An entry monument to High Desert in Albuquerque, N.M., one of several stylized images of blue grama grass, a drought-resistant plant native to the area. Courtesy Design Workshop, Inc.

Kurt Culbertson, who is the School of Architecture's 2008 John G. Williams Distinguished Professor, will launch this year's lecture series at 5:30 p.m. Monday, Sept. 8 with a talk titled "Beyond Green: Toward Social Justice and Equity Through Design." The lecture will take place in Shollmier Hall.

Culbertson is principal, shareholder and chairman of the board for Design Workshop Inc., a landscape architecture, land-planning and urban-design firm with offices in Aspen, Colo., and Asheville, N.C. The firm, which the ASLA named Landscape Architecture Firm of the Year for 2008, is renowned for using sustainable development and design strategies to reconcile economic needs with the preservation of scenic, cultural and community values. Culbertson took a lead role on two key projects for Design Workshop: the master planning process for Flathead County, Montana, a 3.8-million-acre community experiencing rapid growth, and the design of High Desert, a residential development in Albuquerque, N.M. that uses open space planning to preserve natural drainage systems and views. These and other projects are discussed in depth in the 2007 monograph on Design Workshop, Toward Legacy.

A native of Shreveport, La., Kurt Culbertson received his undergraduate degree in landscape architecture from Louisiana State University and a master’s degree in business administration in real estate from Southern Methodist University. He has won more than 20 regional and national awards for design work that ranges from secluded sanctuaries to national parks. In addition to design work, he has conducted extensive research on the contributions of German-American landscape designers to the profession of landscape architecture and authored an award-winning biography, The Life and Times of George Edward Kessler.

Heifer International World Headquarters, Little Rock, Ark. (left, photo by Timothy Hursley) and Urban Outfitters Corporate Campus, Philadelphia, Pa. (right, photo by Lara Swimmer)

Two corporate headquarters projects share top honors this year. The jury noted that while both projects are large in scope, both “demonstrate a sensitivity to the human scale of architecture, creating spaces in which . . . people would enjoy working.” Each project takes a different approach to achieve sustainable design.

Designed by Reese Rowland (B. Arch. ’90), a principal with Polk Stanley Rowland Curzon Porter Architects Ltd. of Little Rock, Heifer International World Headquarters began with the largest brownfield cleanup in Arkansas’ history and ultimately won platinum LEED certification. The jury described Heifer’s headquarters as “a beautiful resolution in form and tectonics, motivated by environmental concerns, but not prisoner to them.” They praised the project as a worthy companion to the adjacent Clinton Library and noted that “the integration of the building with the landscaped design is very well done.” Other School of Architecture alumni on the design team were Joe Stanley (B. Arch. ’69) project management; David Porter (B. Arch. ’82), construction management, and Dustin Davis (B. Arch. ’00), sustainable documentation.

Adaptive re-use and urban revitalization are elegantly realized in the Urban Outfitters Corporate Campus, housed in five restored buildings in the Philadelphia Navy Yard. Jurors praised the project, designed by Jeffrey Scherer (B.Arch. ’71), a principal with Minneapolis firm Meyer Scherer & Rockcastle Ltd., for unifying “disparate structures with a new contemporary environment that emerges through a series of precise well orchestrated interventions – the new resonates with the old.”

For more information on both projects and submission guidelines for the 2009 contest, visit the Alumni Design Awards  page on the school's Web site.

UACDC's award-winning planning for Monticello, Ark. addresses the five urban patterns commonly found in American cities.

The University of Arkansas Community Design Center shows cities how to plan for the future in a project for Monticello, Ark. that has won a 2008 Unbuilt Architecture Design Award sponsored by the Boston Society of Architects. Instead of dictating the usual laundry list of zoning codes, Monticello: Place-Based Planning in the Five Urbanisms of Every American Town addresses all parts of the typical American city with a single rule and some guiding principles.

The rule is simple: property owners can build whatever they want, wherever they want, so long as they provide street frontage – the porches, terraces and arcades that make great public streets.

“You can build a gas station by a church – we don’t care – but both have to address the street to create public space,” said Stephen Luoni, director of the Community Design Center. As for the lowly mobile home, which accounts for 25 percent of all housing starts in the Arkansas Delta: “We say bring them on,” Luoni said. “But they have to take care of the street, with a porch for example. This system handles even the most meager architecture, because it relies on public infrastructure, not the architecture itself.”

The plan also stands out for addressing the five urban fabrics that characterize American cities built in the last 150 years, from the historic downtown grid to post-war suburbs to rural enclaves. Each form presents opportunities that cities can capitalize on as well as liabilities to be considered. For example, rural subdivisions, often villainized as sprawl, may contribute to the development of scenic parkways if a 30-foot buffer of trees, meadow or floodplain is preserved or planted along the highway. The Monticello plan also recommends cluster development in rural areas to conserve natural areas and viewsheds. The downside of this type of development is the high cost of installing remote roads, sewer lines and other infrastructure. View scenario for rural arterial development.

“We try to fair cost each one of the pattern types,” Luoni said.

Regardless of fabric type, the plan applies the following principles:

•    Mix land uses
•    Achieve more compact development to promote walkable neighborhoods
•    Integrate environmental and urban systems
•    Enhance connections between city sectors

Most important, and most radical: the design center’s plan scraps the zoning map that underpins most city planning efforts in favor of a master street plan.
“It’s about how you design the streets and the architectural frontage of the street,” Luoni said, noting the tight streets and continuous arcades in New Orleans as one example where great streets make a great city.

The sleek lines of the Bakhita Ridge House (detail) dialog with a weathered barn. Photo by Timothy Hursley.

The Bakhita Ridge House, which commands views of a weathered barn and 22 acres on the outskirts of Fayetteville, is featured in the August issue of AY magazine. Tim de Noble and Tim Maddox (B.Arch. '02) of DeNoble Architecture designed the home for Ken Gray and Joanne Baltz-Gray.

Steve Luoni contributed an article, "Little Rock's Emerging Nonprofit Corridor," to the current issue of Places: Forum of Design for the Public Realm (vol. 20, no. 1 2008).

Re:View, the School of Architecture's alumni magazine, is at the printer and should mail in late September. In this issue:

• A tour of Reese Rowland's "green" projects
• Career prep on campus
• Garvan Gardens' new master plan
• Latest design/build projects
• Professor-designed homes

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