Florida Professor To Lead University Design Center

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark.- Stephen D. Luoni wants to to create more liveable communities by taking on the strip malls, subdivisions, and big box retail stores that shape the contemporary landscape. Recently appointed the new director of the University of Arkansas Community Design Center (UACDC), Luoni looks forward to integrating his design, research, and teaching interests in projects that impact the real world.

"The Community Design Center doesn't confine teaching within the walls of the university," he said. "UACDC and other outreach programs sponsored by the School of Architecture make it possible for faculty and students to engage the everyday issues of Arkansas communities."

Most recently an Associate Professor of Architecture at the University of Florida and principal at Luoni Gold Design Studio in Gainesville, Luoni's design and research interests have focused on community projects that integrate architecture, landscape architecture, and infrastructure, with an emphasis on environmental remediation. Beginning September 2, Luoni will chart new directions for the UACDC, where he will hold the Steven L. Anderson Chair in Architecture and Urban Studies. Since it opened its doors in 1995, UACDC has provided long-range physical and economic planning assistance for communities throughout the state of Arkansas. This past year, for example, the design center developed master plan alternatives for Little Rock's Good Shepherd Ecumenical Retirement Center, which offers housing for low- and middle-income seniors, and a long-range plan proposing street connectivity and tourism initiatives for Lake Village, located in the Arkansas Delta. While Luoni applauds UACDC efforts to preserve historic downtown areas, promote mixed use development, and improve transportation linkage in Arkansas hometowns, he's ready to take UACDC one step further in community planning.

"University design centers have an opportunity to construct discourse," he said. "There's been a very good foundation laid at UACDC, and I believe we can play a central role in defining new design models that reshape the contemporary anonymous landscape." Luoni is excited by UACDC's potential to construct bridges between architects, engineers, developers, and government officials. "I want to put UACDC in the center of discussions that go beyond architecture to address storm water, transportation, and subdivision design," he noted.

Luoni is also interested in addressing public health issues, especially "lifestyle diseases" such as type II diabetes, cancer, asthma, and cardiac disease, through community design that encourages physical activity.

"In addition to promoting mixed use development, which allows people to live close to their workplace, I would like to encourage other modes of transportation beyond the car, such as greenways and bicycle trails," he said.

Luoni's Florida firm has won national recognition for several community projects that combine environmental, technological and social systems. His firm's design for a 3 1/2-mile urban park along a Gainesville railroad right-of-way, which employs new plant-based technologies to dissipate toxic wastes from the site's industrial past, exemplifies his multidisciplinary approach, bringing together environmental remediation, recreation and storm water systems in a single entity. The design won a national design competition sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts New Public Works Program, a Faculty Design Award from the American Collegiate Schools of Architecture, and the Rail-Trail Design Recognition Award cosponsored by the American Society of Landscape Architects and the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy. Other awards won by Luoni Gold Design Studio include the 42nd Progressive Architecture Design Award for the Redevelopment Plan for Eustis, Florida and first prize for affordable housing solutions developed for Monterey, California.

Luoni earned his bachelor's in architecture from Ohio State University and his master's in architecture from Yale University. In addition to teaching since 1990 at the University of Florida, he visited the University of Minnesota as the Cass Gilbert Visiting Professor of Architecture in fall 2000 and the University of Arkansas last spring, where he led an upper level studio exploring the idea of stacking big box retail stores into "vertical power centers."

"We're excited to see how Steve Luoni's vision will broaden the scope of work we do for Arkansas communities," said UACDC Project Director Jill Anthes. "With Steve here, we'll be ready to mesh studies of historic downtowns with the grittier aspects of our environment - like the commercial strips so prevalent in every Arkansas hometown - to create the wonderful, cohesive communities that we all want." Anthes added that under Luoni's leadership, UACDC may undertake a wider range of projects on different scales, expanding the center's potential to assist Arkansas communities.

"The Community Design Center has developed a presence and a demand for services in the state in a remarkably short time," said School of Architecture Dean Jeff Shannon. "Building on that great foundation, we believe Steve Luoni will be able to extend recognition of UACDC to a national, or even international, level. In answering immediate community needs, Steve will be looking to use those specific solutions as models for other state and national communities."