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Portland State University

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Jeff Schnabel named director of Portland State University School of Architecture

Professor Jeff Schnabel, who was promoted to full professor in May, has been named director of the School of Architecture at Portland State University in Portland, Oregon. Schnabel will assume the directorship on September 1, 2019, succeeding Professor Clive Knights, who is stepping down to rejoin the School’s faculty after more than 12 years of distinguished leadership.

Co-founder of the Portland Winter Light Festival and a longtime member of the Willamette Light Brigade, Schnabel is a leader in the discipline of light and projected media as a method of transforming the built environment. He holds a Master of Architecture from University of Pennsylvania, and a Bachelor of Science/Landscape Architecture from West Virginia University.

“Jeff Schnabel is an exceptional leader and designer who has demonstrated his commitment to the ideal of making beautiful, functional, sustainable architecture for the benefit of all, while earning countless kudos from his students. I am thrilled to welcome Jeff as director of the School of Architecture,” said Leroy Bynum, Dean of the College of the Arts.

“He has an extraordinary example to follow; in my years working with Clive Knights, I have been consistently impressed by his leadership, his devotion to the educational needs of architecture students, and his tireless dedication to building a unique architectural program of the highest quality,” said Dean Bynum.

Since joining the PSU School of Architecture faculty, Schnabel organized the symposium “Illuminated City” in 2011, which attracted light artists and designers who worked with Schnabel to create the Portland Winter Light Festival. Schnabel spearheaded the effort to expand the festival to the PSU campus in 2019. He is vice president of the Willamette Light Brigade, a nonprofit organization that lights Portland’s bridges. He is a member of the New York-based Nighttime Design Institute and the Media Architecture Institute in Toronto.

In 2012, Schnabel established the Shattuck Hall Ecological Learning Plaza at the School of Architecture, an experimental space that was initially used to explore green roofs and green walls and is now a space dedicated to design-build projects and full-scale material explorations. With Rudy Barton, emeritus professor, he has led groups of architecture students on several trips to Spain (Madrid, Barcelona, and Girona), investigating and sketching contemporary and ancient architecture and public spaces in Spanish cities both large and small.

Schnabel teaches architecture studios, seminars, and introductory courses at both the graduate and undergraduate level, and has served as thesis advisor for Master of Architecture students since the inception of the degree in 2009.

“Clive Knights led the transformation of a modest program into a fully accredited school populated with a diverse faculty who bring their national and international reputations in service to our wonderful students,” said Schnabel. “I look forward to building on this momentum in support of our students, and furthering our engagement with Portland’s design and creative communities.”

During his 12 years at the helm, Clive Knights oversaw a series of significant developments in the School, including the establishment and accreditation of a professional Master of Architecture program (2-year and 3-year tracks), the founding of the Center for Public Interest Design, an internationally known research and action center, and the launch of the first Graduate Certificate in Public Interest Design in the United States. In addition, he led a major renovation of Shattuck Hall, the School of Architecture’s home on the PSU campus, which achieved LEED Gold certification. Knights will return to the School of Architecture faculty after a year-long sabbatical. Read Professor Knights’s letter to the student community here.

“It has been a remarkable journey, accompanied by talented and supportive faculty,” said Knights. “Jeff has been with us all the way and is the perfect person, not only to sustain the momentum of the school, but to bring a suite of new ideas that will enrich and augment the school’s offerings as well as its standing in the community going forward.”

www.pdx.edu/architecture

Kennesaw State University

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Thesis students presented their individual research work at the Architecture Research Consortium Center (ARCC 2019) conference in Toronto from May 28-June 2, 2019. It was extremely eye opening and exciting for students to be part of collaborative discussions regarding the practice of research in architecture.
Photo (left to right): Dyesha Holmes, Brittany Adkins, Joshua Robinson, Corey Jones and Jeremy Bowen.

Associate Professor Liz Martin-Malikian and department chair, Tony Rizzuto, PhD also presented a paper exploring applied research as a bridge between theory and practice.

Kennesaw State University

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Kennesaw State Univesity Architecture Thesis Students Receive URCA Funding

The 2019-2020 academic years starts out strong with the department of architecture being awarded a total of $7,000 during this first round of Undergraduate Research & Creative Activities (URCA) funding from the Office of Undergraduate Research.

Congratulations to 7-architecture thesis students—Jared, Devon, Ana, Breck, Caleb, Marysia and Chase— for receiving URCA awards for the maximum amount of $1,000 each to present their research at professional conferences this fall: ACSA: Less Talk | More Action: Conscious Shifts in Architectural Education Conference at Stanford University, California and  Southeast Chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians (SESAH) Conference at Clemson University, South Carolina.

Jared Triemer,  Faith in Humanity: an exploration of spiritually inclusive architecture (advisor: Tim Frank)
Devon Sams, Golden Scrutiny: from Analog-to-Digital  (advisor: Peter Pittman)
Ana Giron, Imaginative Engagement: Consolidating Play and Learning through the Spatial Design of Classrooms(advisor: Arash Soleimani)
Breck Small, Primary Focus: A New Precedent for Ugandan Education (advisor: Giovanni Loreto)
Caleb Lawrence, Atlanta, The Forest City? (advisor: Ed Akins)
Marysia LaRosa, Urban Revitalization of the Rust Belt City (advisor: Ed Akins)
Chase Sisk, How the Automobile Changes Monroe (advisor: Marietta Monaghan)

For information on annual student travel funds available to KSU students, please visit the Office of Undergraduate Research’s website.

Confiscated at the Border: A Case of Force Majeure, or, Don’t Cross the Border with that Library Book!

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ASL Column, June 2019
Lucy Campbell and Barbara Opar, column editors
Column by Janine Henri, Architecture and Design Librarian and Team Lead for Collections, UCLA Arts Library

Confiscated at the Border: a Case of Force Majeure, or, Don’t Cross the Border with that Library Book!

The “troublesome” book(1):

Wu Hung. Remaking Beijing: Tiananmen Square and the creation of a political space. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005. (272 p.: ill. (some col.), maps; 26 cm.)

Contents:

  • Tiananmen Square: a political history of monuments
  • Face of authority: Tiananmen and Mao’s Tiananmen portrait
  • Displaying the people: National Day parades and exhibition architecture
  • Monumentality of time: from Drum Tower to “Hong Kong Clock”
  • Art of the square: from subject to site
  • Coda: entering the new millennium.

Subjects:

  • Architecture and history–China–Beijing
  • Architecture–Political aspects–China–Beijing
  • Art and state–China–Beijing
  • Tian’an Men (Beijing, China)
  • Beijing (China)–Buildings, structures, etc.

Wu Hung is Harrie A. Vanderstappen Distinguished Service Professor of Art History, Director of the Center for the Art of East Asia, and Consulting Curator of the Smart Museum of Art at the University of Chicago. He is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society, and sits on boards and advisory committees of research institutes and museums in the United States and China. There is no doubt that he is a well-respected and well-established scholar. He has published widely on both traditional and contemporary Chinese art and has received many awards for his publications and teaching activities. Prof. Wu Hung recently delivered the Andrew W. Mellon Lectures at the National Art Gallery (March-May 2019).

According to amazon.com(2), Remaking Beijing

“offers a vivid, often personal account of the struggle over Beijing’s reinvention, drawing particular attention to Tiananmen Square—the most sacred space in the People’s Republic of China. Remaking Beijing considers the square’s transformation from a restricted imperial domain into a public arena for political expression, from an epic symbol of socialism into a holy relic of the Maoist regime, and from an official and monumental complex into a site for unofficial and antigovernment demonstrations.

Wu Hung also explores how Tiananmen Square has become a touchstone for official art in modern China—as the site for Mao’s monumental portrait, as the location of museums narrating revolutionary history, and as the grounds for extravagant National Day parades celebrating the revolutionary masses. He then shows how in recent years the square has inspired artists working without state sponsorship to create paintings, photographs, and even performances that reflect the spirit of the 1989 uprisings and pose a forceful challenge to official artworks and the sociopolitical system that supports them.”

The library cataloged this book in the NA9072 Library of Congress Classification range which is reserved for the architectural aspects of the Aesthetics of cities. City planning and beautifying, and specifically for Public squares and promenades. The book is obviously about much more than the 1989 uprisings, and after studying in the United States, the student had not considered that it might appear controversial.

The Confiscation incident:

UCLA students have a week-long break between Winter and Spring Quarters and one of our graduate students from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) decided to visit her family during the break. She took along one of the books she was reading for a research project. She elected to fly to Hong Kong from where she could take a train to Guangzhou. Thus, she crossed the border into the PRC from Hong Kong. This is where her suitcase was searched and all of her books were examined. Remaking Beijing is highly illustrated, and the customs officer noticed Tiananmen Square photographs. Unable to read English, he took the student to an office where another official could read English and evaluate the book. By this time, the student was petrified, afraid that she would be detained overnight, unable to contact family, and unsure of how this would affect her F1 student visa status. In the waiting room she noticed other detained travelers: apparently luxury items are often smuggled into the PRC through Hong Kong. When questioned and informed that she had to relinquish the book, the student explained that it had been assigned by a professor. She had to sign an official document stating this fact, was fingerprinted, and the incident is now on record in a government file. She was told that it was fortunate that she only had one controversial book with her: had she more than one, she would have had to wait overnight and appear before a superior officer. The book was seized and she was released, but with a caution that this incident could cause her future difficulties.

Upon returning to UCLA she reported the ‘loss’ of the book. Because the print edition is out of print, new copies sell for more than our standard replacement charges. I was contacted by our Head of Access Services to determine next steps. Fortunately a copy of this book is located in another library on campus, and a reasonably priced e-book version is available for purchase. Together with library administrators, we determined that this incident was a case of Force Majeure, thus the library could use its own funds to acquire an e-book replacement. But I also asked the student for permission to share her tale and for assistance alerting other foreign students: please don’t take library books across the border! Do not risk jeopardizing your visa status!

(1)   Cover illustration from https://www.amazon.com/dp/0226360792/; catalog description from https://catalog.library.ucla.edu/vwebv/holdingsInfo?bibId=5697302, both accessed May 22, 2019.
(2)   https://www.amazon.com/dp/0226360792/, accessed May 22, 2019.

NEW (2020) Conditions and Procedures for Accreditation

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The National Architectural Accreditation Board (NAAB) has issued “Draft 0” versions of the 2020 Conditions and Procedures for Accreditation, which are publicly accessible through the following links:

+ 2020 Conditions for Accreditation

+ 2020 Procedures for Accreditation

These two documents will be discussed at the 2019 Accreditation Review Forum (ARForum) that will take place on July 25 and 26 in Chicago. The boards of five U.S. collateral organizations (ACSA, AIA, AIAS, NAAB, NCARB) will meet then to also consider the future of architectural education, with guests and members of two NAAB-appointed groups that worked on drafting the two documents.

The “zero” drafts were prepared by the 2019 ARForum NAAB Steering Committee and the NAAB Task Force, respectively. ACSA was represented officially on the 15-member Steering Committee by Bruce Lindsey from Washington University in St. Louis, Rebecca O’Neal Dagg from Auburn University, and Michaele Pride from the University of New Mexico. Kate Schwennsen from Clemson was also a member of the group. John Cays from NJIT, Rocco Ceo from the University of Miami, and David Hinson from Auburn were on the NAAB Task Force (as NAAB board members), which was led by NAAB President-Elect Barbara Sestak from Portland State University. Tom Fisher from the University of Minnesota was an invited member of the Task Force.

In other words, a good number of members of these two groups were from our schools; our community did have a say in the preparation of the drafts and we were offered an opportunity to provide feedback about the proposed ideas during a NAAB workshop at the 2019 Annual Meeting in Pittsburgh.

Nevertheless, we encourage our members to carefully review the “Draft 0” of the Conditions and Procedures. The Conditions in particular contain significant changes. You will notice that SPCs are no longer there; in their place are Program Criteria and Student Learning Criteria. The draft document also describes the “Defining Values of the Profession” that programs must address as part of the accreditation process.

We welcome your feedback about the proposed changes before the ARForum takes place at the end of July. Please send your comments by July 1 to president@acsa-arch.org. Please note that we may share them with NAAB and let us know if you would like to remain anonymous.

Also, please note that NAAB will issue “Draft 1” of the Conditions and Procedures after the ARForum, which will be available for public comment until mid-November, i.e. we will get to discuss them at the 2019 Administrators Conference in New Orleans. “Draft 2” will be produced after the public comment period ends on November 22, 2019. The final version will be issued after the NAAB Board meets at the end of January.

As a final note, the programs going up for accreditation in 2021 will have a choice to use either 2014 Conditions and 2015 Procedures or the 2020 versions. All programs that will have accreditation visits in 2022 or later will have to use the new 2020 versions. So, please review the drafts as they contain some significant changes and let us know what you think. We look forward to hearing from you.

Branko Kolarevic
2018-2019 ACSA President

Tulane University

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Title: Architecture Graduate Student Presents Hybridized Infrastructure at National Symposium

May 29, 2019

Exploring how architecture can improve water management and engage communities in New Orleans, recent master’s architecture graduate Riley Lacalli developed a project that proposes a new infrastructure system and presented his work at a national conference this spring.

The CriticalMASS Graduate Research Symposium at the University of North Carolina Charlotte in April brought together 14 students for presentations to panels of experts from across the country. Lacalli, who graduated from the Tulane School of Architecture’s M.Arch I program in May, said the experience at CriticalMASS was both informative and inspiring with students’ topics ranging from virtual libraries to smog-diffusing glass, Lacalli said.

“The diverse representation of projects reinforced the idea that architecture can be used to positively influence a variety of problems,” he said.

Lacalli’s thesis project “Pumps Politikos” addresses urban infrastructural systems and the problems many cities, coastal cities in particular, are facing as the threat of climate change rises. Among his design solutions, he proposes a series of canopies, elevated above streets and around pumping stations, as green spaces for not only rainwater collection but also civic engagement. The goal is to create a better water management system that utilizes every drop of water as an asset and, by making these sites accessible, reconnect communities to infrastructure allowing them to play a role in the monitoring and management of the system.

“To combat issues such as rising sea levels, land loss, and an increased occurrence of natural disasters, urban environments and the machines that keep them afloat must be redesigned in a multi-scalar, multi-systemic manner,” said Lacalli. “My interest in architecture lies in its ability to contribute to many different disciplines and across many different scales. I would love to get involved with an architecture firm that is taking on projects at a larger city or neighborhood scale, specifically projects that work with the existing fabric and attempt to provide holistic and dynamic responses to potential problems.”

Tulane University

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Title: Norman Collaborates for Whitney Biennial 2019 Installation

May 28, 2019

Assistant Professor Carrie Norman has collaborated with Kenyan-born, Chicago-based artist Brendan Fernandes for the sculptural installation “The Master and Form,” currently on display through Sept. 22 at the Whitney Museum of American Art for the Whitney Bienniel 2019.

This installation, created through Norman’s practice Norman Kelly, explores the intersections of dance + sculpture + performance through devices that put dancers into specific positions and forms indicative of the technique of ballet.

“As a former dancer training in the ballet world, I’ve always been questioning my body, my sense of who I was in that world. Ballet is a very specific type of dance form and specific types of bodies are required to perform the gestures or to be ‘technically successful’ in that space. I think about race, class, gender through ballet, those things are very much set through Western hegemony narratives. Part of what I’m doing in this work is to be critical and to break down those binaries because we are in a space that we need to change that and dance needs that so much in its narrative, to think about things differently.” – artist Brendan Fernandes

Architecture Networks: Building Connections between Collections

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AASL column, May 2019
Lucy Campbell and Barbara Opar, column editors

Architecture Networks: Building Connections between Collections
Column by Aimee Lind, Reference Librarian, Getty Research Library (alind@getty.edu)

Much of the contact faculty and students have with architecture librarians takes the form of reference or collection development requests. Yet, as professionals, architecture librarians are also actively engaged in seeking ways of increasing access to resources. Open discussions on such issues are more than professional development. They serve to help us look for means and opportunities to improve the user experience. Initiatives like the one I describe below are aimed at taking on these challenges and developing new tools for our constituents.

This column originally appeared on ARCHSEC: the official website of the Art Libraries Society of North America Architecture Section.

For those of you who weren’t able to attend the ARLIS conference in Salt Lake City at all or were simply unable to attend the Architecture Networks panel, I wanted to share a summary of the content of the session and provide a place for feedback on the potential future form(s) a project like this might take.

The idea for the panel was sparked by conversations with colleagues over the past few years regarding ways we could increase discovery of our own architecture resources, highlight links to complementary collections, identify connections between collaborators, and facilitate creation of and access to metadata at a deeper level in order to bring to light the important contributions of historically marginalized groups within architecture and its affiliated professions. As we pondered how something like this might work, we began to focus on the component parts necessary to construct these architecture networks virtually:

  • rich, authoritative data on the people, places, and events critical to the study of the built environment
  • standardized, controlled vocabularies that can help link this data effectively
  • a flexible underlying system for data management
  • a user-friendly interface for discovery, and, most importantly…
  • individuals willing to put in the work to make it all happen.

I invited a group of esteemed panelists to speak to these essential elements in order to explore the feasibility of developing a freely available, comprehensive, authoritative scholarly resource devoted to the study of the built environment.

Alan Michelson, Head of the Built Environments Library at the University of Washington, discussed the past development and potential future directions of the Pacific Coast Architecture Database.

Margaret Smithglass, Registrar and Digital Content Librarian at Columbia University’s Avery Library, spoke about the challenges encountered while developing the Built Works Registry, as well as considerations for the future of the project.

Robin Johnson, Vocabularies Editor at the Getty Research Institute, detailed relevant authority work done within the Getty Vocabularies (ULAN and CONA, in particular).

and

Annabel Lee Enriquez, Associate Project Manager at the Getty Conservation Institute, provided an overview of Arches, an open source heritage inventory and management platform, and consider how it might be used for a collaborative project of this type.

Our goals were threefold:

  • to learn about projects, tools, systems, and standards relevant to the study of the built environment
  • to establish what a comprehensive, collaborative resource might look like and whom it might serve and
  • to gauge interest in participation at any level, from individuals contributing data to institutions facilitating larger initiatives

We’d allocated ample time for the engaging discussion that followed the presentation. Happily, many members of the audience indicated that they thought this was a project worth pursuing and several signed up to be part of working group(s) going forward. We hope some of you might like to do the same! Please have a look at the PowerPoint slides. Our goal in the coming months is to identify a preliminary dataset that could serve as a proof of concept for a collaborative grant. Interested? Questions? Please be in touch!  You can reach me at alind@getty.edu.

University at Buffalo, SUNY

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An article published in the May 9, 2019 edition of the New York Times by Eve Kahn featured the research project ‘Growing up Modern’ by Assistant Professor Julia Jamrozik and Coryn Dempster (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/06/style/modern-experimental-housing.html)

Assistant Professor Erkin Ozay served as a panelist on ‘Avenues of Exchange: Professionals, Researchers, and Communities building the Equitable City’ which was organized by ACSA and the AIA Housing and Community Development Knowledge Community hewld in Pittsburgh, on March 28,2019. Ozay presented his teaching and research related tto resttlemenmt urbanism in Buffalo. An article on the event and workshop was featured in Metropolis (https://www.metrpolismag.com/architecture/acse-annual-meeting-pittsburgh-architecture-school-comuunity-engagement/)

Assistant Professor Erkin Ozay served as a panelist on the Annual Western New York Refugee Health Summit held at UB on April 13, 2019. His presentation, titled ‘Construycting Landscapes f Arrival’ called for resettlement institutions to become active participants in housing and neighborhood development.

Professor Brian Carter was editor of the recently published book ‘Boundary Sequence Illusion – Ian MacDonald Architect’.  Dalhousie Architectural Press launched the book at Massey College in Toronto in May, 2019.

Assistant Professor Martha Bohm and Stephanie Cramer, together with UB alum Alyssa Catlin, will direct a design/build studio for students from UB and the University of Maryland in Costa Rica in May and June 2019.

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