STARKVILLE — The inside of Giles Hall was bustling with activity this week as nearly three dozen high school students from throughout the Southeast converged on Mississippi State University for the 2010 Design Discovery architecture workshop.
The workshop showed the 33 students — approximately 10 of whom will attend Mississippi State this fall as freshmen — what a first-year college architecture student experiences.
From drawing and sketching to creating cardboard furniture and models of the Cotton District, the week-long camp is designed to give the group a taste of college life, but also help them decide if architecture is a field they want to pursue, Design Discovery Director Michael Berk said.
“The intent is to give them a simulated experience of what it would be like to study architecture in college and, specifically, what it would be like at Mississippi State so they can make an informed decision and know if this is a discipline and career they want to pursue,” Berk said.
For the Cotton District activity, Design Discovery students took to the streets on foot with notepads and pencils to sketch the area and get a feel for the architecture. The students then built a to-scale model of the Cotton District out of cardboard.
For the next step, students designed their own buildings and constructed them out of cardboard to fill empty lots in the Cotton District model.
Berk said he chose the Cotton District, an area on the edge of campus with restaurants, apartments, bars and other businesses, because it”s an example of “new urbanism” — a design technique that cuts down on suburban sprawl by redeveloping high-density, mixed-use districts and encouraging pedestrian traffic.
“It”s a good model for city development in the 21st century,” Berk said. “It”s more dense, as opposed to suburban sprawl, so we introduced them to that idea.”
On Friday, parents attended final reviews and looked over the work their children completed throughout the week.
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