WELCOME


WELCOME
to the LSU Minden Main Street Workshop. Students and faculty from the LSU School of Architecture will be working and living in Minden for two weeks to provide assistance to Minden Louisiana Main Street in their efforts to cultivate a resilient community. This program is funded in part through a grant awarded to the LSU Office of Community Design and Development from the National Endowment for the Arts. The Minden Main Street Workshop is the first in a series of workshops to connect environmentally responsible design practices with historic preservation strategies to accelerate sustainable development in Louisiana's small towns and cities. For more information, please contact the Office of Community Design and Development.


Friday, May 27, 2011

Today we started laying out some of the basics ideas we had after our meeting with Lyba and Roger. After presenting a very complex plan to our client we learned that the more complex the project is the more expensive it will be. So this time we are trying to stay as simple as possible and still get a wow factor out of nothing. Complexity doesn’t necessarily mean better. We’ll stay simple and it’ll be great. After having an awesome lunch listening to music from the 70’s and hanging out by the train station we came back to studio (except Jeremy who’s going to a wedding) and worked on the site plan. The next step will be to make a better study of our floor plans and see how these will influence the appearance of the façade.

Thursday, January 6, 2011

Post-Workshop Interview


Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Team Imperial Hotel Day 12

Today was our presentation in Minden! Everything went really well and a lot of the community showed up to view our designs and ask questions. It was great to see so many positive responses to our designs. Some saw our designs as inspiration for what they could do with other buildings in the downtown area. We all feel that this project has been a great success and are very proud of our accomplishments in Minden. Thank you to everyone who has supported us!

Final Day and Presentations!!! Team Crichton

Today was the final day of the workshop and we came back to Minden in order to present. The presentations were very interesting and we had a huge response from the community. Everyone, including or client, was very appreciative exited of our work and how it can positively effect historic downtown Minden. The Crichton Building team looks forward too seeing downtown Minden continue to grow and hope to see progress soon.

Webb Hardware - Preparing our Presentation

Today was a LONG day. We started off bright and early - around 8:00 on our work. We were still laying out our floor plans, working on the roof design, the lasercut file, and the 3D model. We all worked really hard. We broke around 6pm to go get some food. We reconvened shortly after and began our all-nighter. I went home at 3:30 (because I was driving to Minden the next day), but the rest of the group stayed until 7:30am. I got to studio at 8, and began mounting our boards for the presentation. We had s good time working (and playing), but it is relieving to be done with the production phase of this workshop!

Last day!

Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Team Crichton

YEAH, OK!

Our last day of work has been extremely productive. We are finalizing our work and formatting it to meet our presentation requirements. As of now we have compiled nearly 4 of our 11x 17 presentation boards. These completed boards include a site introduction, existing conditions, and our proposed front elevation. In addition to these boards, we are adding several more which include a rendered section, site plans, floor plans, and exterior renderings. We have a lot of this work completed but we need to place it in presentation format. It’s going to be a long night, but hopefully we can come together and get all of our work done in time.

Team Imperial Hotel Day 11

We are all very excited for our presentation tomorrow! We will be up late tonight finishing our final documents and printing. We are also building a model of the hotel. Thank you to everyone for all the support! We are excited to be back in Minden tomorrow!

Monday, January 3, 2011

Team Imperial Hotel Day 10

After a nice break for Christmas and New Years, we are ready to complete our projects for our final presentation in Minden. We are making some last changes to the courtyard facade, finishing plans and elevations, and placing our work onto a template to print tomorrow. Tomorrow we will also laser cut and build our physical model. We made the paper in Minden again!


Fruits of LSU labor to be put on display
Written by Angel Haney
Monday, 03 January 2011

Webster Parish residents will be able to see the potential of some downtown Minden buildings in an upcoming presentation.

Students and faculty from the LSU School of Architecture recently worked and lived in Minden for two weeks, departing on December 23, to provide assistance to Minden Main Street in their efforts to cultivate the community.

The program, titled Minden Main Street Workshops, is the first in a series of workshops to connect environmentally responsible design practices with historic preservation strategies to accelerate sustainable development in Louisiana’s small towns and cities.

The final presentations of the work will be held at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, January 5, at City Artworks in downtown Minden.
Pattie Odom, Minden Main Street director, said the public is invited and encouraged to attend.

“The students did a similar program and presentation in McComb, Mississippi,” she said. “They had 100 people turn out for the final presentations. We would like to match, if not beat, that number. We should show our support for these students.”

The 12 participating students worked in three groups, each one focusing on one building. The buildings selected were the old Imperial Hotel, which the students want to see turned back into a hotel, Webb Hardware and the Crichton Building, both of which are being proposed as apartments.

“It’s been really exciting to see the students’ concepts and visions,” Odom said. “Those who attend the event can look for some very professional presentations. I can’t imagine the value of the work they have done for us. I couldn’t tell you what the cost would be to hire a professional to come in and do this and their service has been amazing.”

The buildings selected for the project do have the potential to be developed and Odom hopes to see that happen.

“These ideas can easily be turned into a reality,” she said. “All this time and effort has been put forth by Minden Main Street and Downtown Development to make this happen. We plan on developing downtown to its fullest potential.”

For more information on the project, check out the blog the students and faculty kept during their experience at www.lsuminden.blogspot.com.

TEAM BLOG YEAAAAA

This suuuucccckkkkks ....hahaha . Ok so team Crichton is back in Baton Rouge. We are finishing up our final board, model, and program. All of our hard work will be exhibited in Minden this Wednesday @ 5pm. Come out and show us some support.

Anddd WE'RE BACK!

So today was the first day back after the holiday festivities and such. We're in the basement and in a studio that used to be a first year one so a lot of people have a bunch of new supplies...
We are picking up from where we left off in Minden-there is a lot of work to be done. We're going to stay late today and try to get as much work done before tomorrow. We need to be completely done at the end of tomorrow because on Wednesday we are traveling to Minden for the last time to present our project to our clients. We are also laser-cutting and assembling our model tomorrow.
Today we worked on completing the floor plans, roof designs, the building program, and started playing around with the layout of our boards.

In other news:
Rhett found out you can put AutoCad on the Iphone: