NEWS INDEX Archives 2004 September

U. of I. Community Design Center to host grand opening Oct. 1 in Urbana

Melissa Mitchell, News Editor
217-333-5491; melissa@uiuc.edu

9/22/04

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Civitas, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s Community Design Center, will host a grand opening at 112 W. Main St., Urbana, from 6 to 9 p.m. Oct. 1.

“The event is intended to demonstrate how people from different community sectors can potentially use Civitas as a resource and tool to build community,” said Genevieve Borich, the center’s student director.

Borich said programming and projects undertaken since the center opened last December will be featured at the event, including:

• Opening of gallery space dedicated to teaching concepts of sound urban form as well as social issues pertaining to the built environment.

• The Request for Assistance Program, which links community and nonprofit organizations, neighborhoods, municipalities, city staff and others to university students, faculty members, or both, who can provide support for urban- and community-design projects by providing background or feasibility studies.

• A project that uses technology to map potential infill sites – vacant or underutilized land that might be adapted and developed for new use – in the Champaign-Urbana area.

On view through Oct. 15 in the gallery space is an exhibition of photographs by Borich titled “Urban Textures.” The photos feature close-up images of surfaces found in “everyday urbanism,” Borich said, adding that they “invite visitors to ponder the reason urban elements evolved – and remain – as they appear.”

Civitas is funded by the university’s Office of Public Engagement and Institutional Relations.

More information about the center and current projects is available on the Web, or by contacting Borich, 265-7507.