Lafayette (2013)

Lafayette (2013): Lafayette, Louisiana, a city of 120,000 located in the heart of Acadiana, boasts a rich and vibrant culture of cuisine, music, faith, and community. Like many American cities of its size, Lafayette faces the challenges of both past single-use sprawl development and present growth pressures. Through the benefaction of the Our Lady of Lourdes Regional Medical Center in the fall of 2013, the University of Notre Dame graduate urban design studio (under the direction of critics Jennifer Griffin and John Griffin) undertook the analysis and design of three specific areas within the City of Lafayette. The first –a proposed master plan for St. John Street in downtown Lafayette– introduces a variety of housing types and pedestrian-friendly streetscape improvements into an area that already contains a number of schools, businesses, and civic institutions. The design for the second focus area –the Holy Family Institute– illustrates how a religious institution can sensitively develop its existing historic site not only to economically support their mission of education, service, and ministry to those in need but also to improve the lives of the local neighborhood residents by providing a variety of daily amenities within walking distance. The third proposal –for a large greenfield site around the new Our Lady of Lourdes Regional Medical Center campus– illustrates how to embed a modern-day hospital complex into a walkable, mixed-use neighborhood in order to encourage and support healthy lifestyles outside the hospital’s walls. Visions for Lafayette represents a holistic approach to urban design that considers faith, culture, education, and health as important aspects of the built environment, and that complement the customary social, political, and economic activities of the city. In April 2015 Visions of Lafayette received a Student Merit Charter Award from the Congress for the New Urbanism.