Charlene LeBleu, Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture, has been elected to the American Society of Landscape Architecture’s Council of Fellows, the highest honor that ASLA bestows upon its members. LeBleu, who joined the faculty of the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture in 2004, was nominated by Alabama ASLA chapter for her contribution of knowledge to the profession of landscape architecture and for her lifelong pursuit of research, education and leadership in storm water research, design, and implementation. She will be inducted into the Council of Fellows at the ASLA annual meeting in Boston on November 17, 2013. LeBleu is the third ASLA Fellow in the State of Alabama, and the first woman Fellow in Alabama since 1899.

Ivan Vanchev and Doug Bacon, students in the Master of Integrated Design and Construction program, received an Honorable Mention  in the 2013 Leicester B. Holland Prize: A Single Sheet Measured Design Competition for their drawing, “Auburn Oaks and Toomer’s Corner.” Thier drawing will be put in the Library of Congress and will be available on the National Park Service website as part of the Historic America Buildings Survey (HABS) and the Historic American Engineering Record (HAER).  Vanchev and Bacon produced their entry as part of an independent study directed by Professor Rebecca Retzlaff.

The School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture (APLA) was well represented  when winners were recently announced for the 2013 Birmingham AIA Design Awards competition. Many Honor and Merit Awards were awarded to alumni-led teams and firms. Williams Blackstock Architecture (Joel Blackstock ’80), Dungan Nequette Architects (Jeff Dungan  ’93 and Louis Nequette ’93), Live Design Group  (Aubrey Garrison III ’66, Craig Krawczyk ’97, Jeff Quinn ’78) and GA Studio (several Auburn alumni associates and interns) were among those represented in multiple award categories.

APLA alumnus Samuel “Jack” Bassett (’08) is one of six young professionals chosen by the Design Futures Council as an Emerging Leader for 2013. Each honoree will receive  a scholarship to attend the 12^th annual Leadership Summit on Sustainable Design to be held in Minneapolis, Minnesota in October. The annual summit brings together a delegation of 100 people from the world’s most influential design, engineering and construction firms to explore innovation in sustainable design. The scholarship is sponsored by DuPont Building Innovations as a way to invest in the young talent in the design and construction industry.

APLA alum Nicholas Holt (‘93) was recently named a Senior Fellows of the Design Futures Council by the Design Futures Council (DFC). Technical director at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill’s New York office, Holt was one of thirteen inductees named for “significant contributions toward the understanding of changing trends, new research, and applied knowledge that improve the built environment and the human condition.” (http://www.di.net/news/design-futures-council-announces-2013-senior-fellows/)

Professor Christian Dagg, AIA, has been named as Program Chair for the Master of Integrated Design & Construction program, a collaborative academic program between the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture and the McWhorter School of Building Science.  Dagg has been on the faculty of Auburn University’s School of Architecture since the fall of 2000, where he has served in several leadership positions, including Program Chair for Interior Architecture and a year level coordinator for Second and Fourth Year Design Studios in Architecture.

A retrospective of the work of Professor Emeritus, Robert L. Faust will be hosted by the Department of Art in the College of Liberal Arts at the Biggin Art Gallery, Biggin Hall, Auburn University during the month of December. Drawings, photographs and models of Faust’s work as an architect will be featured. The exhibit is curated by APLA’s Professor Christian Dagg.

An integrated studio of third and fourth year Interior Architecture students has mounted an exhibit cataloging design possibilities for the Atlanta Central Library in Atlanta, Georgia. Commissioned in the late 1960’s but not completed until 1980, the iconic downtown library is the final building by celebrated modern architect Marcel Breuer (1902-1981). Using the work of Breuer as a guide, the studio led by Kevin Moore and Nathan Foust has re-imagined the expansive public interior by developing meaningful luminous and acoustic variety. The exhibit of student work is on display in the Dudley Commons Gallery, at Auburn University’s College or Architecture Design and Construction, weekdays until September 30.

The School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture’s Rural Studio has been awarded a $42,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to support the documentation of the Rural Studio’s 20 years of bringing quality design to rural Alabama. The project will include the creation of a documentary and social media campaign that highlights Rural Studio’s anniversary project to build eight 20K House projects. Art Works grants support exemplary projects in thirteen artistic disciplines and fields: arts education, dance, design, folk and traditional arts, literature, local arts agencies, media arts, museums, music, opera, presenting, theater and musical theater, and visual arts.

OCUS 11 ante litteram, an exhibition of new works by Margaret Fletcher, Assistant Professor in the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture, will open on Saturday, September 14, at Sandler Hudson Gallery in Atlanta, Georgia. An opening reception will be on Saturday, September 14 from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m., and Fletcher will deliver an artist talk on Saturday, October 12 at 2 p.m.

The 2013 Lecture Series of the Auburn University School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture is entitled “Renegades + Outlaws: Design Thinking at the Edge.”  The series is conceived as a way to consider perceptual outliers within the design profession. Wide interpretation of the lecture series theme is encouraged, from practitioners that rely on collaborative practices of art, architecture, filmmaking, and design to practitioners that engage in significant contextual work designed to profoundly affect the essential community in which it resides. Lecturers will elaborate on projects, processes, research, motivation, missions, etc. that have evolved within their practices and have created moments that we can identify as driven by designers who are outlaws and renegades. Details for about the lecturers and the lecture calendar can be found at:  http://cadc.auburn.edu/apla/Lists/APLANews/DispForm.aspx?ID=207

APLA Alum Ginger Krieg-Dosier (B.Arch / B.Int.Arch.’00), and her company bioMASON, won the 2013 Postcode Lottery Green Challenge, and €500,000, with the invention of a sustainable brick that is “grown” using bacteria and has a CO2 free production process. The Postcode Lottery Green Challenge is considered the largest annual worldwide competition for entrepreneurs and was created to instigate change and discover new products or services that combine sustainability with change.

On Sept 30 Carlos Jiménez, Principal and Lead Designer at Carlos Jiménez Studio_ lectured at Auburn University’s School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture as part of the 2013 fall lecture series titled, “Renegades + Outlaws:  Design Thinking at the Edge.” Carlos Jiménez Studio is an award winning, internationally recognized firm founded in 1983 and is based in Houston, Texas. 

Architect and APLA Alum, Al York, AIA (’88, BArch) celebrates with his firm McKinney York Architects (www.mckinneyyork.com) the announcement that they are honored with the 2013 Architecture Firm Achievement Award, given by the Texas Society of Architects (TxA). Recognized as the highest honor the Texas Society of Architects can confer upon an architecture firm, McKinney York now takes its place among a select group of influential Texas firms who have also received this award. 

“Wanderlust,” a letterpress project created by Kyle Wherry, a fourth-year student in the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture, has been chosen for exhibition in the “918 Letterpress Ephemera Show” at Samford University in Birmingham, October 18 to November 29. Out of 548 entries, Wherry’s was one of the 129 chosen to be part of the show; it will be published in the exhibition catalog and become part of the permanent collection at Samford University. Wherry created “Wanderlust,” an accordion fold book, in a Letterpress course that was taught summer semester by Robert Finkel, an assistant professor of graphic design

Professor Matt Hall (ARCH) joins the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture (APLA) faculty this 2013 fall semester with the following adjunct instructors:  Nathan Foust (ARCH), Judd Langham (MLA), Jeff Collins (ARCH), Jacqueline Margetts (MLA), Randall Vaughan (ARCH), Ben Weisman (ARCH/MCP – Urban Studio), John Threadgill (MLA), Xavier Vendrell (ARCH – Rural Studio), Dick Hudgens (ARCH-Rural Studio).

A team of students from architecture, community planning and landscape architecture won the 2013 National Organization for Minority Architects (NOMA) Student Design Competition. The student team included Tina Maceri, Alex Therrien, Cordetrus Johnson, Jason Groomes,Yubei Hu, Taiwei Wang, Torrance Wong, Valecia Wilson, Sarah Curry, Claudia Paz-Melendez, Jack Mok, George Criminale, and Byung Choe. Faculty advisors Kevin Moore, Margaret Fletcher, Dr. Carla Jackson Bell and Nathan Foust provided team support. An Auburn APLA team has won this competition three years in a row.

On September 20 the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture held an annual awards banquet to honor student award and scholarship recipients. This event also celebrates the donors of each student gift, and provides them with an opportunity to spend time with the student recipient.

Auburn University’s School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture (APLA) continues to be ranked among the nation’s best. In the annual DesignIntelligence survey, “America’s Best Architecture and Design Schools 2014,” APLA’s undergraduate program in Architecture is ranked 8th in its fields nationally. Survey respondents rated Auburn students as among the nations strongest in several skill areas, including Construction Models & Materials (2^nd), Cross-Disciplinary Teamwork (2^nd), and Sustainable Design Practices & Principles (3^rd). These rankings are based on annual surveys of leading practitioners in these fields.

October 25 marked the 25th anniversary of the College of Architecture, Design and Construction’s (CADC) annual Pumpkin Carve. Daylong student pumpkin carving yielded up to 400 pumpkins that were displayed and lit for public enjoyment as the sun sets. The often intricate designs were judged on creativity, appearance and craftsmanship, and the winning pumpkins were auctioned off to raise money for the Auburn University chapter of the American Institute of Architecture Students (AIAS).

A cross disciplinary team consisting of Kevin Laferriere (Architecture), Kevin Hill (Building Science), William Holcomb (Building Science), and Jared Taylor (Building Science) from the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture and from the McWhorter School of Building Science placed second in the Design Build Institute of America (DBIA) 2013 Student Competition. The Auburn team, Tiger Building Company, won the Southeast regional competition out of an original field of forty teams from twenty-seven universities. The team was coached by Ben Farrow, Paul Holley and Mike Thompson.

A student exhibition of work from the course ”Architecture in Watercolor” was on display in the Dudley Gallery at Dudley Commons in the College of Architecture, Design and Construction (CADC) in October. The class was taught by instructor Iain Stewart (BArch ’00), an architectural illustrator who has made a name for himself working for firms throughout the US and Europe for over sixteen years. Stewart will be back on campus teaching watercolors in the spring of 2014.

The 2013 lecture series of the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture, entitled “Renegades + Outlaws:  Design Thinking at the Edge” continued over the month of October with lectures from Michael Murphy, the Chief Executive Officer of MASS Design Group, a nonprofit architecture firm based in Boston, MA; Mack Scogin and Merrill Elam, the two principals of the award-winning Mack Scogin Merrill Elam Architects in Atlanta, Georgia; Riccardo d’Acquino of Riccardo d’Aquino & Partners in Rome, Italy, a firm recognized for works in Architecture, Monument Restoration and Urban Design; and Professor Kathryn Moore, Immediate Past President of the Landscape Institute, and the UK representative of the International Federation of Landscape Architects (IFLA).

Assistant Professor Kevin Moore won Best Creative Scholarship for his submission to the IDEC (Interior Design Educators Council) South Regional Conference 2013. Moore presented Beyond the Groundwork, a collaborative alumni exhibit designed and installed by Moore and Amanda (Herron) Loper (BArch 2005). The exhibit was organized by the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture and held at the Jule Collins Smith Museum in Auburn, Alabama in February 2011.

Professor Joceyln Zanzot’s collaborative video was recently published in the inaugural issue of PUBLIC, the on-line, peer-reviewed journal of Imagining America. Zanzot’s piece, called Common Ground in Alabama, explores four years of emerging pedagogy and methodology for community-based art and design practice through the Mobile Studio. The filmic essay features three key projects that cross scales from the state to the county to the schoolyard, exemplifying principles and practices of the studio. To view the short film, please visit:  http://public.imaginingamerica.org/blog/article/common-ground-in-alabama/

Professor Robert Sproull’s winning entry in an international design competition held by the city of Quito, Ecuador in 2008, is currently featured as part of an exhibit called, “Airport Landscape Urban Ecologies in the Aerial Age” at the Harvard Graduate School of Design in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Sproull’s entry, designed in collaboration with Ernesto Bilbao, develops the Parque Bicentenario (formerly known as Parque del Lago) in a planning strategy for converting a local international airport into an urban green space on the same scale as New York City’s Central Park. The exhibit is open through December 19, 2013.