Contact: Phil Hearn
STARKVILLE, Miss.--Mississippi State architecture faculty and students are using a $300,000 federal grant to help displaced Gulf Coast residents rebuild and resettle hurricane-splintered neighborhoods of East Biloxi.
The university's College of Architecture, Art and Design is among seven selected to receive U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development national grants. The funding supports university involvement in rebuilding efforts stemming from last year's hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
The Universities Rebuilding American Partnership is financed partly through special HUD funding totaling $5.6 million. A $2 million collaborative design grant program specifically helps architecture programs partner with affected communities.
"These universities will use their great talents and energy to partner with communities that have been affected by the hurricanes as we seek to rebuild the Gulf," HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson said in announcing the program late last year.
As a result of the grant, Mississippi State's 33-year-old architecture program--the only one of its kind in the state and now headed by college Dean Jim West--is establishing the MSU Gulf Coast Community Design Studio. Its faculty and students will provide design and planning assistance to Mississippi Gulf Coast communities impacted by Katrina.
The design studio already is collaborating with the Biloxi Relief, Recovery and Revitalization Center, a community-based, non-profit organization that coordinates various volunteer rebuilding efforts and provides other assistance to East Biloxi residents.
"The design studio will use the grant to provide planning and architectural services to rehabilitate damaged houses and build new houses to resettle the displaced residents in East Biloxi," said associate professor David Perkes, director of the college's Jackson-based Community Design Center.
"The work already has begun," said Perkes, principal investigator for the grant project and principal leader in establishment of the design studio. "We are doing survey work and have started the community meetings."
He said the project will involve an assessment and Geographical Information Systems mapping of the target neighborhoods in order to analyze and visualize the neighborhoods parcel by parcel. The neighborhood meetings will help engage the local community in the planning process.
Perkes said the planners--including architecture graduate and undergraduate majors--will help identify rehabilitation and construction needs, and design innovative housing rehabilitation strategies and new house construction plans. They also will provide construction documents for non-profit developers and builders, and continuing architectural services during construction.
"For the next few months, we will be working in both Jackson and Biloxi as we get staff and equipment in Biloxi," he added. "The Biloxi Relief, Recovery and Revitalization Center is helping organize the community meetings and is providing work space for our studio."
For more information, contact Perkes in Jackson at (601) 354-6024 or dperkes@coa.msstate.edu.