In January 2017 the Department of Architecture moved into the new 87,200 sq.ft. Design Building in the center of the UMass Amherst Campus. The state of the art facility, designed by Leers Weinzapfel Associates is one of the largest mass timber structures in the US.

Ajla Aksamija has been promoted to Associate Professor with Tenure. Her book Integrating Innovation in Architecture: Design, Methods and Technology for Progressive Practice and Research was published by John Wiley & Sons. She published three journal articles in The International Journal of Architectonic, Spatial, and Environmental Design, the Journal of Architectural Engineering and the Perkins+Will Research Journal. She presented papers at the 3rd International Conference on Biodigital Architecture & Genetics in Barcelona, Symposium on Simulation for Architecture and Urban Design (SimAUD) 2017 Conference in Toronto, PowerSkin 2017 Conference in Munich, and the Facade World Congress in Los Angeles.

Caryn Brause, Assistant Professor, published The Designer’s Field Guide to Collaboration (Routledge 2017). The book received First Prize in the 2017 Building Technology Educator’s Society (BTES) Book Award. 

Carey Clouse has been promoted to Associate Professor with Tenure.

Sandy Litchfield, Assistant Professor presented in an Invitational group exhibition, “East by Northeast: New Directions in Landscape” (September 25th through October 22nd) at the  Martha Gault Art Gallery, Slippery Rock University, PA. 

Max Page, Professor of Architecture and History, published two books to mark the 50th anniversary of the National Historic Preservation Act:  Bending the Future: Fifty Ideas for the Next Fifty Years of Historic Preservation (UMass, 2016), and Why Preservation Matters (Yale, 2016). 

Pari Riahi joined UMass in the fall of 2016 as an Assistant Professor. She received the FRG/HEG grant at UMass for her research: Reconfiguring Parisian Suburbs. She has published an invited paper in the Journal of Architecture and presented at the 105 ACSA Annual Meeting in Detroit.

Stephen Schreiber, Chair, was elected as a regional director of the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards (NCARB) at its 98th Annual Business Meeting. 

The UMass Amherst’s Department of Architecture hosts a diverse and multi-disciplinary Lecture Series in the fall of 2017. For more info see: 2017 UMass Amherst lecture series