IUPUI Students Helping New Orleans Neighborhood
There is a special incentive for students in Preston Ray's design technology class at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI). They know their work will help a New Orleans neighborhood get back on its feet.
Working in teams, the students are preparing technical drawings that the Broadmoor Development Corporation can use to build six single family homes in the Broadmoor neighborhood of New Orleans. The homes will be sold or rented, adding to the stock of available living spaces for low and middle-income residents who call that neighborhood home.
Flooded badly in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Broadmoor's first challenge was to survive. It was so badly damaged that some New Orleans officials thought the only thing to do was to turn the neighborhood into parkland, an idea its residents flatly rejected.
In years past, students in Interior Design, Architectural Technology, and Construction Engineering Management Technology at IUPUI would have being working on fictitious projects for imaginary clients.
Swapping pretend projects for real clients occurred when the Global Design Studio was established. It has provided a national and international reach to the work IUPUI students do.
"The Global Design Studio forms a unique approach to teaching with the design field," said Jan Cowan, director and assistant professor of the Architectural Technology Program in the Design and Communication Technology Department in the Purdue School of Engineering and Technology at IUPUI.
"The Global Design Studio enables the classroom to operate as an actual design firm and empowers students to act as project managers within this context," Cowan said. "Students work with real clients and, often, on international projects, and typically team with students in remote institutions working on the same project."
Conceived in a kitchen in Newfoundland, Canada as Cowan and another college instructor (Mr. Cluny Way) talked about how they could continue sharing architectural projects with each other's students when Cowan moved to Indiana to teach at IUPUI, the Global Design Studio has grown to include scores of students at several universities and colleges: IUPUI, The College of the North Atlantic in Canada, IVY Tech State College, and the University of Gadjah Mada in Java, Indonesia to name a few.
Each university decides what it will contribute to a particular project. Generally, conceptual designs and architectural drawings and blueprints are provided by IUPUI students.
Within only four years of operation, the Global Design Studio has been involved in 15 different projects in four different countries and three different states. Many of the projects have focused on assisting victims of natural disasters who had nowhere to turn for the kind of free help the Global Design Studio provides.
Projects include community centers, schools, a YMCA and numerous private homes around the world.
In addition to students studying Architectural Technology and Architecture , GDS also has pulled in students studying Urban Design and Civil Engineering Technology, for example, into team projects.
"Not only does the Global Design Studio cut across disciplines, but it migrates across borders, cultures and climates, items that are vital to the design of the built environment and the teaching of future designers," Cowan said.
Because architectural design involves life safety concerns, working with real clients carries real responsibility. That's instilled in IUPUI students studying Interior Design, Architectural Technology, and Construction Engineering Management Technology in from virtually the moment they walk into class.
As a semester begins, students are presented with their own business cards, underscoring the need for professional work and behavior. To reinforce this, instructors call upon former students and alumni, as well as professionals in the field to speak about their experiences in GDS courses and the professional world. The results of the students' work are presented to working professionals as well as their clients.
For students in Ray's class, their work is based on designs and rough sketches of the homes that were provided by a New Orleans architectural firm on behalf of the Broadmoor Development Corporation.
"The architectural firm designs the home; we create the technical drawings to build it," Ray said. "Because the firm only has to do a fraction of the drawings that would have to be done if our students didn't draw them, it keeps costs substantially lower than otherwise would be the case."
Among the work the students will do is provide alternative choices of construction: one based on affordability, one based on "GREEN" construction," and the third based on long-lasting construction.
To date, the work done by the students has moved projects forward, whether the drawings were used to construct buildings or not.
"Their drawings get the ball rolling," Ray said. He cited one case in which a New Orleans homeowner wanted to restore a single family home that had been devastated by the hurricane and turn it into a duplex that would be rented to college students. The owner's plans changed and she sold the house quickly by showing buyers how it could be transformed into a duplex.
"The Global Design Studio has numerous service or outreach outcomes that serve to deepen human endeavor and the understanding of individual and social issues," Cowan said. "It helps, in this manner, to develop student responsibility to self and others. GDS exemplifies participation in the intellectual life of these communities expanding student education beyond traditional classroom borders."
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