UNLV center to be celebration of imagination

Friday, July 1, 2005 | 9:42 a.m.

UNLV architectural students this week received what they called an opportunity of a lifetime -- the chance to conceive the initial plans for a center that would embody the work and imagination of science fiction writer Sir Arthur C. Clarke.

Officials behind the tentatively named Arthur C. Clarke Center for Imagination and Opportunity hope to bring the giant monolith from the author's most famous work, "2001: A Space Odyssey" to life in Las Vegas and create an academic center at UNLV that will study and advance the scope of human imagination, Clarke Foundation chairman Tedson Meyers said.

The center will ultimately be in honor of Clarke, Meyers said, but it will also pursue "how imagination can reach that height" that Clarke set in his life's work.

UNLV has signed a memorandum of understanding with the Clarke Foundation to pursue developing the center in Las Vegas, and the 10-day architectural competition that ended Thursday was the first step in developing concrete plans for what the center might look like and what it might include, said Jim Frey, a professor emeritus and the former dean of the College of Liberal Arts at UNLV who is heading up the project for university.

Meyers said Clarke and Clarke Foundation members are attracted to UNLV for several reasons, not the least of which was the warm reception the concept has received from people at all levels of the university and from members of the Las Vegas business community who have expressed interest in donating financially to make the center happen.

But the city itself, with all of the icons on the Las Vegas Strip, is a montage to human imagination, Meyers said.

Clarke, now 87 and living in Colombo, Sri Lanka, expressed similar thoughts in a letter to Frey last October.

"I cannot think of a better place for this center than Las Vegas, where human imagination, creativity and hope combine every day in so many ways," Clarke wrote.

The architecture competition was designed to give the Clark Foundation and UNLV officials some concepts for the center to be able to show to the state university system Board of Regents and possible donors, Frey and Meyers said. The center, which Meyers estimates will cost $50 million to $75 million to build and endow for operations, still needs to be approved by the board.

Frey said the center will likely build upon current programs the university already has, such as creative writing within the Institute for Modern Letters and the new entertainment engineering major. He's leading a team of about 15 to 20 representatives from several disciplines across the university to explore what the center might look like, including professors from liberal arts, fine arts, science and engineering.

The Clarke Foundation wants to help discover and cultivate the imagination and talents of the young in hopes of bettering the future, Meyers said.

The research in imagination conducted at the center will be shared internationally, Meyers said. The center will also be an international attraction with a gallery and museum in honor of Clarke, with the possibility of serving as the home for many of his original manuscripts.

The goal is to also unite the imaginative power of left brain and right brain thinkers, Meyers and Frey said.

The winning design is an ode to both Clarke's most famous work and his synthesis of left and right brain thinking, Vince Novak, the graduate student leader for the project, said.

In the design a giant black monolith, representative of human advancement, and a central staircase unites a building that captures the functional essence of both sides of the human brain, Novak, 31, said.

The left side of the building, like the left side of the brain, is functional and practical. The right side is more creative, with a special glass enclosure that can reflect different images across its interior and exterior walls.

Novak's team, which included undergraduates Frits Bakker, 50, Jane Michael, 21, and Alicia Ziegler, 21, was one of three teams that spent the last 10 days contemplating how imagination might manifest itself in a building. The resulting designs, which students presented Thursday afternoon, were as different as could be, but they all incorporated Clarke's famous monolith.

The sky was the limit for many of the architectural students, who didn't let any concerns for practicality get in the way of their imaginations. One group, led by graduate student Craig Palacios, 33, had its 80-foot by 200-foot monolith building on a bridge running across Maryland Parkway, symbolically linking the university with the future development of the surrounding community and the Midtown UNLV project.

The third group, led by graduate student Drew Gregory, 24, included an underground amphitheater that could at times be covered by water. Various ramps led visitors underground into the center of the building just north of the amphitheater, where a dark monolith burst out of ground, breaking into several chards of light and color.

The sculpture was symbolic of an "explosion of ideas," Gregory said.

The teams were told to ignore rules and regulations in developing their designs, and were told to pick any spot they wanted for the center along Maryland Parkway because officials are not sure where it might go. Meyers said he told them to create an icon fitting for the "city of icons."

The lack of rules was both overwhelming and liberating, students said.

"It's definitely been a challenge," Noga Smerkowitz, 21, said on Wednesday as her team was fine-tuning its bridge design. "How do you create a building for imagination? It's such an abstract concept."

All of the students designed their buildings to help inspire the imaginative process and foster interaction between the university and the community and the various disciplines at the university.

Members of the winning team received $4,000 for their efforts, and the other teams received $3,000 each. Ultimately, different elements from all the designs will likely be brought together in the center, university officials said.

"I think they've done a fantastic job," Mike Kroelinger, director of the School of Architecture, said. "I think what these students have accomplished in a 10-day period is more than you could expect or ever believe."