Competition emphasizes interdisciplinary teamwork

April 5, 2006

WHAT: 2006 Witters Competition – Student design teams at the University of Florida College of Design, Construction and Planning will compete for a $3,500 prize as each team races to create designs and solutions for East Gainesville’s historic Cotton Club and surrounding historic structures located in the Springhill neighborhood.

WHEN: Teams receive the project at 10 a.m. Friday. They spend the next 36 hours creating their project, and then the teams present their projects beginning at 3 p.m. Saturday.

WHERE: Architecture Building Gallery on the University of Florida campus.

BACKGROUND: In the real world, architects, contractors, interior designers, planners and landscape architects interact with each other every day. In the academic environment, as students learn their specific discipline, they don’t always have the opportunity to work with the other disciplines as they will when they graduate.

The Witters Competition provides this opportunity. Each team consists of a student from each discipline in the college: architecture, building construction, interior design, landscape architecture and urban and regional planning. As each student on the team provides input regarding his or her part of the project, the team learns more about the other professions and the issues affecting their work.

This year’s project focuses on the Cotton Club, which was a part of a circuit of jazz night clubs and ballrooms that booked black singers and musicians in the early 1950s. A number of black entertainers who went on to national fame appeared at the Cotton Club, among them James Brown, B.B. King, Ray Charles and Brook Benton. The club and the surrounding buildings are a significant part of East Gainesville’s history. Read more about the Cotton Club on the Web: http://www.cce.ufl.edu/cottonclub.html.

Established in 1993, the Witters Competition is endowed by Arthur G. and Beverley A. Witters for a collegewide interdisciplinary academic competition to foster better understanding among Design, Construction and Planning students.