Nearly 40 creative research projects by CADC faculty, graduate and undergraduate students were exhibited in the Auburn University Research Week 2014 Creative Scholarship Showcase at the Auburn and Dixon Conference Center, April 15_16. Every school was represented, and projects ranged from the collaboration by interior architecture professor Sheri Schumacher and graphic designer professor Robert Finkel that created the Alabama Workshop[s] Brochure/Poster; industrial design student Ben Travis’s portable coffee press; graphic design student Avenley Horner’s Form Magazine; to landscape architecture professor David Hill’s Phenology project. “The depth, breadth and beauty of CADC creative research is, as Karen Rogers, CADC Associate Dean for Research, describes it, “absolutely stunning.”

Professor Emeritus Steffen R. Doerstling, PhD, passed away on Saturday, April 19. He was 86. Doerstling joined Auburn Architecture faculty in 1966 and retired in 1995. He is survived by his wife Ingrid, his son, Mark, his daughter-in-law and grandchildren. 

The Auburn University Office of Sustainability announced its 2014 Spirit of Sustainability Award winners on Tuesday, April 22.  Judd Langham, PLA, ASLA, LEED AP, a 2007 graduate of the Master of Landscape Architecture program, was one of the alumni recipients and Alexis Harrison, a senior in Environmental Design who will earn a minor in Sustainability, received a student award.  They were selected as “representatives of the larger passion and commitment to sustainability that exists within the Auburn community.”

Several faculty members and graduate students from the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture (APLA) were involved in technical sessions at Advance in Atlanta, the American Planning Association’s National Planning Conference in Atlanta, GA, April 26-29. 

Lauren Waldroop, a senior in the College of Architecture, Design and Construction’s Environmental Design (CADC) program, has been awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to research and study in Germany in the coming academic year. Lauren, who has dual degrees in Environmental Design and German with a double minor in International Business and Medieval, Renaissance and Early Modern Studies, will study with Professor Jan Pieper in the Department of Architectural History at the Rhine-Westphalia Technical University in Aachen, Germany. She will be part of a team of faculty and students conducting a comparative study of Northern Renaissance and Southern Renaissance architecture in theaters.

Graduate Students in the Master of Integrated Design & Construction program in the College of Architecture, Design and Construction won several awards in the U.S. Department of Energy’s Challenge Home Student Design Competition to develop cost-effective zero energy ready homes for mainstream builders. Working under the direction of Professors Christian Dagg and Mike Thompson, the students designed two prototypes for a 1,600 square foot house that costs $110 square foot to build. The students competed against 28 schools from across the U.S. and Canada. The MIDC Orange Team won “Best Design Solution, and MIDC Blue team  won “Best Presentation “ and special recognition for “Subject Area Award: Design Goals” and  “Subject Area Award: Net Zero Design Integration.”The Auburn University Master of Integrated Design & Construction (MIDC) program is one of the only degree-granting programs in the United States that is jointly housed between construction management and architecture programs—Auburn University’s McWhorter School of Building Science and the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture.

On May 16 former Auburn University Urban Studio director Cheryl Morgan  presented a retrospective of Urban Studio work for the AIA Northwest Florida at the Museum of Commerce in Pensacola, Florida.

APLA congratulates alumnus Heather Brantley Stallworth (BArch / BIntArch ’00) and Catalyst Architects, LLC on being presented with the Robert Mills Design Award from the South Carolina Chapter of the American Institute of Architects for the design of ‘Seahorse: A Beach House.’  Amanda Herron Loper (BArch / BIntArch ’05) recently received an AIA San Francisco Merit Award for Interior Architecture  for the St. Frank Coffee shop.

APLA alumni–founded Epicenter recently announced that the Union Pacific Foundation will be contributing a sixth year of support.  The Foundation was Epicenter’s very first supporter in 2008 and is honored to be one of the Foundation’s forty-one grantees to which they awarded over two million dollars this year.