Associate Professor Joongsub Kim, Ph.D., AIA, AICP received the inaugural Michael Brill Grant Award in Urban Communication and Environmental Design, sponsored by the Urban Communication Foundation and the Environmental Design Research Association. Professor Kim’s study focuses on urban communication and citizen participation in the Rust Belt Region. Professor Kim also presented a poster entitled “The Role of Urban Agriculture in the Design and Planning of Cities and Communities” at the 2011 ACSA National Conference, Montreal, Canada. Professor Kim chairs the American Institute of Architects Detroit Chapter Urban Priorities Committee, which organized the four-month long event called “Detroit: By Design” this past spring and summer. Designers from several countries and the USA participated in the three symposiums and exhibits at the Detroit Public Library, focusing on transportation, urban centers, and urban agriculture.

LTU hosted nearly 100 visitors from the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy to the Wright-designed Gregor Affleck House in August as part of the Conservancy’s Destination Detroit weekend event. Visitors from sixteen states toured the house along with two other Wright designs in the area: the Melvyn and Sara Smith House in Bloomfield Hills and the Dorothy Turkel House in Detroit. Associate Professor and Wright Conservancy Board of Directors member Dale Allen Gyure, Ph.D., organized the Affleck visit and acted as host.

Assistant Professor Jim Stevens organized and conducted a digital fabrication and parametric workshop at Universiteti POLIS in Tirana, Albania.

The College of Architecture and Design (CoAD) is proud to announce the successful completion of the inaugural year of its Master of Urban Design [M.U.D.] Program. Assistant Professor Constance Bodurow, Program Coordinator, reports many successes, including the first student  cohort and graduates, the first annual Sustainable Urbanism dialogue + lecture with Dr. Mitchell Joachim, and the first annual celebration and dinner at the LTU’s Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Affleck House. For more information, go to http://www.ltu.edu/architecture_and_design/urbandesign_curriculum.asp

Fourth-year Architecture students Adam Murray and Mark Schovers took third place in the Integrated Building Design category of the 2011 American Society of Heating, Refrigeration and Air- Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) competition. The students competed against undergraduate and graduate students from around the world as part of Associate Professor Daniel Faoro’s Sustainable Design Studio last Spring. The project outline called for a 23,000 square foot renovation and addition  to The Drakewell Museum in Pennsylvania, Florida. Jurors included members of the LTU University Center for Sustainability and Associate Professor Edward Orlowski, LEED, Professor Will Allen, Assistant Professor Ashraf Rageb, Ph.D, Adjunct Instructors Celeste Novak and Deirdre Hennebury adjunct faculty, and co-advisor Associate Professor Janice Means, PE, assisted the students at quarterly reviews. Their computer models utilized the Green Building Studio® whole building energy analysis software. Athena® software was used to access the LCA and embodied energy data for the project. Profs. Faoro and Means will attend the ASHRAE awards ceremony in January, where the project will be exhibited.

Adjunct Instructor Corrie Baldauf has been awarded a prestigious Kresge Artist Fellowship, sponsored by the Troy-based Kresge Foundation. The twelve award winners will each receive $25,000. They were chosen from among 450 applications from visual artists in the Detroit metro area. This year’s judges included Nick Cave from the Art Institute of Chicago; Mary Fortuna, exhibitions director at Rochester’s Paint Creek Center for the Arts; Mame Jackson, professor emeritus at Wayne State University; Anne Pasternak of Creative Time, Inc.; and Fred Wilson, artist and MacArthur Fellow.

Paul Urbanek, AIA, LEED AP, B.S.Arch.’81, B.Arch.’82, design director and vice president at the Detroit office of SmithGroup, one of the largest architecture and engineering firms in the country, has been named the 2011 recipient of LTU’s Distinguished Architecture Alumni Award. Urbanek’s design portfolio includes civic, commercial, academic, and cultural commissions for national and international clients. His work has been widely published and has received numerous awards at the local, state, and national levels. Recent design accomplishments include the state-of-the-art Clinical & Translational Research Building at the University of Louisville and the James Clarkston Environmental Discovery Center at Indian Springs Metropark.

The work of retired Professors John Sheoris, FAIA, Joseph Savin, and Harvey Ferrero was displayed in the gallery of the University Technology and Learning Center as part of the new Master Practitioner Folio Series presented by the CoAD. Sheoris joined the full-time faculty at Lawrence Tech in 1981 and taught until 2001. A graduate of Yale University with two degrees in architecture, he came to Detroit in 1953 to serve as director of design at Harley, Ellington, and Day. In 1963, he moved to Smith, Hinchman & Grylls Associates, where he became corporate vice president and director of the health facilities division. Sheoris was responsible for the design of major local, national and international health facilities, including a trauma/clinic center in Taipei, Taiwan, and a military hospital in Nuremberg, Germany.

Between 1969 and 2010, Savin taught architectural design at LTU from 1969 to 2010, along with six years at the University of Michigan, where he earned his bachelor’s degree in architecture in 1955. One of Savin’s early jobs was with Eero Saarinen & Associates in Bloomfield Hills where he worked on the TWA Terminal Building. He later became president of Savin, Wycoff, Phillips Architects before branching off to form his own office.

Ferrero taught architecture from 1962 to 2002 and also worked as an architectural illustrator. A 1955 graduate of LTU, he worked as an illustrator for the U.S. Army and later apprenticed with Bruce Goff in Oklahoma for two years before returning to Detroit to become a registered architect and a professor.