The School of Architecture is pleased to announce the tenure-track appointment of Assistant Professor Dr. Charles Davis II.  Professor Davis holds a PhD and a MS from the University of Pennsylvania, and a Master of Architecture and a Bachelor of Professional Studies from the State University of New York at Buffalo.  He was most recently a Postdoctoral Fellow in the History of Art at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Professor Davis brings a unique and powerful intellectual framework to architectural history and theory. His research lies at the intersection of American literature, architecture and race across the 19th and 20th centuries. He has previously taught at the University of Pennsylvania, Parsons The New School of Design, and The Ohio State University.  He is a recipient of a Canadian Center for Architecture Collection Research Grant and in 2002 was awarded the Fontaine Society Dissertation Fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania.  His recent article “Viollet-le-Duc and the Body: the Metaphorical Integration of Race and Style in Structural Rationalism” was recently published in Architectural Research Quarterly by Cambridge University Press.  Professor Davis will be teaching required courses in Architectural History/Theory, and will offer a range of classes in race and place, and diversity and design, both within the School and the University at large.

The School of Architecture’s Fall Convocation Address was delivered by Peter Eisenman, the Charles Gwathmey Professor in Practice at Yale University. 

Professor Dale Brentrup delivered “Making Visible Daylighting and Thermal Performance Optimization” and “Exploring a Quantitative Evidence-Based Methodology as an Interface for High Performance Envelope Design,” at the 2011 American Solar Energy Society Conference in Raleigh.

Professor Chris Jarrett presented “Paradox of Sustainability: Strategies, Case Studies and Impact” at the School of Business at Wake Forest University.

Associate Professor Deb Ryan received a grant from the Netherlands Foundation through the Historic House Trust in New York for an ideas exhibition of student work at the Wyckoff House.

Associate Professor Greg Snyder led a group of students this summer through Spain and Portugal in his study abroad program, “Figure and Ground on the Iberian Peninsula.”

Associate Professor Peter Wong is teaching in the College of Architecture and Urban Planning at Tongji University in Shanghai this fall.  He will also be conducting research on contemporary Chinese architectural practice.

Assistant Professor Thomas Forget led a group of students this summer through Switzerland and parts of France in his study abroad program, “Precision and Experimentation.”  He also participated on the final review of Marc Angelil’s Urban Design Studio at the ETH in Zurich.

Assistant Professor Thomas Gentry recently delivered “Agrarian Urban Agriculture” at the 2011 Food and Environment Conference in Wessex, England; and “Actively Teaching Passive Heating and Cooling” and “Passive & Active Cooling for Production of Single-Family Housing” at 2011 Passive and Low Energy Architecture Conference in Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium.

Assistant Professor Zhongjie Lin recently delivered an invited public lecture, “Reconfiguring the Superblock” at Southeast University in Nanjing, China.

Assistant Professor Emily Makas spent half the summer in Sarajevo and Mostar focusing on her research project on National and Urban Identities in Bosnia and Herzegovina.