“In ceremonies and silence we say the words.
We like the places they take us. Mostly we do.
The great and all the anonymous dead are there.
We know the sound of all the sounds we brought.
The rich taste of it is on our tongues.
But where are we going to be, and why, and who?
The disenfranchised dead want to know.
We mean to be the people we meant to be,
to keep on going where we meant to go.

But how do we fashion the future? Who can say how
except in the minds of those who will call it Now?
The children. The children. And how does our garden grow?
With waving hands—oh, rarely in a row—
and flowering faces. And brambles, that we can no longer allow.

Who were many people coming together
cannot become one people falling apart.
Who dreamed for every child an even chance
cannot let luck alone turn doorknobs or not.
Whose law was never so much of the hand as the head
cannot let chaos make its way to the heart.
Who have seen learning struggle from teacher to child
cannot let ignorance spread itself like rot.
We know what we have done and what we have said,
and how we have grown, degree by slow degree,
believing ourselves toward all we have tried to become—
just and compassionate, equal, able, and free.

All this in the hands of children, eyes already set
on a land we never can visit—it isn’t there yet—
but looking through their eyes, we can see
what our long gift to them may come to be.
If we can truly remember, they will not forget.”

— Miller Williams, Of History and Hope

The Urban Design Build Studio (UDBS) at the University of Arkansas Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design represents as reverse trajectory in the context of U.S. migration. Founded in La Ville Lumier of Appalachia, a new plateau in the Ozark Mountains now provides a foundational home. On the Hill, in Fayetteville, Arkansas the work of the UDBS aspires to exercise compassion, demonstrate empathy for condition, and dignify unrecognized culture through design. While in context of a new locus. Work is human centered, place specific, appropriate to cause, scaled to the magnitude of challenge, and replicable. In most cases, UDBS efforts are less about the design of projects as conventionally considered, and about the design of participatory processes that will empower many in implementing work reflective of collective identity. Individual growth, opportunity, and concepts of hope extant in communities prevail as considerations in design. Sensibilities are oriented toward positive futures, extracted from rich histories – of materials destined for landfill - of communities deemed unsalvageable – if individuals beyond redemption. Bold amalgams of optimists utilize the UDBS as a conduit in rebuilding community, restoring lives, and repurposing materials that inherently represent culture. Doors, windows, wall fragments, and trinkets that are never forgotten by individuals become the lenses through which hope is restored – and we remember how the spirit meets the bone.