For immediate release: January 9, 2006

Design Workshop to lead MSU students in week-long post-Katrina planning effort

STARKVILLE, MISSISSIPPI — Planning and design firm Design Workshop is partnering with Mississippi State University’s Department of Landscape Architecture to conduct a student exploration into issues of rebuilding in southern Mississippi in the wake of the 2005 hurricane devastation.
 “This student charrette is an outstanding collaborative educational opportunity for our students while providing a substantial service for the southern Mississippi communities affected by Hurricane Katrina,” said Jason B. Walker, assistant professor in MSU’s Landscape Architecture department and Design Week coordinator.

The five-day workshop will engage students in landscape architecture, architecture, The Carl Small Town Center, civil engineering, environmental planning, real estate and business to formulate strategies for supporting the communities of Hattiesburg and Gulfport to rebuild, plan and deal with the impacts of last fall’s destructive storms. The event will involve more than 200 MSU students and will feature three outstanding speakers: ecologist and author Janisse Ray, Mississippi redevelopment chief Leland Speed and geologist Allen Lowrie.

Georgia-born Ray is a naturalist, activist and author of three books of literary nonfiction, including Ecology of a Cracker Childhood, a memoir about growing up on a junkyard in the ruined longleaf pine ecosystem of the Southeast. The 1999 book won high praise from The New York Times and conservationist Wendell Berry, as well as numerous awards, including the Southern Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction.

Leland Speed, executive director of the Mississippi Redevelopment Authority, earned degrees from Georgia Tech and the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration and is a member and past chairman of the board of trustees of Mississippi College, chairman of the Jackson State University Development Foundation and past chairman of MetroJackson Chamber of Commerce.

Allen Lowrie of Picayune, Mississippi, is a geologist with 40 years of geologic and geophysical exploration worldwide. He trained at Columbia University, has taught at Tulane and the University of Southern Mississippi and worked in basic research at Columbia, applied research at the Naval Research Labs at the Stennis Space Center and in operational and production geology for Mobil Oil. He is the author of 80 publications about the evolution of continental margins.

Leading the January 23-27 effort will be the Design Workshop’s Chief Design Officer, Todd Johnson, founding partner Don Ensign and landscape architect Jeremiah Dumas, a Prentiss, Mississippi native and MSU alumnus. In addition to MSU’s participation, the event counts two other major sponsors: Michael Hatcher & Associates of Memphis, Tennessee, and The Landscape Studio of Hattiesburg, Mississippi.

Design Workshop brings special expertise to the MSU session, with experience in helping engineer economic recovery and brownfield redevelopment in several settings across the nation, including Riverfront Park on former rail yards in Denver, the planned Union Park in Las Vegas and major redevelopment in South Lake Tahoe, California.
Since 1985, Design Workshop’s internship and Design Week programs have attracted gifted scholars of landscape architecture, architecture, urban design and planning from all over the world. Past Design Weeks at Illinois, Penn State, Louisiana State, California Polytechnic and North Carolina A&T tackled redevelopment of an underutilized California rail site; a multi-use master plan for a site bounded by an oil refinery, park, river and rail yards; and redevelopment of an industrial brownfield site with the preservation of historic industrial structures outside of Chicago. Other 2006 Design Weeks will be held at Cal Poly and Ball State.

Founded in 1969, Design Workshop practices sustainable design and planning on sites ranging from urban infill, parks and open-space projects to brownfield redevelopment and resorts. The firm, which has seven offices across the United States, has received more than 90 awards for design and planning, including a 2003 Charter Award from the Congress for New Urbanism for its rail-yard conversion in downtown Denver.