LOCUS TRAVELS TO BILOXI WITH THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA
For three weeks in May of 2007, Paul and Wynne led 10 University of Minnesota College of Design students on a design/build project in Biloxi, Mississippi. Nearly two years after Katrina covered East Biloxi with 10 feet of salt water, the city is slowly rebuilding John Henry Beck Park with the help of volunteers. What was previously a drug infested hang-out is now a haven for families.
View from North
The media has long since moved on to other more immediate stories, yet Gulf Coast communities continue to struggle to rebuild well after the Katrina disaster. Demolished bridges, overturned houses and empty schoolyards, etched forever in our collective memory, still exist today. It’s the need for hope and the belief that better days are ahead in the lives of people that is most critical. In East Biloxi, with jobs scarce, opportunity lagging, and insurance claims slow in coming, crime and domestic abuse have risen 30% in the aftermath of the storm. The latest economic downturn is no doubt slowing the rebuilding again.
In the spring of 2007, the Mississippi Gulf Coast Community Design Studio worked with U of M students, already spending a semester in Biloxi, to develop sketches that would serve as the basis for a three-week design + build project in May. Hitting the ground in mid May, we had 19 days to complete the drawings, get the design through the Biloxi building department, build extensive concrete forms, pour 20 yards of concrete, and frame and finish the pavilion. This involved working with the design center, students, Kevin Groenke (U of M Design School, head of the fabrication shop), city leaders, local volunteers, relief agencies, a couple of volunteer steel fabricators, and school children.
The final design sought to provide shade, the most coveted physical commodity in coastal Mississippi. Although the functional aspects of the pavilion are beneficial, our greater success came from the hope and relationships built during the process. The students invited kids from the Boys and Girls Club to participate in the construction effort, placing their handprints in concrete pavers. The excitement of working with wet concrete was surpassed only by their delight, when they returned two weeks later, to find their prints in the finished pavilion. After three weeks of designing until 3am, pouring load after load of concrete, and building wood trusses by moonlight, our greatest satisfaction arose when we stepped out of the shade for the last time to make room for a mom and her kids.
