UACDC Designer Wins Unbuilt Design Award

UACDC Project Director Matthew Griffith

Fayetteville, Ark. - Matthew Griffith, a designer in the School of Architecture at the University of Arkansas, has won a prestigious award for a design that brings classrooms, transportation options, a library and market to North Camden, N. J., one of the most impoverished and crime-plagued neighborhoods in the United States.

High-priced condominiums or retail/office space most likely will go up on the site, but Griffith, a project director at the University of Arkansas Community Design Center (UACDC), will bring home one of architecture's most highly regarded prizes, the Boston Society of Architects' Unbuilt Design Award.

These section drawings demonstrate Griffith's multi-level design strategy.

Griffith's Camden Community Center was one of six projects chosen from 125 submissions from across the country, and follows a 2003 award to an architecture studio led by UACDC Director Stephen Luoni that developed designs for a "Big Box" retail center.

Under Luoni's leadership the UACDC, an outreach program of the UA School of Architecture, has racked up an impressive array of awards for community design projects that serve as national and international models.

Griffith's design addressed a particularly challenging site. Graffiti scrawls, shipping containers and a bunker-like school blight the streets of North Camden, which is severed from redeveloping South Camden by the six-lane Ben Franklin Bridge that stretches across the Delaware River from Philadelphia.

The Unbuilt Architecture jury praised Griffith for developing a design "for this gritty urban site [that] attempts to fill programmatic gaps at the city scale and create new social and spatial links across the dividing landfall of the Ben Franklin Bridge. ... This award recognizes the resilient optimism in the designer's spatial parti [design concept] that tackles a tough neighborhood and a pivotal, if unforgiving, site."

The key to the design's success is the way it ties into surrounding infrastructure. The project reopens an existing pedestrian tunnel that passes underneath the Franklin Bridge and emerges on the Rutgers satellite campus immediately south of the site, adds a second pedestrian tunnel with a subway stop to be shared by town and gown, and ties into existing bus routes.

"There are no jobs in North Camden. You have to work elsewhere, so transportation that reconnects North Camden to the southern portion of the city and Philadelphia is critical," Griffith said. "My project stitches impoverished North Camden to the southern portion of the city where redevelopment is occurring and to the greater Philadelphia region through the transportation network."

Griffith's design is composed of two simple volumes resting atop a constructed landscape. The primary landscape piece is a twisting single-story base building that emerges from the ground, rises along the existing pedestrian tunnel, turns along the street front, and turns back into the site to define a courtyard park. This bar houses subterranean shops, an auditorium, a community room, and the public library. The grass roof of this component slopes down to the ground to form seating for an outdoor theater. Two oblong boxes positioned above the bent bar house classrooms, art studios and a gallery. The garden courtyard opens to a farmers' market to the west, a bus stop to the east and a second pedestrian tunnel designed to access a new subway stop underneath the bridge.

The project model viewed from the southeast shows the proposed center's proximity to the six-lane bridge that divides Camden.

Griffith took on the community center design as a thesis project for the Master of Architecture degree he earned at the North Carolina State University College of Design. When asked why he chose Camden, Griffith replied: "I was interested in the way the bridge disrupted the city in Camden. The more constraints a site offers, the more interested I am in it as a designer. I also wanted to impact the social health of the city."

Griffith's new job as a project director at the UACDC affords him opportunities to improve communities throughout Arkansas. Among other projects, he is currently researching the feasibility of a light-rail system that would link Northwest Arkansas from Fayetteville in the south to Wal-Mart headquarters in the north.

"We are in the unique position of taking a proactive approach, working to secure funding for light rail before transportation has reached a crisis point," Griffith said.

Prior to joining the UACDC in June 2004, Griffith was a two-year visiting professor at the UA School of Architecture, where he taught design studio, building materials and technology, and a seminar course on site within the contemporary landscape. He has worked with Marlon Blackwell, an architect and UA professor, and with Roger Clark, FAIA at Cannon Architects in Raleigh, N.C. In addition to the Master of Architecture degree from North Carolina State University, Griffith earned a Bachelor of Science degree in mathematics from Davidson College.

"Matt Griffith's expertise in design and urban planning, as demonstrated by the Unbuilt Design Award, is a tremendous asset to the Community Design Center," said UACDC Director Steve Luoni. "His integration of architecture and landscape architecture approaches will contribute to our mission to advance creative development in Arkansas."

Founded in 1995, UACDC has provided design and planning services to over 30 communities across Arkansas. UACDC planning has helped Arkansas communities secure nearly $9 million in grant funding to enact suggested improvements. In addition to revitalizing historic downtowns, UACDC addresses new challenges in affordable housing, urban sprawl, environmental planning, and management of regional growth or decline. UACDC also offers hands-on civic design experience to students who work under the direction of design professionals.