See It • Build It • Know It
See It • Build It • Know It
One hundred students and 30 volunteer architects and engineers resusciatate the NAC Plaza.
Each year, the Salvadori Center sponsors an all-day design competition in the Great Hall at City College of New York (CCNY). This competition brings together over 100 students and 20 to 30 mentors who work in teams to solve an architectural/engineering challenge.
The Challenge
This year's charrette took as its focus the plaza in front of the North Academic Center, or the NAC Plaza, as it’s known. Here was the problem the students and volunteers faced:
The Event: High School students from around New York City and City College graduates from around the country have been invited to come to our Harlem campus to celebrate 150 years of local history.
The Problem: The NAC Plaza is where the Festival will be held on the Summer Solstice, June 21. But, people have always complained that the Plaza, in the words of a local poet, “is a hole in a bowl that’s got no soul.” They see it as a cold and uninviting place that doesn’t reflect the vibrant look, feel and sound of the hundreds of students from dozens of countries who cross the Plaza every day.
The Challenge: You and your fellow City College “Students of Today” are in charge of planning the Festival for “Students Past and Future.” Most importantly, you have to turn the NAC Plaza into a warm and welcoming environment where people can really enjoy themselves. What a job you have!
The Day Begins...
The Great Hall at CCNY
They also found sliced bagels with cream cheese, butter, and jelly along with coffee, tea, and juices to wash them down.
Thus fortified, participants began their day with an explanation of the challenge by Salvadori educator Alan Feigenberg, who encouraged them to use their imaginations and energies to make the NAC Plaza come alive. Then participants went to their assigned tables and dug into the work at hand.
Continue on to Bringing the NAC Back
Our founder, Mario Salvadori, a world-renowned structural engineer, believed that the built environment held all the knowledge that a person needed to be an intelligent and active member of the community. What teachers need to make this knowledge available to their students are tools with which they can "unpack" the knowledge embedded in the built environment.
The Salvadori Center gives these tools to teachers and students through a pedagogy grounded in what it calls "project-based, hands-on/minds-on activities" that employ the principles of architecture, engineering, and the design process. Through this method, teachers and their students can unlock the math, science, art, and humanities embodied in the structures and systems that surround them.