New Lines Of Thought WSU Student Architects Bring Fresh Ideas To Mirabeau Point Project

Their designs are inspired, their ideas fresh.

Site plans drawn by architecture students from Washington State University have helped bring color, shape and texture to Mirabeau Point, the Spokane Valley community center that has long been only a vision in the minds of dreamers.

Coupled with the recent approval of $1.5 million in state money for design and planning, the WSU students’ work gives life to the $33 million Mirabeau Point project.

The students’ plans include ideas for environmentally friendly parking lots, aesthetically pleasing directional signs and commemorative names. Mirabeau Point organizers, who have yet to hire an architect, plan to pluck ideas from the students’ drawings and use them as a starting point for designing the complex.

“I really consider what we have here working documents,” said Denny Ashlock, chairman of Mirabeau Point Inc., the nonprofit group planning the complex. “The energy and the creativity is what Mirabeau Point is all about.”

Hushed muttering was the reaction Ashlock received several months ago when he asked the architecture students to sketch plans for the 70-acre recreation and educational center planned for the former Walk in the Wild zoo site.

But the aspiring architects proved worthy of Ashlock’s confidence.

“Personally, I love to see the dreams,” Ashlock said. “If you take that concept of mind, body and spirit and put it on the site, my goodness, that just hits it on the head.”

Sketching designs for the Mirabeau Point complex gave the third- and fourth-year students a chance to test skills acquired in the classroom on a large, real-life project while earning school credit for their work. Most said they had worked on smaller residential and commercial buildings, but never had to coordinate a project of this magnitude.

Attractions planned for the complex include a YMCA fitness and aquatics center, ice rink, play fields, community meeting rooms, a nature trail, planetarium, amphitheater and senior center.

The project forced the students to work as a team and to balance the competing visions of multiple clients.

“The classroom took on an almost office-like experience,” said Dr. Bob Scarfo, associate professor of landscape architecture that assembled the group. “This is my proudest moment at WSU.”

The students were divided into three teams - two from Pullman and one from WSU-Spokane. They presented their final projects last week, one week after Gov. Gary Locke signed a capital budget that included $1.5 million for Mirabeau Point planning and design work and made the project viable.

“When Denny approached WSU about using students, there was some criticism - students?” Ron Tan, a Spokane architect who has donated dozens of hours to the Mirabeau Point project, told the group during a recent meeting between the student design teams and Mirabeau Point organizers.

“I for one welcome students because your minds are fresh,” Tan said. “You’re not tethered with budgets.”

The student teams began work on the project in February by touring the former zoo site.

There, the students studied the site’s topography, terrain, natural resources, major roads, climate, prevailing winds and solar patterns. Those observations shaped preliminary sketches of the complex.

“These things come into play later on in the design work but must be noted before you can begin,” junior Craig Powell said.

Nate Krohn, Matt Whinery and Tom Hartzell, junior landscape architecture majors, teamed with Powell on the first of two design teams from WSU’s Pullman campus.

Both teams worked up overall site plans. Each student then focused on an individual piece.

Powell’s group proposed building Mirabeau Point around sight lines and the intellectual demands on users of each building. The team grouped the buildings in three categories - mind, body and spirit - and positioned them according to the user’s psychological needs.

The other Pullman team studied a matrix of age groups Mirabeau Point would serve before placing the buildings, said junior Terry Sherman, who teamed with juniors Andrew James and Shiro Morishita. The complex should be designed around access and usage, they concluded.

“One of the things I like is the teams are taking different approaches,” Scarfo said.

For the Spokane team of Cristen Linton, an interior design major who graduated Friday, and fourth-year architecture major Courtenay Monahan, the questions asked of them were a little different. The students focused almost exclusively on designing a cultural center that could be built on the site.

“I’d like to see (the cultural center) a place that’s a little farther away from the main area, maybe as an introduction to Mirabeau Point,” Monahan said.

Mirabeau Point needs a distinct entrance, Tan said. A gateway to the complex will be as much a defining characteristic as the design and layout of the buildings, he said.

“The peripheries, the limits of your site need to be defined so that someone coming on site says ‘I’m at Mirabeau Point,”’ Tan said. “This is not just a park. It’s the combination of physical characteristics and the culture - Spokane Valley.”

Dealing with actual clients was perhaps the best lesson for the students. Mirabeau Point Inc. was the student’s primary client. But the project’s public-private partnership concept forced the students to consider the needs of the Spokane County Parks Department, the YMCA and the Ice House at Mirabeau.

“It’s fun getting into the details,” Hartzell said. “When you get into the details you are dealing with the individual and how the surroundings affect them.”

The “real world” experience was one the students will add to their portfolios. From an academic standpoint, the project was worthwhile as well, Scarfo said.

“Maybe we can stop using ‘the real world’ as a phrase and make this the real world,” he said.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Map: Proposed Mirabeau Point project