Center For Building Communities
The Center for Building Communities is an initiative to address architectural and urban design needs around the country. Led by Professors Sallie Hood and Ron Sakal, the Center for Building Communities represents a transformation of the South Bend Downtown Design Center, which Notre Dame architecture students have worked with since 1995, broadening its scope to serve a national constituency.
The Center for Building Communities leads studios focusing on sustainable urban design and architectural development, paying particular attention to the local and regional characteristics of the communities the projects serve. Emphasis is placed on modular building technology and the ways it can facilitate the strengthening of communities through a blend of affordable and market-rate housing, civic, commercial and mixed-use buildings.
Champion Enterprises, Inc., known for factory-built construction throughout North America and the United Kingdom, underwrote the first two design studios affiliated with the Center. The first looked at urban infill in Elkhart, Indiana. The students designed single-family homes and mixed-use commercial and residential buildings for Elkhart’s downtown, using Champion’s wood and steel technologies. Another design studio used the same technologies to develop a master plan for the historic downtown of Conway, Arkansas. This collaboration further enhances students’ experiences through exposure to a wider range of architectural styles, and the technological, economic and environmental issues specific to different regions of the country.
Read more about this topic: Notre Dame School Of Architecture
Famous quotes containing the words center, building and/or communities:
“Placing the extraordinary at the center of the ordinary, as realism does, is a great comfort to us stay-at-homes.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“Writing a book I have found to be like building a house. A man forms a plan, and collects materials. He thinks he has enough to raise a large and stately edifice; but after he has arranged, compacted and polished, his work turns out to be a very small performance. The authour however like the builder, knows how much labour his work has cost him; and therefore estimates it at a higher rate than other people think it deserves,”
—James Boswell (1740–1795)
“I am convinced, that if all men were to live as simply as I then did, thieving and robbery would be unknown. These take place only in communities where some have got more than is sufficient while others have not enough.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)