Officials break ground on Center for Design Innovation

The Center for Design Innovation broke ground Monday on an $8 million building that local officials hope will serve as a physical and symbolic anchor for the southern part of downtown Winston-Salem.

The 27,000-square-foot building also will serve as a test — and an opportunity — for determining how well creative and design fields work as engines for a knowledge-based economy.

The building, projected to open in fall 2013, will sit on a 4-acre site off Rams Drive and will be the first building in the South District of Piedmont Triad Research Park.

"The center will be a magnet and a generator of new ideas and new concepts that hopefully will translate into new companies and new jobs," Mayor Allen Joines said. "It will be attractive to the young people we are trying to attract and retain."

The center was established in 2005 as a multicampus research center of the UNC system, the result of a partnership between Winston-Salem State University, UNC School of the Arts and Forsyth Technical Community College. The center has been operating since 2007 at a temporary site in Winston Tower.

WSSU and CJMW Architecture are handling the design and building of the center, and UNCSA will oversee its maintenance and operations.

The center specializes in two areas: motion-capture techniques and rapid prototyping.

Motion-capture techniques support animation for films, video games and mobile applications, as well as improvements in health care related to physical and occupational therapy. The techniques can provide analyses of moving or flexible machinery and movements of people engaging in activities such as dance and sports.

Rapid-prototyping techniques support the design and development of furnishings, textiles, medical devices and other industrial products through a quick-design cycle that includes 3-D modeling.

Carol Strohecker, the center's director, said she hopes there will be 200 to 300 people using the facility on a daily basis once it's fully operational.

"This center is specially designed to have all the right equipment and right kind of space we needed to reach our potential," Strohecker said.

"I am convinced it will bring people here from across the state and beyond because of the tailor-made aspects of our technologies. We will be able to not only do the motion capture indoors, but also have it portable, recording the data and visuals that will create a lot of value."

John Mauceri, chancellor of UNCSA, jokingly referred to the building project "as the center of divine intervention" because it has taken more than seven years to just get to the groundbreaking stage.

But he stressed he believes the center will succeed because it will bring together "multidisciplinary efforts from diverse people to address our challenges."

"The center is a bold idea of boundless opportunity built upon the strengths of our schools," he said.

Dave Moore, design principal for CJMW Architecture, said his firm faces a challenge of designing a building that represents the design circulating within it.

"CDI has a specific program right now, but that will change over time and the building needs to be adaptable to that change," Moore said. "The challenge is to make a physical building as flexible as possible to allow for future programs to happen."

Officials say the building represents the first fruits of a $280,000 economic assessment of Northwest North Carolina released in November 2003 by consulting firm AngelouEconomics.

Angelos Angelou, founder of the firm, urged the region to embrace an economic-development strategy primarily focused on the design sector.

By doing so, Angelou said at the time, it would create economic tentacles stretching to targeted industries such as biotechnology, food processing, hospitality and tourism, logistics and distribution, customized materials production, value-added services and viticulture.

Donald Reaves, chancellor of WSSU, said the center will offer opportunities for education, as well.

"We understand our graduates must have a new set of skills if they are to be competitive and thrive into today's knowledge-based economy," Reaves said.

Reaves said he is confident the center will serve as a bridge "between what we know as downtown and the two university campuses and their neighborhoods."

Pointing to the downtown skyline, Reaves said, "In time, as the South District of the park fills in, that divide will disappear."