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Using Neatline to bring research to life; a collaborative project at the University of Virginia

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Barbara Opar and Barret Havens, column editors

June column written by Rebecca Cooper Coleman, Architecture and Instruction Librarian, Fiske Kimball Fine Arts library and Ronda Grizzle, Project Management & Training Specialist, Digital Research & Scholarship, University of Virginia

In the Fall semester of 2014, seventeen students enrolled in On Haj with Ibn Jubayr: Reconstructing the 12th Century Mediterranean.  The course, cross-listed as both an architectural history and art history seminar, focused on the writings of 12th century Muslim Ibn Jubayr as a starting point for broader exploration of the visual culture associated with pilgrimage and Mecca.  Final projects in the class consisted of online exhibits created using Neatline, which was developed in the University of Virginia Library Scholar’s Lab, and is described as “a geotemporal exhibit-builder that allows you to create beautiful, complex maps, image annotations, and narrative sequences from collections of archives and artifacts…”  Successful integration of Neatline into the course required collaboration between faculty member Lisa Reilly, course teaching assistant Elizabeth Mitchell, Scholar’s Lab technical trainer Ronda Grizzle and GIS specialist Kelly Johnston, and Architecture Librarian Rebecca Cooper Coleman.  Through their work with Neatline, students brought their research to life, using the tools and methodologies of the experimental humanities to create coherent narratives on their themes.  Students also learned to navigate primary sources and negotiate issues of intellectual property while curating their work for the web.  The collaboration between faculty and the Library in shaping and executing the assignment promoted numerous learning objectives that stretched far beyond the course title and allowed students to acquire skills that will continue to serve them as scholars.

The exhibits can be viewed here.

Your Jurisdiction and You

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By Michael Monti, ACSA Executive Director

Expect cautious optimism over the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards (NCARB) endorsement of a path for students to earn an architectural license and a professional degree together. The decision last week sets in motion a process to get the first students underway. The idea is easy to get behind, but for these plans to succeed, schools and state licensing boards will need to collaborate. A change to a licensing regulation may be necessary, but alone it is not sufficient. Licensure upon graduation will instead require substantial commitments from schools and the profession.

From the schools it starts with a commitment to design a curriculum that adds professional competency—attested to by the license—as one of its outcomes. This drastic expansion in scope should not be underestimated. Schools and the profession will have to build and sustain a system to move students along a path that will take 10 years to bring to maturity.  

From the profession there must be a commitment to employ students regularly. This is not an infusion of free labor, it is more like a compact between firms and schools to have ongoing conversations about the experiences that students will get while working. 

The path to licensure is greatly streamlined when students satisfy educational and licensing requirements at the same time. Students seeking a license at graduation may need additional support.

Students must be confident that employment opportunities early in school will be in supply. During the contraction of the profession in 2008 and the years after, architecture programs faced real difficulties matching students and employers. Students looking for a job will have to be savvy about finding the right match. Firms taking students will have to adjust, as well. Interns need IDP experience across a number of work areas, and architecture schools typically define in advance the educational outcomes that work in a professional office will occasion. In other words, what happens in the office will have to be purposely educational.

A clear path to being an architect starting after high school is a potential game changer, but only with a lot of coordination, transparency, and frank assessments of the costs and benefits will it succeed. Start by looking where you live to see what the state requirements for registration are. What degree is required for registration? When can someone start taking the ARE? Are additional requirements in place?

If you’re lucky, you, too, could live in a state that wants your school to be responsible for both the education and the training of architects.

Washington University in St. Louis

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Assistant professor Catalina Freixas will present “Eco-urbanism: Sustainable Strategies for Vacant Land in St. Louis” at 1p May 29 as part of EDRA45NewOrleans. Co-authored by senior lecturer Pablo Moyano, the paper introduces WUSTL’s Sustainable Land Lab initiative, which showcases strategies that can transform vacant land into assets that advance sustainability. Specifically, the paper looks at the five projects that have been implemented, as well as HUB: Hybrid Urban Bioscapes, a finalist proposal focused on a synergistic approach to eco-urbanism.

Assistant professor Chandler Ahrens (SlrSrf Residence) was featured in the 2014 AIA Center For Emerging Professionals Annual Exhibition, which promoted the compelling work of the rising generation of architects and designers.

Assistant professor Catalina Freixas was among the presenters at The Mediated City conference in London, which examined the city as a virtual, filmic, social, political, and physical construct. Freixas shared the paper “Shrinking Cities: A Sustainability Assessment of Eco-Urbanism Strategies,” which she authored with senior lecturer Pablo Moyano. 

The keynote speakers for this year’s St. Louis Earth Day Symposium included John Hoal, associate professor and chair of the Master of Urban Design program, and Derek Hoeferlin, assistant professor. In addition, as part of the Biodiversity session April 1, senior lecturer Pablo Moyano presented on Eco-Urbanism in a Shrinking City: A Quantitative Sustainability Assessment, a paper he co-authored with assistant professor Catalina Freixas, and adjunct lecturer Mikey Naucas, BS03, MArch/MLA12, co-presented on A Tree Master Plan for Washington University in St. Louis: Maintain, Enhance, Transform.

Professor Stephen Leet’s work was featured in an installation titled dec*o*ra*tive dip*tychs, trip*tychs, and an arm*co  : sophisticated wall art for the swank modern home at Centro Modern Furnishings in St. Louis. “Drawing on the artist’s experience as a former auto body painter and his contact with Arte Povera, conceptual, process and minimal art while at NSCAD in the 1970s, [professor Stephen] Leet’s most recent works are formally rigorous and knowing mash-ups of diverse influences from both high and low culture. Formats are drawn from diptych/triptych medieval altarpieces, renaissance proportion systems, Bach, 12 bar blues, and the repetitive patterns of window openings on walls. The various arrangements of alternating vertical color bars and intervals between panels recall post-war abstract parallel stripe painting, nautical signal flags, the universal barcode, gestalt figure/ground reversals, military campaign ribbons, and regiment neckties.” –Edoardo Persico, Avalanche.

Assistant professor Kees Lokman has been shortlisted for the 2014 Prix de Rome Architecture, the oldest and largest Dutch prize for architects and visual artists under the age of 40. In putting together this shortlist, the international jury considered the quality of the work and its potential to grow and make an important contribution to architecture in the Netherlands. Each of the nine nominees receives a budget and is given three months in which to devise and work out an assignment given by the jury. 

Eleven artists/artist groups–including assistant professor Chandler Ahrens and Aaron Sprecher–transformed Indianapolis Art Center’s ArtsPark into an outdoor gallery through the creation of temporary installation art for Installation Nation. Designed by Ahrens and Sprecher, “White out” explored the idea of difference and singularity through the process of embedding disparate geometries and objects under a homogenous white skin. The perception of difference is transformed when multiple unique geometries push and deform the surface while the white elastic skin attempts to pull the parts back into a cohesive singular object. The result starts to white out or reduce clarity of difference, similarly to overexposure in photography.

A commemorative piece by assistant professor Patty Heyda is included in a book that has been published on the life and work of her former mentor in the Czech Republic, architect Jiri Stritecky of Atelier 8000, who died in 2012. The book was launched together with a retrospective exhibition of his work that opened April 30 at Jaroslav Fragner Gallery in Prague.

Associate professor Zeuler R. Lima delivered a series of lectures about his book Lina Bo Bardi, the first comprehensive monograph about the work and life of the Italian-born Brazilian architect. Venues included Museo Marino Marini (Florence, Italy), Istituto Universitario di Venezia (Venice, Italy), Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna (Rome, Italy), and The Berlage Center for Advanced Studies in Architecture and Urban Design at Delft University of Technology (The Netherlands).

John Hoal, associate professor and chair of urban design, and Derek Hoeferlin, assistant professor, are co-principal investigators for “Climate Adaption Performance Model for Fluvial Zones along the Mississippi, Missouri and Illinois Rivers in the Midwest,” which has received $26,600 in funding from Washington University in St. Louis’ International Center for Advanced Renewable Energy and Sustainability (I-CARES). The research project is an extension of work they initiated for MISI-ZIIBI: Living with the Great Rivers. Hoal and Hoeferlin are looking to develop a Climate Adaptation Performance Model (CAPM) to be the framework for future multidisciplinaryMISI-ZIIBI workshops that will continue collaborations with numerous partners.

Rod Barnett has been appointed chair of landscape architecture in the Graduate School of Architecture & Urban Design and Washington University in St. Louis, effective July 1, 2014. Barnett is a noted scholar, educator, researcher, and designer. He was recently chair of the graduate program in landscape architecture at Auburn University, and before that held similar positions at Unitec in Auckland, New Zealand. He teaches studio and courses in theory, history and drawing, and was selected as one of the top twenty design educators by DesignIntelligence in 2012. He received his PhD from the University of Auckland, where he researched the potential of nonlinear dynamical systems science to inform landscape architectural design and practice. As part of his studies he developed a self-organizing approach to urban development called Artweb, a multidisciplinary design and planning strategy that focuses on marginalized and underutilized urban terrains to create a network of arts and science projects throughout the city. Barnett has written extensively on themes developed from his work in nonlinear design, including re-examinations of historical landscapes such as the sacred groves of ancient Greece, and reinterpretations of art-historical tropes, such as the medieval garden of love. He also has studied landscape systems as emergent conditions in sites as far-flung as the coastlines of Fiji and Tonga, the Mississippi Delta, and the stone alignments of Carnac in Brittany, France. Although he has spent many years in practice, developing projects both large and small, public and private, he now maintains an experimental practice that culminates in competitions and exhibitions. Recently he published Emergence in Landscape Architecture (Routledge, 2013).

 

 

Licensed at Graduation: NCARB Endorses Plan for Architecture Students to Complete IDP, Examination While in School

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On Friday, the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards (NCARB) announced their endorsement of a new path for architecture students —licensure upon graduation from an accredited program. Developed by the Licensure Task Force, a group comprised of leaders from NCARB, AIA, AIAS, NAAB and ACSA, this new track would integrate internship and examination requirements into the years spent completing a professional degree in architecture. 

This proposal would offer certain benefits, among them, shortening the timeline to licensure for students who know their career path in advance and adding more opportunities to bring people into the profession early in their educational careers. “While licensure upon graduation may not work for all schools or all jurisdictions,” said ACSA president Norman Millar, “we laud NCARB’s collaborative process with schools, students, and the profession to facilitate licensure.”

Millar, who represents ACSA on the Licensure Task Force, anticipates that this new opportunity will encourage collaboration between educators and members of licensing boards and the profession, allowing for more conversations about the goals and missions of architecture programs. 

Schools will have the chance to participate in the pilot program later this year through a Request for Information, followed by a Request for Proposals in 2015. “We look forward to an open process that allows architecture programs in any U.S. jurisdiction to work with their boards to see if their mutual interests can be advanced” says Millar.

Texas A&M University

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Texas A&M environmental design students presented five design concepts for two state-of-the-art hospitals proposed as part of a giant medical complex to be located in an underserved region of Nigeria at an April 28 event attended by Nigerian investors and dignitaries at Legacy Hall in the Jon L. Hagler Center.

The architecture-for-health studio project, including designs for a an 800-bed adult specialty hospital and a 400-bed mother/child hospital, was undertaken during the spring 2014 semester in collaboration with HKS Inc., the Dallas-based international architecture firm that is working with Thompson & Grace Investments of Nigeria to develop a world-class 100-acre medical service and research complex to be known as the Thompson & Grace Medical City.

The five dual-hospital concepts unveiled at the April 28 gathering were designed by five, four-student teams in a studio directed by George J. Mann, the Ronald L. Skaggs, FAIA Endowed Professor of Health Facilities Design.

A master plan for the multi-use development, created in fall 2013 by three Texas A&M landscape architecture students directed by Chanam Lee, associate professor of landscape architecture and presented to investors last February, also includes a medical school and research institute, conference center, buildings for office and residential use, an elementary school and an artisan village.

In 2014,Texas A&M’s “The Big Event” went worldwide. Numerous public spaces in Europe received “facelifts” from College of Architecture students in three study abroad venues as a “thank you” to their host communities — mirroring the annual Big Event tradition in Bryan/College Station in which students perform volunteer community-beautifying tasks including cleaning, planting, painting and yardwork.

A total of 122 students in Barcelona, Spain; Bonn, Germany; and Castiglion Fiorentino, Italy muddied their boots, turned earth and wielded hammer, nails and other tools. “We are very proud of our College of Architecture students studying abroad this term who have transported the Aggie “Big Event” tradition around the world,” said Elton Abbott, assistant dean for international programs & initiatives. “It’s a great way to show the Aggie spirit to our global partners.”

Design for Pediatric and Neonatal Critical Care, a new book aiding clinicians tasked with planning new pediatric and neonatal intensive care environments, authored by Dr. Mardelle McCuskey Shepley, FAIA, director of Texas A&M’s Center for Health Systems and Design, is receiving favorable reviews.

“Planning for a new pediatric or neonatal ICU is daunting for most clinicians,” said Bob White, director of the Regional Newborn Program at Memorial Hospital in South Bend, Ind. “Few have prior experience, and the skills needed are far different from those they use on a regular basis,” Shepley’s book, he said, “fills this void in remarkable fashion.”

A professor of architecture who joined the Texas A&M faculty in 1993, Shepley is a member of the American College of Healthcare Architects’ Council of Fellows. She published influential books in the healthcare field, such as Health Facility Evaluation for Designing Practitioners (2010) and Design for Critical Care: An Evidence-Based Approach (2009, co-authored with Professor Kirk Hamilton).

The Department of Architecture at Texas A&M University held the 3rd annual Celebration of Excellence on May 9, 2014 at the College Station Hilton. This event, a sequence of presentations and selections from the completing Master’s thesis projects, culminated as a whole-day jury with five student finalists presenting their thesis projects to the entire school. Awards were presented to top students and faculty of the year during the event.

The jury of 2014 consisted of:

  • Velpeau Hawes, Jr. ‘58, head of Hawes Consulting, a member of the American Institute of Architects’ College of Fellows;
  • Smilja Milovanovic-Bertram, associate professor of architecture, University of Texas;
    • Jeff Potter ‘78, former president, American Institute of Architects, member of the American Institute of Architects’ College of Fellows, and
    • Bijan Youssefzadeh, director of the School of Architecture at the University of Texas at Arlington.

“These awards recognize not only our most promising students and their individual accomplishments, but also represent the level of excellence of all our students,” said Ward Wells, head of the Department of Architecture. “The recognition of students and faculty is truly a cause for a celebration of excellence.”

The event is a project of the department’s Council of Excellence, an elite group of department friends and former students committed to supporting and enhancing architecture program excellence, building relationships with students and bridging gaps between the academic and professional worlds.

Clemson University

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 The U. S. Department of Energy selected Clemson University team to compete in the Solar Decathlon 2015 competition. Over the coming months, Associate Professor Vincent Blouin, PhD principal investigator and the Clemson Solar Decathlon team will design, construct and test their house before reassembling it at the competition site in Irvine, CA.

Ulrike Heine has been granted tenure and promoted to the rank of associate professor. Heine teaches classes in design and sustainability and has been recognized more than  seven times throughout the past years as students in her design studio classes won national and international awards for their work in sustainable design.

Assistant Professor Peter Laurence, PhD contributed to A Critical History of Contemporary Architecture 1960-2010 edited by E. G. Haddad and D. Rifkind (Ashgate, 2014) with his chapter “Modern (or Contemporary) Architecture circa 1959.”

Assistant Professor Armando Montilla published his article “Retracing Propinquity and the Ethno[flow]” in Journal of Civil Engineering and Architecture Vol. 2(3), ‘Complex Urbanism’ pp. 142 – 148. Montilla will also present his paper “Suburban Re-structuring and Dense Agglomeration Resilience in the midst of the ‘Ethnocity’: The case of Miami’s Hispanic community ‘Unrooting’ and the Foreclosure Crisis” at the ATINER 3rd Conference in Urban Studies and Planning in Athens, Greece, June 10-13, 2014. 

Assistant Professor Carlos Barrios, PhD presented and published his following peer-reviewed papers: “Navigation and Visualization in Multidimensional Spaces” in Computer Aided Architectural Design Research in Asia (CAADRIA) Kyoto Japan, May 2014; “Parametric Models in Hyperspace” in 102nd ACSA annual meeting. Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture, Miami Florida, April 2014; “A Textile Block Grammar: Shape Grammars in Frank Lloyd Wright’s Californian Textile Block Houses” in Congreso Internacional de la Sociedad Iberoamericana de Grafica Digital, SIGraDi, Valparaiso, Chile, November 2013.

Keith Evan Green, RA, PhD, Professor of Architecture and Electrical & Computer Engineering, presented his Assistive Robotic Table (“ART”) at CHI 2014 in Toronto, and will present the LIT KIT at Design or Interactive Systems (DIS 2014) in Vancouver. Green is principal investigator for both of these NSF-supported projects featuring embedded computing. Green is co-author of Architectural Robotics: Towards an Ecosystem of Bits, Bytes and Biology, forthcoming from MIT Press.

AIASC, its section champions and Clemson architecture students and faculty have received a 2014 national AIA Component Excellence Award in the Public Affairs and Communications: Outstanding Overall Program category for “Kids in Architecture Workshops.” This collaborative project celebrated the coincident centennials of AIASC and Clemson architecture while providing an opportunity for children to explore the creation of architecture through drawing, modeling and a full-size interactive model. A unique aspect of the program was the collaborative teaming: Clemson architecture students and faculty in Genoa (Italy), Charleston and the Clemson campus; AIASC architects from Spartanburg, Greenville, Columbia, Charleston, Hilton Head and Myrtle Beach; and the children’s museums in each of these cities. Professor Lynn Craig and Associate Professor Daniel Harding, Associate Professor Ray Huff and Lecturer David Pastre took the lead.

Lynn Craig, FAIA, RIBA, has been recognized for his 33 years of dedicated service to the School of Architecture. Last year, Craig received the 2013 AIASC Medal of Distinction, AIASC’s highest honor.

Fourth-year undergraduate architecture student Nick Tafel (Senior Lecturer Annemarie Jacques and Lecturer Dustin Albright, faculty advisers) won the AIAS/AGA Ascension Design Competition. The competition challenged students to design adaptable, lightweight wheelchair ramps using galvanized steel to be implemented throughout the country in the AIAS Freedom By Design program. 

Clemson’s School of Architecture is pleased to announce that Associate Professor Ulrike Heine will be serving as the School’s Associate Chair; Assistant Professor Peter Laurence, PhD will continue his leadership as Director of Graduate Programs; and Associate Professor Rob Silance and Assistant Professor Sallie Hambright-Belue will be serving as Co-Directors of Undergraduate Studies.

University of Southern California

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Assistant Professor Kenneth Breisch  is currently at work on a history of the Los Angeles Public Library, the centerpiece of which will be a chapter on Bertam Grosvenor Goodhue’s Central Building, which opened in 1926. “In part and in detail the building recalls numerous ancient styles,” observed Goodhue’s associate architect, Carleton Monroe Winslow, “for no building, particularly a Library, can disregard the accumulation of architectural experience of the past.”  As conceived by the architect, working in collaboration with the poet and philosopher Hartley Burr Alexander and sculptor Lee Lawrie, this “accumulation of architectural experience” can be perceived in manifold and ambiguous ways.  Goodhue’s “modified” Spanish Colonial forms, for example, suggest a plethora of ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern traditions.  Articulated with classical pilasters and pylons that metamorphose into busts of ancient artists and philosophers, Goodhue’s library sits like a great ziggurat in a lush garden.  The central tower, its crowning pyramid sheathed in colorful mosaic tiles, recalls at once Iberian, Byzantine and Egyptian sources, as well as the form of a modern American skyscraper. Alexander’s inscriptions, as well as Lawrie’s sculptural figures, likewise, borrow from Greece and Rome, the ancient Near East, Egypt, China and India, to create a veritable cathedral of knowledge, intended to be experienced as a literary and philosophical journey through history.

Professor Breisch is the former Director and founder of the School’s Graduate Program in Historic Preservation, which, under his leadership, has been the recipient of California Preservation Foundation President’s and a Los Angeles Conservancy Preservation awards. He has taught at SCI-Arc, The University of Delaware and The University of Texas at Austin. Professor Breisch has published numerous articles, book reviews and book chapters on American architectural history, especially in the areas of library design and vernacular building. His book, Henry Hobson Richardson and the Small Public Library in America: A Study in Typology, was published by MIT in 1997.
 
He is the co-editor of Constructing Image, Identity and Place: Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture, IX (Nashville: University of Tennessee Press: 2003) and Building Place: Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture X, which will be published in 2005. He is currently completing a book on the history of library design for the Library of Congress, and is working on a book on the history of the Los Angeles Public Library system. His research has been funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Rockefeller Foundation and the University of Michigan.
 
Professor Breisch has been a member of the board of directors of The Vernacular Architecture Forum and the Society of Architectural Historians, and currently serves as President of the latter group. He has been a member of the Santa Monica Planning Commission and is now on the Library Board in that city.

University of Southern California

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Selected for its embrace of technology and sustainability, the TR+2 StudioHouse in Pacific Palisades, designed by Adjunct Professor Mark Cigolle and Professor Kim Coleman, was the site of one month of events marking the international launch of BMW’s i8 carbon fiber hybrid sports car.

Associate Professor Amy Murphy’s chapter “New Orleans, Nature, and the Apocalyptic Trope” has been included in the recently released Verso publication New Orleans Under Reconstruction: The Crisis of Planning, co-editors: Carol McMichael Reese, Michael Sorkin, and Anthony Fontenot, with a foreword by Mike Davis.  

Professor Diane Ghirardo, Ph.D. presented a paper, “Who is the Architect?” at the American Association of Italian Studies conference in Zurich in May 2014; in April, she lectured at the University of Enna in Sicily on “Women and Space in Early Modern Italy,” and on “Lucrezia Borgia entrepreneur,” at Casa Romei, in Ferrara. 

Vittoria Di Palma’s essay “Empire Gastronomy,” which explores connections between architecture, the outline drawing, and the invention of nouvelle cuisine, has just been published in AA Files 68. 

Patrick Tighe, FAIA, had the privilege of being a juror for the 2014 New York AIA Awards. Jurors included Giancarlo Mazzanti, Kunle Adeyemi, Reed Kroloff, Sheila Kennedy, Sharon Johnston, Robert Campbell, Alberto Campo Baeza, Regine Leibinger and Joeb Moore. An exhibition of the award winning work is currently on view at The Center for Architecture, New York. Patrick Tighe Architecture was awarded a 2014 AIA, HUD Secretary’s Housing Award. The award is granted by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development along with the National Chapter of the American Institute of Architects. The project will be recognized at the 2014 National AIA Convention In Chicago (June) where Tighe will participate in a panel discussion and present the work. Tighe also served as a juror for the 2014 2 x 8 competition. The 2 x 8 honors and exhibits the best work of California’s Architecture schools. 

Scott Uriu’s work has been added to the permanent collection of the FRAC Center in Orleans France for his firms model, drawings, and animation of the project “Animated Apertures”.   Uriu will be featured in the July 2014 issue of Interior Design Magazine for his “Aperture” installation at the SciArc gallery (Baumgartner+Uriu).  

1567 will be Co-Chairing ACADIA 2014 together with Alvin Huang and David Gerber, to be hosted in October 2014 in USC School of Architecture. Keynote speakers include Zaha Hadid, Will Wright and Casey Reas among others. The event will bring together the design community interested in the intersection between design and technology showcasing the fore-front of techniques and paradigms that constitute our practice.  Jose has also been selected as a cluster champion for Smart Geometry Conference 2014 to be held in Hong Kong.  Together with Satoru Sugihara and Sergio Irigoyen, the ‘BLOCK’ cluster will focus in developing a game app, for urban speculation and analysis of the different agencies that determine the urban density of Hong Kong.

Neil Leach has been appointed Professor at the European Graduate School, and is teaching on their new PhD program in Digital Design. He is publishing three new edited volumes this year, including an issue of Architectural Design on ‘Space Architecture: The New Frontier of Design Research’. 

Adjunct Associate Professor Jennifer Siegal’s newest mobile project will be featured in the Truck-A-Tecture exhibition at the Kaneko Museum opening on June 27 in Omaha, NE. In August it will travel and be on display at Google, Venice (Silicon) Beach, CA.

Adjunct Associate Professor Yo-ichiro Hakomori will be leading the Global Initiative Study Abroad program to Asia in the Fall Semester, 2014.  Along with landscape professor Takako Tajima, the two will lead a group of students to Japan and China.  While in Japan, the program will engage in a joint urban design workshop with students from Meiji University School of International Architecture and Urban Design, and the University of Dortmunt, Germany.  In China the group will work with students from the Beijing University of Civil Engineering and Architecture to research preservation and repurposing the traditional Hutong.  The semester will culminate with an landscape urban design studio at the Hong Kong University in Shanghai.

Eric Nulman recently completed a fellowship at The MacDowell Colony. While in residence, Eric worked on the project Mono Environments; Mono Environments was design research on the use of ephemeral ornament (colored-light shadows) to generate a singular spatial aesthetic. Eighteen light patterned environments were created using physical models with custom cut theatrical gels to filter sunlight onto interior walls and floors; these temporary environments were documented in situ with photographs and represented through drawings. 

Rob Ley, Lecturer, recently completed an interactive curtain wall facade as part of the New Wishard Hospital in Indianapolis, IN.  The project stretches 12,000 s.f. and changes color through lenticular articulation in response to the building users’ direction of travel and speed. 

Dr. Travis Longcore (Lecturer in Landscape Architecture and Associate Professor (Research) of Spatial Sciences) was an invited speaker at the USC Center for Sustainable Cities Spring Symposium “Envisioning Drought-Resilient Cities.”  He spoke on “Interstitial Greening for a Drought-Reslient City.”  Longcore was also a quoted expert in the Los Angeles Times on issues associated with alley cleanups.   

Dr. David Jason Gerber is co-chairing this years’ ACADIA 2014 Annual conference titled Design Agency held at the University of Southern California School of Architecture. Dr. Gerber chaired and edited the 5th annual conference on Simulation in Architecture and Urban Design. 

Professor James Steele, Ph.D. has been selected to be a member of the  jury for the International Design Competition for the Noble Quran Oasis, held from May -1 to 15th in Madinah, Saudi Arabia.

Lecturer Mina M. Chow, AIA, NCARB and USC School of Cinematic Arts Adjunct Associate Professor Mitchell Block have won a prestigious documentary grant from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts  for their film FACE OF A NATION:  “What Happened at the World’s Fair?”  An inquiry into national identity and the importance of the vision through the architecture of World’s Fairs, the film introduces the debate about the importance of vision created by architects as part of the immigrant American dream. 

Dr. Joon-Ho Choi, Assistant Professor of Building Science at USC was recently invited to the National Math and Science Competition as a special lecturer. He talked about “How and why to be an engineer/ scientist” for K-12 students. Dr.  Choi will open a new course, titled “Sustainable Design for Healthy Indoor Environments” in the fall semester of 2014 based on his robust research experience with the Workplace 20.20 project supported by the General Services Administration. He will present two of his research papers at the 13th International Society of Indoor Air Quality: “Evidence-based model of building façade features using data mining for assessment of building performance”, and “Visual environmental quality control using human physiological signal in an office workplace”. The conference will be held in Hong Kong in July 7 to 12, 2014. 

Lawrence Scarpa and his partner Angela Brooks of Brooks + Scarpa were named the recipients of the 2014 Smithsonian Cooper Hewitt Award in Architecture. 

Assistant Professor Rachel Berney has been awarded entry into the USC Advancing Scholarship in the Humanities and Social Sciences Grant Writing Mentorship Program. During the 2014-2015 school year, she will develop funding proposals for her new Los Angeles-based research project MOBILE CITIES, under the mentorship of Dr. Ann Forsyth of Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design. 

Assistant Professor Alexander Robinson recently delivered a keynote lecture at a symposium on “Parametrics” at Washington State University. He also presented his recent work in a lecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and presented peer reviewed work at CELA in Baltimore and SIMAUD in Tampa, Florida (by proxy). 

Victor J. Jones, Assistant Professor of Architecture has been newly appointed to the Board of Directors of the Los Angeles Forum for Architecture and Urban Design.

Lecturer Vinayak Bharne’s latest book Zen Spaces & Neon Places: Reflections on Japanese Architecture and Urbanism was released on May 1. The book brings together two decades of Bharne’s scholarship on Japan since his first trip in 1993 as the Asia-Pacific Development Commission Traveling Scholar from India.

Lecturer Nefeli Chatzimina – Founder of X|Atelier Architects – completed construction of a Flagship store for a prestigious Insurance Company in Athens, Greece. Nefeli during the Summer 2014 will be organizing International Architectural Design Workshops in Europe [Athens and Innsbruck]. Selected students from USC will participate in this design academic research with the title ‘Functionless’ using the latest computational design techniques and digital fabrication technologies. X|Atelier workshops are based on Nefeli’s current PhD Research as a selected candidate from the University of Athens in Greece. 

University of Miami

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A distinguished leader in contemporary architecture and urbanism has been named the new Dean of the University of Miami School of Architecture. Rodolphe el-Khoury, who currently serves as Director of Urban Design at the University of Toronto’s Daniels Faculty and is a partner in the design firm Khoury Levit Fong, will join the University of Miami beginning July 1.

An academic with more than 26 years of experience in the field, el-Khoury joined the faculty at John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design in 2005.  Born in Beirut, Lebanon, el-Khoury found his passion early in life. During his stellar career, he has taught at Harvard University, M.I.T., University of Hong Kong, Princeton University and Columbia University among others. 

“I am thrilled to join the University of Miami School of Architecture,” said el-Khoury. “The UM School of Architecture has changed the world as the breeding ground for the New Urbanism. It has an amazing history and continues to have an important role in the field.”   

As a partner in Khoury Levit Fong (KLF) his award-winning projects include Beirut Martyr’s Square (AIA San Francisco), Stratford Market Square (Boston Society of Architecture) and the Shenzhen Museum of Contemporary Art (AIA Cleveland). Recently KLF won international competitions for a planning exhibition hall in Changzhi, China and for the revitalization of Copley Square in Boston. 

“We identified Rodolphe el-Khoury as the new dean of the School of Architecture after an international search,” said UM Executive Vice President and Provost Thomas LeBlanc. “His extensive academic background and experience in the field, as well as his innovative work in imagining how architecture can partner with cutting-edge technology to enhance people’s lives make him the perfect match for the school.”

As co-director of the Responsive Architecture at Daniels laboratory (RAD LAB), el-Khoury, researches architectural applications for information technology aiming for enhanced responsiveness and sustainability in buildings and cities. He spoke at TEDxToronto in September of 2013 about his designs for the “Internet of Things.”  He aims to put every brick online and believes that “embedded technology empowers networked environments to better address the environmental and social challenges we face today.” 

“Rodolphe el-Khoury is a visionary and a top-notch academic,” said UM President Donna E. Shalala. “We expect him to take our School of Architecture to new heights in the 21st century.”

El-Khoury received a doctorate degree in Philosophy and a Master of Arts in Architectural History from Princeton University, as well as a Master of Science in Architecture Studies from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and a bachelor’s degree in Architecture and Fine Arts from Rhode Island School of Design.

Last fall, el-Khoury participated in the fifth annual TEDxToronto conference and spoke on “Designing for the Internet of Things,” viewable online at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcUvg9jcfG8

Virginia Tech

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Henri deHahn, provost for the NewSchool of Architecture + Design in San Deigo, California, will join Virginia Tech in June as the director of the School of Architecture + Design (http://www.archdesign.vt.edu) in the College of Architecture and Urban Studies.

DeHahn will provide leadership to the undergraduate and graduate programs within the school, including the departments of architecture, landscape architecture, industrial design, and interior design as well as the six research and outreach centers housed within the school. 

Virginia Tech’s School of Architecture + Design offers undergraduate and graduate education through the Blacksburg, Va., campus, the Washington-Alexandria Architecture Center in Alexandria, Va., and programs engaged at the Center for European Studies and Architecture in Riva san Vitale, Switzerland.

“Henri brings a wealth of national and international experience from large and academically diverse institutions to the School of Architecture + Design,” said Jack Davis, Reynolds Metals Professor of Architecture and dean of the College of Architecture and Urban Studies.

Prior to his most recent role as provost at the NewSchool of Architecture + Design, deHahn was department head and professor for the Department of Architecture at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, Calif., and has held faculty positions with ETH Zurich — a renowned university in Zurich, Switzerland — and the University of Kentucky in Lexington, Ky., and served as a visiting professor at the Aayojan School of Architecture in Jaipur, India.

In addition to his academic experience, deHahn has worked as an architect and consultant on a variety of projects in the United States and Switzerland.

DeHahn earned his Master of Architecture from the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Lausanne, Switzerland, and his Bachelor of Science from the Collège Saint-Michel in Fribourg, Switzerland. He has completed additional studies in New York. at The Cooper Union and the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies.

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