Envision Little Rock is part of the 100 year celebration of the John Nolan’s Plan for a Park System for Little Rock back in 1903. The plan proposed a master plan for a park system that would wrap around the city and include park space along the Fouche and Rock Creeks and the Arkansas River as well as tree lined boulevards stretching through the city connecting other parks in the city fabric. One part of the plan called for Capitol Avenue to be one of these tree lined streets, with the Capitol Building at the west end and some other import landmark or monument at the east end.
Capitol Avenue was one a busy thoroughfare in town as you can see.
Today, it still is a pretty nice street, especially east of Broadway. The Capitol building offers a nice focal point at the west terminus while you look down the tree line sidewalks and dense urban canyon of some of the tallest buildings in the state. But the grand avenue kind of peters out at its east end and abruptly and unceremoniously dies into Interstate 30.
Envision Little Rock is a design competition sponsored by the City of Little Rock, Keep Little Rock Beautiful commission and Studio Main to solicit proposals for a creative and dynamic gateway into the city and an east terminus for Capitol Ave. Have an idea? Want to build an icon for Little Rock? Think you have a grand idea to change the course of a city??? Enter your design! See the attached PDF’s for more info and registration
…and there is a small cash prize…
EnvisionLR2013_CompetitionBrief
EnvisionLR2013_CompetitionDescription
EnvisionLR2013_RegistrationForm
“When it comes to walking in the city, a smartphone is now almost as important as a good pair of shoes. Our phones provide us with pedestrian sat-nav, reviews of the best places to visit and even measure how many calories we’re burning, while we walk. In fact, recent research suggests that our phones are encouraging us to walk further in the city and explore more places.” — Adam Davies on smartphones and walkable cities (via thisbigcity)
Check out this great article about walkable cities and the emerging role of smartphones.
Check out the latest article about PopUp Main Street!
Anonymous asked: I would like to know who to contact about space for the thursday and friday food truck's on south main
Send us an email at popupmainstreet@gmail.com or info@studio-main.org and we will put you touch with Buckley!
Join the Architecture & Design Network for this season’s first lecture:
Mark Boyer | Tuesday October 16th | 6:00pm | Arkansas Art Center
Professor and head of the Landscape Architecture Department of the University of Arkansas’s Fay Jones School of Architecture, Mark Boyer joined the school faculty in 1998. Following his graduation from Louisiana State University where he earned his graduate degree, Boyer entered private practice. His work at that time focused on sensitive ecosystems in state parks and national wildlife refuges.
Boyer was part of the interdisciplinary team that designed Habitat Trails, a sustainable neighborhood for the Benton County chapter of Habitat for Humanity. The project won seven major awards, including a national Honor Award in Analysis and Planning, from the ASLA. His interest in ecological issues and storm-water management is reflected in the courses he teaches. Established in 1976, the Department’s emphasis is on urban design, community development, wetland reclamation and the design of parks, gardens, public memorials and a variety of recreational amenities. Historic landscape preservation is also an important component of the program.
Boyer’s lecture, like all others in ADN’s 12/13 series are free and open to the public. Sponsors of the series include the Fay Jones School of Architecture, the Central Arkansas Chapter of the AIA and the Arkansas Arts Center.
For more information, contact: projects4pi@mac.com
One of our favorite groups in town, the Architecture & Design Network has announced their Fall 2012 / Spring 2013 Lecture Schedule!!! Check it out, there are some incredible folks coming here in the next year. Don’t worry we’ll post information here about each lecture!
If you haven’t heard, there are some amazing things going on along South Main Street. We are thrilled that Create Little Rock (the young professionals arm of the Chamber of Commerce) have asked us to assist them in creating a “Better Block” event for Little Rock. If you haven’t heard of the program, check them out http://betterblock.org/. The program focuses on Rapid Urban Revitalization projects that are largely made possible through donations, hard work, and passionate volunteers.
PopUp Main Street will be focusing on South Main Street in Little Rock from I-630 to 15th Street. The event will start the afternoon of Friday, November 9th and run through the morning of Sunday, November 11th. Some modifications to the street be made the weekend prior. Check out the general plan below that was produced by studioMAIN, and keep tuned to this space for further information and volunteer opportunities!!!
South Main 2nd Thursday Truck Night -
From the Arkansas Times:
Chef Jeffrey Palsa has been operating The Food Truck in Little Rock for a couple of years now, serving up hot gourmet sandwiches and and soups with a cheerful smile and a ready laugh. After a hot, dry summer that proved difficult for many of our local trucks, Palsa wanted to reignite excitement in the food truck scene, deciding to create a monthly truck even in the SoMa neighborhood called Second Thursday Truck Night. The event will be held on September 13 from 4:30 p.m. - 7:30 p.m. at the Bernice Garden and will continue throughout the fall every second Thursday of the month. Chef Palsa chose evenings for his event in order to bring people down to a neighborhood that doesn’t have many options for dining out past five o’clock, although he stresses that the ladies of Loblolly Creamery will have their soda fountain in the Green Corner Store open for folks in need of ice cream or a fresh-made soda.
For the inaugural event, Palsa has lined up several of Little Rock’s best trucks in addition to his own, including The Southern Gourmasian, Clyde & Kiddo’s Barbecue, and Taqueria Samantha III. Little Rock Urban Farming will also have a booth set-up with flowers, Arkansas honey, and produce. The trucks are all planning specials for the event, including some kid-friendly dishes. There will be ample covered seating available so that everyone can enjoy their meals comfortably, and parking is located both next door to the garden as well as across the street.
If you haven’t had a chance to try these trucks, or would like to get a taste of things to come during the upcoming Main Street Food Truck Festival, this new food truck event is the perfect opportunity to come down to SoMa, enjoy the peaceful surroundings of the sculpture garden, and sample a lot of really great food. Bernice Garden is located at 1401 S. Main in Little Rock.
“Outside the Pale: The Architecture of Fay Jones,” an exhibit of artifacts on loan from the Old State House Museum and the University of Arkansas, opens today at Laman Library and will run through Aug. 25.
Laman has a connection to the famed UA architect, who was an apprentice of Frank Lloyd Wright: He designed the gazebo in the library plaza in the early 1970s.
The exhibit takes its name from a book published by the Department of Arkansas Heritage and will be accompanied by an essay by Robert Adams Ivy, author of “Fay Jones: Architect.” Ivy writes:
“Fay Jones architecture begins in order and ends in mystery. His role can perhaps best be understood as a mediator, a human consciousness that has arisen from the Arkansas soil and scoured the cosmos, then spoken through the voices of stone and wood, glass and steel. Art, philosophy, craft, and human aspiration coalesce in his masterworks, transformed from acts of will into harmonies: Jones lets space sing.”
A chair that looked like a potato chip. Another that resembled a “well-used first baseman’s mitt.” A folding screen that rippled …
With a grand sense of adventure, Charles and Ray Eames turned their curiosity and boundless enthusiasm into creations that established them as a truly great husband-and-wife design team. Their unique synergy led to a whole new look in furniture. Lean and modern. Playful and functional. Sleek, sophisticated, and beautifully simple. That was and is the “Eames look.”
That look and their relationship with Herman Miller started with molded plywood chairs in the late 1940s and includes the world-renowned Eames lounge chair, now in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Charles and Ray achieved their monumental success by approaching each project the same way: Does it interest and intrigue us? Can we make it better? Will we have “serious fun” doing it?
They loved their work, which was a combination of art and science, design and architecture, process and product, style and function. “The details are not details,” said Charles. “They make the product.”
A problem-solver who encouraged experimentation among his staff, Charles once said his dream was “to have people working on useless projects. These have the germ of new concepts.”
Their own concepts evolved over time, not overnight. As Charles noted about the development of the Molded Plywood Chairs, “Yes, it was a flash of inspiration,” he said, “a kind of 30-year flash.”
With these two, one thing always seemed to lead to another. Their revolutionary work in molded plywood led to their breakthrough work in molded fiberglass seating. A magazine contest led to their highly innovative “Case Study” house. Their love of photography led to film making, including a huge seven-screen presentation at the Moscow World’s Fair in 1959, in a dome designed by their friend and colleague, Buckminster Fuller.
Graphic design led to showroom design, toy collecting to toy inventing. And a wooden plank contraption, rigged up by their friend, director Billy Wilder for taking naps, led to their acclaimed chaise design.
A design critic once said that this extraordinary couple “just wanted to make the world a better place.” That they did. They also made it a lot more interesting.
(Source: hermanmiller.com)