Instead of attending class, landscape architecture students spent the week in meetings and working with professionals from Colorado on an immersive project.
Professionals from Design Workshop, a multi-national landscape architecture and urban design firm, have partnered up with Landscape Design students to design a section of Indianapolis
The program's success lies at the core of the firm's ideals, Steven Spears, a firm associate and 1999 graduate of Landscape Architecture Department, said.
"[Design Workshop] is very interested in the education process," he said. "This program is a way of giving back to the educational community, of which we are all a part.-áSure it is a way to get our firm's name out to future graduates, but its primary concern is providing students with real-world experience."
Design Week is a collaborative experience Design Workshop has done for six years at various universities.
Ball State University's is connected to the firm through Landscape Architecture chairman Malcolm Cairns and professor Les Smith, both of whom have been instrumental in organizing third-year-level field trips to the firm's Aspen, Colorado, office. Ball State alumni work for the firm and make the connection even stronger.
"Our goal is for the students to have an immersive learning experience with a real firm, dealing with real issues, and connecting with real people," Joseph Blalock, Landscape Architecture assistant professor, said.
The project deals with a site in Indianapolis just north of the IUPUI campus, he said.-áWorking in teams of 8-10 members from five different years of study, students are focusing on a brownfield. A brownfield is property that the expansion, redevelopment or reuse of which may be complicated by the presence of a hazardous pollutant or contaminant. It was chosen, in part, because of Design Workshop's world-renowned success with brownfield redevelopment and the challenges the site also provides students.
"With IUPUI and BioCrossroads to the south, Methodist Hospital to the east and Fall Creek's protected public land to the north, this site is a key in connecting communities," Blalock said.-á"We hope to see what services are lacking in the surrounding neighborhoods and create a mixed-use development.-áThe challenge is to work with the existing water treatment facility on the site, which provides 65 percent of Indianapolis' water."
Gentrification is also a concern, he said. It is the process of renewing deteriorating neighborhoods while middle-class or affluent people move in, displacing the prior, often poorer residents.
While the site for this project is mostly unoccupied, the abutting neighborhood of Riverside is home to many lower-income families.
But with challenge comes opportunity. BioCrossroads has created upward of 7,000 jobs and further development of this site could lead to a loop on the city's developing monorail, Spears said.-áThis, in turn, could benefit Riverside residents.
Each group of students and professionals outline site possibilities with hopes to get both the private sector and the city of Indianapolis on board.
This particular real-world immersion experience concludes today with the ten group presentations in Indianapolis. Members of the community, real estate agents, developers, and representatives from the mayor's office will all be on hand to listen to and review the proposals.-áWith two Indianapolis developers already interested in the site and the options, "The tough sell is to the city of Indianapolis," said Spears.-á But working with the students transcends the content on the presentation boards.-á "If this community comes together with the site, that is way more rewarding than the details of planting design."
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