Four projects associated with the College of Architecture, Art and Design (CAAD) were recognized at the first American Institute of Architects Middle East Region Design Honor Awards. The jury was chaired by Larry Scarpa of Brooks + Scarpa in Los Angeles, CA and jury members included Lorcan O’herlihy and Alice Kim.

Assistant Professor Bill Sarnecky received a Merit Award in the Interior Architecture category for CAAD’s Booth designed and built for SaloneSatellite 2012 at the Salone Internazionale del Mobile in Milan, Italy. The jury also awarded Sarnecky a Merit Award in the Unbuilt category for the Tarkeeb group design-build project. The project will result in a new entry and display wall at the College of Architecture, Art and Design at AUS.

The jury awarded Assistant Professors Christine Yogiaman and Ken Tracy a Merit Award for Cast Thicket, a prototypical installation that furthers earlier research into tensile concrete molds through the use of plastic form-work and a layered structural network.

The jury also awarded Assistant Professor George Newlands a Citation Award for a contemporary addition to a traditional adobe residence in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Assistant Professor Emily Baker presented her research, Spin-Valence, in a talk entitled “Search for a Rooted Aesthetic” at the Fabricate 2014 conference held in Zurich, Switzerland.  Her paper of the same title is published in “Fabricate: Negotiating Design & Making.” 

Assistant Professor Faysal Tabbarah, in collaboration with Mobius Design Studio, has been awarded first place in the first Maraya Art Park Competition for their entry, Parasol. The proposal will be constructed in mid-2014.

Associate Professor Michael Hughes’ PORCH_house Prefab received an AIA Design Honor Award from the Louisiana AIA and an AIA Design Merit Award from the Arkansas AIA. Hughes also contributed a chapter titled “Constructing a Contingent Pedagogy” to the new book “Architecture Live Projects: Pedagogy into Practice” edited by Harriet Harriss and Lynnette Widder. Publication by Routledge is scheduled for summer 2014.