Nebraska Governor Dave Heineman and UNL Dean of Architecture Wayne Drummond were featured speakers at a December 10th reception showcasing forty-five architectural designs intended to help the rural community of Albion re-pioneer itself for the 21st Century.

The reception was held at 3:30 pm on the first floor of the State Capitol where the designs will be on display, allowing visitors an opportunity to examine the designs and speak with the 15 students who created them. Refreshments will be served in the Capitol cafeteria and all interested parties are invited to attend.

The designs being showcased have been created by German eco-architect and UNL professor Martin Despangs 5th and 6th year students over the course of a semester-long studio entitled Re-pioneering Albion.

Intended to serve as part of Albions comprehensive planning process, the students ideas provide a fresh perspective on ways to help the community grow and prosper in the years ahead.

Albion, the county seat of Boone County in northeast Nebraska, has a population of 1600. Despite having been featured in the Wall Street Journal last spring as an example of a rural community benefiting from an ethanol plant, Albion faces the same problems most rural communities face. These include an aging population and infrastructure and an out-migration of youth. To address these challenges, Albion is reaching back to the vision, passion, hard work and dedication of the pioneers who originally built the community.

For this project Professor Despangs students have made themselves members of the Albion community in order to better understand and appreciate Albions strengths and weaknesses. As a result, the students have become their own clients, allowing them to design from the perspective of Albion residents. The students have sought to build upon Albions character and its past to create a variety of innovative and eco-friendly structures designed to serve Albions future.

The students projects seek to help Albion increase its sense of community, strengthen its cultural institutions, reinvigorate commerce and attract young professionals and entrepreneurs to build not only their businesses but their families in Albion.

Designs include a daycare facility which uses passive solar techniques for climate control, a combination winery/microbrewery, a new library, art galleries and a studio space for artists, an apartment building that generates its own electricity from the wind without a traditional turbine and many other innovative ideas.

The boundless creativity and optimism of these talented students is quite contagious, Albion City Administrator Andy Devine said recently after reviewing the designs. The projects shift ones perspective from the communitys shortcomings to the endless possibilities of what we could become by accentuating the many positives our community has to offer. These ideas provide fuel for envisioning our communitys future.

Because the students ideas could potentially benefit many rural communities, their designs for re-pioneering Albion are being displayed in the State Capitol -- a building known as the Beacon of the Pioneers -- from December 10th through the 17th for people from across Nebraska to see.