The Wake

Say goodbye to the University of Minnesota’s Science Classroom Building.

The Mississippi River Design Initiative, hosted by the University’s College of Design, plans to render the East Bank river site anew. Jamie Helding, a 21-year-old landscape architecture student, plans to use this project as a springboard into her post-collegiate career.

“The Mississippi River Design Initiative is comprised of staff at the University of Minnesota, which reaches out to faculty and administration advisors, as well as off-campus partners, in achieving the Initiative’s goals,” states MRDI’s Web site, riverdesign.umn.edu.

One such goal is to redesign the site around the Science Classroom Building in an effort to reconnect the campus to the mighty river on which it dwells.

“It’s probably the ugliest building on campus,” Helding says. “It blocks a great view of the West Bank, and it’s like the U isn’t even connected to the campus anymore.”

As the Metropolitan Design Center prepares a grant to carry out this project, Helding and other students and faculty have created the Making River Connections workshop. The purpose of the workshop is to assemble groups of students, community members, faculty and professionals and create prospective designs for the site.

The workshop seeks public artists, students in history, architecture, graphic design, urban studies, horticulture, geography and members of the surrounding communities to participate.

People who attend the workshop will be assembled into teams, given informational packets about the site and sent off to create designs. This will take place on the first day of the workshop, Oct. 14. Start times and registration forms can be found online at the MRDI’s Web site under “News and Events.” Click on the link for Making River Connections.

On the second day, the groups will present their designs to a panel made up of river experts, architecture and design professionals, as well as College of Design faculty. The panel will vote on the designs, which will then be displayed in Rapson Hall and on the MRDI’s Web site. These designs will be used in the final process when construction begins.

“Design firms will be at the workshop, and we’ll be able to meet with professionals, who get involved in projects like these to keep their…teeth sharp, their skills honed. It’s all really good for setting up your life after you get out of the U. Just going to the workshops, writing that on your résumé will help, just to say you worked with the pros,” says Helding.

The goal of the workshop is to “highlight connections between the river, the site and the campus through strategies such as public art, interpretive installations, plantings, water features, etc.” according to the Web site.

Helding’s involvement started when she was hired as a research assistant by Pat Nunnally, a College of Design professor and coordinator with the MRDI. It was Nunnally who conceived the Making River Connections idea, and the common enthusiasm for riverfront planning between the two helped Helding gain an important role in the workshop’s evolution.

Helding is the only undergraduate working on the project, and is amazed by how much she learned and how much being a part of this project will benefit her academically and professionally.

She says that her involvement with the project has shaped what road she’ll take with her career, and plans on going into riverfront planning. “There’s so much that goes into it – people are naturally attracted to water, and it’s important that sites near water be planned so people can enjoy it.”

“Design firms will be at the workshop, and we’ll be able to meet with professionals who get involved in projects like these to keep their…teeth sharp, their skills honed. It’s all really good for setting up your life after you get out of the U. Just going to the workshops, writing that on your résumé will help, just to say you worked with the pros.”

Helding has tasted the real world, and she wants more. Working on a real project that will have real results (construction is hoped to begin in 2008) is preparing her to leave student life and make a career out of something she’s deeply interested in. Other students looking for a stepping-stone out of college and into the real world would do well to register for this workshop, which will be held in the Rapson Hall courtyard Oct. 14.