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Drexel, Penn State, Morgan State meet with Urban Studio and Harrisburg City, officials at HACC to plan upcoming projects (left to right)
Lisa Iulo, Penn State architecture professor; Bruce
Quigley, HACC architecture professor; and Fred
Sembach, Pa. Sen. Jeffrey Piccola's chief of staff
listen to a presentation by Pennsylvania Human
Relations Commission Chairperson Stephen Glassman,
AIA. Glassman was the featured speaker at the June
27 architecture summit. "I think there is a tremendous opportunity to take (the Urban Studio) to a much higher level," Dr. Edna Baehre, HACC's president, said during her welcoming remarks. "This is a wonderful opportunity for everybody to help improve the City and provide a quality educational experience for our students." "Drexel and Morgan State are both very highly regarded universities and will be influential in the progression of the Urban Studio in Harrisburg," Task Force Coordinator Robert Philbin said. "HACC and Penn State had excellent experiences this past year, and the addition of these institutions will expand the reach and scope of studio projects in the city." Director of Harrisburg's Department of Building and Housing Development Terri Martini said her office offers a variety of projects for the fall and spring, some of which the city will help fund so that the Urban Studio can design and build them. "We have a number of planning, design and construction projects that the students can address," Martini said. "We just have to coordinate the scheduling of classes into the construction management schedule before the end of July in order to start the projects in the fall semester." Stephen A. Glassman, AIA, chairperson of the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission (PHRC), was the event's featured speaker. "Architects have a responsibility to understand diverse community needs and to know how they can be effectively integrated into sensitive design solutions," Glassman said. Theotis Braddy, executive director of the Center for Independent Living of Central Pennsylvania (CILCP), announced at the meeting that CILCP would underwrite an Urban Studio course project on accessibility design for the upcoming semester. Task Force Coordinator Robert
Philbin and Terri Martini, director of Harrisburg's
Department of Building and Housing Development,
participated in a planning meeting for the
Harrisburg Urban Studio. The purpose of the June 27
meeting was to develop a curriculum for the fall
2005 and spring 2006 semesters. "This process will take some time to fully develop, but we are moving in incremental steps toward accomplishing larger projects," Philbin said. "For example, HACC students created a development strategy for an abandoned Laundromat, a particularly difficult and costly project. The plan was development by HACC design students in the studio, and it can now be renovated in smaller projects by HACC construction trades students." The plan for the coming year is to expand this model and prioritize similar "real life" city projects and schedule design classes to address each project. The architecture and engineering advisory committees will work with the architecture students to develop their designs. Subsequent classes would then actually build the works. "This is a unique challenge and opportunity," Kazim Dharsi, RA, program coordinator of the architecture program at HACC, said. "It requires coordination and cooperation, and we have established an Urban Studio Curriculum Coordinating Committee to work through the process." Dharsi and Dr. Paul Hirshorn, director of Drexel University School of Architecture, are co-chairs of the coordinating committee. The all-day HACC planning session also included an architectural and planning tour of the City of Harrisburg and a visit with Mayor Reed's office. The Harrisburg Urban Studio is modeled after Auburn University's famous Rural Studio, a program that provides architectural students with a practical learning experience while enhancing the environment of disadvantaged communities. The Urban Studio is a project of Mayor Stephen R. Reed's Harrisburg Urban Initiative. For more information visit www.nichenews.com/urbanstudio or contact Nathan Pigott, Hershey Philbin Associates, npigott@hersheyphilbin.com or 717.975.2148. (Click Here for More Photos from the Summit)
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