Hyattsville Arts District / Four Corners

About the Project:

The ARCH 700 Urban Design Graduate Studio looked at the Four Corners site and the Arts District area in Hyattsville with the intent to understand what problems each of these communities had and how to apply best practices in urban design to each. At Four Corners, the focus was on creating a sense of place and community along University Boulevard where little of that kind of experience existed previously, and at Hyattsville, how to reimagine the urban design of the Arts District and the vacant County Service building so that a more vibrant town center could emerge. Students explored issues such as multi-modal circulation, the city grid, densification through the addition of various building typologies, community place-making, and ‘complete street’ design. All of the proposals sought to integrate new residential and other developments and create a framework for parks and urban spaces that embrace diversity and maintain historic cultural assets.

About the Studio:

Bringing the energy, talents, and enthusiasm of graduate architecture students to real-world problems is one of the most important experiences an educator can provide. The work contained in this report is the result of an intense focus throughout part of a graduate school semester on one of the “wicked problems” of today, and that is making existing communities that have been overrun by poor planning and lack of proper investment in the public realm more livable.

The partnership between the PALS program and the Program in Architecture at the School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation provides ample opportunity for students to learn and communities to benefit from such creative thinking. The Four Corners community in Montgomery County and the Hyattsville Arts District in Prince Georges County have very different issues and contexts, yet both are surrounded by vibrant neighborhoods but each in need of creative thinking that could make them both more livable communities.

We would like to thank PALS and the municipalities for their interest and support and also the graduate architecture students of ARCH 700 Fall 2023 for their unbridled enthusiasm, daily willingness to “try stuff,” and for their insights-some good, some less so but always useful to help define the problem and understand the “art of the possible.”