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Virginia Tech

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Assistant Professor Dr. Elizabeth Grant, Ph.D., R.A., is the principal investigator for a grant of $45,000 awarded to The Center for High Performance Environments (CHPE) at Virginia Tech. The grant was awarded by the RCI Foundation to investigate the effect of roof reflectivity on air and adjacent surface temperatures. The EPDM Roofing Association (ERA), the Asphalt Roofing Manufacturers Association (ARMA), and the Polyisocyanurate Insulation Manufacturers Association (PIMA) contributed to the grant award. Elizabeth Grant will be collaborating with Carlisle Construction Materials to conduct the study on the Blacksburg campus of Virginia Tech.

Associate Professor Michael Ermann’s forthcoming book, Architectural Acoustics Illustrated, was awarded the Virginia Society AIA Prize for Design Research and Scholarship. The text, which aims to translate the field of building acoustics into the graphic language of architecture will be published in November of this year (Wiley). The jurors recognized that his submission “covered an interesting and important subject, noting that the content has great depth and could become an standard textbook for architecture education.”

Professor Dr. Markus Breitschmid, Ph.D., S.I.A., is the author of the article “Architektur leitet sich von Architektur ab.” The article was published in the Zurich-based architecture journal Werk, Bauen + Wohnen in its September 2014 edition.

Virginia Tech

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Professor Henri T. de Hahn, S.I.A., has been named director of the School of Architecture + Design. A Canadian-Swiss dual citizen, de Hahn was educated as an architect at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology located in the city of Lausanne. Henri de Hahn completed additional studies at The Cooper Union and the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies in New York. He has practiced architecture with Atelier Cube and Musy et Vallotton in Lausanne. Prior to his most recent role as Provost at the NewSchool of Architecture + Design in San Diego, Calif., de Hahn was the Department Head at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, California from 2006 to 2012. Previously, de Hahn was a professor at the University of Kentucky. Henri de Hahn also taught for several years at the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH) in Zürich and the Aayojan School of Architecture in Jaipur, India. De Hahn is a registered architect in Switzerland, a member of the Swiss Institute of Architects (S.I.A.) and numerous professional societies both in America and Europe.

Associate Professor Vance Hunter Pittman, R.A., has been named the chair of the graduate programs in architecture at the School of Architecture + Design. He oversees the two-year and three-and-a-half-year Master of Architecture programs, the Master of Science in Architecture program, and the Doctor of Philosophy in Architecture and Design Research degree program.

Professor Susan Piedmont-Palladino, R.A., has been named director of the School of Architecture + Design’s new graduate concentration in urban design, a stream within the Master of Science in Architecture program. The Urban Design concentration enrolls its first class in Fall 2014. Based at the Washington Alexandria Architecture Center (WAAC), the new program builds on the interdisciplinary structure of the WAAC and draws on current graduate programs in architecture, landscape architecture, planning, and public policy. In addition, Piedmont-Palladino, who is a curator at the National Building Museum, has been awarded the 2014 John ‘Wieb’ Wiebenson Award for Architecture in the Public interest by the Washington Architecture Foundation and the AIA/DC. The award is given to an architect who has spent a career championing design in the public interest. 

Visiting Assistant Professor Dr. Laura McGuire, Ph.D., has been appointed to teach lecture courses in history and theory of architecture. She received her Ph.D. and M.A. degrees in History and Theory of Architecture at the University of Texas at Austin and her B.A. in Anthropology from Brandeis University. McGuire joins the architecture program from Vienna, Austria, where she has been a curator at the Kiesler Foundation.

Virginia Tech’s Board of Visitors has approved the following promotions of architecture faculty members:

Professor Kathryn Clarke Albright, A.I.A., has been promoted from the rank of Associate Professor to Full Professor.

Professor Dr. Markus Breitschmid, Ph.D., S.I.A., has been promoted from the rank of Associate Professor to Full Professor.

Professor Joseph Wheeler, A.I.A., has been promoted from the rank of Associate Professor to Full Professor.

Associate Professor James Bassett has been promoted from the rank of Assistant Professor without Tenure to Associate Professor with Tenure.

Associate Professor Dr. Hilary Bryon, Ph.D., has been promoted from the rank of Assistant Professor without Tenure to Associate Professor with Tenure. 
    
Professor Dr. Mehdi Setareh, Ph.D., P.E., a structural engineer, was a team member, led by Zaha Hadid Architects, London, UK, that designed the Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University in East Lansing, MI. The building won the 2014 Innovative Design in Engineering and Architecture with Structural Steel (IDEAS2) award from the American Institute of Steel Construction. Mehdi Setareh, principal investigator, and undergraduate architecture students Kelly McCarthy and Sarah Spanski, were awarded a grant from the Research Experience for Undergraduate program of the National Science Foundation to study vibration serviceability of buildings. The on-going project is the recipient of NSF grants in the total amount of $213,000.

Smith Creek Park (the Masonic Amphitheatre and Smith Creek Pedestrian Bridge Projects) in Clifton Forge, VA, designed and built by 3rd-year architecture students in the design/buildLAB, led by Assistant Professors of Practice Keith Zawistowski, A.I.A., and Marie Zawistowski, has been named the winner of the A+ Award in the fourth annual AZ Awards program. The award program is an international competition honoring excellence in design and architecture, sponsored by AZURE, Canada’s leading contemporary architecture and design magazine.

Assistant Professor Aki Ishida, A.I.A., and Lynnette Widder were awarded a Professional Runner-Up in the Strategy & Research category for the Core77 Design Awards 2014 program. The Project Making the Giraffe Path created workshop events and artifacts for the not-for-profit CLIMB (City Life is for Moving Bodies) to explore, record, and enhance the relationship between five parks along Northern Manhattan’s major escarpment and the communities along their edges.

Instructor Rengin Holt, longtime professor of the architecture program’s printing laboratory, had her print entitled “Secret Gardens” selected from over 600 entries and exhibited in First Street Gallery of New York City’s 2014 National Juried Exhibition. The print will be included in her forthcoming book “Constructive Geometry.”

Virginia Tech

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Henri deHahn, provost for the NewSchool of Architecture + Design in San Deigo, California, will join Virginia Tech in June as the director of the School of Architecture + Design (http://www.archdesign.vt.edu) in the College of Architecture and Urban Studies.

DeHahn will provide leadership to the undergraduate and graduate programs within the school, including the departments of architecture, landscape architecture, industrial design, and interior design as well as the six research and outreach centers housed within the school. 

Virginia Tech’s School of Architecture + Design offers undergraduate and graduate education through the Blacksburg, Va., campus, the Washington-Alexandria Architecture Center in Alexandria, Va., and programs engaged at the Center for European Studies and Architecture in Riva san Vitale, Switzerland.

“Henri brings a wealth of national and international experience from large and academically diverse institutions to the School of Architecture + Design,” said Jack Davis, Reynolds Metals Professor of Architecture and dean of the College of Architecture and Urban Studies.

Prior to his most recent role as provost at the NewSchool of Architecture + Design, deHahn was department head and professor for the Department of Architecture at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, Calif., and has held faculty positions with ETH Zurich — a renowned university in Zurich, Switzerland — and the University of Kentucky in Lexington, Ky., and served as a visiting professor at the Aayojan School of Architecture in Jaipur, India.

In addition to his academic experience, deHahn has worked as an architect and consultant on a variety of projects in the United States and Switzerland.

DeHahn earned his Master of Architecture from the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Lausanne, Switzerland, and his Bachelor of Science from the Collège Saint-Michel in Fribourg, Switzerland. He has completed additional studies in New York. at The Cooper Union and the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies.

Virginia Tech

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Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University

The LumenHAUS (primary faculty advisors: Associate Professor Joseph Wheeler, A.I.A.; T.A. Carter Professor of Architecture Robert Dunay, F.A.I.A., Director of the Center for Design Research; Professor Robert Schubert, Associate Dean for Research; Visting Instructor David “Chip” Clark) has been selected as one of nine recipients of the 2012 American Institute of Architects Honor Awards for Architecture. The jury commented that the “creative use of materials and the flexibility of its components quickly respond to changes in the environment through automated systems that optimize energy consumption. The plan and section are orchestrated by light and materials to enhance the perception of a small footprint. The interior is cleverly designed with comfortable if compact spaces, compatible materials, and a rationale and clear layout.” It is for the first time that a building conceived, constructed, and built by an architecture school has been awarded with a National AIA Honor award. 

Professor Susan Piedmont-Palladino’s book, Intelligent Cities, was just published in December by the National Building Museum. It’s the culmination of a year-long initiative supported by the Rockefeller Foundation.

Virginia Tech

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Professor Robert Dunay, F.A.I.A., Associate Professor Joseph Wheeler, A.I.A., and Professor Robert Schubert contributed the chapter “Lumenhaus© and the Eclipsis Sun Control System©” to the book Design and Construction of High-Performance Homes. Building Envelopes, Renewable Energies and Integrated Practice (edited by Franca Trubiano; London & New York: Routledge, 2013, p. 235-248).

Professor Robert Dunay, F.A.I.A. and Associate Professor Joseph Wheeler, A.I.A., led a team of six students in a three-week workshop in collaboration with SOM in Chicago. This second workshop over the past year embodies an experimental protocol for the Center for Design Research that integrates teaching and research within an innovative linking of the profession and the academy. The result of this effort is the document, SOM/CDR: Industrial Fabrication, Energy, and the Urban Dwelling. In addition, Dunay and Wheeler delivered lectures at Aalto University in Helsinki, Finland. A conference sponsored by the U.S. Embassy focused on recent research into sustainability and net-zeor energy dwellings. Dunay’s lecture focused on Innovations in Energy Efficient Buildings. Wheeler presented LumenHAUS, winner of the 2010 Solar Decathlon Europe competition, as a case study.

Professor Robert Dunay, F.A.I.A., ACSA Distinguished Professor, was named Design Intelligence Most Admired Professor. This is the third consecutive year (fourth overall) Professor Dunay has been recognized. DesignIntelligence honors excellence in education and education administration by naming 30 exemplary professionals in these fields. The 2013 class of education role models was selected with extensive input from thousands of design professionals, academic department heads, and students.

Associate Professor Dr. Markus Breitschmid, Ph.D., S.I.A., chair of the Core Professional Bachelor of Architecture Program, authored a new book on the œuvre of Basel-based architects Christ & Gantenbein. The book is co-authored with Victoria Easton. The book is published by the German press Hatje & Cantz in an English/German languages edition. 

Virginia Tech

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For UIA 2011 TOKYO 24th World Congress of Architecture, G.T. Ward Professor of Architecture Donna Dunay, FAIA, and Helene Renard, Assistant Professor of Interior Design at Virginia Tech, gave opening and closing talks for the exhibit, “For the Future: Pioneering Women in Architecture from Japan and Beyond,” mounted at the Tokyo Forum. “For the Future:” showcases work in an historical framework through projects and achievements between Japan and the US, and beyond. The exhibition designed as a collaborative effort of the International Archive of Women in Architecture Center (IAWA) at Virginia Tech with the International Union of Women Architects (UIFA) Japan to celebrate 25 years of the IAWA presents unique, early and largely unknown histories of women’s contributions to architecture. 

Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University

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Associate Professor Markus Breitschmid, Ph.D., S.I.A., Chair of the Core Professional Bachelor of Architecture Program, has edited the text for the book publication “Olgiati”. The volume is published by Birkhäuser Publishers in Basel in 2012. Besides the English edition, there are editions in French, German, Italian, Spanish, and Japanese. Breitschmid was also invited to moderate the event “Architettare: Tradition & I”, a discussion on architecture among internationally active architects, by the Organizzazione Studenti Accademia of the Accademia di Architecttura at the Universita della Svizzera Italiana, held on May 31, 2012.

Assistant Professor Aki Ishida has been awarded Japan Foundation Center for Global Partnership Education Grant to design an interactive installation reinterpreting Japanese lantern festivals for the AIA Blue Ridge chapter’s design award exhibit on September 14, 2012. The project is designed in collaboration with the Institute for Creativity, Arts and Technology at Virginia Tech. 

Virginia Tech

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A new program offered through the College of Architecture and Urban Studies’ Washington-Alexandria Architecture Center (http://www.waac.vt.edu/#!home/c1kho) integrates the disciplines of architecture, landscape architecture, and urban planning to create a master’s-level concentration in urban design (http://www.waac.vt.edu/#!ud/cool). The program, which is in its final stages of governance approval, will open its door to its first cohort of students for fall semester 2014.   The Urban Design concentration within the School of Architecture + Design (http://www.archdesign.vt.edu)’s existing Master of Science in Architecture (http://archdesign.vt.edu/architecture/ms-arch) degree program will leverage existing excellence in faculty and curriculum, including the graduate architecture and landscape architecture programs as well as courses within the Urban Affairs and Planning (http://spia.vt.edu/uap) program focused on topics such as historic preservation, public process, land-use law, and sustainability.   “It’s a program for a generalist; for someone interested in the bigger issues in a city. It’s the perfect program to take advantage of the depth of the curriculums in the college and everything Alexandria has to offer,” said Susan Piedmont-Palladino, a professor of architecture at the Washington-Alexandria Architecture Center and the program director for the new concentration.   Students will choose classes in the School of Public and International Affairs (file:///C:UsersspallaAppDataLocalMicrosoftWindowsTemporary%20Internet%20FilesContent.OutlookQ7IFG811spia.vt.edu) and the School of Architecture +Design (http://archdesign.vt.edu/), both schools within the College of Architecture and Urban Studies. The curriculum will focus on topics including livable cities and sustainable cities; areas where the college’s research will serve as a useful resource. Dean Jack Davis said, “As populations are increasingly moving to urban centers throughout the world, knowledge on environmental sustainability, public health in the urban core, and quality of life issues are critical to excellence in design. This concentration will address those issues and more.”  The plan is to keep the size of each incoming class small to allow for more personalized attention and customized education. “We hope students will come in with particular urban issues that they are interested in,” Piedmont-Palladino said. “So it will have a self-directed course of study.”   Piedmont-Palladino also says she hopes that the program attracts a diverse group of students so that each can benefit from learning from one another.   “The ideal candidate is someone who has a professional degree in landscape architecture or architecture and may have spent time abroad, time in a city, and been exposed to other cultures. Perhaps they have practiced for a few years and found themselves interested in problems beyond a single building and want to expand their knowledge of planning,” explained Piedmont-Palladino. With this program, they can come back to school for three semesters and get a master’s in architecture with an emphasis in urban design.”   The new concentration is not limited to those with degrees in architecture or landscape architecture, however. Students with non-professional degrees in architecture and landscape architecture can enroll for an extra semester. For students who do not have a relevant design degree, the program requires successful completion of a foundation studio to learn the basic principles of design and graphic communication. Such students would join aspiring landscape students with similar backgrounds in an introductory course for their first year at the Washington-Alexandria Architecture Center.   A board of advisors will help guide the curriculum and also provide professional relationships, creating a built-in network for the new graduates.   Virginia Tech’s College of Architecture and Urban Studies (http://www.caus.vt.edu/) is composed of four schools: the School of Architecture + Design, including architecture, industrial design, interior design and landscape architecture; the School of Public and International Affairs, including urban affairs and planning, public administration and policy and government and international affairs; the Myers-Lawson School of Construction, which includes building construction in the College of Architecture and Urban Studies and construction engineering management in the College of Engineering; and the School of the Visual Arts, including programs in studio art, visual communication and art history.   Related Links * Jaan Holt, Henry Hollander receive American Institute of Architects Northern Virginia Chapter Award (http://www.vtnews.vt.edu/articles/2013/10/103113-caus-holtandhollandernovaaia.html) This story can be found on the Virginia Tech News website: http://www.vtnews.vt.edu/articles/2013/11/111813-caus-urbandesign.html

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