When I spoke at Notre Dame a couple of weeks ago, I had the pleasure of meeting Philip Bess, of the College of Architecture. I learned a lot in our five-minute conversation, and Philip has expanded his thoughts so that I might share them on this blog – it’s sort of a bleg, sort of just…information.

We’ll start with this:

The Notre Dame School of Architecture is the only school in the country that has the study of classical architecture embedded in its curriculum, and one of only three that teaches traditional town planning and urban design. We are committed to the making of a beautiful and just built environment, which some of us regard as imperatives of and at home in historic Catholic culture. Beginning in the fall of 2006 I will be conducting an annual graduate urban design studio the intent of which will be to engage specific communities (towns / neighborhoods / dioceses / parishes) who are interested in traditional towns and neighborhoods as physical forms of community that promote the well-being of its members. So I’m beginning a search for dioceses and / or parishes who might be willing to be our "clients" for such an exercise or series of exercises, who would take us into their community for 8-10 days at the beginning of the fall semester, during which we would conduct a community design workshop known in architectural circles as a "charrette." The purpose of the charrette would be to produce a set of visual images that represent a shared vision for traditional neighborhood development, as well as proposed zoning mechanism/s to realize that vision, both of which would be further developed during the ensuing semester in consultation with our community "client." The cost for what will be a substantial and unusually professional work product typically would be simply for our travel and travel-related expenses.

We have been intending to initiate this program next fall; but events in the gulf coast have rendered hundreds of communities in need of exactly these kind of design services for their reconstruction. As an academic institution, we are constrained in our ability to respond to this situation immediately. Nevertheless, I am very interested in contacts with towns and parishes and dioceses (not just from the gulf coast, but from anywhere) who might be interested in promoting traditional towns and neighborhoods both through their own building projects and as part of a larger community effort to promote traditional urbanism.

And an expansion:

There is a good chance that the Notre Dame architecture program will be conducting a town planning studio next spring (a certainty that we will be doing so next fall); and it could very well be a mutually beneficial thing to have our students do a town planning proposal for some town that desperately needs it, of which candidates there is currently, alas, no shortage. My thought is that if Notre Dame has any political cache in Mississippi or Louisiana, it is through the Church and various Church agencies, for whom we would be happy to work gratis if their real-life needs happen to correspond with our pedagogical responsibilities.

So…out of our 8,000 or so daily readers…let’s pass the word. If you’re a part of one of these affected groups or communities, or have contacts, please give this consideration. You can contact Philip Bess by email at pbess@nd.edu.

Finally, by way of background:

I wanted to link you to three articles that identify affinities of some current movements in traditional architecture and urban design with Catholic intellectual and social theory traditions. The first is probably the most germane, because it includes a detailed and illustrated account of what I mean by traditional neighborhoods and towns; but the others address important related issues. I forward them for you to read (or skim) as you like, to recommend or link as you like, but above all as background to an enterprise I am trying to initiate in the graduate urban design program at the Notre Dame School of Architecture. The links are as follows:

http://www.acton.org/publicat/m_and_m/2003_spring/bess.html (illustrated)

http://www.claremont.org/projects/local_gov/Newsletter/aristotle.html

http://www.thursdayassociates.net/Texts/virtuousreality.html