My name is Gregory Luhan I’m the associate dean for administration and the John Russell
Groves endowed professor of architecture.
When I first came to the University of Kentucky President Todd had organized a tour of the
Commonwealth, And my role was to say what role does design play in this context, and
how could I take this idea of building things and taking things apart and introducing that
into the context of the classroom, for the classroom literally becomes a 3 dimensional
textbook.
So what was interesting for me was you start to make linkages between the tours I was taking
across the Commonwealth and aligning it to things I as interested in doing in the studio.
I love what I do I mean I have a great passion to do good for people.
You know, as the associate dean for research one of the opportunities that we had here
was to change the culture of the college, from a really dynamic teaching school to a
really formative researching enterprise.
So how do we design the highest performing building possible, put that into a context,
bring that into a classroom and then teach students about the gravity of their ideas,
the impact of their ideas and locate that into a community that would impact the community
in a positive way.
We create new knowledge and we disseminate new knowledge.
I am not sure if you know the whole story on how I’ve got involved with west liberty
to begin with but at the time the tornadoes hit I was actually up in Boston presenting
my research.
I was informed by my daughter that the tornadoes had come through and had destroyed the town.
So when I landed the next day, my daughter, at the time she was nine years old, went to
her room and gathered all of her toys and her stuffed animals and packed them up and
said we’re going to west liberty, and I said alright lets go.
And it was the first time either of us had ever seen that type of destruction.
A year and a half later I get a phone call from some of the people that we met, and they
realized they didn’t have everything taken care of and how we could work with them and
we were working very specifically with all the folks in West Liberty to really invent
ideas and implement them.
The model behind you showcases 35 different projects on a variety of different scales
from residential to food towers that can provide food for all of Eastern Kentucky, recognizing
there is a food desert in the area for healthy food.
To cultural heritage centers, military museums, idea factories, farmers markets, everything
you would need in order to have a sustainable community.
One of the projects for the studio was to turn this into a publication because we want
to effectively communicate a how to primer; we work with them to develop business plans
then the floods hit in Johnson County.
There was 100 families that were displaced, so for the last semester we have been working
in Johnson county looking at houses on difficult sights that would be affordable that would
be out of the flood plane.
But we realize a lot of the terrain in the area is very mountainous so building on those
types of sights is very expensive, so we’ve been working with constructional engineering
folks and constructional science to think about the building as a different type of
system where we can actual design these buildings and make them more affordable.
So our challenge is to make it in an affordable way, to align it with the culture and the
ideas that the families want to live, to make it high performance so the cost of living
in the house is very small.
March 29th we’ve arranged with Ag extension to present our work and to the citizens of
Johnson County.
We’re not just developing generic prototypes and saying here’s how you have to live,
but actually working with the actual families themselves to understand how they live.
So, when we have the opportunity to work with communities that are around the university
it breaks down the boundaries between the university of being the ivory tower where
they have all the ideas, and the work that we do with the community cause the community
has fantastic ideas.
They also have an identity, and we also realize that we don’t want to change what that identity
is, we want to empower it.
What your really trying to be is a thought leader and realize whatever you design impacts
the health, safety and welfare of everyone that comes in contact with it.
So the domain of architecture is less about being the creative genius, as it is understanding
how to collaborate with others and putting your ideas to action and to be engaged with
the communities that we serve.