Steve Luoni, Community Design Center Director, to Present Lecture Feb. 7 in Little Rock

Renderings courtesy the U of A Community Design Center

These computer renderings show designs from the recovery plans for Vilonia and Mayflower, two Arkansas towns that experienced damage and fatalities from an April 2014 tornado.

LITTLE ROCK – Steve Luoni will present a lecture at 6 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 7, at the Arkansas Arts Center, at Ninth and Commerce streets in Little Rock. The lecture, titled "Resilient Communities: Disaster Recovery as a Model Urbanism," will follow a 5:30 p.m. reception.

Luoni is the director of the University of Arkansas Community Design Center, which is an outreach program of the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design at the university. He is also a Distinguished Professor and the Steven L. Anderson Chair in Architecture and Urban Studies in the school.

The presentation will focus on recovery plans for Vilonia and Mayflower, two Arkansas towns that experienced damage and fatalities from an April 2014 tornado. The plans for both towns respond to residents' requests for walkable town centers with mixed land uses, despite no tradition of urbanism in their communities. The plans focus on urban design features with discussion on small town urbanism as a model for middle-American communities going forward.

The town center plan for Mayflower — called Slow Street — was the 2015 winner of the World Architecture News' Future Project Urban Design Award. It was among a shortlist of projects from Istanbul, London, Paris and Washington, D.C.

The 2016-17 June Freeman Lecture Series is sponsored by the Architecture and Design Network with support from the Arkansas Arts Center, the Fay Jones School, the Central Arkansas section of the Arkansas Chapter of the American Institute of Architects and community members.

The lecture is free and open to the public, and no reservations are needed. For more information about this and other ADN programs, contact jonathan@amr-architects.com.