corridor can be reclaimed to once again make a great pedestrian environment.”

The American Architecture Awards, founded 15 years ago, is a centerpiece of The Chicago Athenaeum and the European Centre’s efforts to identify and promote best practices in all types of architectural development and to bring a global focus to the best new designs from the United States. It is the only national and global program of its kind. This year’s jury consisted of architecture professionals in Greece.

“The American Architecture Awards program showcases the best of new American building design and urban design-oriented research by the nation’s foremost visionary designers,” said Christian Narkiewicz-Laine, museum president of The Chicago Athenaeum. “The American projects selected by the Greek jury exhibit conceptual strengths that solve critical aesthetic, civic, urban and social concerns, as well as the requisite functional, environmental and sustainability concerns. The selected projects for 2013 demonstrate the highest regard for vision and aesthetic image-making, which has traditionally defined the United States as a leading design nation in this decade, as well as the previous decades of the 21stcentury and in the history of modern architecture.”

The award-winning projects will be premiered at the 14th International Biennial of Architecture, which opens today and continues through Oct. 15 at Centro Cultural Recoleta in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The exhibition later will travel in Europe.

The University of Arkansas Community Design Center was founded in 1995 as part of the Fay Jones School of Architecture. The center advances creative development in Arkansas through education, research, and design solutions that enhance the physical environment. It has provided design and planning services to more than 45 communities and organizations across Arkansas, helping them to secure nearly $65 million in grant funding to enact suggested improvements. In addition to revitalizing historic downtowns, the center addresses new challenges in affordable housing, urban sprawl, environmental planning, and management of regional growth or decline. The center’s professional staff members are nationally recognized for their expertise in urban and public-interest design, and their work has received more than 90 design awards.