The Muncie Urban Design Studio helps Ball State students becomemore involved in the community Irving Distinguished Professor ofArchitecture Tony Costello said on Tuesday.
Costello shared his works and experiences in a presentationsponsored by Ball State's chapter of Phi Kappa Phi, aninterdisciplinary honors organization.
Affectionately called MUDS by the program's participants,Costello said, the Muncie Urban Design Studio, is a component ofthe Community Based Projects program, a public service learningprogram which has its roots all the way back to the founding of theCollege of Architecture and Planning in 1966.
Costello wrote the four main goals for the CBP program back in1969, and he said they have stayed the same to this day.
The goals are expanding student education, increasing publiceducation, offering technical assistance and completing appliedresearch.
"I think that the most important thing about this program isthat we give our students a unique learning experience," Costellosaid. "I like to think we get our students off-campus to give thema real education."
Students present their work to members of the community in orderto learn how to engage in meaningful dialogue, and communitymembers can become participants in the program instead of justobservers.
"We believe that an educated and informed public is the publicthat can aggressively take part in planning their future," Costellosaid.
To technically assist the community, MUDS has been focusing onthe creation of affordable housing for the past 10 years throughthe creation of the Muncie Homeownership and DevelopmentCenter.
"It's helping people to analyze their community in terms ofassets and liabilities, and I think what we bring to the process isthe ability to look at an environment and objectively evaluate it,"Costello said.
Applied research in MUDS focuses on the knowledge collected bystudents and faculty members who then publish their findings forcertain projects.
One major project done by MUDS was the Muncie Charrette in 1982,the first intense planning and design workshop in thecommunity.
The workshop focused on the White River that runs through Muncieand how the community could use this resource to its greatestadvantage. Now, more than 22 years later, some of the ideas broughtup in that workshop are a reality.
MUDS is also responsible for the restoration of much of downtownMuncie's buildings as the city followed MUDS' lead when its membersbegan restoration on their own building at 209 S. Walnut St., nowthe location of Vera Mae's Bistro.
Two other workshops have been held since the first - theMunsyana Charrette in 1988 and the South Side Charrette in2003.
MUDS is focusing on affordable housing currently, and last yearthe count of completely designed and built housing units in Munciewas up to 40.
"I'd like to think that the generation of architects andplanners who are attending Ball State or have attended Ball Stateleave here with an understanding that they can make a difference intheir community," Costello said. "These community-basedinvolvements are life changing in the sense that students seethemselves taking the alternative career path."
Not only architecture students can learn something frompresentation like Costello's senior Tom Murray, a Phi Kappa PhiStudent Executive Board Member said.
"We work so hard in our academic areas to gain as much as we canon that specific subject that to throw ourselves down anothercourse for awhile is enlightening and it makes you a morewell-rounded individual," Murray said.
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