Monday, May 4, 2009

NEA Design Arts Stewardship Award Granted to Project Documenting History of Charlottesville’s Downtown Mall

The National Endowment for the Arts has selected "Designing Community: A Social + Design History of Charlottesville’s Pedestrian Downtown Mall"(Lawrence Halprin & Associates, 1973 Community workshop, 1974 Downtown Master Plan, 1976 Public Space design) for a 2009 Design Arts Stewardship award. This grant, awarded to Preservation Piedmont and the Charlottesville Community Design Center (CCDC), will fund continued documentation, research and oral history interviews leading to publication and public colloquium about the Halprin design Charlottesville Pedestrian Mall. The work will be directed by Elizabeth K. Meyer in collaboration with Daniel Bluestone, Lydia Brandt, Jane Fisher, Director of CCDC, and a group of UVa graduate students.

UVa students and faculty in Architectural History and Landscape Architecture started site documentation of and research on the Charlottesville Pedestrian Mall in the Fall 2008 semester. The preliminary documentation and research done by the students took place within a graduate design studio, LANDSCAPE ADDITIONS, taught by Professor Elizabeth K. Meyer, FASLA.

The students’ findings were compiled into a small publication in January 2009 which was selected for a Virginia Chapter ASLA Student Award for Communications. Student work continued in the Spring 2009 semester in the form of an urban community history research workshop under the direction of Professor Daniel Bluestone, Director of the Historic Preservation program. The student research in his course establishes a social history context for understanding the relationship between the Halprin design for the Mall and mid twentieth century "urban renewal" in Charlottesville.