The future of UND?
JLG Architects, a prominent architectural firm based in Grand Forks, recently debuted a new website. The other day, I was looking through JLG's online portfolio and I stumbled across some very interesting images. They show proposed developments at the University of North Dakota which, until this time, the public hasn't had a chance to look at. I love "peeking into the future" like this and I wanted to show you the pictures. Some of them are rather interesting.
Of the three projects shown here, two have been previously mentioned: a new College of Business and Public Administration complex and a new addition to Memorial Union. The Union project is currently listed in a bill making its way through the state legislature. The other project, a new housing complex geared specifically to students of the School of Aerospace Sciences, is news to me.
Update - 3/6/2007 - 6:02 PM
Surprise, Surprise...WDAZ has a story on tonight's newscasts about these building projects. This is getting to be pretty funny, really. Does WDAZ even look for their own stories anymore or do they just rely on the blogosphere to give them their "scoops"? Oh well, I get a kick out of seeing my blog posts become the evening news each night! Keep reading the blog, Jessica Dugan and all you other 'DAZers...
All images copyright JLG Architects
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20 comments:
I think the Business building and Aerospace housing are needed and well designed. Unfortunately the Memorial Union addition is so much wasted space. Does UND really need a two-story sign/walkway? That seems to be very expensive and have little benefit to the students.
My only thought about the Union extension is that it puts the main entrance closer to the road. I know when I was at UND it always felt the building was rather far from the street. If it's cold out, it gets you into the building faster.
And, a very popular trend in architecture recently is to give buildings a new look by extending the entrances or doing something with "lobby" area. For example, the FargoDome. They took a giant brick bread box, added a new front facade and entrance, and out of nowhere it looks like a new facility.
Could that "aerospace housing" be planned for the north side of University immediately north of CAS 1 (yes, I'm showing my age)?
The existing facilities in that location are probably due for demolition and replacement.
If CAS 1 is Odegard Hall, I know the existing housing you are talking about. That seems like a logical location to me. However, the existing housing there was remodeled (to some extent) in the last couple of years. Would they remodel buildings and then tear them down a few years later?
I think a more likely spot would be directly East of Odegard, adjacent to the location of the new residence hall. I think the apartments in that area would come down before the large Y shape apartment building and townhouses North of Odegard.
In the spirit of the current trend in UND makeoverness, it'd make more sense to tear down the old apartments immediately to the east of Odegard.
One could also theoretically build a Tower of Aviation Housing in the parking lot NW of Ryan/Skalicky. Good luck with a parking solution in the wake of that, though I think there is still a strip of land between the Hilton Garden and I-29.
Hey, they've done some design work for the Cedar Ave. Redevelopment in Richfield, MN.
->Urban Design ->Richfield Cedar Ave Corridor.
I'm just a short ways south of there. They're doing the retail dev. part right now and building a Super Target and some smaller retail plus a Home Depot may be built. I knew they wanted to do more and the city of Richfield didn't have more info on it, so it's cool seeing on a website from a GF company.
So I hope for JLG Architects that it does all turn out that way.
GJB
Two questions about Jessica Dugan's WDAZ story (which she based off of my post):
1)Why didn't she show the COBPA pictures?
2)When talking about the Aerospace Housing project, why did she show the new apartment/dorm which is currently under construction? Those are two totally different projects.
If you missed the report, my suspicions about the Aerospace Housing project were right. The project was proposed in the past, but never made it off of the drawing board.
I have heard that before the plans for the current new student housing were finished, that the dormitory was origionally going to have a similar look to the aerospace complex. That idea was apparently turned down. I am sure the aerospace housing design were just some preliminary concepts that were drawn up.
Maybe GFG needs to deflate his ego a little bit. We don't see Tuey or the Forum bragging about scoops. You might be first, but the constant bragging is getting old.
News agencies generally don't reveal who their news "tip" came from. If I was to call WDAZ up and say "Business A is coming to Grand Forks," they'll do their story about Business A coming to Grand Forks, not about me. I'm not the story, and I didn't do whatever (if any) legwork that they did to put their story together.
Story ideas and stuff don't just come out of the ether -- they get their ideas and "scoops" the same way as anyone else. The fact that they may use this, or any, blog as a source of rumours to follow up on is irrelevant.
If WDAZ was to read, word for word, GFG's post as a news story, you'd have plagiarism. That's not what they do -- after seeing something of interest here, they do a story on their own, given the germ of an idea.
The story is the story, not the source.
Which, if you're interested in promoting Grand Forks, is a good thing -- WDAZ probably reaches 1,000 people for every 1 person that reads this blog, and I suspect that GFLife has the highest readership of any local blog. (The negativist would counter that GFL would be more popular if 'DAZ would credit them and point them to the website, while the counter argument is a) why would they want to do that :-) and b) WDAZ is "push" information and will ALWAYS be more popular than "pull" information.
Maybe GFG should do a story about the Civic Center, and see if WDAZ soon after does a story about it.
Or any other story of local importance and see if they run it soon after.
I think that's the point GFG is making. It just seems funny that two bloggers (GFG and T-Tran) are reporting on news items that are run on WDAZ soon after...
The problem is that this isn't a "credible" source. When GFG posts something, it's a pointer TO the credible source. Again, he's not the story.
Saying "a local blogger saw these pictures on a web site" doesn't make any sense if the story is about the pictures. Saying "these pictures were on a web site" is more sensible.
As a "for example," I hear various news reports cite "The Smoking Gun" or "Drudge" as a source. In every case that I can recall, though, they were saying that that source had something on their site. Not "Drudge today had a link to a CNN article that was about..."
(This is no way is intended to denigrate GFG or this blog. I'm just trying to explain the difference between a news source, and source of story ideas.)
Hey guys, don't think for a minute that I expect WDAZ to credit this blog when they air a story that I "scooped". It would be foolish and totally unrealistic for me to expect anything like that. I just get a bit of a kick out of seeing my blog posts end up on the evening news so often. What I meant to get across was that, sometimes lately, I've wondered if the station even trys to get these scoops on their own. It seems like they just rely on some dumb blogger (me) to dig them up for them. Plenty of the things I "scoop" are out there and any media person scouring the Internet and listening to the "word on the street" should be able to find them just as easily as I can.
As far as the commenter who said "Maybe GFG needs to deflate his ego a little bit. We don't see Tuey or the Forum bragging about scoops". Ummm, that would be because Tuey and the Forum are paid to get scoops and I'm just a poor schmuck who does this for a hobby. That's a silly comparison, Jessica...errr...Anonymous. ;)
I have this dirty little idea that I should post something totally fabricated and see if it ends up on that evening's newscasts. That would be really funny...
If you did that, it would not get on the news. Reporters have to verify information first before they can pass it on to readers/viewers/listeners precisely because there is sometimes false info out there.
I agree with Dale on this one. The tipster is not the news. The news is the person/organization that did something significant that affects or could affect lots of people.
On the other hand, if us reporters needed a story bad enough and we could not verify it ourselves, perhaps because it was late at night, we do cite other news media -- WDAZ or the Forum, for example.
In principle, there's nothing wrong with citing a blog, but I think that blog has to have an established reputation and credibility that it is considered almost another kind of news media. For example, if the Wonkette political blog had some juicy allegation that no one else has -- Cheney is gay! -- reporters will not hesitate to cite that Web site.
Wow, Cheney is gay? Who'da thought it?
Gay or not, I wouldn't want the crook sharing my foxhole.
Let me guess: you applied for a job at WDAZ and they laughed at you? That's possibly the only explanation you might have for your ridculous statements concerning them.
So, JLG is the reason that everything in Grand Forks looks like it was built in the 60's. They need to update their look, or the city and UND needs to look at other options that don't make the community look like it was built 40 years ago...
Tu-Uyen said...
If you did that, it would not get on the news. Reporters have to verify information first before they can pass it on to readers/viewers/listeners precisely because there is sometimes false info out there.
So, that's why they were using "spoof" and condescending websites on the "emo" story they ran a bit ago and had the audacity to pass them off as credible sources? Perhaps they need to do some additional resaerch before jumping on a scene that's already half a decade past.
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