Other ACSA Websites

Study Architecture ProPEL

Posts

University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

/in /by

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 Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

/in /by

Mohamed Boubekri, Associate Professor, most recent book Daylighting Design: Planning Strategies and Best Practice Solutions was published by Birkhaüser Verlag. This is a follow-up book to his previous book: Daylighting, Architecture and Health published by the Architectural Press/Elsevier.  

 

Associate Professor Erik M Hemingway‘s creative design/preservation and research work on his Urbana Modernist residence was featured in the December/January 2015 Dwell Issue in an article entitled “Buy A Piece of American Modernism with these 8 For Sale Homes”. It was the first of eight featured with other homes designed by Phillip Johnson, Paul Rudolph, and Frank Lloyd Wright.

 

The Urbana Modernist residence was also featured again in Curbed with an article “Oh Look, Someone already restored this 1967 Home For You”. Erik is currently designing a Pre-Fab addition to an A. Quincy Jones designed Eichler in Los Angeles, based on this previous work and his continued research on flat pack/ fabrication.

 

The School of Architecture is pleased to announce that Thérèse F. Tierney was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure. She is also a Faculty Affiliate of the Illinois Informatics Institute where her research focuses on networked urbanism.

 

Associate Professor of Architecture Thérèse F Tierney was invited to exhibit “ZIPBox Housing:  a transit-oriented development” at MIT Disrupting Mobilities: A Global Summit Investigating Sustainable Futures, November 11-13, Cambridge, MA, co-convened by Ryan Chin, City Science Initiative, MIT media lab and Susan Shaheen, TSRC, University of California Berkeley.  The Disruptive Mobility Summit brings together leaders from academia, industry, and government to discuss the role of current innovations within mobility networks.

The UIUC advisory board unanimously approved Tierney’s joint appointment with the Unit for Criticism & Interpretive Theory.   Faculty are appointed to the Unit in recognition of the relevance of their research and teaching to theoretically informed interdisciplinary work. Tierney’s transdisciplinary research on 21st c. urbanism, “Point clouds, locative media, and digitizing the image of the city” is featured in a multimedia exhibition titled “Now/There: Scenes from a Post Geographical City” in Los Angeles from Sept -24 -Oct 29.  In December, the exhibition travels to Shenzhen, China as part of the Shenzhen Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism + Architecture, curated by Aaron Betsky, Alfredo Brillembourg & Hubert Klumpner, ETH Zurich, and Doreen Heng Liu. 

http://www.biennialfoundation.org/biennials/shenzhen-hong-kong-bi-city-biennale-of-urbanism-architecture/









 

 

 

 

 



 

 

 


 

University of Detroit Mercy

/in /by

The Volterra International Design Workshop was organized jointly by the University of Detroit Mercy School of Architecture and the Volterra-Detroit Foundation from July 29 to August 8, 2015 in Volterra, Italy. In addition to the host team from UDM SOA, students and faculty from three other academic institutions participated in the workshop: University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign (USA), Warsaw University of Technology (Poland), and University of Pisa (Italy). Architect James Timberlake from Kieran Timberlake in Philadelphia attended as a special guest of the workshop to provide the intellectual leadership and connect the students with the most progressive ideas in the architectural profession.

The theme of the workshop was “Society and Technology: Water, Food, Waste, and Energy”. The workshop consisted of three interwoven components: pre-workshop research, a lecture series, and a design challenge. 

The focus of the school teams’ pre-workshop research was on their universities’ hometowns. Following the general theme of the workshop, the students studied the relationship between and mutual impact of the availability and distribution of fundamental resources (energy, water, food) and city development. 

The lecture series was designed to give students insight into the history and the contemporary problems of Volterra, as well as to present a modern vision of architectural research and practice. Beyond the general introduction and the historical tour of the city, the Volterra theme was further advanced in the presentations of the Director of the Pinacoteca in Volterra, archeologist Alessandro Furiesi (on water management in Volterra from antiquity to modern times), architect Andrea Bianchi (on the deterioration of the Tuscan landscape caused by the industrial use of land in Volterra territory) and the president of the social cooperative “La Torre” in Volterra Marco Bruchi (on the problems of garbage removal and recycling in the Comune of Volterra). 

A connection between the context and the goal of the workshop was provided in lectures by Dean Will Wittig and Professor Wladek Fuchs (University of Detroit Mercy School of Architecture). Finally, James Timberlake gave two highly inspiring talks about “Making of an Architect”, as well as his firm’s design and research philosophy and most recent projects. 

At the core of the workshop was the unique opportunity for everybody to collaborate over an architectural design problem. The city of Volterra is a wonderful urban laboratory, presenting a great balance of the medieval city scale, form and tradition, contrasted with problems resulting from the needs of a living city organism. The site selected for the design challenge lies just outside of the city’s medieval walls, alongside the ruins of the Roman Theater, and it is bordered by one of the main streets bypassing the historic center. Currently used as a municipal parking lot, the site presents great potential for a much more significant role in the city’s urban fabric. The functional program of the project was branded as an “Ecological Forum”, a city district focused on the ecological values of urban living, and complementing the historical urban core of Volterra. 

During the workshop, the students and professors were divided into three mixed groups, to generate and test multiple concepts. An additional level of design insight and inspiration was offered to all groups during the project reviews by James Timberlake, Will Wittig and Giulio Pucci (University of Pisa). 

The workshop concluded with project presentations, a discussion, and a public exhibition at the Volterra International Residential College. The projects generated a significant amount of interest and discussion among the city officials and residents who came to the exhibition. The site and its current use is a matter of significant public interest in Volterra. The work presented at the exhibition has been clearly seen as a valuable voice in the discussion about potential directions for the city future development. 

Two primary notions permeated the final presentations and discussion among the workshop participants. The first was the importance of research in design, and the value of design as a form of research. The design outcomes of the workshop have clearly identified a direction for further studies at the scale of the entire city. This would involve the vehicular traffic pattern inside and around the city, and the potential for a green belt around the medieval center of Volterra – instead of the existing chain of parking lots. Thus the design ideas formulated this year have become the first step in research toward next year’s workshop.

The workshop was also an excellent experience in teamwork and design collaboration in an international context. Over the course of ten days, the students had the opportunity to share and confront their ideas and skills in the continuous dialogue with their colleagues and faculty mentors. Considering the nature and the character of the contemporary architectural practice, collaborative design work should be considered an essential part of professional education. After all, the most important quality in an architectural office environment, and one which can be built only through a genuine and continuous collaboration is – in the words of James Timberlake – “the collective intelligence”.

 

University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

/in /by


The School of Architecture is pleased to announce that Thérèse F. Tierney was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure. She is also a Faculty Affiliate of the Illinois Informatics Institute where her research focuses on networked urbanism. In July, Tierney served as an external PhD examiner for Maryam Fazel, University of Sheffield, UK; thesis title: “Locative Media: from transcendental technologies to socio-formative spheres (an examination of the interface between place, agent and locative media).” More recently, Tierney’s invited essay, “Point Clouds, Locative Media, and Digitizing the Image of the City” will be published this December 2015 in Now, There: Scenes from a Post-Geographic City (Mimi Zeiger, Editor).    

University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

/in /by


Associate Professor Randy Deutsch AIA, LEED-AP, will have a new book to be published in October, Data-Driven Design and Construction: 25 Strategies for Capturing, Analyzing and Applying Building Data, 1st Edition (Wiley, 2015).  An additional new book, Convergence: An Integrated Framework for Architecture (AD, 2016).

He was a Keynote speaker at The Next Frontier: Mining and Leveraging Data in BIM, BIM Perspectives conference, The Graduate Center, CUNY, NYC, 2015.  He also gave/will give the following lectures:   Measuring the Immeasurable, Validating the Ineffable, New Jersey Institute of Technology, School of Architecture, 2015;  Public Lecture: What Leveraging Data Meansfor You, Your Career, Firm and Profession, AIANY Technology Committee, Centerfor Architecture, NYC; Lecture: The Data on Data-Centric Practices, Knowledge Architecture, KA Connect 2015, knowledge management conference, San Francisco, CA; Lecture: National Organization of Minority Architecture Students (NOMAS) 2015 Symposium, 50 Shades of Leadership, Urbana, IL, 2015; Lecture: Architects Design By Manipulating Data, Not Form, AIA Northeast Illinois, 2015.

He also delivered two talks at Building Technology Educators’ Society 2015 International Conference: Educating the Technology-Inclined Design Architect; & Data Driven Design in Education and Practice.

He was featured in “Deep Data: How Greater Intelligence Can Lead To Better Buildings,” by C.C. Sullivan, in Building Design + Construction magazine, June 2015, pp.43-46.  He was interviewed on BIM in education, BIMThoughts podcast S2E12, 2015. 

Professor Deutsch also developed and delivered an online course on design thinking, Architecture as a Second Language, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, College of Fine and Applied Arts, 2015.

He was also invited as a Board Member, Advisor, UK-based Building Research Establishment (BRE) Advisory Board on BIM education in the US, 2015-16 and a Board Member, Virtual Builders, US BIM education, 2015-16.

During the summer Assistant Prof. Mark Taylor directed a summer design studio that worked in collaboration with Prosperity Gardens, a non-for profit organization who transforms vacant land into productive urban farm land.  Students investigated the adaptive re-use of a former police evidence building and produced designs for a wash, pack and storage facility to be located on a one acre site in downtown Champaign. Funding secured from ADM with allow the facility to be built in the coming year.

 


University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

/in /by

ACSA News – 5.27.15

On April 14, 2015 Mark Taylor, Assistant Professor in the Illinois School of Architecture, was honored with the 2015 Campus Award for Excellence in Public Engagement for his untiring contributions to improve lives in Haiti. Following the 2010 Haiti earthquake, Taylor made numerous trips to Léogâne, the town at the epicenter of the quake, to help assess the damage in the town and develop schematic designs for a school, a hospital, and a midwifery training center. His trips revealed the enormous challenges related to building safe and resilient structures, in a country where many people live on less than $1 a day. Undaunted by these challenges, Taylor developed collaborations, both internationally and locally, to improve building design, construction practices and the quality of locally produced building materials. The Kay Fanm Yo (Women’s House) was completed in January 2013.

 

Illinois School of Architecture, Assistant Professor, Sudarshan Krishnan, will be one of the key speakers at the conference “State-of-the-Art in Civil Engineering Structures and Materials” organized by the Universidad de Las Fuerzas Armadas (ESPE) in Quito, Ecuador, in July 2015. The title of his lecture is “Design of Cable and Suspension Structures.” He will also be delivering a series of special lectures to the civil engineering students at the Universidad Central del Ecuador and ESPE on the “planning of structural systems for medium and high-rise structures,” with an emphasis on seismic considerations. 

 

University of Detroit Mercy

/in /by


From July 29 to August 8 the University of Detroit Mercy School of Architecture will host the first bi-annual Volterra International Design Workshop in Volterra (Italy).
 
The workshop is a new addition to and an extension of the UDM SOA study abroad program in Volterra, which was first organized in 1987. Beautifully and conveniently located in the middle of Tuscany, equal distances from Florence, Pisa and Siena, Volterra offers the UDM SOA students and faculty a genuine immersion in Italian history and culture.
 
Since 2013 the program has been housed in the UDM School of Architecture’s private facility in the city: the Volterra International Residential College. The new home base in Volterra allows the UDM SOA and its academic partner, the Volterra-Detroit Foundation, which established and now manages the facility, to plan and organize a variety of academic and cultural programs in Volterra, including AIA Continuing Education programs, collaborative academic programs with the University of Pisa (Italy) and – for the first time this summer – International Design Workshops.
 
This year, selected students from the UDM SOA, together with the Dean of the UDM School of Architecture Will Wittig, will remain in Volterra for an additional ten days beyond the normal length of the program. During this time they will be joined by students and faculty from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign and the Faculty of Architecture of the Warsaw University of Technology from Poland, as well as local academics and professionals from Volterra, Pisa in Italy. The workshop will be moderated by James Timberlake, FAIA, from Kieran Timberlake (Philadelphia, USA), an alumnus of the UDM School of Architecture.
 
The purpose of the workshop is to create an international academic forum for sharing contemporary architectural ideas. Architecture is becoming an increasingly global profession, which offers new and fascinating inspirations and opportunities internationally. The workshop will give the students and faculty the opportunity to experience international teamwork and collaboration.
 
The theme of the workshop is “Society and Technology: Water, Food, Waste, and Energy”. In the words of Dean Will Wittig: “In every town, in every society, there is a daily, weekly, and yearly rhythm of arrivals and departures; oranges and milk, newspapers, workers, school children, water, coal, busses, sewage, and garbage. And the logic of logistics can be traced in these systems that anticipate the flow of water, food, energy, and waste. City form in turn is organized and orchestrated to establish the physical ecosystem of a society that enables social capital to flourish.”
 
For additional information about the UDM School of Architecture and other programs in Volterra please visit http://www.volterra-detroit.org

University of Notre Dame

/in /by

The School of Architecture at the University of Notre Dame would like to invite you to attend our 2013-2014 Lecture Series. Attendees are eligible to receive AIA/CE credits. All lectures begin at 4:30 pm in 104 Bond Hall, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN 46556.

September 9th, 2013
Nancy Steinhardt
Chinese Architecture & the Beaux-Arts

September 16th, 2013
Joe Burns
Designing Sustainable High Rise Architecture

November 4th, 2013
Eduardo Luis Rodriguez
Havana 1900: The City and its Architects

November 20th, 2013
Thomas Beeby
The Richard H. Driehaus Prize Lecture

November 25th, 2013
John Ochsendorf
On Vaulting

February TBC
Rob Krier
TBC

March 3rd, 2013
Craig Hamilton
Temples and Tombs

March 31st, 2013
Ruan Yisan
TBC

April 16th, 2013
Roger Scruton
Order and Fluidity: Reflections on Post-Modern Architecture

University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

/in /by

ACSA News – 3.18.15

Abbas Aminmansour was selected for the 2015 American Institute of Steel Construction (AISC) Special Achievement Award.  Per AISC’s web site, “A Special Achievement Award provides special recognition to individuals who demonstrated notable singular or multiple achievements in structural steel design, construction, research or education. This award honors living individuals who have made a positive and substantial impact on the structural steel design and construction industry.”  The award will be presented at the opening plenary session of the North American Steel Construction Conference (NASCC) on Wednesday March 25, 2015 in Nashville, Tennessee.   

Associate Professor Randy Deutsch AIA, LEED-AP received a UIUC College of Fine and Applied Arts Creative Research Award in late 2014; served on the 2015 American Institute of Architects National Technology in Architectural Practice Innovation Awards Jury in February; published a book review on BIM Design in The International Journal of Architecture, Engineering and Construction (IJAEC) in February; will be giving a TEDx Talk, “Creating Career Control Joints,” in April; will be presenting a paper, Leveraging Data in Academia and Practice: Geometry, Human- and Building-Performance, at the Architecture Research Centers Consortium (ARCC) 2015 in Chicago in April; has an article, Who Will Lead Our Industry’s Data-Driven Future?, in DesignIntelligence in May; will be delivering a talk, “AESOP: The Data-Centric Practice of the Future,” at KA Connect 2015 in San Francisco, CA in May; will be presenting Leveraging Data Across the Building Lifecycle on data-informed design at the International Conference on Sustainable Design, Engineering and Construction (ICSDEC) in Chicago in May; wrote a new book, Data Driven Design and Construction: 25 Strategies for Capturing, Analyzing and Applying Building Data, to be published by Wiley in the Fall, foreword by James Timberlake FAIA of KieranTimberlake; has papers accepted and will be presenting at the Building Technology Educators Society (BTES) Conference, presenting in Salt Lake City, UT in June; developing an online course ARCH 164: Architecture as a Second Language; contributed to an article in Architect Magazine on Best Practices in BIM, integrated design and leadership.

Kevin Hinders will be giving a paper alongside Michael Loganbill at the upcoming AIA conference describing the Chicago Studio- its pedagogy and practice.

Paul Kapp has published his latest book:  The Architecture of William Nichols: Building the Antebellum South in North Carolina, Alabama, and Mississippi, has been released by the University Press of Mississippi. 

Joy Monice Malnar’s co-authored book, New Architecture on Indigenous Lands received excellent  reviews in a diverse range of publications from the Canadian Architect (November 2014, page 46), to the Journal of Tourism and Cultural Change (http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14766825.2014.932496) to the First American Art Magazine (No. 5, Winter 2014, page 68). She is currently teaching in the ISoA’s new Chicago Studio program established with the support of the Chicago architecture firm VOA.

Polygon Sculpture Studio, designed by Professor Jeffery Poss and two recent ISoA graduates at Workus Studio, received 2014 Merit Award for Architectural Design from the American Institute of Architects Central Illinois Chapter.  The studio is perched at the top of a steep lakefront property overlooking Lake George in upstate New York.  

Faculty within the detail+FABRICATION Program of the Illinois School of Architecture are exploring the role of fabrication and making in an exhibit entitled “Speculative Visions of Pragmatic Architectures” at the Krannert Art Museum in Champaign.  Rather than privileging finished products, objects, or built work, these designers are placing an increased focus on the process of making as a means for surveying alternative outcomes.  The exhibit is curated by detail+FABRICATION program chair Professor Jeffery Poss, and features the work of Associate Professor Erik Hemingway, Fabrication Coordinator Hugh Swiatek, and Visiting Faculty Brian Vesely and Camden Greenlee. The exhibit runs through the summer of 2015.

In recognition of his work in Haiti following the 2010 Haitian Earthquake, Assistant Professor Mark S Taylor has been awarded a University of Illinois’ 2014-2015 Campus Award for Excellence in Public Engagement.
 

In 2014, the Urban Communication Foundation selected Thérèse Tierney’s book, The Public Space of Social Media: Connected Cultures of the Network Society, as a finalist for the Jane Jacobs Urban Communication Award.  Also that year, Tierney’s essay, “Reappropriating Social Media: Internet Activism, Counterpublics & Implications,” won Honorable Mention for “Best Faculty Research in the Humanities” by the Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities. More recently, she published on digital topics such as “Crowdsourcing Crisis Response: Mobilizing Social Media for Urban Resilience,” European Business Review (7/2014) and “Will 3D Printing Revolutionize Architecture?” BIF Design Education (2/6/2014). This April, Tierney is curating an exhibition, “Building the Future: Interaction Design” sponsored by [co][lab] in Urbana, Illinois.

 

University of Tennessee-Knoxville

/in /by

Renowned landscape architect and planner Drew Wensley has been appointed a visiting professor of practice in the University of Tennessee, College of Architecture and Design.

Wensley is chief executive officer of Canada-based Moriyama & Teshima, a globally recognized planning and landscape architecture firm. He will visit the College of Architecture and Design numerous times a semester, and work remotely with faculty and students on various projects.

“Drew is a great addition to the Landscape Architecture Program for several reasons, not the least of which is his firm’s global reach,” said Gale Fulton, chair of the UT Landscape Architecture program. “His wide range of professional experiences, including large-scale planning projects and exquisitely detailed built works from South America to the Middle East, will add a new dimension to the local and regional work in which our faculty and students are currently engaged.”

UT professor of practice positions are set up so faculty can provide detailed hands-on education in specific areas. There are about twelve such positions across various UT colleges. Wensley will relay his experiences and his professional practice activities through topics taught in the Landscape Architecture Program’s design studios.

Wensley has contributed to some of the largest and most significant city building and environmental restoration initiatives in the Middle East, Asia, and North America. In 2001, he started the vision and implementation of the Wadi Hanifah Comprehensive Development Plan in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, a bio-renewal effort producing a 120-kilometer-long oasis with forty-two kilometers of recreational trails, three lakes, six parks, and nearly 40,000 trees.

The project marked a shift in how environmental systems and natural resources are treated and preserved and their importance in building strong sustainable cities in the future. As a result, Wensley presented the plan to the Council for Sustainable Development and Delegates at the United Nations in New York as a leading example of sustainable urban renewal.

Wensley’s consulting work with Skidmore, Owings, & Merrill (SOM), a leading urban planning, architecture, and engineering firm, on urban planning initiatives around the world led to his involvement with Philip Enquist, the UT Governor’s Chair for High Performance Energy Practices in Urban Environments. Wensley is a contributing partner in the Governor’s Chair’s collaboration between SOM, UT, and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory to research and create solutions for resilient cities.

“Developing more resilient cities requires this highly integrated partnership among numerous disciplines, and I am excited that UT is becoming a hub for this type of research and practice,” Fulton said. “Graduates of our program will benefit greatly in their future careers as a result of these opportunities and experiences.”

As a leader at Moriyama & Teshima, Wensley has contributed to more than $1.2 billion of construction internationally. Projects include the new campus plan for Kuwait University, a new home for 40,000 students, and the Comprehensive Environmental Plan for the city of Makkah in Saudi Arabia. In Canada, projects include Calgary’s East Village Riverwalk, the Lakehead University Campus Plan, the Havergal College Campus Plan, the Canadian War Museum, and ongoing work with His Highness the Aga Khan in Toronto and Ottawa.

Wensley is a graduate of Ryerson University in Canada. His design drawings are housed at the Ontario Archives in Toronto and were recently exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in Copenhagen, Denmark. For more information about Wensley, visit the faculty profile page of the UT Landscape Architecture Program website.

We use cookies and other tracking technologies for performance, analytics, marketing, and more customized site experiences. By continuing to browse this site you are agreeing to our terms. Learn more about these in our Privacy Policy. ACSA reserves the right to delete content and suspend user accounts that it determines to be inappropriate.

OKLearn more