Associate Professor Chris Livingston and Assistant Professor Zuzanna Karczewska attended an international conference in Delft, Netherlands organized by European Association of Envisioning Architecture.  Chris Livingston’s paper was entitled “The ‘Surgeon-Anatomist’ – Architecture, Medicine and possible trajectories for Visualization within Building Information Modeling” and Zuzanna Karczewska’s “Tangibility and Duration of Drawing”.

Associate Professor Maire O’Neill has an upcoming exhibit titled “Taking Stock – A morphology: field documentation of agricultural buildings” at the Ravalli County Museum in Hamilton, Montana.    This exhibit includes building documentation and interpretive drawings reflecting the evolving building practices of livestock producers and farmers settling the intermountain west.  It includes a typological and morphological analysis and will take place October through December 2011.

A proposal written by Milenka Jirasko was one of three international winners of the Berkeley Prize Travel Fellowship Competition allowing her to research the former Auschwitz concentration camp in rural Poland this summer.  She won a $3,200 travel stipend to allow her to research sacred spaces that are open to the public under the guidance of Associate Professor Maire O’Neill.  Fellow students Carson Booth, Rachel Haugen, Britni Jezirorski and Chris Taleff were among 33 semifinalists selected overall. The prize is given by the University of California, Berkeley and the Berkeley Prize Endowment to enable winners to travel to gain a deeper understanding of the social art of architecture.  

A team of Montana State University students has won a competition to design an 85-foot ice-climbing tower as part of an attempt to lure the 2013 world cup of ice climbing championship to the Gallatin County Fairgrounds in Bozeman. The team led by Michael Spencer of Willow Creek, a recent graduate of the MSU School of Architecture, with Tymer Tilton of Missoula a current architecture student, and MSU engineering student P.J. Kolnik, won the MSU-based competition to design the Bozeman Ice Tower under the guidance of Associate Professor Mike Everts.  Everts says “the winning design is composed of angled climbing surfaces that attach to stacked, side-cycled shipping containers. The containers, in addition to being economical and sustainable, are designed to be temporary lodging for visiting athletes”.  The winning design, which can be seen on the Web, http://bozemanicetower.wordpress.com/, includes a tower that can be used for ice or traditional climbing surrounded by a spectator area that will allow the structure to be used as an outdoor concert venue.

Associate Professor Mike Everts received an Honorable mention for the 2011 NCARB Prize.  The submission titled “The Next Generation of Mountain Architects” was recognized by the jury for teaching students leadership skills, communications skills, and how to participate in the community decision-marking process. With guidance from non-faculty architect practitioners and professors, students researched and designed a culturally and environmentally sensitive community center in Phortse, Nepal near Mt. Everest. Students then traveled to Nepal to work with local officials, contractors, and villagers to dig the foundation and construct critical building component prototypes.