Beginning in the spring semester of 2012 the Architecture Department, Tyler School of Art, Temple University will be housed in a new building, designed by the Philadelphia firm, H2L2. The building will double the space for the architecture programs at a time of curricular growth, with space to accommodate the Architecture Department’s new undergraduate programs in Facility Management and Architectural Preservation, a pre-professional undergraduate degree in Architecture and a graduate level professional degree program in Architecture. 

Robert Shuman, Partner at MGA Partners in Philadelphia, has joined the full time architecture faculty at Tyler School of Art, Temple University.  Shuman brings an extensive professional experience to the department where he will be contribute through curricular development and teaching in the areas of environmental systems, comprehensive design, and professional practice. He will continue to practice at MGA Partners.

Professor Lindsay Bremner and Adjunct Faculty Member Jeremy Voorhees were placed third in a two stage international competition for the design of a cyclone shelter in Bangladesh. Professor Bremner’s book, Writing the City Into Being: Essays on Johannesburg 1998 – 2008 (Johannesburg, Fourthwall Books, 2010) was launched in New York at the Storefront for Art and Architecture in a panel discussion between the author, Helene Furjan, Alicia Imperiale and Mabel Wilson on March 15 2011 (Interrogation 04). Professor Bremner will be leaving Temple_Architecture at the end of December 2011 to take up a position as Director of Architectural Research at the University of Westminster  in London, UK. 

Assistant Professor Alicia Imperiale presented a paper, “Hosting Celebrity/Housing Cittadini/Città dell’Arte: the Olympic Village in Rome 1960-2010,” at the American Academy in Rome in October and presented her design work in a talk entitled : “Noisy Knots” at the Input-Output conference and exhibit at Tyler School of Art in October organized by Architecture’s Rashida Ng and Sneha Patel. She was a Peer Reviewer for the ACADIA conference in New York. Her essay, “Organic Italy?: The Troubling Case of Rinaldo Semino,” was published in Perspecta: The Yale University Journal of Architecture, in November and she is a contributor to the book Clip, Stamp, Fold: The Radical Architecture of Little Magazines 196X to 197X, ActarBirkhauser. She was a participant in a panel at the Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York in January in connection with the recent book Monsterpieces by Aude-Line Duliere and Clara Wong, ORO Editions and in March for the release of Lindsay Bremner’s Writing the City into Being: Essays on Johannesburg 1998-2008. She was a panelist at the Institute for Contemporary Art in an event in relation to the exhibit Anne Tyng: Inhabiting Geometry and has contributed an essay to the forthcoming catalogue.

Assistant Professor Rashida Ng presented the keynote address at the Assembly of Architects 2011 Baraza in Minneapolis, Minnesota in April 2011.  The Assembly of Architects provides programs to evoke social awareness and engage communities, specifically youth, in the relevance of design and how it affects us all.  The Assembly fosters and promotes the profession of architecture within communities through strategic partnerships with local and national design associations, corporate entities, and nonprofit organizations.  The theme of this year’s event was “Women of Color in Architecture: Disparities, Opportunities, Possibilities.” 

Assistant Professor Scott Shall recently completed two collaborative works as an extension of his ongoing research into crowd-generated architectures.  The first, sited in Bolivia and funded through a Temple University research grant, uses small, site-responsive architectural works to systematically generate versions of education that are tailored to the lives of kids working on the streets of La Paz.  Over the next two years, Professor Shall will use the data unearthed through these works to build more complex models, eventually resulting in the construction of a School for the Creative and Performing Arts in La Paz.  The second work, completed in partnership with the Philadelphia School System and the Mural Arts Program of Philadelphia, uses four elements arcane to the abandoned lot – broken concrete and asphalt, chainlink fencing, scraps of wood and vegetation – to generate a 4000SF outdoor classroom space at Bodine High School in North Philadelphia at a cost of under $5.25/SF.  Over the next few years, the Philadelphia School Board intends to use the unique tectonic developed through this work to generate additional outdoor classroom environments throughout Philadelphia. 

Assistant Professor Bob Trempe has been named a winner in the 2011 Winnipeg Warming Huts design competition. His submission, titled “Under the Covers,” uses the conceptual act of splitting and peeling up the snow to generate shelter, simultaneously exposing the “ground” beneath. In this way, the fabric of snow is distorted, with the shelter recognized by the user through the act of distortion in the existing field of white. The shelter design will be built in December 2010 and installed in January 2011 along the Assiniboine Credit Union River Trail in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Assistant Professor  Trempe has also been named a second time winner in the “Stored Potentials” competition in Omaha, NE. 

Assistant Professor Srdjan Jovanovic Weiss guest curated and designed the exhibition of Anne Tyng: Inhabiting Geometry at the Institute for Contemporary Arts (ICA) in Philadelphia, January 13-March 20, 2011. Weiss worked closely with Tyng, who is now 90, to conceptualize the architecture of the exhibition. The same exhibit traveled to Graham Foundation in Chicago in where it was open from April 15 until June 18 2011. A catalog co-published by the ICA Philadelphia and the Graham Foundation is available in summer 2011 and distributed by DAP. In conjunction to this exhibit the Domus magazine in its May issue published Weiss’ interview with Anne Tyng conducted in March 2011.  Professor Wiess also co-edited the new book Evasions of Power: Architecture of Adjustment that has been published by the Slought Foundation in Philadelphia in May 2011. The book contributes to ongoing discourses about human rights, geopolitical conflict, and territorial sovereignty with contributions from an array of practitioners from fields including art, literature, philosophy, architecture, and urban studies. Exploring overlooked urban zones, state borders, enclaves, and extra-territorial sites throughout the world, contributors probe contemporary perspectives on power and its evasions. Major support for this publication was provided by the Graham Foundation.   Finally, Professor Wiess received a publishing grant by the Graham Foundation for an upcoming book Socialist Architecture: A Vanishing Act co-authored with Armin Linke. The book explores contemporary states of monumental and sculptural architecture built in order to solidify the values of former Yugoslav Socialism. The Socialist Federation of Yugoslavia vanished during the early 1990s and was Balkanized into a number of emerging democracies, former Socialist states. Each of these new states inherited monuments, buildings, landscapes and infrastructure which was constructed specifically for the former Socialist condition and representation. The Vanishing Act captures the indecision of emerging democracies today and the distinct effects their undecidability creates spatially and visually to experiencing former Yugoslav architecture.