We endorse most of the revisions to the Conditions for Accreditation, including the increased emphasis on self-assessment to demonstrate compliance. However, we are concerned about the new language in Draft 1 defining “accredited degrees.” We recommend that NAAB preserve the minimum credit hours for all professional degrees specified in the 2014 Conditions pending a clear definition of qualitative differences between B.Arch, M.Arch, and D.Arch degrees.
First, the proposed Conditions state that a student with no undergraduate education in architecture can obtain an M.Arch in 30 credit hours. This language is misleading and will further complicate explanations of graduate degrees with prospective students.
Second, NAAB’s proposed definition of B.Arch degrees opens the door to professional bachelor’s degrees in less than five years. In essence, the language would allow an architecture curriculum that satisfies the institution’s general education requirements and then adds the minimum required professional content to the degree, with little to no electives in architecture courses.
Together the changes may confuse the public, erode the value of the M.Arch, and leave undergraduate students less prepared for an increasingly complex profession.
Our review of the proposed Conditions brought us to understand the importance of an unaddressed problem in architecture. All three accredited degrees (B.Arch, M.Arch, and D.Arch) equally satisfy the commonly accepted educational requirement to become a licensed architect. No other qualitative distinctions about the skills and knowledge of architecture school graduates exist. We also know from salary data that graduates with an M.Arch do not earn more than graduates with a B.Arch in the first decade of their careers.
From an educator’s standpoint, bachelor’s and master’s degrees are not the same and represent different levels of educational achievement. Under NAAB’s proposed language, this lack of distinction becomes even more acute. For this reason, we have called for a profession-wide discussion over the next 12 to 18 months to define levels of expectation for graduates of every level of architectural education, from associate’s degrees to PhDs.
We believe the clarity of degrees is an essential part of increasing access to architectural education. Understanding what each degree path offers helps the profession ascribe value to emerging architects’ knowledge. It also equips future architects with appropriately calibrated skills to address the world’s complex problems related to climate change, urbanization, and resource depletion.
As we further explain in our response, ACSA wants to find ways to reduce the cost of, and expand access to education, but we do not believe that using regional accreditation standards to determine minimum credit hours for degrees is the answer. Such changes will likely have unintended consequences on students who arrive with remedial needs in writing, mathematics, and the arts. A shorter professional undergraduate degree that covers the same scope in fewer credit hours cannot effectively serve students with these needs.
I invite your feedback on these issues (president@acsa-arch.org). In a future column, I will also address more fully ACSA’s recommendation to increase requirements on research, climate change mitigation, and urbanization.
The International Seminar on Urban Form invites submissions of abstracts for papers to be presented for the annual conference. The conference will be held in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA, on September 1 to 4, 2020 The conference is organized by the College of Architecture + Planning at the University of Utah. The organizers invite participation in the Conference by interested academics and professionals.
Please submit your paper proposals here. The deadline for Abstract Submittal is January 4, 2020.
In returning to North America, it is appropriate for morphologists to reflect on the cities that are being built in the 21st century and analyze the extraordinary changes in urban form that characterized 20th century cities. The theme of “Cities in the 21st Century” will also look forward to the new morphologies of world mega-cities, which are decidedly unique in history, as well as responsive to burgeoning city populations. The theme has special meaning, in that there is a new urgency in developing and adapting sustainable urban forms for the growing majority of residents in cities.
This theme will explore the current state of evolving world urban morphology, encompassing the following tracks:
The evolving morphology of world mega-cities. Mega-cities arising in Asia and Africa are showing extreme and challenging new forms. This theme explores the analysis and comparison of these built environments, and will begin to collectively identify and assess mega-city physical characteristics.
Legacies of the 20th century: repairing modern city form. The 20thcentury was particularly disruptive to the continuity and form of the city, birthing multiple new typologies and forms based on technological imperatives. Nevertheless, these cities require extensive change in order to meet new challenges of sustainability and rapid urban growth. What is the urban morphology of urban repair?
Sustainability as an imperative and limitation in urban and regional evolution. The singular world challenge for cities is dealing with climate change in its many iterations. How does the urban framework and urban regional form respond to sustainability? Are there relevant lessons from historic cities and their forms?
New building and neighborhood typologies in response to urban crisis. The crisis brought about by rising urban populations, climate change, and potential catastrophic events calls for new typologies and revisited old typologies that can absorb and respond to these changes. How could the mechanisms of typological evolution address crisis?
Adaptation of historic cities: weaknesses and strengths. Cities are continuous forms that slowly adapt over time to new conditions. The characteristics of historic cities must be protected, yet adaptation still needs to occur.
Utopian and ideal cities of the 21st century, including “smart” cities.Utopian cities of the 20th century influenced the actual form of many cities. As new utopian ideals arrive, what forms need to be retained and revered. Can we compare the ideal forms of previous eras to the issues of urban form today?
Methods and practice of urban morphology as adapted to new city forms.
The legacy of Gian Luigi Maffei. The passing of Professor Maffei in this past year will be noted in a retrospective of his work and his influences. His proteges, admirers and colleagues are invited to propose topics in this theme
Abstract Submission
Abstracts of paper proposals (250 words) should address at least one of the topics outlined in the call for papers. Speakers should also submit a short biography (100 words). Submissions will be accepted online through Ex-ordo.com where participants may sign in and submit abstracts in a few minutes. Ex-ordo provides a dynamic submission process, where more options become available according to your selections.
Please submit your abstracts proposals here by January 4, 2020.
Authors will be notified of acceptance by the Conference Committee by April 1, 2020. Final acceptance will be based upon review of the full-length paper which must be received before the corresponding deadline.
The organizers are planning a special digital issue of Urban Morphology from selected papers presented at the conference. In addition there will be a digital Proceedings assembled after the conference. Only papers presented by one of the authors will be published in the Proceedings. Electronic presentations (e.g. Skype) may be considered. For additional information, including contacting the organizers, venue, hotel, travel, and visa requirements please see the conference website:
The International Seminar on Urban Form (ISUF) is the international organization of urban form for researchers and practitioners. It was inaugurated in 1994, bringing together urban morphologists worldwide. It seeks to advance research and practice in fields concerned with the built environment, especially the comparison of change and evolution of urban forms and building types over time and across space. Members are drawn from several disciplines, including architecture, geography, history, sociology, urban design and urban planning. ISUF organizes conferences, publishes the journal Urban Morphology and provides an international framework for communication between members.
A conference at the Center for 21st Century Studies, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee April 30-May 2, 2020
The Center for 21st Century Studies and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee will host this year’s annual conference, “#ALT-MKE” on April 30-May 2, 2020. Confirmed plenary speakers for the conference are: Dasha Kelly Hamilton (Wisconsin’s Poet Laureate), Brian Larkin (Barnard College/Columbia University), Monique Liston (Ubuntu Research), Rick Lowe(University of Houston), AbdouMaliq Simone (University of Sheffield) and Fatima El-Tayeb (University of California, San Diego).
Please refer to a description of the conference theme and the call for proposals below.
Conference Description
In July 2020, the City of Milwaukee will host the Democratic National Convention where leaders will gather to nominate a presidential candidate and to ratify a platform with national and global agendas. The DNC chose Milwaukee because it sees Wisconsin as emblematic of the key Midwestern and post-industrial states that the Democrats must win to retake the presidency. In turn, Milwaukee sought to host the Democratic Convention as an opportunity to remake its image as a thriving, multicultural city.
During the DNC, predictable narratives will be trotted out about Milwaukee: of segregation, crime, poverty, and blight, alongside those championing a resurgent economy and new forms of capitalist urban development. The DNC marks a supposedly transformational moment from which new solutions will emerge. But the narratives of blight and rebirth–articulated not only by political leaders but often by academics as well–often reify what they are intended to counteract. The spectacle of the DNC and of its capitalist solutions mask a panoply of more ordinary efforts underway all around us, as movements, activists, and everyday people demand new ways of seeing, organizing, and acting in the world to address the overwhelming crises of the day. Indeed, Milwaukee is like many cities in the US: a babel of ecological, social, and political perspectives, a metropolis at a crossroads of critical thinking, and a place of promise and failure.
UWM’s Center for 21st Century Studies explores these multiple perspectives in its spring 2020 conference, “#ALT-MKE: Finding New Answers in the 21st Century City.” At this critical juncture, we must rethink our political imaginations and critical engagements. Can Milwaukee, and other urban areas like it, offer novel answers to the intractable problems that confront us? If the city is an answer, what questions must we ask?
#ALT-MKE will highlight how the temporality and space of the ordinary city offers new epistemologies and practices that are engaged in the global struggle to combat racialized disinvestment, a fractured body politic, ecological crisis, and urban abandonment. The spectacles offered by the DNC–whether political, mediated, or financial in nature–lead only to institutional inaction and failure, wherein lie opportunities for ongoing forms of resistance to find new and stronger footings.
From the Situationists and Russian Constructivists, to suffragists, tactical urbanists, the Movement for Black Lives, and the Occupy movement, people have always imagined and sought new ways of life to challenge oppressive structures and violent erasure. Under the increasingly dire pressures of climate crisis, racial capitalism, ongoing settler displacement, destructive national politics, and crushing inequality, the time has come to reclaim our future by reframing these issues through the refocused lens of the 21st century city.
At the core of this investigation is our focus on reframing cities as political and ideological acts that hold within them normative values of aesthetics, power/resistance, public life, and citizenship. By inviting explorations of critical, decolonial, anti-racist politics, this conference hopes to bring together new forms of analysis, methods of urban historiography, organizing, and engaged forms of scholarship.
The conference seeks to highlight the undercommons and the counternarratives fomented in the ordinary life of spaces and places. We will ask how contested knowledges and stories of a city may be experienced across different and intersecting power relations that organize bodies and space. We hope that accounts of everyday practices, local knowledges, and organizing will help illuminate how urban residents resist, adapt and reformat conventional structures of power, governance, and order. We do not expect to find a single solution, but to foster a variety of grounded strategies and projects that we aim to highlight, bring together, and learn from.
Call for Proposals
We seek proposals for 15-20 minute presentations which could address any of the following topics:
Racial capitalism
Climate, ecology, water justice, and cities
Urban culture/urbanities
Water and land issues, particularly as they pertain to indigenous rights
Historiography of the city, historiography of urban political, social, or activist movements
Artistic practices and urban space
New ways to read and interpret cities—epistemologies of the urban
The dynamics of race, class, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality in urban spaces
Narratives of cities, urban crime, and/or segregation (in literature, film, or other media)
Indigenous knowledges and practices
Local foodways and agricultural practices
Urban design and sustainability (including transportation)
Settler colonialism and decolonizing cities
Cities and biopolitics/biopower
The urban in relation to the suburban/exurban
Please send your abstract (up to 250 words) and a brief (1-page) CV in one PDF document by Monday, January 13, 2020 to Richard Grusin, Director, Center for 21st Century Studies, at c21@uwm.edu.
NS|A 2020: EMERGING AND EXPERIMENTAL AGENDAS IN DESIGN EDUCATION
NEXT SCHOOL | ATMOSPHERE 2020 Symposium: February 6th ~ 8th, 2020
What/how do/can we teach/learn design today?
From Beaux-Arts to Bauhaus, and the polytechnic schools to the present-day schools, paradigms of design education have shifted and evolved, each experimenting with different pedagogical philosophies and methodologies, relevant to their context. How are the contemporary pedagogy modeled and structured? What are the methods explored and experimented, and why? How are the contemporary design educations align with the shifting topography of culture and environment? What are the emerging opportunities of design education within today’s social, cultural and ecological context?
THE SYMPOSIUM
NEXT SCHOOL | ATMOSPHERE 2020 is a symposium that will GATHER, DISCUSS and DISSEMINATE pedagogical experiments/examples of design studios/schools today. It will showcase experimental cases, including esoteric and temporary exercises, which are attempting to realign/reinforce the design education with the contemporary context, and imagine the possibilities of next models and structures for the design education, a NEXT SCHOOL.
The symposium will be composed of invited keynotes, selected poster-panel ‘topic’ forums, poster display, discussions, exhibitions, and social events. NEXT SCHOOL is the 12th annual symposium ATMOSPHERE organized by the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Manitoba.
CALL FOR POSTERS
NS|A 2020 invites participation from academics, scholars, teachers, students and practitioners who have vested interests in educating designers within contemporary context: how design is taught and learned within the TOPOS of today’s culture, environment, and economy.
SUBMISSION: Authors are invited to submit POSTERs (+ABSTRACT) that contain and communicate experimental projects and or pedagogies in relation to ‘Design Education’. A single author CAN submit multiple POSTERS related to different aspects of his/her school’s projects and pedagogy.
SCHEDULE
+Poster DRAFT: December 20th, 2019 +Poster invitation: January 10th, 2020 +Poster FINAL: January 29th, 2020 +Symposium: February 6th ~ 8th, 2020
LOCATION
Faculty of Architecture, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg Canada
Awards that recognize and advance architectural research in the design of the built environment.
November 25, 2019 – The Board of Directors of The Architectural Research Centers Consortium (ARCC) announces three research awards in support of recognizing and advancing state-of-the-art research in architecture and related design fields.
2020 ARCC James Haecker Award for Distinguished Leadership in Architectural Research
The ARCC James Haecker Award for Distinguished Leadership in Architectural Research recognizes an individual who has made outstanding contributions to the growth of the research culture of architecture and related fields, including urban and regional planning, landscape architecture, and interior design. Named in honor of ARCC’s founding Executive Secretary, the recipient of the prestigious James Haecker Award has demonstrated a record of sustained and significant research leadership at the national and/or international level. Given the innovative, sustained and high impact of her work, the ARCC Board of Directors is pleased to announce the recipient of the 2020 ARCC James Haecker Award for Distinguished Leadership in Architectural Research is Dana Cuff.
Dana Cuff, Ph.D. is Professor of Architecture and Urban Design at UCLA where she is also Director of cityLAB, an award-winning think tank that advances experimental urbanism and architecture (www.cityLAB.aud.ucla.edu). Since receiving her Ph.D. in Architecture from UC Berkeley, Cuff has published and lectured widely about spatial justice, the architectural profession, and affordable housing. She is author of several books, including The Provisional City about postwar housing in Los Angeles, and a co-authored book (released early 2020) documenting her innovative cross-disciplinary project at UCLA called the Urban Humanities Initiative, funded by the Mellon Foundation. Based on cityLAB’s design research, she co-authored a landmark bill that permits “backyard homes” on virtually all 8 million single-family properties in California (AB 2299, Bloom-2016), doubling the density of suburbs across the state. She and her team are currently working on a wide range of new forms of affordable housing to be co-located with schools. cityLAB recently initiated a satellite center in one underserved neighborhood of Los Angeles, where a deep, multi-year exchange with community organizations will demonstrate ways that embedded research and humanistic design of the public realm can create more compassionate cities.
2020 ARCC New Researcher Award
The ARCC New Researcher Award celebrates the activities, accomplishments and promise of scholars in the early stages of their research career. The ARCC New Researcher Award is intended to acknowledge emerging figures in architectural and environmental design research that demonstrate innovation in thinking, dedication in scholarship, contributions to the academy, and leadership.
Based on the experimental and creative nature of her work, and promise in the field, the ARCC Board of Directors is pleased to announce the recipient of the 2020 ARCC New Researcher Award is Tsz Yan Ng.
Tsz Yan Ng, M.Arch. II is an Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan. She previously served as the Walter B. Sanders Fellow at the University of Michigan (2007-2008) and the Reyner Banham Fellow at the University of Buffalo (2001-2002). She holds an M.Arch. II from Cornell University, and an M.Arch. and Bachelor of Professional Studies from the State University of New York at Buffalo. Tsz Yan Ng’s material-based research and design primarily focus on experimental concrete forming (hard) and textile manipulation (soft). A common thread to her work investigates questions of labor in various facets and forms – underscoring broader issues of industrial manufacturing innovation, of human labor, crafting, and aesthetics. Principal of an independent architecture and art practice with built works in the US and China, her work ranges in scale from textile manufacturing facilities to commercial retail interiors and installations. She recently received an Architect Magazine R+D Award for Robotic Needle Felting and an AIA Upjohn Research Initiative Grant to explore concrete 3D printing. Her co-edited book Twisted was released in 2018 and was co-editor for the JAE theme issue Work (2019).
2020 ARCC Research Incentive Award
The ARCC Research Incentive Award aims to support and promote high‐quality architectural research and scholarship activities in ARCC member schools. The program provides faculty in with a one-year $5,000 grant to support and enhance their research and creative activities, and to develop their research agendas.
Following the high caliber of applications, the ARCC Board of Directors is pleased to announce the award of two proposals for the 2020 ARCC Research Incentive Award.
1) Reconfigurable Space: Kinematic Environments Controlled with Computer Vision
Principal Investigator: Rachel Dickey, M.Des.; Co-Investigators: Ali Karduni, M.Arch./M.S. in Information Technology and Noushin Radnia, M.Arch./M.S. in Information Technology (University of North Carolina at Charlotte)
The project will explore a robotic architecture produced from large-scale deployable surfaces which can change size in shape based on human activity. The research focuses on the first of the three related projects: 1) physical design and prototyping of kinematic architectural elements; 2) design and testing of computer vision sensing and control systems for actuated elements; 3) user testing studying the impact of reconfigurable environments on occupants. The outcome of this first phase of work includes a research exhibition demonstrating pneumatically actuated soft robotics.
Rachel Dickey, M.Des. is an Assistant Professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and is founder of Studio Dickey, an experimental design practice based in Charlotte. She holds a Masters of Design Studies with a concentration in technology from the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University and a Bachelor of Science in Architecture and Master of Architecture from Georgia Tech. Dickey has held appointments as a visiting critic at Cornell University and Design Innovation Fellow at Ball State University. Her research and work has been published in Architectural Review, Arteca, Robotic Fabrication in Architecture, Art, and Design, and in Paradigms in Computing. Additionally, she has exhibited at the Office for the Arts at Harvard, Des Cours in New Orleans, and the Museum of Design in Atlanta. Dickey’s particular area of interest examines ways of engaging the body and technology to uncover design approaches which demonstrate the influential capacity of architecture to impact and enhance the lives of those who encounter it.
Ali Karduni, M.Arch./M.S. is a Ph.D. Candidate in Computing and Information Systems at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. A computer scientist and designer, Karduni works as a researcher at the Charlotte Visualization Center and instructor in the School of Architecture. His research involves understanding how information technologies affect spatial and social processes, and developing new interactive technologies to alter and impact these processes. His interdisciplinary work has been published in academic journals, book
chapters, and conference proceedings spanning the disciplines of Computer Science, Urbanism, and Architecture. He holds a Master of Architecture and Master of Science in Information Technology from UNCC and a Master of Urban Planning and Policy from the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Noushin Radnia, M.Arch./M.S. is a Post-Graduate Teaching Fellow in the School of Architecture at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. She has worked as a designer, researcher, and educator in Iran and the United States. She holds a Master of Architecture and Master of Science in Information Technology from UNCC and a Bachelor of Architecture from Azad University of Tabriz, Iran. Radnia has pursued her research in the Digital Arts Lab at UNCC at the intersection of architecture and technology, centered around the dialogue between physical and digital space and how they impact human experience.
2) Flexi-Form: Design and Fabrication of Additive Flexible Formwork for the Design of Concrete Interlocking Modules
Principal Investigator: Niloufar Emami, Ph.D. (Louisiana State University)
The project will study 3D printed concrete fabrication methods that can accommodate the creation of complex and cost effective formwork geometries at scale. The proposed research involves optimization of a wide range of process parameters, including temperature, extrusion speed (flow rate), printing speed (feed rate), extruder nozzle diameter, and effects
of mixes with different densities. The outcomes of the study will produce sufficient data to better understand the influence of these aspects, narrowing the gap between design and fabrication.
Niloufar Emami, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor of Architecture and holds the A. Hays Town Professorship at Louisiana State University. She is a researcher, educator, and designer looking for gaps, intersections, and overlaps between architecture and multiple other disciplines, using computational tools and fabrication techniques to provide creative yet performing solutions. Niloufar holds a Ph.D. in Architecture with a major in building technology from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, a post-professional Master of Science in Architecture from the University of Michigan, a Master of Architecture from Iran University of Science and Technology, and a Bachelor of Architecture. Niloufar is the recipient of numerous awards, including first runner-up award in DIVA Day competition, Barbour Scholarship and the Helen Wu Award, among other honors.
Award recipients were selected by ARCC’s eight-member Board of Directors. Review process and deliberations were consistent with rigorous peer-review where nominees and proposals were debated on their own merits. Past recipients of ARCC Awards can be reviewed on ARCC’s website (arcc-arch.org).
About The Architectural Research Centers Consortium (ARCC)
Founded in 1976, the ARCC is an international association of architectural research centers, academies and organizations committed to the research culture and supporting infrastructure of architecture and related design disciplines. Through conference programming, grant and award programs, workshops and research journal Enquiry, ARCC represents a concerted commitment to improve the quality of life in the built environment.
AASL Column, November 2019 Lucy Campbell and Barbara Opar, column editors Column by Barbara Opar
Last month’s AASL column included a summary of Open Access, followed by a listing of institutional repositories with architectural content. This month, we want to take Open Access a step further. In addition to text and image-based repositories, many Schools of Architecture record their lecture series and place them online for further viewing- including making them openly available to the public. Below is a preliminary list of these lecture archives. Date ranges vary as well as the medium employed for distribution. They all have in common one thing- interesting content. We invite you to explore these resources. They could prove to be a means to enhance your own lectures.
Ryerson University, Department of Architectural Science, Professor Paul Floerke New publication 2019 -Detailing Architecture
This book deals with the visualization of how detailing and the actual building process unfold in phases. The design of each building is reflected to emphasize the connection between initial design stages and exact steps of execution to reach a convincing result of the work created. Students – especially in their studio work – have noticeably benefited from this approach.
Please encourage your students and colleagues to look into this exciting publication. It is exceptionally affordable: only 15$ CDN for a high- resolution pdf-copy where zooming in and out of each detail is simple to do to grasp every step. Each dollar goes towards a next research project aiming at a similar approach.
Follow this link for more information and a preview:
The ACSA Board of Directors approved a preliminary slate of candidates for the 2020 Election to the board at its November 9–10 meeting. The candidates came from an open call for nominations and self-nominations reviewed by the board’s Nominations Committee.
In accordance with our election procedures, ACSA members have the opportunity to petition to add candidates to the slate, following procedures outlined below. The petition period closes on December 27, 2019, at 5 pm Pacific time. The final slate of candidates and election materials are scheduled for release on January 8, 2020. All ACSA Full members are eligible to vote on all positions. The results of this election will be announced publicly online soon after the February 7, 2020, ballot deadline, and introduced at the ACSA Annual Meeting in San Diego in March.
Second Vice President Sharon Haar, University of Michigan Michaele Pride, University of New Mexico
Secretary/Treasurer Ulrike Altenmüller-Lewis, Drexel University Antje Steinmuller, California College of the Arts
At-Large Director John Folan, University of Arkansas Gundula Proksch, University of Washington
Petition Procedures Any faculty member of an ACSA Full or Candidate member school may submit a petition nominating another eligible candidate for the above open board positions. Each petition must include a letter of nomination outlining the candidate’s qualifications and interest in the position and the names and email addresses of at least 10 faculty members from 10 different ACSA Full or Candidate member schools who attest to supporting the candidate’s nomination. (In total, there must be at least 10 faculty from 10 schools total who sign the petition, and the petition must be delivered as a single package.) The petition shall also include a statement of interest from the nominee and curriculum vitae or biographical statement. The Nominations Committee shall review all qualified petitions and prepare a report to the Board of Directors confirming eligibility of the petitioners.
Timeline
December 27, 2019 – Deadline for submission of petitions to add candidates to the slate
January 8, 2020 – Final slate of candidates and ballot materials published and sent to ACSA Full Member schools
February 7, 2020 – Deadline for ballot submissions
Nominations by Petition Email (preferred): mmonti@acsa-arch.org Michael Monti, ACSA Executive Director ACSA Nominations, 1735 New York Ave. NW, Washington, DC 20006
Professor Korydon Smith, Chair of Architecture, received a 2019 Great Places Award from the Environmental Design Research Association (EDRA) for the top book. Interpreting Kigali, Rwanda: Architectural Enquires and Prospects for a Developing African City (University of Arkansas Press), was co-authored with Toma Berlanda. The book explores complex challenges of planning, design, and construction in informal settlements. With one billion people living in organic cities worldwide and the city of Kigali projected to triple in size within a generation, the book offers place-based research and strategies to scholars and practitioners across disciplines throughout the Global South.
Professor Mark Shepard was awarded a 2019 McDowell Fellowship. One of five architects to be selected from 676 applicants Professor Shepard is using the Fellowship to advance his research in digital design and simulation.
The IDEA Center (Center for Inclusive Design and Environmental Access) recently launched innovative solutions for Universal Design (isUD tm). The advanced on-line tool provides organizations with a path for building inclusive environments. isUD contains guidelines to address design for usability, wellness and social relations and can be used for design guidance, self-assessment or audited certification. Adapters include Procter & Gamble, Price Waterhouse Coopers, the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh, Uniland Development and Temple Beth Tzedek. To learn more, visit www.thisisud.com.
The IDEA Center partnered with Touch Graphics Inc. to install and evaluate a Touch Responsive Model in the Smithsonian Castle in Washington, DC. The model – a 3D representation of buildings and plans of the National Mall – provides information about resources on the Mall, the Smithsonian buildings and directions to all facilities in multiple sensory modes. A kiosk version, that provides specific building information, was also installed at the National American History Museum.
Professor Brian Carter gave a keynote address entitled ‘Books + Buildings’ at the 2019 WNY Conference of the Art Libraries Society of North America.
Assistant Professor Charles Davis delivered a lecture at Penn Design. The talk discussed his creative work, entitled ‘Building Black Utopias”, which uses architectural drawings and models to translate the modernist principles of African American literature of the 1960’s and 70’s. His lecture was followed by a panel discussion on the writings of June Jordan, an African American poet who collaborated with Buckminster Fuller in 1965 to design the project “High-rise for Harlem”.
Emily Kutil was appointed 2019/20 Banham Fellow. A graduate of the University of Cincinnati she received an M. Arch and a Certificate in Museum Studies from the University of Michigan. Prior to her appointment Emily worked in practice in California and with M1DTW in Detroit. A founding member of ‘We the People of Detroit Community Research Collective’ she also taught design and visualization at the University of Detroit Mercy. Her research at UB is focused on the history and future of water, land and power in the Great Lakes Watershed.
This morning, the School of Architecture at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign announced that Francisco Javier Rodríguez-Suárez, FAIA, will be joining the school in January as the next Director, pending approval by the University of Illinois Board of Trustees. He is currently an ACSA Distinguished Professor of Architecture at the University of Puerto Rico, where he served as Dean from 2007 until 2016. See the full announcement at https://arch.illinois.edu/node/950
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