ECU, PCC students Design First People Heritage Center for Wayne County

ECU NEWS RELEASE

GREENVILLE--Six teams of anxious students from East Carolina University and Pitt Community College presented their designs on April 29 for a Woodland Indian cultural center at the Wayne County Arts Council building in Goldsboro, N.C. The designs were evaluated by friends, family, and dignitaries, but more importantly, by the man who will use one team's design to build his dream.

Dreamweaver of the Haliwa-Saponi tribe trained his steely eyes on each team's design, asking pointed questions of the ECU interior design and PCC architectural technology students. He questioned the students as thoroughly as he might question professional consultants.

Dreamweaver came to Rebecca Sweet, associate professor of interior design, in January via the ECU Sustainable Tourism Center and North Carolina's Eastern Region with a challenge for her students to design the First People Heritage Center he intends to build with the help of the Waynesborough Park Board in Wayne County. Sweet approached Bill Hofler, architectural technology instructor at PCC, about a collaborative class project, and Hofler was game. What ensued for the students and teachers was an immersion in Eastern Woodland Indian culture, art, and environmentally compatible building techniques.

"Dreamweaver led us on a fabulous journey to discover a history that I know I was not taught in school," said Sweet. "We traveled to the North Carolina Solar House and to the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C., to learn about the people who lived on this land before the Europeans took it over. Their culture was the essence of sustainability and respect. Our challenge was in expressing this culture in an imaginative design for the twenty-first century."

Dreamweaver asked the students to design four round buildings reflective of traditional Woodland Indian building but showing how the tribes might be living today had their civilization not been disrupted. The buildings will shelter a museum for artifacts, artist studios and classrooms, a visitor center serving natural foods, and retail space for selling fine arts, crafts, and gifts made by North Carolina and other certified Woodland Indian tribal members.

"In only three months, the students produced designs that exceeded my dreams," said Dreamweaver. "It was difficult to choose between them, but in the end, one team's designs stood apart and captured the essence of my vision for the center."

After selecting Team Evergreen's designs, Dreamweaver announced that the team's members will receive lifelong passes to visit the First People Cultural Heritage Center. The center will be added to Waynesborough Park, a 20-acre park on the Neuse River, which draws locals and tourists to its kayak and hiking trails, camping facilities, and reconstructed historic village.

Team Evergreen included ECU interior design students, Jennifer Wilson, Stacey Evans, and Chi Yiu, and PCC architectural technology students, Angie Cordahi and Anthony Allen.

05/04/2009