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Montana State University

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The School of Architecture is pleased to announce that Assistant Professor Dr. Susanne Cowan has joined the faculty at Montana State University. She received her B.A. in Landscape Architecture, and her Ph.D. in the History of Architecture and Urbanism, both from the University of California, Berkeley. Her research focuses on the relationship between urban design and the social conditions of cities, particularly regarding participatory democracy as a method for making city planning and policy decisions.

In her dissertation, “Democracy, Technocracy and Publicity: Public Consultation and British Planning, 1939-1951”, Susanne explores how architects and town planners created a forum for democratic debate about new planning policies. She recently completed an oral history documentary film, “Design as a Social Act,” which examines how architects have approached the social needs of users in the design process. In her most recent work, she has been tracing the ways that planning policies in de-industrializing cities have shaped the process of urban decay and gentrification, and what positive or negative impacts urban design interventions have had on social and economic conditions of residents.

Susanne’s interest in participatory design grows from her commitment to professional activism in the design of the built environment, demonstrated in her work as an environmental educator for Americorps, and her training as a facilitator for collaborative policy-making.

Teaching Professor John R. (Jack) Smith, ARCH.D., FAIA, NCARB, received a 2014 Citation Award from the AIA Montana Design Awards Program for his House III project in Hulen Meadows, Idaho and a 2014 AIA Idaho Honor Award.

Associate Teaching Professor Chere LeClair, AIA, NCARB, LEED AP was elected as the Northwest and Pacific AIA Regional Director.

Graduate student, Kluane Weibel, received a Merit Award for her project titled “Artic Dwelling” at the AIA Regional Student Leadership Institute Meeting.  Kluane’s advisors were Associate Professors Maire O’Neill and Chris Livingston and Professor Ralph Johnson.

Assistant Professor Bradford Watson, Associate Professor Mike Everts, and Professor John C Brittingham presented at the ACSA International Conference in Seoul Korea.  Assistant Professor Watson presented “Displaced Territories with Sean Burkholder from UBC, Associate Professor Everts presented “Creating Hybrid Programs and Predicting Their Evolution Through 4D Parametric Analysis” and Professor Brittingham presented “Unlikely Partnerships.”

Professor Fatih Rifki presented “Genesis and Epicenter of Renaissance: Florence versus Istanbul” at the 4th Annual International Conference on Architecture in Athens, Greece.

University of Arkansas

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Peter Mackeith  Begins Tenure As Dean Of The Fay Jones School Of Architecture

 

Peter MacKeith began his appointment July 1, 2014, as the new dean of the Fay Jones School of Architecture at the University of Arkansas. He arrives in the school after a distinguished 15-year career at the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis, where he rose to tenured full professor and associate dean. He is an internationally recognized design educator whose work encompasses architectural design, design research and publication, and exhibition curation and design. He has spent 25 years as a liaison between the design cultures of the United States and the Nordic nations, particularly Finland.

Links to interviews and announcements about Peter may be found here:

Marlon Blackwell, Distinguished Professor and head of the Department of Architecture in the Fay Jones School of Architecture, has received a $50,000 fellowship grant from United States Artists, a national grant-making and advocacy organization. United States Artists awards several fellowships each year, under names such as Ford, Rockefeller and Knight. Blackwell, who was awarded a Ford Fellowship, is one of 34 artists to receive a 2014 United States Artists fellowship. The Fellows were selected from 116 nominated artists living in the United States and Puerto Rico and were chosen by a panel of expert peers in each artistic discipline. Blackwell, honored in the Architecture and Design category, is a nationally and internationally recognized teacher and one of the nation’s most respected regional modernist architects. He is founder and principal at Marlon Blackwell Architects, based in Fayetteville. Blackwell is the second faculty member from the Fay Jones School to receive this prestigious honor from United States Artists. Steve Luoni, director of the University of Arkansas Community Design Center and a Distinguished Professor, was named a Ford Fellow in 2012. The Fay Jones School joins the ranks of Columbia University, the University of California, Los Angeles and Southern California Institute of Architecture for having multiple members of their faculty selected in the USA Fellows program since it began in 2006.

For additional information, see: http://newswire.uark.edu/articles/25586/blackwell-named-ford-fellow-in-united-states-artists-fellowship-program

 

Vol Walker Hall Project Short-Listed for 2014 World Architecture Festival Awards

The home of the Fay Jones School of Architecture – the renovated Vol Walker Hall with its new addition, the Steven L. Anderson Design Center – has been chosen as a finalist in the 2014 World Architecture Festival Awards, the world’s largest architecture design awards program serving the global community.

More than 400 projects from more than 40 countries were short-listed across 31 individual award categories for the festival, to be held this week in Singapore. The Vol Walker Hall project is one of 16 short-listed projects in the Higher Education and Research category. This project is the only one in its category to represent the United States.

For additional information, see: http://newswire.uark.edu/articles/25335/vol-walker-hall-project-short-listed-for-2014-world-architecture-festival-awards


Fay Jones School Architecture Program Receives Eight-Year Reaccreditation from National Board

The professional Bachelor of Architecture program in the Fay Jones School of Architecture recently was granted an eight-year term of reaccreditation by the National Architectural Accrediting Board.

“The team believes that the Fay Jones School of Architecture provides an active learning environment that emphasizes knowledge through drawing, modeling, and experiential design,” stated the visiting team in its summary. “Administration, faculty, and students are committed to design for a new decade that engages community, new technologies, and environmental awareness. The team was impressed with the vitality of the student body, their dedication to community engagement and sustainability, and their passion for architecture.”

In July, the National Architectural Accrediting Board met to review the Visiting Team Report, the product of a three-member team’s visit to the Fay Jones School in February. The directors of the National Architectural Accrediting Board voted to continue full accreditation for the new maximum term of eight years. The Fay Jones School architecture program is scheduled for its next accreditation visit in 2022

For additional information, see: http://newswire.uark.edu/articles/25087/fay-jones-school-architecture-program-receives-eight-year-reaccreditation-from-national-board 

Marc Manack and Frank Jacobus, both assistant professors of architecture in the Fay Jones School of Architecture and co-principals of the architecture firm SILO AR+D, have won an award for their project, the Super Sukkah.

Their project was one of the 10 cutting-edge sukkahs selected in the competition, “Sukkah City STL 2014: Between Absence and Presence.” The 10 winning projects, chosen from a field of 33 entries, were created both by individuals and teams of architects and designers from around the country. The winning projects of the competition will be on display from Oct. 7 to 12 at Washington University in St. Louis. Each winning entry receives a $1,000 honorarium to defray construction costs.

For additional information, see: http://newswire.uark.edu/articles/25417/fay-jones-school-professors-design-among-winners-at-sukkah-city-stl-2014 


Creative Corridor Project in Little Rock Honored by American Society of Landscape Architects

A plan to transform four neglected blocks of Main Street in downtown Little Rock into an arts district has won a 2014 Honor Award from the American Society of Landscape Architects. Faculty and staff members of the Fay Jones School of Architecture at the University of Arkansas designed this award-winning work.

The Creative Corridor, designed by the University of Arkansas Community Design Center and Marlon Blackwell Architect won an Honor Award for Analysis and Planning, one of five awarded. This is the design center’s sixth ASLA award and the fifth that they have received in this category. The ASLA award represents the highest recognition in landscape architecture design and planning open to North American organizations for work underway worldwide. Thirty-four award-winning projects were selected from more than 600 entries.

For additional information, see: http://newswire.uark.edu/articles/25463/creative-corridor-project-in-little-rock-honored-by-american-society-of-landscape-architects


Fay Jones School Partners With Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art

Fay Jones School of Architecture students and faculty have a unique opportunity to be involved with the public display of a 60-year-old house designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville acquired the Bachman Wilson House, built in 1954 near the Millstone River in New Jersey. It has been disassembled and transported to the museum’s 120-acre grounds, where it is being reconstructed. This home is one of Wright’s “Usonian Houses,” a group of 60 middle-income family homes that were typically small, single-story structures with no garage and minimal storage. They used native materials, flat roofs and cantilevered overhangs, and emphasized a strong visual connection between interior and exterior spaces.

In collaboration with Crystal Bridges, Fay Jones School students, led by Santiago R. Pérez, Assistant Professor and 21st Century Chair in Integrated Practice, are in the final “prefabrication phase” of a three-semester effort to design, develop and fabricate a small architectural interpretation pavilion for the Bachman Wilson House reconstruction on the museum grounds.

This initiative is a confluence of “Design-Build” and “Digital-Fabrication” cultures and practices, informed by Usonian principles, into a hybrid DESIGNFAB practice model, championed by Pérez. In conjunction with the Pavilion project, Pérez delivered a lecture at Crystal Bridges titled “Rethinking Wright: Adapting Usonian Principles in 21st Century Architecture.”

In addition, during the fall 2014 semester, Fay Jones School students will analyze and document the reconstruction of the house for inclusion in the Historic American Buildings Survey, under the leadership of professor Greg Herman.

For additional information, see: http://newswire.uark.edu/articles/23407/fay-jones-school-partners-with-crystal-bridges-museum-of-american-art 

http://newswire.uark.edu/articles/24337/perez-to-present-rethinking-wright-lecture-at-crystal-bridges-on-may-21

 

University of Southern California

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Aroussiak Gabrielian presented her research, Mediated Visions: The City Re-Imag(in)ed, at the Mediated City Conference which took place in Los Angeles in early October.  Her paper from the conference was selected for publication in the peer reviewed Journal of Architecture, Media, Politics and Society.  Student work from Aroussiak’s Spring semester landscape studio, Transient Topographies, was exhibited at the Writers Bootcamp Gallery at Bergamont Station in Santa Monica in mid-October.  Aroussiak also served as a facilitator at the 5D Worldbuilding Institute’s, Spaces of Fiction Conference, which took place at the USC School of Cinematic Arts, where she is currently an Annenberg Fellow and Ph.D candidate. 

Jennifer Siegal, Adjunct Associate Professor, gave a GoogleTechTalk and exhibited the AERO-Mobile (a moveable retail environment made of up-cycled parts discarded by the aerospace industry) at Google Los Angeles. Commissioned by the Kaneko museum in Omaha, NE as part of the Truck-A-Tecture exhibition, the project was exhibited at Theatrum Mundi “Designing for Free Speech” in NYC and “To Be Destroyed” at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Toronto.

Vittoria Di Palma has been invited to give a talk on the subject of her new book, Wasteland, A History (Yale: 2014) at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design, as part of the Cambridge Talks IX conference, “Inscriptions of Power: Spaces, Institutions, and Crisis,” which will be held from April 2-3, 2015.  http://cambridgetalks2015.wordpress.com/ 

Drawings and models by Lorcan O’Herlihy have been added to the Carnegie Museum of Art’s permanent collection.  They will be exhibited in early 2015 as part of Sketch to Structure.  This exhibit unfolds the architectural design process to show how buildings take shape. With sketches, plans, blueprints, renderings, and models from the Heinz Architectural Center collection, this exhibition reveals that architectural design, from initial concept to client presentation, isn’t straightforward. Beautiful hand-drawn sketches by Lorcan O’Herlihy show an architect quickly capturing ideas about shapes and color. Pencil drawings of the Los Angeles County Hall of Records by Richard Neutra show a master draftsman at work. And watercolors by Steven Holl of a client’s home render in beautiful detail, on a single sheet of paper, the planned building’s exterior, floor plan, and elevation.

Erik Mar has been designing the new 15,000 sf South Whittier Library since April; it’s targeting LEED Platinum and is now in Plan Check. He will start on the new 7,000 sf Los Nietos Library in November. Both are for the LA County Public Library, and are 2 out of the 3 all new libraries funded by Supervisor Knabe’s $45 million project: Operation Libraries. http://knabe.com/issues/operation-libraries/#.VE0heoeBndk 

On October 9, Ted Bosley moderated a workshop entitled “Authenticity in the Age of Sustainability” at the annual international historic house museum conference (DEMHIST), held this year in Compiegne, France. Attending were colleagues from the National Trust (UK), the European Association of Royal Residences (ARRE), and numerous historic sites around the world.

Neil Leach has recently published an issue of Architectural Design on Space Architecture, together with two papers for the 2014 Acadia conference. He is currently on leave from USC as a Visiting Professor at Harvard GSD.

Texas A&M University

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Professor Shelley Holliday has been appointed by the Department Head, Professor Ward Wells, as the Associate Department Head for Undergraduate Programs in the Department of Architecture, Texas A&M University. Professor Holliday is currently a senior lecturer and has been on faculty since spring 2000.  Her areas of interest include structural steel, structural and material detailing, bridging the architecture/engineering gap, and interdisciplinary design. Professor Holliday has been honored to receive many teaching awards, the latest most distinguished award being the Distinguished Achievement Award for excellent teaching Spring 2013.

University of Texas at Austin

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The School of Architecture received news of a $1 million grant from the Still Water Foundation, an Austin-based foundation that supports the arts and other causes. The award is to support the renovation of the school’s Battle Hall (Cass Gilbert 1910), the West Mall Office Building, and to build the John S. Chase addition to the School of Architecture. 

Associate Professor Emeritus Owen Cappleman passed away in Austin, Texas, on September 25, 2014, at the age of 76. 

The T3 Parking Structure, designed by Associate Dean Elizabeth Danze and Senior Lecturer John Blood, Danze Blood Architects, has won the American Architecture Award for 2014 from The Chicago Athenaeum Museum of Architecture and Design, together with The European Center for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies and Metropolitan Arts Press. 

Two UTSOA faculty members have received 2014 University Co-op Research Awards.

Assistant Professor Benjamin Ibarra-Sevilla was awarded a $5,000 Creative Research Award for “Mixtec Stonecutting Artistry: 16th Century Ribbed Vaults in Mixteca, Mexico,” an exhibit that showcases three cathedral vaults using a 3-D laser point scanner and printer. Senior Lecturer Rachael Rawlins was awarded the $5,000 Best Research Paper Award for “Planning for Fracking on the Barnett Shale: Urban Air Pollution, Improving Health Based Regulation, and the Role of Local Governments,” Virginia Environmental Law Journal. The article undertakes the most comprehensive review and analysis of air quality monitoring, regulation, and health effects assessment on the Barnett Shale. 

Assistant Professor Danelle Briscoe will be presenting the Guadalupe Garage Green Wall project research at the ACADIA 2014 Conference, to be held October 23 to 26, in Los Angeles.   

Virginia Tech

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Assistant Professor Dr. Elizabeth Grant, Ph.D., R.A., is the principal investigator for a grant of $45,000 awarded to The Center for High Performance Environments (CHPE) at Virginia Tech. The grant was awarded by the RCI Foundation to investigate the effect of roof reflectivity on air and adjacent surface temperatures. The EPDM Roofing Association (ERA), the Asphalt Roofing Manufacturers Association (ARMA), and the Polyisocyanurate Insulation Manufacturers Association (PIMA) contributed to the grant award. Elizabeth Grant will be collaborating with Carlisle Construction Materials to conduct the study on the Blacksburg campus of Virginia Tech.

Associate Professor Michael Ermann’s forthcoming book, Architectural Acoustics Illustrated, was awarded the Virginia Society AIA Prize for Design Research and Scholarship. The text, which aims to translate the field of building acoustics into the graphic language of architecture will be published in November of this year (Wiley). The jurors recognized that his submission “covered an interesting and important subject, noting that the content has great depth and could become an standard textbook for architecture education.”

Professor Dr. Markus Breitschmid, Ph.D., S.I.A., is the author of the article “Architektur leitet sich von Architektur ab.” The article was published in the Zurich-based architecture journal Werk, Bauen + Wohnen in its September 2014 edition.

University at Buffalo

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The Buffalo School is pleased to welcome four new architecture faculty members with the start of the 2014-15 academic year. With experience in the practice and academic realms of architecture, urban design and urban planning, these new faculty members come with a shared eagerness to engage Buffalo’s regional context in their design inquiry. See more at: http://ap.buffalo.edu/news/newfaculty_2014-15.html

Shannon Bassett is an architectural and urban designer. She holds an MArch from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design and a BArch from Carleton University in Ottawa. Her research, teaching, writing and practice operate at the intersection of architecture, urban design and ecological systems.

Julia Jamrozik holds architecture and art degrees from the University of Toronto and an MArch from the University of British Columbia. Her research interests focus on public space, public buildings and the role of both playfulness and play in shaping these environments.

Erkin Özay is a registered architect and an urbanist whose research focuses on urban asset distribution practices and their spatial impacts on the city. An Aga Khan Fellow (2011-13) at the Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design, he has also explored the issues of urban conservation, territorial expansion and transportation infrastructure in the city of Istanbul. Ozay received his B.Arch degree from Middle East Technical University in Ankara and his M.Arch II degree from Harvard GSD.

Nicholas Rajkovich, PhD, AIA, focuses his research investigations on the intersection of energy efficiency, renewable energy, and adaptation to climate change. He holds a PhD in urban and regional planning from the University of Michigan, a Master of Architecture from the University of Oregon and a Bachelor of Architecture from Cornell University.

Western New York’s new economic development plan, the product of a major community-based planning effort led by the WNY Regional Economic Development Council (WNYREDC) and Empire State Development in partnership with the UB Regional Institute, has been recognized by the International Economic Development Council with a 2014 Excellence in Economic Development Silver Award. The work also recently received a 2014 Planning Excellence Award for Best Practice from the Upstate New York chapter of the American Planning Association. A “Strategy for Prosperity in Western New York” (the Plan) is a five-year roadmap for the region that responds to Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s restructured, bottom-up approach to state economic development. The Plan, which emphasizes smart growth, workforce development, entrepreneurship and the region’s strategic industry clusters, won the state’s “Best Plan” award in 2011. To date, over 8,600 citizens have engaged in the planning process, which includes annual progress reports to monitor and adapt the Plan. In 2012, as a result of this work, Gov. Cuomo pledged to invest $1 billion in WNY over 10 years to leverage private investment. In response, WNYREDC, with the Brookings Institution, McKinsey & Company and the UB Regional Institute, developed the “Buffalo Billion Investment Development Plan,” a market analysis and investment strategy based on the Plan’s framework. View these plans: http://regionalcouncils.ny.gov/content/western-new-york

Edward H. Steinfeld, ArchD, SUNY Distinguished Professor of Architecture, will receive one of his field’s most significant honors: the James Haecker Award for Distinguished Leadership in Architectural Research. Presented by the Architectural Research Centers Consortium (ARCC), the award recognizes individuals who have “made outstanding contributions to the growth of the research culture of architecture and related fields.” A pioneer and leading scholar in the field of inclusive design, Steinfeld’s research centers on designing products and built environments that are more accessible, safe and friendly for all people, including those who are often marginalized. His research on design for disability is the foundation for accessibility codes and regulations in the U.S., including the Americans with Disabilities Act Accessibility Guidelines. That work is widely cited by other researchers and helped establish UB as a leader in rehabilitation research. Under Steinfeld’s leadership, the IDeA Center (Center for Inclusive Design and Environmental Access) has become an internationally renowned, multidisciplinary research initiative. Steinfeld is the third architect with Buffalo School ties to receive the honor. Previous winners are Dean Robert G. Shibley and John Eberhard, the school’s founding dean. Read more: http://ap.buffalo.edu/news/steinfeld_haecker_award.html

The IDeA Center will be collaborating with the Erie County Department of Senior Services, New York State Office for the Aging, and the County Executive Office to make Erie County more welcoming, friendly, and livable for all ages by joining the World Health Organization and AARP’s Network of Age Friendly Communities. Dr. Ed Steinfeld, the director of the IDeA Center, was joined on Monday, September 22, 2014, by Nancy LeaMond, Executive Vice President of Social Impact at AARP, Corinda Crossdale, Director of the New York State Office for the Aging, and Erie County Executive, Mark Poloncarz, who announced Erie County’s sign-on to the Age Friendly Community initiative at a press conference in downtown Buffalo. The IDeA Center is excited to spearhead the initiative in Erie County by connecting the ongoing local organizations and groups who already contribute to the goals of the Age Friendly Community vision. Here are two stories on the press conference: http://news.wbfo.org/post/erie-county-joins-initiative-focused-older-adults, http://www.buffalonews.com/city-region/erie-county/county-joins-aarp-network-of-age-friendly-communities-20140922

Beth Tauke, associate professor of architecture and associate dean for academic affairs, received the University at Buffalo’s 2014 President Emeritus and Mrs. Meyerson Award for Distinguished Undergraduate Teaching and Mentoring in recognition of her dedicated and inspired service to students over the past three decades. The distinction, UB’s highest award for undergraduate teaching and mentoring, sets the bar for faculty excellence in advancing student potential as young scholars and future leaders. See more at: http://ap.buffalo.edu/news/tauke_meyersonaward.html#sthash.OYZYnwpT.dpuf.

She also published a book chapter entitled “House of Sense Memory,” in Lost in Space, edited by Ekhard Feddersen and Insa Ludtke and published by Birkhauser in fall of 2014. The book is about ways that architecture and urban planning can more thoroughly respond to people with dementia, especially to their sense of orientation and ability to perceive space. In addition, she gave a keynote lecture entitled “Visual Sway: Gender Identity and Color Coercion in Toy Packaging” at The Institute for Research and Education on Women and Gender’s 2014 Symposium: Gender and Color. She discussed the gender coding in toy packaging and possible effects on gender identity throughout life.

Mark Shepard presented at the City By Numbers: Big Data and the Urban Future symposium, organized by Pratt Institute and Places Journal. Symposium participants included Laura Kurgan, Associate Professor at Columbia University GSAPP and Director of the Spatial Information Design Lab, Shannon Mattern, Associate Professor of Media Studies at The New School in New York, Malcolm McCullough, Professor of Architecture and Design at the University of Michigan, and Anthony Townsend, Senior Research Scientist at the NYU Rudin Center for Transportation Policy & Management, among others.

Joyce Hwang and Chris Romano, together with alumni Courtney Creenan-Chorley (M.Arch ’12, MUP ’12), and Peter Schmidt (M.Arch ’14), presented a seminar at the AIA New York State Conference: “New Practice, New Design,” in Saratoga Springs, NY. Their talk, “Cross-Profession Practices: Mixing-up the Academy with Industry,” centered on models of research and practice that have emerged from collaborative work between the University at Buffalo School of Architecture and Planning, Rigidized Metals, and Boston Valley Terra Cotta. Joyce also participated as the representative for B/a+p on the “NYS Schools of Architecture Roundtable,” together with Lance Jay Brown (CCNY), Dennis Andrejko (RIT), Frank Mruk (NYIT), and Mark Mistur (RPI). More information here: http://www.aianys.org/main/convention_conferences.shtml. Associate Professor Hwang, Sean Burkholder, Chris Romano, and Nick Bruscia also presented their work as part of the Worldwide Storefront Circus for Construction event at Silo City in Buffalo. Trenton Van Epps (B.S. Arch ’14) was also involved in organizing this event, as the Circus for Construction’s Buffalo liason. See here for more information: http://www.circusforconstruction.com/, http://storefrontnews.org/programming/events?preview=true&e=620. Photos of the event are here: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1483192755298906.1073741832.1453617868256395&type=1.

Georg Rafailidis was selected to participate as part of the “Affordable Living” group in the Slovenian Design Biennale, which opened on September 18th, at the Museum for Architecture and Design MAO in Ljubljana, Slovenia. The project, “Continual House,” by Davidson Rafailidis, earned a favorable mention in Louise Schouwenberg’s review on Dezeen:http://www.dezeen.com/2014/10/09/louise-schouwenberg-opinion-bio-50-social-future-design-fairs/. Rafailidis and his partner Stephanie Davidson were commissioned to develop a piece for the current exhibition at the Harbourfront Architecture Gallery in Toronto, Ontario, which opened on September 26th. The exhibition theme is “Suburbia,” and Davidson Rafailidis was recruited based on their 2011 competition win, “Free Zoning,” which developed a proposal for regeneration on the site of Buffalo’s Central Park Plaza Strip Mall. http://www.harbourfrontcentre.com/visualarts/2014/architecture-exhibition-fall-2014/

Rafailidis will also present a paper on “Space and Structure” at the ACSA Fall conference, “WORKING OUT: thinking while building” at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada, on October 18th.

Construction for the new Gimeno Guitart’s Santa Maria Church and Parish Center started in Tarragona, Spain, in September. The project consists of two buildings and amounts to almost a total 30,000 sf. Construction is scheduled to finish in about 12 months. The building will eventually become a social and urban landmark within this area of the city, near Barcelona. More info. http://gimenoguitart.com/en/projects/santa-maria-parish-center/. Miguel Guitart also had his research text “The Failed Utopia of a Modern Vernacular: Hassan Fathy in New Gourna” selected for publication at the Journal of Architectural Education JAE 68:2, entitled Building Modern Africa, with David Rifkin, Florida International University, and Itohan Osayimwese, Brown University, as Theme Editors.

Jin Young Song is selected as a speaker for the Design Like You Give a Damn : LIVE! , as a part of 5th Annual Humanitarian Conference by Architecture for Humanity at Dwell Design on NY. Design Open Mic at the conference presentation features emerging and established designers and architects presenting their humanitarian projects.

http://architectureforhumanity.org/content/dlygad-design-open-mic-2014

Shannon Bassett’s design research “Speculative Surfaces for the Chinese Eco-City” exhibited at the Hong Kong Shenzhen Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism and Architecture (2011-2012) which recently featured in the ensuing book publication, “Learning from Tri-ciprocal Cities” The Time, the Place, the People 2011-2012″ which was published in Spring 2014 by ORO Editions, Edited by Gene Kwang-Yu King and Anderson Lee. Bassett was also faculty advisor to the competition scheme “The Wall”, which recently received an honorable mention in the recent International Beijing Cityvision Competition 2014. This was judged by an international jury which had as president Ai Weiwei, along with Greg Lynn, Sou Fujimoto, Eric de Broches des Combes and Andrea Bartoli.

University of Oklahoma

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The Division of Architecture (DivA) recently appointed the following faculty as new administrative positions: Marjorie P. Callahan as Associate Director of Faculty Development, Anthony Cricchio as Associate Director of Curriculum Development, and Dr. Stephanie Pilat as Associate Director of Student Development.

Associate Professor of Architecture Marjorie P. Callahan, AIA received an Ed Cline Faculty Development Award Spring 2014. The award funded research conducted at Carnegie Mellon University with noted scholar Dr. Omer Akin exploring how University environments shape teaching and learning. Marjorie was recently appointed the in-house IDP Education Coordinator and advisor to the newly formed DivA student organization Architectural Virtuosi, a student organization focused on assisting students through the IDP process.

In association with the Bruce Goff Chair of Creative Architecture, Assistant Professor Dr. Catherine Barrett, AIA is chairing the 2014 Creating_Making Forum, November 5-7. This year’s forum builds upon the discourse introduced at the inaugural 2010 Creating_Making Forum.  Featured speakers include Dr. Robert Fishman, OU DivA Director Hans Butzer, and Andrew Freear. For more info, visit: http://www.ou.edu/architecture/centers/creating-making.html

Associate Professor David Boeck, AIA and Assistant Professor Dr. John Harris (Division of Regional and City Planning) led a student service-learning initiative to Zambia, Africa Summer 2014. David also gave a presentation titled Aging in Place to a group of senior citizens in Stillwater, Oklahoma September 2014. As advisor to the College of Architecture (CoA) student organization NOMAS, David escorted the student competition team to Philadelphia for the 42nd Annual NOMAS Conference.

Assistant Professor Daniel Butko, AIA collaborated with Russ Berger Design Group (RBDG) Summer 2014 on a variety of acoustical design projects including a 7,000 sf multi-studio facility. Daniel’s ongoing research with RBDG has shaped his professional and academic investigations, including the curriculum for his biannual Architectural Acoustics seminar titled The Sound of Shaped Space. As a member of the OU CoA Compressed Earth Block (CEB) Research team, Daniel is currently collecting thermal, energy, and acoustical data from both recently completed CEB and adjacent wood-framed residences. Daniel will present conclusions based on recent data in a paper presentation at the Acoustical Society of America (ASA) conference October 2014. Daniel continues his role as advisor to the CoA student organization Design-Build Society (DBS) as they prepare for their first community-based service-learning project of the 2014/15 AY. As part of the DivA’s Bridging Cultures Program, Daniel led a three-day visit to Kansas City, MO September 2014 for the 4th year Undergraduate and 3rd year Graduate students. The group of 46 students and 3 faculty toured numerous firms, buildings, and site options for the semester mixed-use design project. 

Director Hans Butzer, AIA through his practice Butzer Gardner Architects recently published the North Downtown Redevelopment Plan for Oklahoma City. The plan explores the relationship of development opportunities with transportation improvements including streetcar routes and a bicycle boulevard. Hans also lectured at the Oklahoma District Council of the Urban Land Institute.

Associate Professor Anthony Cricchio, RA was promoted to Associate Professor upon receiving tenure. Anthony also serves as Coordinator of College of Architecture International Programs, overseeing bridging cultures experiences. 

Associate professors Anthony Cricchio, RA and Nickolas Harm, RA were instructors for the annual Playhouse Parade project in which students design and build a playhouse for CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocates) of Oklahoma County. This is the fifth year CoA students have designed and constructed a playhouse for CASA’s raffle to raise support for local children in need. The collaborative course included 8 students of various year levels, Building Facility Manager Jerry Puckett, and Creating_Making Lab Manager Hunter Roth.

Associate Professor Lee Fithian, AIA joined with Associate Tammy McCuen (Division of Construction Science) as advisors to the third place team at the National Design-Build Institute of America (DBIA) annual student competition October 2014. Lee recently returned with an interdisciplinary group of students as part of the Spring 2014 semester Rome Program. Lee and her CoA students collaborated with an Italian elementary school to design and construct a rainwater collection system as the service-learning component of this annual bridging cultures experience. Professor Nickolas Harm and 20 students from the Divisions of Architecture and Interior Design are preparing for the Spring 2015 semester in Rome.

The CoA Institute for Quality Communities hosted Oklahoma’s 26th Annual Statewide Preservation Conference in June under direction of Wic Cary Professor and Director of Small Town Studios, Associate Professor Ron Frantz, AIA. Ron was also a speaker during the conference.  For more information, visit http://okpreservationconference.wordpress.com

Assistant Professor Dr. Stephanie Pilat completed the book titled “Reconstructing Italy: The Ina-Casa Neighborhoods of the Postwar Era.” This book, published by Ashgate Publishing Limited, traces the transformation of the Italian nation through an analysis of the Ina-Casa plan for working-class housing, established in 1949 to address the employment and housing crises. As a recipient of the Wolfsonian-FIU Fellowship, Stephanie conducted research in residence on a new project titled “Shaping the Body Politic: Architecture for Youth and Sports in Fascist Italy.” Stephanie is also the recipient of The University of Oklahoma, CoA 2014 Outstanding Educator Award.

Joining the DivA faculty Fall 2014 are Assistant Professor Dr. Shideh Shadrahan to lead instruction on structural design in architecture, Assistant Professor Bob Pavlik, AIA to shape pedagogical strategies for digital haptic fabrication techniques and beginning design, and Associate Professor Jay Yowell to enhance the integration of sustainability and ethics in design and systems courses. Award winning practitioners Debra Richards, AIA and Geoff Parker, AIA serve as adjunct faculty for the 2014/15 AY.

In other program news, the CoA is now offering a PhD in Planning, Design, and Construction as of Fall 2014. The CoA recently awarded over $110,000 in 40 scholarships to 90 students from all disciplines (Architecture, Construction Science, Interior Design, Landscape Architecture, Regional & City Planning, the Tulsa Urban Design Studio, and Environmental Design). The CoA also recently honored Academic Counselor Suzanne Robinson with OU CoA 2014 Jerri Hodges Bonebrake Award, named after Bruce Goff’s long-time assistant.

Licensure at Graduation and the Known Unknowns

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by Michael J. Monti

We are hoping that a number of programs may wish to take the next step to allow students the ability to complete the entire IDP process as well as the Architect Registration Examination® (ARE®) over the course of their studies.

– NCARB

If you haven’t seen it already, NCARB has asked for a formal response from accredited and candidate schools about its Licensure at Graduation initiative. So like it or not, it’s happening, and here’s why you should be talking about this complex issue at your school and why you should tell NCARB what you think.

Schools influence the profession when we speak clearly. This happens at the local level and at higher scales. The problem is that clarity overcomes complexity only through sustained and open debate. When we in academia don’t air out the issues, our beliefs become muddled, and inevitably the result is that the profession will “influence” us, as NCARB’s initiative may do.

Their Request for Interest and Information asks schools to report by October 31 on their “interest level and readiness to design and develop an integrated path leading to licensure at graduation encompassing the NCARB requirements of education, experience, and examination.”

Since its announcement in June, the Licensure at Graduation initiative has drawn both praise and jeers. Some of the jeers misunderstand the purpose of the initiative, which does not intend to replace existing architecture curricula or paths to licensure. Other jeers come from the realization that we don’t exactly know what this initiative means for architecture schools, faculty, and students. Licensure at Graduation poses a series of interconnected questions whose answers we know we don’t know:

  • How many students would do it?
  • Would students have to stay in school longer?
  • Are enough jobs available to support every student who wants one? (Paid jobs, ahem.)
  • If other schools do it, will my school lose a competitive edge if it does not?
  • If other schools do it and compromise their commitment to educating students, rather than training them, will architectural education suffer?
  • Will those jobs allow students to satisfy IDP requirements by graduation?
  • Will my curriculum change radically to satisfy the training needs of graduates?
  • Is a license to design buildings too small a target to shoot for in architectural education?
  • What does it mean to ‘teach to the test’?
  • Will my institution permit it?
  • What role will my state registration board have in making this work?
  • What does this do for my NAAB accreditation?

And so on…

One merit of NCARB’s approach is that it wants to understand what its integrated path means for your school. They need to hear from schools that will not pursue this option as much as from those that will.

Licensure at Graduation will not be for everybody, but until NCARB (and the rest of the profession for that matter) understands how and why schools will and will not pursue this outcome, relative silence from the schools will generate confusion and will hamper schools’ ability to work with the profession over the long term.

We have long known that the Licensure at Graduation path existed. We have talked for decades about integrating education and practice. Now the fallen logs and overgrowth have been cleared through sustained efforts to think about redundancy and complementarity in NAAB Student Performance Criteria, IDP requirement areas, and ARE divisions.

It is time to use this opportunity to respond to NCARB and to share those responses among our members, so that we can continue talking not just about licensure, but about practice in all its forms.

 

NCARB’s Request for Interest and Information can be found here. If you wish to also share your school’s response with ACSA, we will make an aggregate report during the November 6 Administrators Conference session on Licensure at Graduation. Send your response to Michael Monti, mmonti@acsa-arch.org. These will be kept confidential, unless otherwise specified. 

University of Southern California

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100 Years of Architecture at USC!  2014 marks the exciting milestone of educating the 100th class of students at USC Architecture. These 100 classes have produced more than 5,000 alumni who are advancing modernism, prefabrication, sustainability and urban design. The students in these 100 classes have been mentored by faculty members who are leaders in modern architectural design, construction and conservation excellence, and who have developed a multidisciplinary perspective on the design of projects in urban settings. USC Architecture is proud to have been the first accredited architecture school in Southern California, and the first in the west to teach a curriculum focusing on modernism, highlighted by a faculty supporting the Case Study House Program through teaching, research and practice. To commemorate the centennial, 2014 will be marked by several once-in-a-century events, including a lecture series, special scholarship announcements and the launch of a fundraising campaign. USC Architecture is known for real-time design, focused on the now. Our centennial is another opportunity to move from thinking to building, from students to leaders and from Los Angeles to the world. These concepts will guide us as we begin our next 100 years.

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