LSU Office of Community Design and Development Receives NEA Grant to Revitalize Main Street Area in Minden
BATON ROUGE – Select students from LSU’s College of Art & Design will have an opportunity
this year to partner with preservationists in redesigning a historic main street district
in Minden, La., courtesy of a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, or NEA,
recently awarded to LSU’s Office of Community Design and Development, or OCDD.
The NEA Access to Artistic Excellence Design Grant will support a series of interdisciplinary
workshops that will bring 15 second-year students from the schools of Architecture
and Landscape Architecture, as well as from the Department of Interior Design, together
with design professionals, preservationists and community leaders. The workshops will
connect environmentally responsible design practices with historic preservation and
adaptive reuse strategies to accelerate sustainable development in Minden.
“We’re really excited about this grant and the experience it will give our students,”
said Marsha Cuddeback, a professor in the LSU School of Architecture and OCDD director.
“It’s a natural fit for us, given our mission of community outreach, and it’s a win-win
for both students and the communities involved.”
The grant builds on a program that OCDD piloted last year in McComb, Miss. In that
program, students worked with the McComb Main Street Association on a schematic redesign
of several aging buildings in the town’s historic Depot District. Students have continued
to work with community leaders in McComb and are presenting their designs in an exhibit
this week in downtown McComb.
In the new program, teams of design students will participate in one workshop that
brings them together with a “client” to develop adaptive reuse design solutions for
Main Street historic buildings. During the workshop period there will be two educational
sessions for the community and a final exhibit of the work completed by the student
teams. The students and lead faculty will live in the selected LA Main Street Community
for 16 days and work collaboratively with community members to assist them in stewarding
their historic infrastructure and raising awareness of the role cultural heritage
plays in developing strategies to cultivate communities grounded in environmental,
economic and social stewardship.
Louisiana Main Street is a program of the State Office of Historic Preservation in
the Department of Culture, Recreation, and Tourism. Main Street promotes the revitalization
of small town historic commercial districts, in association with the National Trust
for Historic Preservation.
For the community involved, the project is great because it provides access to design
expertise, community design, and heritage preservation support that are generally
not available to residents in Louisiana’s rural Main Street Communities. For students,
it is an opportunity to enrich their education by working collaboratively with community
members, and seeing first-hand the value of cultural heritage and historic preservation
to community sustainability.
The project supports OCDD’s mission by engaging in community outreach that provides
design and technical assistance to communities in Louisiana, and enriches students’
education through civic engagement and service learning.
The grant was awarded to OCDD, Cuddeback, and Frank Bosworth, also a professor in
the School of Architecture, in conjunction with community partners Ray Scriber, director
of Louisiana Main Street, and Patti Odom, Minden Louisiana Main Street director.
For more information on the LSU Office of Community Design and Development, visit
the LSU School of Architecture’s website atwww.design.lsu.edu/Architecture.