Center for Public Life

ARC 202
NCSU College of Design
Spring 2020

The work on this page was completed by undergraduate students in their second year of study at the North Carolina State University College of Design. Instruction was in person until March 2020, and virtual thereafter.

1
This sophomore spring semester is intended to develop students’ ability to analyze, understand, and respond to site conditions and context in a variety of environments. Students began the studio with an analysis of Charlottesville, VA.

Their first design project was in a relatively remote setting - a classroom and professor’s residence tucked into the tree-line of Observatory Hill, overlooking the city and the University of Virginia campus.

2
Turning to an urban environment, students were then asked to design a Center for Public Life that contributed to reestablishing the preeminence of public space on the historic Downtown Mall in Charlottesville, VA.

Designed as a truly public pedestrian-only corridor in 1976, accessible and equitable public spaces on the mall have been slowly disappearing as new regulations annex “free” spaces on behalf of cafés and restaurants with “pay to stay” policies. Additionally, cultural stigmas bias the availability of public space for leisurely activities toward the business class, while neighboring low income communities, minority groups, and the homeless population are ushered along and off of the mall by “no loitering” signs and hovering shop owners.

The core of the program of the Center for Public Life belongs to the city and the university for the study and observation of public life. Students also incorporated two accessible and equitable public spaces - one programmed for a specific public use of their choosing, and the other unprogrammed to allow for chance interaction, agenda-less lingering, and too-long conversations.

A selection of student work is featured below.