A group of ASU architecture students will design two new state capitol buildings in downtown Phoenix.
The students will begin this summer redesigning the Arizona State Senate and House of Representatives buildings, which make up part of the capitol.
Last month, five of those same students won $50,000 in an architecture competition in Pittsburgh.
The redesign project originated with House Speakers Jake Flake, R-Snowflake, and Bob Robson, R-Chandler.
Flake and Robson discussed ideas for the buildings with Wellington Reiter, dean of the College of Architecture and Environmental Design, said Cheryl McNab, director of External Relations for the architecture school.
"Some students will open the project and give it direction right now," McNab said. "Then in the fall, more students will work on it."
McNab said the opportunity to help design the buildings would be a great experience for the students.
"They will have an opportunity to make history," she said. "They are going to use architecture to make the legislative body of Arizona work better."
ASU will pay $15,000 to fund the initial design work.
The existing Senate and House buildings are the same size, but the House building serves twice as many officials as the Senate, McNab said.
"It's remarkable the representatives have been as effective as they have been with that building," McNab said. "They've outgrown it completely."
McNab added that the small size of the buildings is one reason why the architecture school had been asked to work on the redesign of the buildings.
Architecture graduate student Matthew Muller said the main idea of the redesign project was to spark collaboration between the ASU community and the state government.
"It's a win-win situation for both," he said. "Students get to work on an exciting and potentially real project, and the state government is tapping into a talented design school to get excellent research and information for their building."
Muller was one of the five students who won first place and $50,000 in the Urban Land Institute Gerald D. Hines Student Urban Design Competition last month.
They defeated three other finalists: Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a team made up of students from Stanford University and University of California-Berkeley.
For the competition, the various teams submitted a detailed plan to improve a 57-acre plot of waterfront land in Pennsylvania.
Reach the reporter at jeremy.a.cluff@asu.edu.
