{"id":5562,"date":"2017-02-10T19:58:24","date_gmt":"2017-02-11T00:58:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cod.mellonaidinteractive.com\/?p=5562"},"modified":"2022-05-23T14:53:22","modified_gmt":"2022-05-23T18:53:22","slug":"designweek-windsor-recap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/design.ncsu.edu\/blog\/2017\/02\/10\/designweek-windsor-recap\/","title":{"rendered":"DesignWeek: the Windsor, NC Experience"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is a blog written by Jaquasha Colo\u0301n<\/strong>,\u00a0<\/b>NC State University\u00a0<\/em>College of Design, Master of Landscape Architecture Candidate 2017 |\u00a0WILA Leadership Board \u00a02016-17 |\u00a0UNCC \u00a0Master of Urban Design \u00a02015 |\u00a0<\/em><\/span>FAMU, BS of Architectural Studies 2014,\u00a0who shares her\u00a0appreciation of the opportunity to serve the community of Windsor, NC,\u00a0<\/em><\/span>as a recap of her experience during DesignWeek<\/a> 2017.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

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I came into DesignWeek elated. DesignWeek itself was set up similarly to the Urban Land Institute\u2019s Hines Student Competition, a two-week-long, incredibly intensive and highly competitive international project held every January in the first week of the school year (I participated in the 2015 competition). Like the Hines, the teams consisted of a handful of students in different disciplines working together on a specific site with a set of issues presented, which students are asked to address. Where DesignWeek differs is in location and urgency: The project was close to home and dealt with disaster mitigation. Instead of working with a handful of blocks in a city no one on our team had ever seen, we were tasked with sites in our state, all of which were hit hard by Hurricane Matthew. My team was tasked with Windsor, in Bertie County.<\/p>\n

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\n<\/a>This was my second time working in Bertie. The first time, in my Fall 2016 studio under Assistant Professor in Landscape Architecture Celen Pasalar, we were tasked with helping the community design a new nature park right on the coast of the Albemarle Sound. On our site visit to Windsor, we met the county manager and executive director. They drove us around the town, to our site, to the river center, and ended the day by buying the five of us lunch. By the time we left that first day, I was ready to hit the ground running on the project; I truly wanted to help this community. Soon our studio was preparing to set up a traveling community engagement stand at the local high school homecoming game, but tragedy after tragedy struck. Tropical Storm Julia swept over the area, flooding the town and shutting down the community. Within a few weeks it was underwater again due to Hurricane Matthew, and ultimately, we were not able to ever meet with the community. It changed the nature of our semester project, and in the end, the officials who took us around the town could not make it here to see the end result of our studio work due to the more important work of getting the community back on its feet.<\/p>\n