Ten architecture majors from the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts designed and built a public plaza for visual art in Grand Center that was dedicated Dec. 15. The project, begun last fall, teamed the students with Grand Center Inc., a non-profit organization that develops district arts initiatives and real estate, and the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts.
The plaza — located immediately south of the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra’s Powell Symphony Hall at 718 North Grand Blvd. — will host outdoor exhibitions, site-specific installations, performance pieces and video and new-media work by local and nationally known artists, as well as information about Grand Center programs and events.
“This has been a pretty remarkable project,” said Carl Safe, professor of architecture, who led the semester-long studio. “It’s a significant contribution to the streetscape, connecting Powell Hall with the block to the south. But the timeline was very short, and students had to do a lot of learning very quickly.”
Safe has shepherded a number of similar design-build projects over the years, including a wooden shade pavilion adjacent to the University City Post Office; and a similar project for Market in the Loop in the 6600 block of Delmar Boulevard. Yet he says the Grand Center plaza represents a new scale and level of complexity.
Built on a former parking lot, the plaza is divided into two zones. A grassy area is located at the northern end, while the southern end is filled with 21 eight-foot steel poles designed to accommodate a variety of modular display panels. When not in use, those panels are stored in a long, shallow enclosure formed by two overlapping masonry walls on the plaza’s eastern edge. A small glass-enclosed gallery is located at one end of the storage space, which also houses a pair of Web-ready video projectors. Dozens of flood lamps set into the concrete foundation provide dramatic lighting.
“We were given a budget of about $45,000, but that doesn’t fully convey the scope of things,” Safe said. “If you were to bid this work out, it could easily have been $200,000 to $250,000. It’s a minor miracle that we were able to get everything completed.
“Students did an amazing job of getting materials donated and services volunteered,” Safe continued. “One company donated the block, another donated the mortar, another donated grout to fill the wall. We got reinforcing steel for 26 cents on the dollar. They were unbelievably resourceful.”
The entire project was completed in about 14 weeks. Design conception began in late August 2006, with each student developing an individual proposal. By mid-September, the students had formed teams and focused their efforts on two designs, which were presented to a review board consisting of Carmon Colangelo, dean of the Sam Fox School; Peter Bunce, interim arts initiative director for Grand Center; and Matthias Waschek, director of the Pulitzer Foundation.
Once the final design was selected, students began defining budgets, finishing construction documents and applying for city building permits. The class then turned to actual construction, surveying the site and hauling 83 tons of gravel by wheelbarrows to create a solid sub-surface. The students built the concrete formworks, threaded steel rebar and worked with apprentices from the St. Louis Cement Masons Joint Apprenticeship Program, the Masonry Institute of St. Louis and the Ironworkers Joint Apprenticeship Program.
“We had a lot of help from the professional trades,” said Ivo Rozendaal, a graduate student in architecture. “We could not have gotten this far without their help. It’s amazing how many companies have come out here to support us.”
Though programming details are still taking shape, the plaza’s display space was designed to be flexible.
“The poles basically serve as an armature for artists to work within,” Rozendaal said. “We’re providing a ‘starter set’ of panels in a variety of materials, but they could be anything an artist wanted: solid or fabric, opaque or transparent. Projections could relate to an artist’s work or include video or just be changing colors. The space is really open to interpretation.”
The plaza adds another dimension to Grand Center, St. Louis’ premier arts and entertainment district and home to cultural organizations such as the Fox Theatre, The Sheldon Concert Hall, the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts and the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis.
“The goal is to bring a little more street-life to the area,” Rozendaal continued. “A lot of people just come down for the shows. We want them to stick around afterwards and bring some more vibrancy to the community.”