CCA Collegetown design competition: bridging an aesthetic chasm

By Franklin Crawford

The Cornell Council for the Arts is offering members of the Cornell designing community a shot at a different kind of "entrance" examination: a competition to improve the aesthetics of College Avenue and Eddy Street leading to and from campus.

"The competition is intended to produce new aesthetic ideas that can influence the direction of campus and city planning design as well as private development," said Milton Curry, CCA director, associate professor of architecture and a coordinator of the competition with Amaechi Okigbo, associate professor of landscape architecture. "We pose the question: What if Collegetown could be transformed into a more urban corridor of activity, with pedestrian paths and buildings that re-imagine its relationship with the Cornell campus?"

The CCA competition, which begins March 15, is open to individuals or teams composed of at least one member of the Cornell community, including faculty members, students and alumni of any degree-granting department at the university.

For more information on the competition, or to register, visit the CCA Web site at http://www.arts.cornell.edu/cca or call the council office at 255-7274.

Curry said competition proposals should address "the role of public art, the definitions of public and cultural space and the theatricality of the public sphere."

Finalists' projects will be exhibited at Cornell and in New York City and will be published in a CCA catalog.

The Collegetown competition inaugurates CCA's latest initiative, called "CCA Idea Competitions," a multiyear series of juried design competitions that consider and re-imagine parts of the physical landscape at Cornell and in Ithaca, Curry said.

He said the CCA currently is establishing connections with major museums and institutions to bring more exposure to contemporary art on the campus. This year, the council will invite jurors for its CCA Idea Competitions and CCA Emerging Artists Exhibition from the Studio Museum in Harlem and the Van Alen Institute in New York City.

The CCA's Web site is expanding to include a digital archive of campus arts events sponsored by the CCA and is quickly becoming the "cultural portal" for arts events on campus, Curry said.