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Miami student architects part of AIA Prize-winning project

12/01/2006

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Venice on Vine

Miami University architecture students participated in a collaborative project in Cincinnati's Over-the-Rhine that received a merit award from the Cincinnati Chapter of the American Institute of Architects (AIA).

Community leaders, individual architects, two architectural firms, two community based non-profit organizations and more than 40 architecture students from Miami and the University of Cincinnati worked on the winning project, Venice on Vine.

A pizza restaurant and non-profit facility, Venice on Vine opened this fall at 1301 Vine St. It is a program of the non-profit Power Inspires Progress, which provides job training and employment readiness for low-income residents through operating the restaurant and a catering facility.

Miami students, as part of the Center for Community Engagement in Over-the-Rhine directed by architecture and interior design professor Thomas Dutton, worked on the restaurant's storefront that became offices and administration. "Basically what we inherited was a brick room with some plaster remaining and a sub floor," said Dutton. Students designed and built cabinets, a continuous counter-desktop, artwork, new floor, white walls and new lighting. "The students also used steel studs, hung from the ceiling horizontally, to bring the scale down in the room to a more intimate level," added Dutton.

Miami professor Robert Bell also worked on the project.

Other partners sharing the AIA award include: U.C. School of Architecture and Interior Design students taught by Terry Boling and Tom Bible, U.C. Niehoff Urban Studio in Over-the-Rhine instructed by architect Carrie Biedelman, U.C. Community Design Center with funding from the U.C. Institute for Community Partnerships under the supervision of project architect Frank Russell, the non-profit building sponsor ReStoc and local architecture firms KZF and Brashear Bolton.

The 2,400-square-foot project includes a pizza and catering kitchen, dining area and office training room in the storefront of a three-story historic mixed-use building.