Students participate in design-build competitionCARBONDALE, Ill. -- While the city of Carbondale prepared to convert R. Buckminster Fuller's original dome home to a temporary post office for a day to issue a commemorative Fuller stamp, a group of Southern Illinois University Carbondale students was creating a tribute to Fuller deep in the heart of Texas.
The architecture students, all sophomores, and one of their professors got the challenge earlier this month at the Construction Specification Institute's annual design-build competition in San Antonio. Each of the 14 teams was to follow the theme "Remembering" by comparing or contrasting San Antonio to their home institution's region in one-inch ceramic tiles. One of SIUC's two teams in the competition chose to replicate a Fuller-inspired dome they had just toured in Fort Worth. Casa Manana is the nation's first permanent theater designed for the production of musicals-in-the-round. None of the group was aware that the Fuller stamp was being unveiled July 13 in Carbondale, two days after they would return to Carbondale. The second group did an abstract depiction of the San Antonio River and the Mississippi River. "None of them had any experience in ceramics," said Norman L. Lach, assistant professor of architecture and interior design. "I thought it would be a mess, but it was great." Since they were last-minute entrants in the competition, the students stayed up "most of the night" designing the murals, said student Matt S. Hupe. And they managed to combine business with pleasure when they went in search of a Kinko's at 4 a.m. and made a stop at the Alamo. The student groups decorated a group of columns that are part of an overpass across the street from the FineSilver Building, which is home to art galleries and the San Antonio chapter of the American Institute of Architects. Lach said the permanent murals near historic downtown San Antonio are collectively worth $50,000.
The whirlwind six-day journey offered the students a chance to see several other noted architectural creations, including:
To see all the murals created in the student competition, go to http://www.csi-s.org. Participating in the competition were:
Chatham
Chicago
Crystal Lake
Freeport
Lacon
Murphysboro
Roanoke
Vienna
Jackson, Missouri
(CAPTION: Design teams--Southern Illinois University Carbondale architecture students and an instructor participated in the Construction Specification Institute's annual design-build competition in San Antonio, Texas. The two teams produced two ceramic tile murals, one dedicated to R. Buckminster Fuller and the other an abstract depiction of the San Antonio and Mississippi rivers. Those involved were, from left: back row Norman L. Lach, Jill M. Kirchherr, and Ryan R. Murphy; middle row: Carrie M. Momeni, Lilia A. Angel and Matt S. Hupe; front row Dan C. Finholt and Mark A. Dorsey.)
(CAPTION: Creative tribute--A team of Southern Illinois University Carbondale architecture students created this mural of tribute to R. Buckminster Fuller at a student design-build competition in San Antonio, Texas. The ceramic tile mural depicts a Fuller-inspired building, Casa Maņana theater, in Fort Worth.)
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