Ventura (2009)
2009 Ventura Vision is the product of work commissioned by the City of San Buenaventura in the fall of 2009 and executed between September and early December of 2009 as an academic exercise by graduate architecture and urban design students from the University of Notre Dame.
The first design investigations in conversation with Ventura residents and public officials took place during a six-day on-site September 2009 public design workshop, also known as a charrette. Ventura Vision represents work undertaken subsequent to that charrette and proposes images of and guidelines for both present and long-term development in Ventura’s historic center and along its waterfront.
Ventura Vision is offered as a supplement to and in support of the City of San Buenaventura Downtown Specific Plan of March 2007. The Notre Dame School of Architecture’s guiding ideal is a built environment that is convenient, durable, and beautiful. We contend that by being convenient, durable, and beautiful, the built environment also necessarily will be both culturally and environmentally sustainable. We have endeavored throughout to be faithful to the objectives outlined in the Downtown Specific Plan. In the few instances where we propose that Ventura supplement or depart from the Plan, we do so guided by our belief in the congruence of our guiding ideals and the intentions present in the Plan.