Jim Barker video for the Mississippi State University Fred Carl Jr. Small Town Center's 40th Anniversary celebration.
TRANSCRIPT:
- [Interviewer] Can you describe how your idea came about for what we now know as the small town center?
- Let me begin by saying that the thing I recall from all this was the joy that was involved in creating a school of architecture from scratch. So that if you're a designer, and you get to design buildings and, and houses, and things like that. But this was a case where a whole group of designers came together and got to design a school, a curriculum, a lecture series, a culture, a studio culture. And so out of that kind of joy there was an energy, there was an idea of creation. And by the way, all of us involved in that, as faculty members were, in my case, two years out of graduate school. We had no idea what we were doing. We just were flying by the seat of our pants and we were trying everything we could possibly try to see if we could do this the right, do it right, and live up to the opportunity that had been handed to us. And I think the, the starting point for all that was to try to answer the question, how should this school be different than all the other schools of architecture in the United States and Canada, which we sort of linked together there. And we were struggling with that question. We knew that we didn't want to make it look other schools, but we were looking for something that was different about Mississippi, that was architectural, and we began to talk to our colleagues in the English department. And, try to understand how they would look at this. Of course their advice was read Mississippi writers. Read the writers who wrote about, they were from Mississippi. So we started reading Faulkner, and Eudora Welty, and Shelby Foote, and Walker Percy, and, um, and Willie Morris. And William Alexander Percy. These were all people that were from Mississippi. And they wrote about the place that was Mississippi. So we got intrigued about their writing. And then it occurred to me, that what was I doing here? I had been prepared with my degree in urban design, to be in the middle of Manhattan somewhere, studying and working, and trying to shape that environment. So the thought I had was, well, why don't I get all my textbooks out from graduate school, which only two years ago I was in the graduate school. Why don't I get my notebooks, and all my notes, and all my textbooks, and put myself through graduate school again by reading all that and substituting the words small town for the word city. Or small town design for the word urban, the words urban design. So this was a project that took a while. And I spent an hour every day at lunch going through all that material. And mix that together with what those writers were saying about the sense of place that Mississippi had, and we began to discover the beauty of the courthouse square towns around us. These are unusual, we have a few in South Carolina, but none as many and none as carefully thought out, it seemed to me, as what we found in Mississippi. So these were beautiful places. And then I came across some writings, and an article, I think in Architectural Record, about the Texas Rangers in Austin, Texas. They were these very sophisticated designers that wound up in Texas. And they were asking themselves some of the same kind of questions. And they had seen courthouse square towns in Texas. John Haydeck was one of them, I remember. They were overcome by how beautiful those little towns were. They didn't do very much with it necessarily, I don't think. I'm not sure all of them stayed long enough to do much there. But we began to realize that we have stumbled on to a field of study that didn't exist before. And we were intrigued by that. So we began to talk with each other about the fact that well, if we started focusing on these places, we probably would be wise because Mississippi was filled with them, and that would have the staying power of almost a mission that fit the state of Mississippi. So, that's really how, I think the idea began to come together. It came together because we were talking to each other. And we were trying things. We were experimenting. We were, and trying to inspire each other, so what we could do now that we found ourselves all together in this place.
- [Interviewer] Please describe the early publications about small towns that you co-authored. Who had what role in the publications, and how did these books impact the development of the center?
- We realized that we needed a kind of, base, substantive base, to build from. We needed some research, as much as architects can do research about this. And so we approached the National Endowment for the Arts. They were intrigued by this idea of a book about small towns, a way of thinking about this area of study being similar to urban design, but very different from urban design. And so they gave a us a grant. Mike Fazio, and Hank Hildebrandt, and I started down this path, and we knew we had some resources, but we weren't exactly sure what we were gonna do with those resources. And so we talked a lot about two, architects, landscape architects, that we admired. One of 'em was a guy named Gordon Cullen. Cullen had helped dissect environments into pieces and gave names for each of those pieces. As you move from outside a city to inside the city. And then out again. So that sequence was intriguing. And, we also found a device that was developed by Lawrence Halprin, a landscape architect, who actually borrowed it from his wife, who was a choreographer, of how you script where dancers are supposed to be in time and space. As music moves and the dancers move, where are they supposed to be? It's a kind of code. That was intriguing. So, we meshed those things together and came up with a way of analyzing a small town environment from outside. When you first see a steeple of a church, or you wee a water tower from outside, and you move to the heart of the center. In this case a courthouse square town, and then out again. How you could understand that sequence, and how it could be recorded. So we began to do sketches of what those would look like. Gave them names and developed a code for what those experiences were like. And so it looks kind of like, an early, morse code or something. We put it in this book, and we had sketches alongside to make sure people were following what we were actually doing. Our reasoning was we can analyze these towns. Begin to compare one with the other, and get a start on this new field of study, as we saw it, at that time. So the National Endowment for the Arts was so happy with that first work, they made it one of the projects that they thought was their best in a decade. And said here's another grant. Go do some more work. So Mike Bono, and Hank Hildebrandt, and I, start on this second journey. The first book that we produced was called The Small Town as an Art Object. The second wound up being called The Small Town Design Book. And it developed those ideas and theories a little bit further. And they both have a similar format, and have a similar feel I think, to them. But those were the people that were involved, and that's how that all came about.
- [Interviewer] Please describe the importance of the Chautauqua conferences.
- Mike Fazio deserves full credit for that name. The reasoning was that we wanted to find colleagues who were doing similar work around the country, invite 'em to Mississippi, and have them come and talk about the work they were doing. And if we made it musical and played some, music as part of it, sort of string music, and what I mean string music, string band music, more than anything else. And had good food, and lectures, and opportunities to talk with each other, and people presented papers, we would, by the time we started talking about what it would look like, Fazio said that's a Chautauqua. So that's what we called it. Chautauqua in Mississippi. We hosted the first one of those, wondering if anybody would show up, and whether we would get papers. Which we were flooded with papers. Not from architects so much. More from cultural geographers, from writers, from landscape architects, and as we attracted more and more of those people each year, we began to find out what the state of the art was, and what would interest us most. We began to sort of refine these ideas and began to develop 'em. The center of that emerged after a couple of those Chautauqua's. We needed a base within the school that would allow us to do this kind of research, and attract grants, and begin to do some projects. Also along the way, not so much connected directly with Chautauqua's, as people began to understand what we were trying to do. We found some colleagues that were interested in this. Elizabeth Platter-Zyberk, Andrés Duany, they came to see what we were doing. To try to understand the Neshoba County Fair, and how it came to be. And it helped shape I think, their ideas about New Urbanism. J B Jackson came, on his motorcycle, all the way from New Mexico, to see what we were doing, and present some of his work. And we had a number of other interesting people. Dan Camp, who was actually doing projects in Starkville. He was more of a builder and developer. So you put all this in this big pot and mix it up, and you begin to get an energy and some confidence that maybe we were on the right track.
- [Interviewer] Please discuss the context of who was involved in the early days of the center, and how the center was organized and staffed.
- There really was no staff. In the early days. It was, basically the other people, the people involved, were the ones that I've mentioned. And then we began to realize we might could do a graduate program, and begin to try to recruit graduate students, and all of that. So I think as you look across 40 years, you would think that it was organized and began with all that infrastructure in place. We were absolutely making it up every day as we went along. And we were leaping at opportunities, and striving to do good work. But it wasn't because we were well staffed, or well housed, or anything else. We just basically were putting it together like you do a new company in your garage. And then see where it grew from there.
- [Interviewer] What was the importance of the center then and now?
- Well I think, from what I have seen of the work of the center, it's light years from how we made this whole thing up. I mean the work that is being done, I think what's been added I guess, is the idea of extension. Mississippi State, being a land-grant university, has a very active extension service in fields like forestry and agriculture. But what has happened at Mississippi State with the center is, they're beginning, the School of Architecture is beginning to see it as, as the natural land-grant obligation of architects and designers, to actually take in problems into the center, and help solve them. And help address the needs of small towns around the state of Mississippi. The work that I've seen that students and faculty are doing, to address that responsibility as a land-grant school, is very inspiring to me. So it's taking those theories and applying them in ways in which they are really making a difference in people's lives. And these towns are getting high quality consultants that the schools has developed, along with their students and graduate students, to actually make a difference in the communities around the state of Mississippi. Almost all of which, besides Jackson, are really small towns. And that's very gratifying to see that all that work and thinking is now being applied to solving real world problems. And giving the school an opportunity to be a part of that land-grant mission of the university.
- [Interviewer] What is your fondest memory of the center, and or the people involved?
- I guess it would be, the energy. It's like, I had this, this comparison. It's like we were given a big roll of yellow tracing paper. And told to create something. And in our case instead of it being building, it was this school. And decide what its place within the rest of the architecture schools was to be. The energy that was there, the joy that was there, the risk taking. We had a Dean, Bill McMahon, who was such a pleasure to work with. Bill's idea was, we can do anything. And he would cover for us if we messed up. We would try, somebody would come up with some crazy notion within the school. Like creating this small town center. Well, I mean, that had never been done before. And the chances of it being successful were very slim. We didn't have any resources. But what we had was some courage. And Bill McMahon, a dean who, wanted to see this school be distinctive. And so our attitude was, if you came up with a crazy idea, the response of my colleagues and I would be, let's do it. Let's try it. It might not work but let's try it. So my fondest memory was the idea of taking risks. And seeing what the results of those risks likely to be. In my mind, 40 years is not enough span of time to separate the school from that risk taking. I would do everything I could to encourage them to stay new. Just stay, a new school of architecture, for as long as possible. Because out of that chaos comes some wonderful things. The beneficiary of all that are the towns in Mississippi and the students in the school.