The School of Architecture will dedicate its new building for fifth-year students tonight in Jackson. A ceremony and lecture in the Old Capitol Museum will precede the event.
The event will start with a lecture by Thomas Phifer, a New York based architect, at 6:30 p.m. Following the lecture, there will be a dedication at the new Stuart C. Irby Jr. Studio at 509 East Capitol Street.
Stuart Irby, for whom the studio is named, donated the building to the college for use and helped gain funds for its renovation. He was a philanthropist and head of an
electrical good distribution company.
The total cost of the renovation was approximately $3 million, which came from private donations, bonds and money set aside by the state legislature.
The building is a three-story facility that houses the fifth year program and the Jackson Community Design Center, a research center for the SOA that deals with various nonprofit organizations to improve the city of Jackson.
The fifth year of the program is housed in downtown Jackson to provide architecture students with experience in an urban environment that they would not get in Starkville.
The new studio is the first facility in Jackson since the architecture program’s establishment in 1973 to be owned by the university and designed to be used as an architectural studio space.
Designed by Barlow, Eddie, Jenkins Architects from Jackson, the Capitol Street building was a collaboration of many individuals’ ideas.
“It is not any one person’s building. Nobody got everything that they wanted,” Jim West, dean of the SOA, said. “I think it is a richer space because of that,” he added.
“It is a great building to work in and something that the school can be proud of,” Joe Hagerman, who works with the community design center, said. “It is much better than anything we have had before,” he said.
Kemper Smith, a fourth-year student designed t-shirts for the SOA that feature a drawing of one of the galleries in the
building.
“This is a big change for our school and I thought that featuring the building on our shirts would be the best way to honor the change,” Smith said. “We hope that this is a building that will be useful for the whole
university,” West said.
Along with space for the architecture program, the building also has a suite of offices. He added that the offices are intended for use by all parts of MSU.
“If a person from any department went to Jackson and needed office space or wanted to have a small banquet, we wanted them to have space that they could use.”
Being in downtown Jackson, a link to the community is important to the college. “The building also has great gallery spaces that we hope the
community around the school can use,” West said.