Metro Roundup: Urban Studio celebrates 30 years of revitalization work
When Auburn University’s Center for Architecture and Urban Studies first set up shop in downtown Birmingham in 1991, there wasn’t much going for the neighborhoods at the heart of the city.
Most of the prominent retailers were long gone from the city center, ensconced in malls and strip centers in the suburbs. And the idea of folks living downtown — in restored buildings, or possibly new ones — was just a quaint notion shared by a cadre of architects and planners.
Thirty years later, there’s a whole new look and feel to downtown. And many say Auburn’s learning hub for architectural students interested in urban building and design — now known simply as the Urban Studio — and the teachers and architects who’ve staffed the studio, can claim some credit for the renewed vibrancy.
Take founding director Frank Setzer, who died in 2001. He was part of a group of architects and designers who were among the first to bounce around the idea of creating a new park at the center of the city, along the railroad tracks, in what was then an area of bleak industrial warehouses and empty lots. Students from Urban Studio also lent their ideas to what the area could be, helping maintain momentum and keeping the conversation going as the community coalesced around the park idea.
Today, Railroad Park draws tens of thousands of people from across the region and has been a catalyst for hundreds of millions of dollars in additional development, including the popular Regions Field minor league baseball stadium. Even the name of the neighborhood has evolved, to Parkside.
In 1991, an area around an old Dr. Pepper bottling plant, just east of downtown, was just beginning to draw interest, thanks to the vision and determination of local developer Cathy Sloss Jones. The students at Urban Studio were among those she consulted for fresh ideas about how the area around the site, and the surrounding, semi-industrial neighborhood of Lakeview, could evolve.
Today, Pepper Place and Lakeview are bustling with restaurants and nightspots, professional office spaces, new residential apartments and the most popular weekend farmer’s market in the metro area.
Jones remembers those early days well, and the instrumental role Urban Studio students played in helping shape the direction of Pepper Place and the Lakeview master plan.
“We talked about Pepper Place as a district. We talked about saving historic buildings. A lot came out of that plan; it became the roadmap,” Jones said. She noted that more than 250 people took part in discussions about Lakeview and how it should be developed.
In 2011, a devastating tornado tore through the Pratt City area of the city, stripping bare portions of the tight-knit community. Urban Studio students were among those engaged in the process of how the area could be revitalized. Still a work in progress, the Pratt City area now sports a new park, a walking trail and community center, fueled in part with federal grants.
More recently, the fifth-year architecture students who choose to spend a year in Birmingham (plus third-year students invited for a semester) have put their unjaundiced eyes to other Birmingham neighborhoods that are eager for design ideas that can spark greater vitality and draw new residents, businesses and investors. They include an already revitalizing Smithfield, a historic neighborhood just west of downtown; Ensley, where the city is making significant investments with partners; and McClendon Park, where a nearly century-old Legion Field stands.
Remarkably, the students are almost universally embraced when they approach a community about lending their ideas and support, said architect Alex Krumdieck, Urban Studio director.
“They don’t insert themselves. Instead, they go out and into the community,” Krumdieck said. “They meet community members and embody the community, but work to elevate the community as well.”
Jones, president and CEO of Sloss Real Estate, an urban redevelopment firm founded in Birmingham by her grandfather in 1920, said Urban Studio students are particularly attuned to the need to “knit” proposed projects into the communities around them. She has accepted Urban Studio students as interns and hired its graduates, as have many of the prominent architectural and real estate development firms in the city.
In 2008, Urban Studio launched its 16-week internship program, placing students in local professional offices. Krumdieck said many students who come to Urban Studio don’t initially intend to stay in Birmingham for their professional careers. But after they learn about Birmingham and the professional opportunities in the city, many decide to stay after graduation.
Cheryl Morgan, the retired former director at Auburn Studio, said Birmingham and the state also benefit from the many Urban Studio graduates who move on to prestigious architectural firms around the country and then decide to return.
“We have had kids go to San Francisco, and Chicago and New York, and they come back,” Morgan said. “In some cases, they learn that they can have even better opportunities here, after five or 10 years in these powerhouse firms. They bring this added level of experience and knowledge to reinvest in the community here.”
Earlier this spring, Krumdieck and more than 100 Urban Studio supporters, alumni, former and present instructors and city officials gathered to celebrate the studio’s 30th anniversary — an event postponed for a year because of the COVID-19 pandemic. At the event, officials announced that the studio — which has leased space in several locations around town over the decades — will be creating a permanent home following the university’s purchase of the historic Hood McPherson building next to the Harbert Center conference venue in the city’s northside business district. The building, constructed in 1914 and mostly vacant for years, will undergo a dramatic restoration and renovation before the studio moves in next year.
Officials also unveiled at the event a new endowed fund for the studio, named in honor of Setzer. The Franklin Setzer Fund for Excellence is designed to provide a reliable stream of annual income so the studio can expand and enhance its operations and its reach across the Birmingham community.
While Birmingham has been the focus of many Urban Studio projects, over the years the students have reached out, beyond the city’s boundaries, to help small communities across Alabama devise designs and plans for their town centers. Morgan said around 75 community master plans — from Wedowee to Camden to Cordova and many places in between — have been created by students since the studio’s creation, in coordination with nonprofit organizations including Design Alabama, Your Town Alabama and Main Street Alabama.
Morgan said the outreach to communities has always been grounded in an “asset-based” approach. “You start with what’s good about a place, and build on that,” she said.
She and Krumdieck agree that the students bring an eagerness and openness that can spark great ideas and help build consensus in how a community can chart a course for a better future through thoughtful planning and design.
Krumdieck said he hopes the studio’s new facility will become a place to foster even more conversations about how to build better, more vibrant neighborhoods and communities through thoughtful discussion and innovative design.
Indeed, as the studio prepares for a new class this fall, Krumdieck has already identified a high-profile Birmingham project for the students to start mulling over: what to do about the historic Rainbow Viaduct, which the city closed down because of safety concerns. The viaduct, on 21st Street, which links busy sections on the city’s northside and southside, has already sparked animated conversations about whether it should be replaced with a new span for cars, become a pedestrian-only attraction or be removed completely.
“Over the past 30 years, the ideas generated and the work done in Urban Studio have made Birmingham — and countless communities, neighborhoods and small towns across Alabama — better places to live,” Karen Rogers, acting dean of Auburn’s College of Architecture, Design and Construction, said during the recent 30th anniversary event.
“… We celebrate that proud history and look forward to the future and to the rich possibilities and opportunities that that future holds for Urban Studio’s next 30 years,” Rogers said.
To learn more about Urban Studio, go to cadc.auburn.edu/architecture.
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