LSU and Southern University architecture students headed to Letterman’s Blue Print and Supply in Mid City Friday night for White Light Night to present their ideas for giving the community a new marketplace and café.
The Society of St. Vincent de Paul, an organization that provides services for the homeless in Baton Rouge, hopes to eventually establish a market and café as a workforce development opportunity for homeless persons, as well as a healthier food option for Mid City residents. Architecture students had the task of designing a building to meet those needs.
Those who participated in the event are fourth and fifth-year architecture students enrolled in Architectural Design VI, a six-hour service-learning studio course led by LSU School of Architecture Professional in Residence William Doran and Associate Professor Jason Lockhart.
Each year, the studio works with the Mid City Redevelopment Alliance to develop projects and find clients like the Society of St. Vincent de Paul. This year, the students also formed a partnership with the East Baton Rouge Redevelopment Authority.
To figure out how to create the most engaging and inclusive building for the relatively low-income neighborhood, students had to go to Mid City and talk to residents.
LSU fourth-year architecture major Terin Barrios said engaging the community was the most exciting part of this project.
“My favorite part about this project is the fact that the students are kind of out in the street meeting people and asking questions,” Doran said. “There are some real world implications of what they’re doing because most of the architecture projects are all theoretical and on paper, and there’s never usually a real client.”
The partnership with Mid City stems from the need to improve the neighborhood that is home to several areas declared as food deserts, which the U.S. Department of Agriculture defines as any area with at least 20 percent of its residents making below 80 percent of the area median income and at least 33 percent residing one mile or more from a store that sells fresh fruit and vegetables.
Projects like this one tend to be tricky because the designer usually comes in as a third party, Doran said.
“The biggest challenge of this project was really understanding what the issues are in the neighborhood because you don’t live there,” Doran said. “Coming in as an outsider, that’s a hard thing to understand and grapple with, so it’s really critical we spend a lot of time in the neighborhood. The local churches have been really instrumental in helping us.”
Southern University fourth year Bryan Raymond said his group made sure to incorporate in their design the things the community members said they needed.
“They wanted something that wouldn’t seem so out of place to where they would feel out of place,” Raymond said. “They wanted to feel welcome, so that’s what we tried to incorporate into our design: more welcoming things, less fenced-in areas.”
While the designs the students submit won’t necessarily become a real-life creation, Doran said he hopes they will help prove the ability of the architecture school to serve the community.
“St. Vincent de Paul stays so busy just meeting the very basic needs of the homeless, they don’t have a lot of time to focus on future development,” Doran said. “So that’s where we want to help them push forward; we feel like we can serve a significant purpose.”
For this project, the students were divided into 11 teams of three or four, and according to LSU fourth year Carolina Rodriguez, the teams grew close over the course of the project.
“We are all really good friends on the team, so we have a lot of fun. Our work dynamics are pretty good, and we are all very focused, but also really chill, so it just works,” Rodriguez said.
To give the community a way to express their desires for this potential new marketplace and café, the architecture students hosted a community engagement event called Mid City Speaks.
LSU fourth year student Teresa Williams said her group had giant chalkboards out in the neighborhood where anyone could write what improvements they would like to see in their community.
Students asked questions like, “Where do you currently buy groceries?” and “What is your primary means of transportation?” Many residents asked for things like more lighting and a safe place for children and families to play outside.
“The one thing we noticed was not only did people come and answer the questions we had for them, but little kids would come and draw crazy pictures all over the boards. So we wanted to use that and incorporate it into our concept,” Williams said.
Barrios, who was on the same team as Williams, said their project incorporates several outlets that allow the community members to express themselves because the group saw that as a community need.
“In between our buildings was an open green space,” Williams said. “So we pretty much recreated that idea that we had before and made giant chalk boards and what we’re calling expression space. We actually kind of transformed the whole neighborhood to a place people can come and express themselves through art or music or anything,” Williams said.
The hope is that this event will raise awareness about this community and make somebody want to come in and do something about it, Barrios said.
Architecture seniors Eva Rodriguez, Jeanette Fein, and Christine Nguyen stand in front of their project proposal during White Light Night at Letterman’s Blue Print and Supply on 4627 Government Street.
