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University of Nebraska-Lincoln

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Professor Earns Emerging Voices Award

There are certain professional accolades that are more coveted than others. The Emerging Voices award from the Architectural League New York annually recognizes rising stars in architecture and design and is highly sought after.  This year’s 2016 Emerging Voices award was given to eight firms including Min | Day and its principals E.B. Min and UNL Architecture Program Director and Professor Jeffery. L. Day.

Min | Day now joins the peerage of others who have earn this prestigious award that has been in existence for over 30 years, firms such as ArandaLasch, David Benjamin / The Living, Neri Oxman, SO – IL, Dlandstudio, el dorado, WORKac, Olson Kundig Architects, Office dA, SHoP Architects, Asymptote Architecture, Michael Maltzan Architecture, Marlon Blackwell Architect, Vincent James Associates, WEISS/MANFREDI, Allied Works, Stan Allen Architect, Morphosis, Steven Holl Architects to name a few. 

This award not only recognizes the architectural work of Day and Min through their practice Min | Day but also College of Architecture FACT (Fabrication And Construction Team) students and designs from their furniture company, mdMOD.

Since the Emerging Voices was awarded through a nomination process, that made the honor even more important to Day.

“Only eight offices were recognized for this award and the fact that it’s a nominated award makes it even more satisfying,” Day explained. “This is a big milestone for us, and it’s an award that is only achieved once in a career. It’s a wonderful accomplishment for our firm.”

Min | Day was established in 2003. The partnership emerged from a friendship that began in graduate school at UC Berkeley. After graduation they started collaborating on projects and competitions. Over the years, their partnership evolved, and it was eventually formalized in 2003 when Day relocated to Omaha. Simultaneously, Day started the FACT student design-build program at UNL which is an allied student practice. FACT frequently collaborates with the firm, giving students real-life experiences with creative clients.

Min | Day currently as two locations, one in San Francisco, California, the other in Omaha, Nebraska. Between the two places, they have a full-time staff of 6 people not including the average 15 FACT students working on collaborations.

“A big part of who we are is the fact we have two sites,” commented Day. “It is not common for a firm of our size to have that, but we turned it into an advantage. We founded Min | Day with the belief that establishing offices in these two cities would yield a perspective that transcends the limitations of regional specificity. Our office combines design-research, academic engagement, commissioned work, furniture design, and student design-build projects to create highly refined yet often imprecise and flexible designs that reflect our unusual structure.”

This environment has fostered a design approach that was given Min | Day its unique and emerging voice.

“We promote an approach to flexibility not as the absence of form but as the presence of unique and carefully considered infrastructure, affording individuals the power to manipulate their own environment while simultaneously instilling a distinct personality derived from our design process,” Day said.

He explains they want their work to participate in a culture and help create a culture, not represent a culture in a mode of a disconnected artist or critic.

“If anything is constant, it’s that our designs are always evolving. Every project is different and unique.”

Over the years, Min and Day’s working relationship has transitioned, meliorated and eventually turned into a synergy that’s hard to replicate.

“I think we are a good design partnership, and we have a similar design sensibility but enough difference that the work is dynamic and constantly evolving,” Day commented. “We challenge each other. We are not always in full agreement, and I think that is what takes our work to a higher level.”

When not working at the firm, Day divides his time with the University of Nebraska and Min lectures part-time at the California College of the Arts.

The Emerging Voices award is not only a great accolade for their firm but also for the universities they work with.

“It shows that the practicing faculty are engaged in their field at a high level and are receiving national and international recognition for their work,” Day commented. “It translates into school pride and more students seeking to be a part of a college that affords them the opportunities and recognition that the College of Architecture and FACT provide.”

University of Nebraska-Lincoln

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Sustainability Energizes Professor Research and Instruction

Gasoline prices have finally started to fall giving many Americans a well-deserved break for their pocket books, but another great way to drive down those energy dollars is within the home or business by reducing energy spending.

Residential and commercial use accounts for 41% of the energy consumed in the United States, according to the National Academy of Sciences.

Building energy-efficient homes and structures has been the driving passion of Associate Professor Tim Hemsath’s career. He has researched, presented, published and taught on this subject, to the point he can probably lecture about this topic in his sleep.  

“I’ve always been interested in sustainability. You could say I was raised with those values,” Hemsath commented. “When I was a kid, we would walk to church along the highway and my dad would have the family pick up trash. So before there was an Adopt a Highway program there was the Hemsath program.”

Hemsath explains his desire to make a sustainable impact only intensified in college when he decided to go into architecture. 

“I wondered where I could have a measurable impact and how it would affect design. How can we better design our buildings with a greater understanding of its impact, and how can we alter that impact so it creates a positive difference?”

Energy is measurable, so Hemsath knew he could set clear objectives and goals for his designs and his research.  

“You can use computer modeling to understand the operational energy consumption of a building and then in theory, design buildings that are more efficient.”

There is no one silver bullet to achieve an energy-efficient building. Hemsath tells his architecture students an efficient building depends on various factors such as climate, its size, the building design, how it is used, etc. 

“There are too many factors involved to say this one thing can save you x amount in energy because every place in the world is different, every building is different.  What I like to say is you have to understand all your factors before you can make any conclusions.”

Hemsath’s résumé regarding energy-related projects is quite extensive. His research started in 2006 with the College of Engineering on a project developing energy-efficient housing prototypes. He later served as the principal investigator on a Nebraska Research Initiative to increase research capacity surrounding zero-net energy at the University of Nebraska.

Hemsath explains he has seen an upward trend in designing sustainable buildings at the national level. 

“I see the use and demand growing,” Hemsath observed. “When I started researching and teaching about sustainability in 2006, only homes were achieving high-efficiency results. Now you see large facilities, campuses and communities also meeting these standards.  The capabilities and the technology are all there. It really comes down to market demand and the desire from everybody’s standpoint to make it happen. It’s a matter of the right dominos falling in the right places.”

Many factors are driving this trend including regional and national legislation with energy codes, building standards and emissions restrictions. Furthermore, 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act stimulus funds were tied to local energy code adoptions for its recipients. Also some municipalities such as Minneapolis and Chicago have implemented benchmark ordinances requiring energy consumption reports from commercial buildings.  At this point, Hemsath says these reports aren’t used to reduce consumption but if history repeats itself, he can see these established reporting mechanisms eventually being used to for energy conservation similar to the origins of the 1970 Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Air Act.

But even with all these government entities pushing the market to be more efficient, Hemsath believes design professionals have to be at the forefront of that effort.

“We are the ones who design the buildings. We are the doers, the innovators.”

When designing new buildings, to achieve a zero-net energy building, there are three action steps Hemsath recommends:

  • Use energy efficiently. Design for solar, daylight, climate and design the appropriate envelope. Build the most energy-efficient building possible.
  • Minimize energy use. Incorporate energy-efficient systems and install technology such as occupancy sensors.
  • Apply renewable energy. Produce energy through such mediums as photovoltaic, thermal and wind.

However the greatest need for energy conservation efforts are actually in established buildings. It is estimated that ¾ of our current buildings will be renovated by 2050. Hemsath says that is an untapped market for innovation. For those looking to improve the efficiency of their home there are key elements he suggests.

  • Have someone evaluate the home for energy efficiency. Many energy companies offer this service.
  • Insulate the attic and walls and make the home airtight by sealing window trim and baseboards.
  • Make sure the home has a well-designed duct system with a balanced supply and return air flow. Make sure the ducts are sealed so there are no leaks.

Hemsath says if the home owner can only afford to do one thing, he says the number one thing they should do in Lincoln’s climate is improve the home’s insulation or airtightness.

With all his teaching and research experience, Hemsath is often regarded as an expert in his field. He has spoken internationally and nationally on issues of energy-efficient design and using building energy modeling. He has several local engagements this semester including a talk entitled “Zero-net Energy Homes” at the March Nebraskan’s for Solar meeting and then another presentation at the Nebraska ASHRAE Chapter on “Building Energy Modeling in Design,” date to be determined.

Furthermore, Hemsath has several published works on this subject including two recently in Science Direct entitled “Building Design with Energy Performance as Primary Agent” and “Sensitivity Analysis Evaluating Basic Building Geometry’s Effect on Energy Use.” Hemsath will have a book coming out in early 2017 published by Routledge entitled “Energy Modeling in Architectural Design.”

With the outlook of energy consumption projected to increase, Hemsath’s work couldn’t be more important or timely.

University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

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Professor David Chasco, FAIA was invited to be the jury chair for the AIA Michigan 2015 Honor Awards Program, held June 5, 2015. Approximately 80 entries were submitted by AIA Michigan based firms and were reviewed.  Twelve projects were given Honor Awards in categories of Building, Interior Architecture, Low Budget/Small Project, Unbuilt and Steel, that “exhibited design excellence through creative responses to issues and challenges.” Professor Chasco also selected several alumni of the Illinois School of Architecture, Carol Ross Barney, FAIA and Brian Vitale, AIA (2014 Young Architect Award) both of Chicago, to comprise the Honor Award Design Award Jury.  David then participated in the Honor Award Ceremony at Detroit’s AIA Honor Award-winning Woodward Garden Theatre.

Professor David M. Chasco, FAIA was invited to lead a team of 6 Illinois School of Architecture graduate students – Angel Ng, Jienan Zhang, Christian Pepper, Katherine Stowell, William Smarzewski, and Yang Yu – in the first Volterra 2015 International Design Workshop, sponsored by the University of Detroit-Mercy (UDM) School of Architecture and hosted by their Volterra (Italy) Detroit Foundation in the Volterra International Residential College. The Workshop was held from July 27 through August 7th, 2015. Participating university teams also involved the University of Detroit-Mercy led by Dean Will Wittig and Professor Wladek Fuches (President, Volterra-Detroit Foundation), Warsaw Technological University (Poland) led by Professor Jan Slyke, Ph.D. and University of Pisa representative Giulio Pucci. James Timberlake of Kiernan Timberlake Architects, an alumnus of UDM and designer of the new U.S. Embassy, London, was the Workshop captain. The Workshop project titled “Il Foro Ecological” explored the theme of the relationship between society and technology through the creation of a new Urban District on a large site inhabited by a large public parking lot, the ruins of first century BC Roman Theatre, Roman Baths and bounded by the Volterra hilltop ring road on one side and the medieval defensive wall on the other. The site was part of the old Etruscan and Roman City. Three (3) university integrated teams of students designed urban responses respecting and integrating the site antiquities with a redirected pedestrianized ring road, new baths, marketplace grounds and facilities and other uses deemed appropriate. The culmination of the students’ design efforts was a final exhibition and presentation to various Volterra interested townspeople and stakeholders including Mr. Mario Buselli, Mayor of Volterra. Professor David Chasco has been invited by the University of Detroit-Mercy to head the Volterra 2016 International Design Workshop as well as select a UIUC School of Architecture alumnus as the Workshop Captain.

Professor David Chasco FAIA, and Chicago Architects Carol Ross Barney FAIA and Brian Vitale AIA of Genseler, juried the recently held Michigan Masonry Institute Architectural Awards. The three had also judged the 2015 AIA Michigan Honor Award recently.  Professor Chasco is also a member of the new Campus Master Plan Advisory Committee to advise the University of Illinois Campus Planners, the Smith Group over the next 1 ½ years. He also continues to serve as the Co-Chair of the Chancellor’s Design Advisory Committee which conducts design reviews of all relevant campus architectural projects.

Erik M. Hemingway, associate professor of design in the School of Architecture at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and principal of hemingway+a/studio, will deliver a special public presentation to introduce the design problem for the 2016 Laskey Charrette. During this intensive, weekend-long workshop, sophomore architecture students work in teams to brainstorm ideas for a given design challenge. Their final designs are exhibited and reviewed, with a jury of faculty awarding prizes.

The charrette is presented annually by Studio L in collaboration with the College of Architecture and Graduate School of Architecture & Urban Design to honor Professor Emeritus Leslie J. Laskey and his singular approach to design education during his 35-year WashU tenure.

With over two decades of design experience as principal of hemingway+a/studio, Hemingway’s projects have been recognized in such publications as architecture, Architectural Record, Dwell, Global Architecture, and *surface. Before coming to the University of Illinois, he taught design at the University of California, Berkeley; Lawrence Technological University; and Louisiana State University, as the Nadine Carter Russell Endowed Chair.

His academic studios are engaged with design competitions as a medium of entrepreneurial critical practice and material experimentation. He is the faculty sponsor for his students’ design work, which have resulted in twelve recognitions for global issues ranging from the United Nations on Aging, Barcelona Collective Housing, Steel Design, Preservation as Provocation, Socio Design Foundation, and a Modular School for Burmese Refugees. Two built projects from his seminar material work, mundane[UPGRADE], were published in Exploring Materials by Princeton Architectural Press.

Hemingway earned a Master of Science in Advanced Architectural Design from Columbia University and a Bachelor of Architecture from California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo. Before establishing his practice, he worked in the offices of Arquitectonica and Zaha M. Hadid. His most recent research has been engaged in significant residential structures designed by Mies van der Rohe in Chicago and A. Quincy Jones in Los Angeles. Featured in an exhibition, Erik Hemingway Modernism, at the Krannert Art Museum in 2015, these combine a “more for less” approach based on his flat pack fabrication and preservation upgrades within existing Modernist homes.  

Professor Marci S. Uihlein is the new President-Elect for the Building Technology Educators’ Society (BTES) and will serve as President of the organization in 2017.

University of Southern California

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Professors Kim Coleman and Warren Techentin, in conjunction with Wong Chiu Man and Maria Warner Wong, principals of WOW Architecture in Singapore and USC Architecture graduates, are leading research studios in the graduate and fifth year undergraduate programs that explore innovative design solutions for Bhartiya City, a 150-acre creative hub currently in construction near Bangalore.   Thanks to the generosity of the Bhartiya corporation, the group traveled to India for twelve days in January, researching the country’s culture and traditions.  The research will culminate in a planned exhibition in fall, 2016.

Dr. Joon-Ho Choi at USC has published a journal article, entitled “Investigation of human eye pupil sizes as a measure of visual sensation in the workplace environment with a high lighting colour temperature” in the journal of Indoor and Built Environment. He will host an intensive seminar, titled “Post-Occupancy Evaluation (POE) as a Proactive Environmental Design and Control Tool in Modern Buildings” at the Environmental Design Research Association-EDRA 47 Conference in Raleigh, NC in May 2016.

Trudi Sandmeier, director of Heritage Conservation programs, will serve as a moderator for the upcoming international Iconic Houses Conference at the Getty Center. She has also been chosen to chair the Awards Jury for the Los Angeles Conservancy’s upcoming Preservation Awards program.

John V. Mutlow Architects, Inc. recently won the Award for Innovation in Quality Affordable Housing – USA, as part of Build Magazine UK’s Architecture Awards 2015 program.

Eric Haas, Adjunct Associate Professor and Principal of DSH // architecture, presented his firm’s adaptive reuse projects and current work at the AD&A Museum at the University of California Santa Barbara in January.

Assistant Professor Alison Hirsch will serve as a panelist in the California Historical Society’s February 16th program, “The Continued Legacy of Anna and Lawrence Halprin.” Her article, “Urban Barnraising: Activating Collective Ritual to Promote Communitas” comes out in Landscape Journal this month and her article (co-authored with Aroussiak Gabrielian), “Grounding Diaspora: negotiating between home and host” will come out in the Journal of Architectural Education next month (March).

Patrick Tighe, FAIA, Adjunct Professor, will lecture this Spring as part of the Cal Poly Pomona Lecture Series. Tighe will also present the work of the firm as part of the  Cal Poly San Louis Obispo lecture series. Patrick Tighe Architecture was recently awarded 2 Best of Year Awards from Interior Design Magazine (published in the January issue). 

Lisa Little has been selected as a finalist by theTacoma Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium for two large public art installations to be constructed as part of their new facility. In addition, her practice Vertebrae has been selected to participate in the upcoming Come In!: DTLA exhibition series, opening in March 2016.  Vertebrae also recently completed a laser cut, powder-coated, long-span aluminum shade canopy in Venice, CA entitled Troll Blue Swell. 

The competition to redesign Pershing Square, LA’s most maligned but also most promising park,  Pershing Square Renew, started with 54 teams. In October, that was narrowed to ten semi-finalists. Six of the ten included USC School of Architecture faculty, representing the school’s on-going legacy and impact on the shape of the city. The competition to design the new City Hall park in DTLA for the entire block adjacent to Grant Park at 1st and Broadway has been narrowed down to four teams, including USC professor Lawrence Scarpa, FAIA and his firm Brooks + Scarpa. Final designs were submitted just before the new year holidays. Public presentations  from the four firms will occur on Friday Jan 15, 2006 with the winner selected shortly afterwards. 

Lorcan O’Herlihy, FAIA, Adjunct Professor and principal of Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects [LOHA] will be collaborating with Art Share L.A. to renovate and update their home in the Arts District. LOHA will work with Art Share to carry on their mission of fostering a creative environment for artists and the surrounding neighborhood by developing a space containing a combination of galleries, classrooms, subsidized live-work lofts, event and performance venues, and other community-building spaces. In addition, LOHA will be working with Detroit artist Olayami Dabls on building his African Bead Museum to display and celebrate a collection of African art and artifacts. LOHA’s work with Dabls and the African Bead Museum will join another new LOHA project in Detroit, designing a key component of a catalytic new development in Detroit’s Brush Park neighborhood, the city’s largest residential project in decades. Selected by the Brush Park Development Company, LOHA will design four mixed-use buildings that will become the cornerstones of this significant revitalization effort, incorporating housing, retail, dining, and various arts and cultural amenities on an 8.4 acre site in historic Brush Park. 

Geoffrey von Oeyen, Assistant Professor of Practice, organized a national meeting of the Architectural Division of the American Composites Manufacturers Association (ACMA) at the USC School of Architecture on January 27 and 28, 2016. Bill Kreysler, Chair, presented to a large audience of USC students and faculty an overview of the ACMA’s work to extend composites research and practice to architectural applications. About twenty national leaders in the composites industry met with students during a reception to discuss current materials research and design techniques. 

Kyle Konis, Ph.D AIA, Alejandro Gamas, and Karen Kensek published a paper in the journal Solar Energy entitled, “Passive Performance and Building Form: An Optimization Framework for Early-Stage Design Support.” The paper documents work completed under the Innovative Design for Energy Efficiency Activities (IDEEA) program under the auspices of the California Public Utilities Commission.

Alvin Huang, Assistant Professor, has been awarded the 2016 ACSA Faculty Design Award for the Durotaxis Chair, a fully 3D printed rocking chair which utilizes multi-material 3D printing to express variable structural performance and ergonomic conditions. His work has also recently been featured in Autodesk’s LineShapeSpace.com article “5 Ways Architects & Postdigital Artisans are Modernizing Craftsmanship” and in The Architect’s Newspaper. On March 30, Alvin will be the keynote speaker at the AIA East Bay’s Design & Technology Symposium in Oakland, California.

KnitKnot architecture, the firm of Maria Esnaola, has been awarded a first prize in the Europan 13 Competition (Europan 13_The Adaptable City. http://www.europan-europe.eu/en/) for the municipality of OS (Norway). Europan is a biennial competition for architects under 40 years old to design innovative housing schemes for sites across Europe. The competition encourages architects to address social and economic changes occurring in towns and cities.

Laurel Consuelo Broughton, Adjunct Assistant Professor at USC SOA and her studio WELCOMEPROJECTS participated in the exhibition Errors, Estrangements, Messes, and Fictions alongside Andrew Kovacs and First Office at All Gallery in Los Angeles. The large exhibition was curated by Hadrian Predock and sponsored by USC School of Architecture. In February, Laurel was invited as a guest speaker in The XLab: Cross-Disciplinary Practice and Collaboration at University of Minnesota Collage of Design. 

Chu+Gooding Architects are designing an exhibition for Artist Rodney McMillian at the Studio Museum in Harlem which opens on March 24th in New York City. Their Santa Monica Canyon house provides the backdrop for actress Cate Blanchett in the upcoming Terrence Malick feature film ‘Knight of Cups’ which opens March 3rd. Their Hollywood Hills home of celebrity photographer James White is being published multiple times – the cover of Sept 2015 Elle Decor, Vogue Living Australia, Architectural Digest Russia & German Design Magazine Places of Spirit.

Karen Kensek and Douglas Noble have been awarded a grant from the Precast Concrete Institute Foundation in support of a design studio to examine the use of precast in extreme climates.  The studio will work with the National Park Service to study precast as a strategy for the extreme temperature swings in the desert at Joshua Tree National Park. The projects will be fully off-grid, and will be situtated in a high seismic- zone.  Noble and Kensek will travel to the PCI convention in Nashville to present the results of this three-year study.

 

Boston Architectural College

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The Boston Architectural College (BAC) has been accepted by the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards (NCARB) for participation in the inaugural launch of the Integrated Path to Architectural Licensure Initiative, validating the College’s longstanding tradition of integrating in-class and experiential learning in architectural education.

As the only school in New England to earn recognition in NCARB’s Integrated Path to Architectural Licensure, the BAC aims to reconfigure the graduate architecture degree program, accredited by the National Architectural Accrediting Board (NAAB), to be able to offer students the opportunity to qualify for architectural licensure at the time of graduation. The College’s accepted proposal demonstrates the strong alliance that exists between practice and academics; it was crafted by a balanced team composed of two deans, Len Charney, dean of Practice and Karen Nelson, dean of the School of Architecture, along with key staff; Beth Lundell Garver, director of foundation instruction in practice, and Kyle Sturgeon, director of advanced architecture studios and building technology.

NCARB’s Licensure Task Force commended the BAC for its substantial effort in creatively incorporating experience and examination into the existing NAAB-accredited Master of Architecture curriculum, synthesizing pre-graduation academic coursework, internship requirements, and access to all divisions of the Architect Registration Examinations® (ARE®). This recognition enables the BAC to introduce a series of progressive educational changes that stand to benefit all BAC architecture students by eventually reshaping the College’s architecture curriculum.

The College is currently the only NAAB-accredited architecture degree-granting program to combine academic coursework with systematic qualitative and quantitative assessment of professional skills gained through non-classroom instruction and architectural internship. Moving forward, the College anticipates new collaboration with the 12 other accepted schools and welcomes conversations surrounding this process. NCARB has established a new Integrated Path Evaluation Committee (IPEC) to oversee the ongoing work of this initiative. It is anticipated that the IPEC will continue to coach accepted programs, promote engagement with jurisdictional licensing boards regarding necessary law or rule changes to incorporate integrated path candidates, and oversee the acceptance of future program applicants.

“Being selected as an NCARB ‘integrated path’ pilot recognizes the Boston Architectural College’s tradition of integrating rigorous academic coursework with applied, practice-based learning in monitored and evaluated experience settings,” said Len Charney. “It not only underscores the exceptional potential of the BAC’s approach but also strengthens the commitment of all partners—students, administrators, educators, and supervising practitioners alike—to redouble the collective efforts to communicate openly and ensure a student’s ultimate success.”

As described by Kyle Sturgeon, “This is a real game-changer for us. It advances what we have been doing to a higher level, bringing everyone involved together to accelerate and better prepare our architecture students’ path to licensure.”

2016 ACSA Board Candidates & Results

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The ACSA board of directors is pleased to announce the results of the 2016 ACSA Elections:

First Vice President: Francisco Javier Rodríguez-Suárez, Universidad de Puerto Rico

Second Vice President: Branko Kolarevic, University of Calgary

West Director: Corey T. Griffin, Portland State University

East Central Director: Kelly Bair, University of Illinois at Chicago


Online Voting
Below is information on the 2016 ACSA election, including candidate information. Official ballots were emailed to all full-member ACSA schools’ Faculty Councilors, who are the the voting representatives. Faculty Councilors must complete the online ballot by close of business, February 10, 2016.

 

2016 ACSA PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES

First Vice President
The First Vice President will serve on the Board for a three-year term, beginning on July 1, 2016, with the first year served as First Vice President/President-Elect, the second year served as President, and the third year served as Past President. The links below include campaign statements written by each candidate and short curriculum vitae.

   
Luis Rico-Gutierrez
Iowa State University
 Francisco Javier Rodríguez-Suárez
Universidad de Puerto Rico


Second Vice President
The Second Vice President will serve on the Board for a four-year term, beginning on July 1, 2016, with the first year served as Second Vice President, the second year served as First Vice President/President-Elect, the third year served as President, and the fourth year served as Past President. The links below include campaign statements written by each candidate and short curriculum vitae.

   
Barbara Klinkhammer
Philadelphia University
 Branko Kolarevic
University of Calgary

 

2016 ACSA REGIONAL DIRECTOR CANDIDATES

The Regional Director will serve on the Board for a three-year term, beginning on July 1, 2016. Regional Directors serve as leaders of their regional constituent associations and chair meetings of their respective regional councils. They maintain regional records and have responsibility for the fiscal affairs of the constituent associations, and are accountable to their regional council for these funds. They provide assistance to regional schools and organizations applying for institutional membership. They prepare annual reports of regional activities for publication in the Association’s Annual Report. They participate in the nomination and election of their respective succeeding regional directors; and perform such other duties as may be assigned by the board, Regional Directors also sit on the ACSA board and are required to attend up to three board meetings a year. The links below include campaign statements written by each candidate and short curriculum vitae.

 

West Director Candidates

   
Robert Corser
University of Washington
 Corey T. Griffin
Portland State University 

 


East Central Director Candidates

   
Kelly Bair
University of Illinois at Chicago
 Erik M. Hemingway
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign 

 


ACSA Election Process
ACSA Bylaws, Article IX, Section 3: Election Process: “Elections shall be held in accordance with the Rules of the Board of Directors. Faculty Councilors of member schools shall be responsible for encouraging colleagues to express their views regarding candidates for Association elections, and shall submit the vote of the member school they represent on behalf of all members of the faculty. The Association shall announce the results of elections and appointments as soon as feasible, consistent with the Rules of the Board of Directors”.

The Faculty Councilor from each ACSA full-member school is the voting representative. Faculty Councilors must complete the online ballot by close of business, February 10, 2016.

 

2016 ACSA Board Election Timeline

January 11, 2016

  

Ballots emailed to all Full-member Schools, Faculty Councilors

February 10, 2016

  

Deadline for receipt of completed online ballots ACSA office

March 2016

  

Winners announced at ACSA Annual Business Meeting in Seattle

The Faculty Councilor from each ACSA full-member school is the voting representative and must completed the online ballot by close of business, February 10, 2016.  


Contact
Eric Ellis, ACSA Director of Operations and Programs
phone: 202.785.2324
email: eellis@acsa-arch.org

 

University of Nebraska-Lincoln

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College of Architecture Students Work with UNMC and MMI on Facility Design Concepts

Nothing is more exciting to a design student than the possibility of their designs actually being used in real-world situations. The work of UNL interior design and architecture students this past semester has set the groundwork for a new facility at the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC).

When College of Architecture Instructor Sheila Elijah-Barnwell had heard that UNMC was considering a new facility for Munroe-Meyer Institute (MMI), a healthcare facility that focuses on individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities, she jumped at the opportunity. She approached Dr. Wayne Stuberg, Professor and Interim Director of MMI, and Ron Schaefer, Interim Executive Director, Facilities Planning & Construction, with a proposal to involve her students in selecting a site and developing design concepts.

MMI welcomed the idea; in fact, a new facility had been on their radar for several years as part of their strategic campus plan and the idea of involving College of Architecture students in their strategic campus plan seemed like a great idea.

“Since we are part of the training institution of Nebraska, this was an ideal way to have UNMC collaborate with UNL on a project that would benefit the students as well as the families we serve,” said Dr. Stuberg.

“The facility is quite outdated, having first been built in the 50s and having been added on to twice,” commented Dr. Stuberg.

The College of Architecture and its students were equally excited, but they had their work cut out for them. This wasn’t just a weeklong project for these students. They spent a great portion of their semester researching multiple subjects related to this project even before developing design proposals.

In the beginning the students got to know MMI, who MMI was, what services they provided and who their clients were.

Next, students worked on site selection. They analyzed the UNMC campus and presented site proposals to the MMI administrators. Feedback from the MMI team was crucial to the students as they developed their preliminary designs further.

“Since we are multi-faceted in what we do, it was important for the students to understand how we should best be position within the new building,” Dr. Stuberg commented. “From these conversations, the students gained an understanding regarding the relationships between the departments and how to strategically locate those areas that shared clients or education and research interests.”

MMI met with the students again to go over their preliminary plans. 
“We had some key requirements to be carried through for all conceptual plans such as a central reception area,” Dr. Stuberg said.

A centralized location would allow for multi-disciplinary evaluations and reduce the need for the client to move from one departmental area to the next.

The culmination of the entire process came at last in early December when the twelve teams presented their final proposals to the MMI administrators and directors. MMI representatives were impressed by the teams’ creativity and said they had come a long way during this process.

“They needed to understand the needs of a complex population including the clinicians, staff members, researchers, students, clients and client families,” Elijah-Barnwell explained. “They did a great job of processing all those needs and client requirements and created some -thoughtful design proposals.”

“We hit the ground running with our research,” explained Luke Abkes, fifth-year master of architecture student. Abkes said even before he put pen to paper, he did hours of research on the client and the Institution.

MMI was the ideal partner according to the faculty and students.

“MMI was great with communicating their ideas and giving us feedback; they were very generous with their time,” Abkes added. “MMI was as invested in this project as we were which created a mutual excitement for everything that was going on.”

The students appreciated input from outside of the classroom for a different perspective and experience.
“We were excited to finally have a real client and a real building that we were working on and they were excited because they were getting all of these brand new ideas from students who were thinking outside of the box, where as an architect, that they hire in the future, might be a little more bound by budget,” Abkes added.

Interior Design Instructor Stacy Spale thought having a real “client” pushed the students to excel. “The students did great with the client experience. I think the students always care more when it’s a real client, and it has real potential. In five or six years, some of the ideas our students presented might end up in the real new Munroe-Meyer Institute. That’s really exciting and inspiring. It gave them a since of purpose and direction. It’s not just an academic exercise, it has the potential to really change things.”

The average visitor might not understand the level of planning that goes into designing a building and all the considerations that are taken into account. However, these student teams thought of everything down to every material they chose and the reason for it. For example, they chose clear glass in areas where light can inspire people and open up a space and translucent or opaque glass in other areas where privacy was important.

Ashley Wojtalewicz, fourth-year interior design student and Luke Abkes’ interdisciplinary project partner, said the interior design students were assigned to detail out the recreational therapy area and the main lobby space. Both the architectural and the interior design students placed a great amount of consideration into the needs of MMI’s disabled patient population.

“With our material choices, the concept doesn’t really feel clinical at all but yet it still supports clinical activities, and that’s what we were going for as a team, we didn’t want the clients to feel like they were in an institution,” Wojtalewicz added.

Material choices were important to Wojtalewicz for user comfort. For example, many interior designers chose carpet in appropriate spaces not only for comfort but also the acoustics in the room.

Interior design finish materiality was also useful to guide the user through the facility in an intuitive, seamless way, also known as “wayfinding,” which was a common theme woven into many of the student proposals.

“Using materiality, there are different ways that we can give visual cues to the patient; so if they can’t read, they still know where to go,” commented Wojtalewicz. Wayfinding is spatial problem-solving using landmarks or visual cues. The interior design students used their material selections to intuitively lead patients through the building. In one proposal, all blue lines on the floor lead to the front desk and all red lines lead to physical therapy, etc. In another proposal, all the levels of the building have different wall colors to assist the visitor with wayfinding.

Both Wojtalewicz and Abkes, said their instructors were key contributors to the project’s success.

“My instructor, Stacy Spale, has given us really great feedback as we moved through the process,” commented Wojtalewicz. “She has a great deal of background in healthcare design.”

Abkes concurred and added, “My instructor Sheila is actually an adjunct professor who also works at HDR. She’s very well connected with a lot of the healthcare industry around Omaha. She was able to bring in real-world experience.”

From MMI’s standpoint, “It’s a win-win situation,” Dr. Stuberg said.

The students presented themselves and their ideas well and were very professional through the whole project. Dr. Stuberg admitted at times, the students would bring up ideas that MMI hadn’t even thought of yet. Dr. Stuberg said he can see components of the student designs being incorporated into the final facility. He added that their designs and research will definitely be part of the foundational document they give the contracted architectural firm.

When asked if he would partner with the College of Architecture again given a similar opportunity, Dr. Stuberg responded, “I would do this again in a heartbeat!”

The AASL Core Reference List

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Barbara Opar and Barret Havens, column editors

Navigation tabs of AASL Core Reference List organized by research category.

Need to identify the key publications or databases to refer to for a variety of specific architectural research needs? Do you need to quickly distribute a list of major technical handbooks and standards or other resources to your undergraduate class?  Then check out the AASL Core Reference List for help!

AASL would like to share with you the results of this important team effort. The Association of Architecture School Librarians has just completed a project designed to benefit faculty and students in schools of architecture as well as our fellow librarians. For several years, task force members Kathy Edwards (Clemson), Janine Henri (UCLA), Barbara Opar(Syracuse) and Amy Trendler (Ball State) have been creating a list of core reference resources needed for academic programs in architecture.

First, the task force identified essential categories of reference tools and then developed a list of corresponding resources for each category which would aid researchers from beginner to advanced. The list includes the following categories:architecture schools; bibliographies/guides to research; biographical resources; building codes and regulations; cost estimating; dictionaries and encyclopedias; graphic standards and drawing guides; surveys and histories of architecture; special collections; indexes and databases; professional practice; specifications and trade literature; guides to architectural styles; technical handbooks and standards; and finally visualresources. In addition to the original categories the authors added a section listing publications relevant to each of the NAAB Student Performance Criteria and related subcategories. The authors collaborated using Springshare’s online LibGuides platform, which facilitated compiling the resources for each category, reviewing each other’s selections, and eventually publishing the Core Reference List.  Overall editing of the AASL Core Reference List was completed by Barret Havens, Outreach Librarian at Woodbury University in Burbank.

AASL hopes that this guide will prove useful to faculty, students and fellow librarians in quickly ascertaining core reference works in the field of architecture. As a catalog of key resources, it could become part of the NAAB accreditation used to evaluate architecture libraries. AASL’s core periodical list– which is in the process of being updated- has been used in this way. We welcome your input and feedback on this and other lists we develop and update in the hopes of benefiting the field of architectural education.

 

Auburn University

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Danielle S. Willkens, PhD, Assoc AIA, FRSA and visiting assistant professor of architecture at Auburn since 2014, has been awarded the prestigious H. Allen Brooks Travelling Fellowship by the Society of Architectural Historians. This $50,000 award allows an emerging scholar to travel anywhere in the world for one year to gain firsthand experience of architecture and landscapes. For more, click here.

“Homage to Malevich,” a quilt created by Sheri Schumacher, associate professor emerita, has been accepted for exhibition at the QuiltCon West Conference sponsored by the Modern Quilt Guild in Pasadena, California, February 18-21. The largest modern quilt show in the world, QuiltCon West will feature 375 quilts from more than 1,340 entries. For more about QuiltCon West, click here.

Auburn fifth-year Architecture / Interior Architecture dual degree student, Sarah Wahlgren was elected National President of the American Institute of Architecture Students for 2016-2017.  Read more here.

 

University of Nebraska-Lincoln

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Lecturers Emily Andersen and Geoff DeOld’s firm DeOld Andersen Architecture has speculations on the public right-of-way included in “Public Public,” an exhibition examining pubic space in public places through the lens of art/architectural interventions and investigations.

Professor and Interim Associate Dean Rumiko Handa has contributed a chapter titled “Experiencing the Architecture of the Incomplete, Imperfect, and Impermanent,” in Architecture, Culture, and Spirituality: Essays on the Experience, Significance, and Meaning of the Built Environment. The book was co-edited by Julio Bermudez, Thomas Barrie, and Phillip Tabb, and came out in October this year from Ashgate.

Handa presented a paper titled “W. G. Sebald’s Austerlitz: Architecture as a Bridge between the Lost Past and the Present,” at the Reading Architecture Symposium, held in Athens, Greece, in June 16-18, 2015.

Handa also presented a paper titled “Allure of the Incomplete, Imperfect, and Impermanent: Synecdoche, Palimpsest, and Wabi in Architecture of the Everyday,” at the International Conference on East Asian Architecture Culture, held in Gwangju, Korea, in November 10-14, 2015.

MS-ARCH graduate Tshui Mum Ha presented a paper titled “Reuse, Recycling, and Reintroduction of History with Contemporary Eyes through Adaptive Reuse, at the International Conference on East Asian Architecture Culture, held in Gwangju, Korea, in November 10-14, 2015. The paper is based on her Master of Science in Architecture thesis, and Rumiko Handa was her thesis advisor. 

Associate Professor Tim Hemsath’s international conference presentation on ‘Building Design with Energy Performance as Primary Agent’ is scheduled to be published in the Energy Procedia Journal. This spring he has been invited to speak at two events. First, on the subject of Zero-net Energy Homes at the Nebraskan’s for Solar March meeting and second at the Nebraska ASHRAE Chapter on Building Energy Modeling in Design. In partnership with the University of Missouri, Professor Hemsath will help lead two student design teams to compete in the national Race to Zero competition sponsored by the U.S. Dept. of Energy and held at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s Research Support Facility, April 16th to 17th.

Professor Sharon Kuska, was listed as one of Design Intelligence’s 25 Most Admired Educators for 2016. 

Assistant Professor Peter Olshavsky, Ph.D. will be presenting a paper on Daniel Libeskind’s “Three Lessons in Architecture” at the Society of Architectural Historians’ conference this coming April. Olshavsky’s essay, “Hidden Multitude: Libeskind’s Three Lessons in Architecture” will be published in the forthcoming peer-reviewed journal Dialectics (University of Utah). 

Lecturer Bob Trempe’s work has been selected as one of only two submissions picked from the United States for the Warming Huts: An Art + Architecture Competition on Ice sponsored by The Forks Renewal Corporation.  A total of 160 entries were submitted from all over the world as part of this year’s competition.  These designs will be installed on the Red River Mutual Trail located on the Assiniboine and Red rivers in Winnipeg, Manitoba, as part of a system of warming huts and ice trails adding to the area’s growing tourist attractions. 

Professor and Director Jeffrey L. Day’s firm Min | Day won several awards:
2015 AIA Nebraska Design Awards. 

> Honor Award, Architectural Interiors: Bucktown House
> Merit Award, Unbuilt: BART / Muni Market Street Entrances
> Honor Award, Architectural Detail: Dr. No Cabinet
> Merit Award, Architectural Interiors: Spirits Pavilion, Slow Food Nation

AIA Central States Design Awards and from the AIA Chicago:

> Honor Award, Interior Architecture, Bucktown House, AIA Central States Region 
> Interior Architecture, Bucktown House, AIA Chicago 2015 Design Excellence Award

Min | Day’s work has been featured in several publications including:

> Omaha World Herald, “Blue Barn Theatre’s new home has slightly larger capacity, one-of-a-kind features,” by Betsie Freeman, September 9, 2015
> Interior Design magazine, “Influence is Immortality” (includes Bucktown House) by Fred A. Bernstein, October 2015 pp162-164
> Chicago Architect magazine, (Bucktown House) Nov./Dec. 2015

Finally, Min | Day has been shortlisted as a finalist of the Architecture League of New York’s 2016 Emerging Voices award and lecture series.

Alumni Kevin Bukowski and Liz Szatko (2015 Bachelor of Science in Design graduates) won two awards for their Air Rights Architecture project in the 2015 AIA Nebraska Design Awards  The pair collaborated on this design in Assistant Professor David Karle’s ARCH 410 studio during the fall of 2014. The two awards are:

 > Merit Award, Emerging Architects Unbuilt
> People’s Choice, Emerging Architects Unbuilt (this award is determined by popular vote, not jury)

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