Urban Studio Partners with DesignAlabama for 2024 Design Vision Charrette

DesignAlabama director Gina Clifford ’00 ‘02 organizes the Design Vision Charrette as a community visioning workshop. Students, professionals and stakeholders come together over two days of meetings, stories, stakeholder conversations and design sprints. Often, the charrette experience is new for both students and stakeholders. DesignAlabama works with Birmingham-based architect Marshall Anderson ’97 to introduce the process and facilitate the charrette.

In addition to Anderson, Urban Studio faculty Alex Krumdieck ’86 and Ben Wieseman ’12 are there to help the students work through their processes. During the charrette, students have the opportunity to better understand how a project grows from an idea to a concept and, eventually, to a strategic plan for a community to better understand their assets and how to work cohesively towards a solution—something students will need to understand as they move forward in their careers.

The Design Vision Process

Taking both students and stakeholders through the charrette process is integral to the success of the project. After some time socializing (and caffeinating), Anderson assembles everyone to begin the discussion on how the next two days will play out, what the goals are and what the outcomes will be. The process essentially boils down to three steps over the next two days:

1. Conversations between stakeholders and students
2. Discussion and design drafts with students and facilitators
3. Students presenting drafts of their ideas to stakeholders for input

The essential ideas for Harpersville and The Wallace Center for Arts & Reconciliation centered around the town’s intent to bring tourism to the area, the site owner’s intent to optimize the use of the site and what those concepts mean to the stakeholders.

One of the challenges of the Wallace House site is the legacy of slavery and portraying the experiences of and the relationships between the enslavers and the enslaved. As part of the assembled stakeholders group, students interacted with descendants from all sides of plantation life. The original family still owns the property and has worked towards creating a place where the families’ legacies can be honored through interpretation and arts. The site is run by descendant Nell Gottlieb and artist Jennifer McCohnell.

Stakeholders, Conversations and Emotions

When designing for a site like Wallace House, it is important to take time to not only listen to stakeholders but to honor the emotions that come out through experiencing a place like a plantation. For most of the morning, students were able to sit with stakeholders who told stories and discussed their hopes and fears for the site.

The mission of the Wallace Center for Arts and Reconciliation is to “promote reconciliation, healing and repair through arts, education and cultural programming,” which is where the students’ challenges with the site and its interpretation start. How do you balance honoring the stories of both the enslaved and enslaver while attempting to express that in a way that will bring in tourism while fostering “reflection, hard conversations and truth-telling” to reckon the past and present.

The emotional undercurrent of the charrette was important to notice. Through the lens of emotion, honoring that experience while understanding how to reflect the authenticity of the site and its stories was top of mind for everyone involved.

Mayor Theoangelo Perkins is a descendant of farmers who arrived on the site after emancipation. In addition to wanting to honor the history of the site, as mayor he has a commitment to support the town as well. His vision includes tying the Wallace site to a broader historic trail system through Harpersville.

After lunch, the stakeholders departed, and students got to work. They were able to immerse themselves in the site by walking the grounds and examining outparcels related to the property—including the family cemetery and a church site recently gifted to the organization.

The Student Experience

“Getting to work with actual clients during the design process was very helpful when making design decisions. It gave us the opportunity to learn how to design to meet the client’s needs in real-time, which was unlike any class project we have done before,” shared third-year Erin Cantrell. “We were able to experience how suddenly a project can change, forcing us to come up with ideas and test them quickly to convey the idea to the client.”

The Design Vision experience is designed to put students in a real-world situation and work through the charrette process in real-time. In addition to engaging stakeholders in the design process, the program immerses students in professional experiences they don’t always get in a classroom. From networking and community building to understanding the importance of listening and feeling heard, the Design Vision process provides a wealth of information in a short period of time.

Although given a general overview of the project, the students had not yet been introduced to the site or any of its history.

“Not knowing anything beforehand forced me to learn everything about the site in person. After talking to the people there, walking the site and learning about the history of the Wallace House, I learned things about the site’s historic sensitivity and the passion of the Wallace House descendants that I would have never discovered in my own research. This ultimately taught me that being onsite firsthand and communicating with a client are invaluable tools in establishing a sense of place and creating sensitive architecture,” third-year student Joshua Muscolino explained.

The impact of being onsite and directly interacting with stakeholders provided a valuable context for third-year Nikki Zakrzewski: “Their narratives and viewpoints provided valuable insight into the potential impact of architecture on communities and its ability to communicate weighty historical messages that can ultimately lead to healing. Our team focused on developing a program that introduced the Wallace House and its adjacent historical sites. We aimed to integrate art, agriculture, and culinary spaces to bring the community of Harpersville together and invite guests to visit and learn about what happened here and its impact on the United States and our lives today.”

Lasting Impact

The combination of the Design Vision charrette, the Urban Studio experience and working within the Harpersville community creates something the students can later carry into their careers. The work in Harpersville will, of course, be an early part of the students’ portfolios, but it goes beyond the nice plans and pretty drawings.

“As a class we presented our work and the people that came to listen seemed to really appreciate and like the work that we did. There were some suggestions and questions, but overall, I believe that they really liked the work that we did. Both the city historian and mayor attended our presentation and had nothing but good to say about what we had done. Being able to give back to a community that had so much taken away felt great, and I look forward to coming back to this project later on in the semester,” stated third-year Davis Baker.