News and Media

Published: Jan 27, 2010

SAVANNAH, Ga.—The Savannah College of Art and Design’s architecture program announces an exhibition of student work at the Charleston, S.C., Civic Design Center.   SCAD’s graduate-level students have been working with the city of Charleston’s Civic Design Center on new proposals for urban design, and the proposals that have come from this collaboration will be on view at the Civic Design Center, 85 Calhoun St., Charleston, S.C., Jan. 29-Feb. 19, with an opening reception on Jan. 29 at 4:30 p.m. The reception and exhibition are free and open to the public.

The proposals on view have come out of a collaboration between SCAD’s architecture program and the Charleston Civic Design Center. The CCDC is an urban design initiative of the city of Charleston to promote a positive vision for the future of the city, and its role is to enhance the quality of life in Charleston by engaging the community in creating a dynamic urban design direction for the city.

In Fall 2009, SCAD professor Arpad Ronaszegi and students from his Architecture Design Studio VII course began a project to create new proposals for the “entry experience” into the city from the western side of the Charleston peninsula. Currently, entering Charleston from its west side does not adequately prepare visitors to appreciate the historic downtown area. SCAD students created urban design proposals to re-envision the experience and offer a new perspective on the place.

The ideas and solutions generated from the project comprise the exhibition at CCDC.  Throughout the process, SCAD students worked as designers and professionals, recognizing the connection between historic and contemporary, conceptual and experimental, natural and man-made. Students proposed scenarios for urban life, developed conceptual and experimental urban and architectural models, and transmitted these ideas to tangible built environments and objects for an actual project.

The proposals were presented to the CCDC and were developed through dialogue with city officials. Throughout the exhibition, the documents will be available to the public and will become essential to the city’s pursuit of generating ideas for the site.

The Charleston Civic Design Center's hours are Monday-Friday, 9 a.m.-5 p.m.