PHOTO:  La Cage aux Folles, a 17 foot bent steel tube structure by Warren Techentin, was previously on exhibition at Materials & Applications (M&A) in Silver Lake from April 19th through September 2nd. Once built, La Cage actively engaged the community by opening the sidewalk as a pocket park and through curated performances

Assistant Professor Alexander Robinson was selected to be a Rome Prize Fellow in Landscape Architecture for 2015-2016. This spring his machine for designing the Owens Lake Dust Control Project was exhibited at the Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions gallery as part of the show “After the Aqueduct”. In May he and Associate Professor Vittoria Di Palma will co-present at the Dumbarton Oaks conference, “River and Cities”. 

Associate Professor Vittoria Di Palma was recently awarded the 2015 Louis Gottschalk Prize by The American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ASECS) for her book, Wasteland: A History. The annual prize is awarded for the best scholarly book on an eighteenth-century subject. Di Palma and Wasteland: A History were also recognized by the PROSE Awards (The American Publishers Awards for Professional and Scholarly Excellence) this year with an honorable mention in the architecture and urban planning category. In addition, Wasteland was one of five books awarded the 2015 John Brinckerhoff Jackson Book Prize by the Foundation for Landscape Studies.

This semester select landscape architecture students are enrolled in a unique studio: A New Waterfront for Old Istanbul / Rethinking the Eminönü Waterfront. Taught by Adjuncts Takako Tajima and John Dutton. The studio reimagines the public infrastructure at the water’s edge of Eminönü, a neighborhood on Istanbul’s Historic Peninsula within walking distance to Istanbul’s most famous sites (i.e. Hagia Sophia, Topkapi Palace, the Blue Mosque, etc.). The work of the studio aims not only to develop ideas for a new urban space and waterfront edge but also to address how the new will connect to the old. The studio included a weeklong site visit to Istanbul during which time students had the opportunity to present their preliminary designs at Istanbul Bilgi University’s Faculty of Architecture.

Professor and program director Kelly Shannon co-authored (with Bruno De Meulder) ‘Towards a Resilient Hoog Kortrijk, Belgium: The conversion of a fragments, post-war development’ for Topos 90: Resilient Cities and Landscapes and penned ‘Preemptive design opportunities to mitigate disasters’ (the editorial) for the Journal of Landscape Architecture (theme issue Disaster: 2015-1) as well as the journal’s ‘Urbanization and Risk: In Conversation with Miho Mazereeuw’ and short book review of ‘Humanitarian Architecture: 15 Stories of Architects Working After Disaster’. In July, she will be a keynote speaker at the Designing Inclusion: Co-Producing Ecological Urbanism for Inclusive Housing Transformations in Guayaquil, Ecuador at the International Summer School.

Professor Emeritus and former Landscape Architecture Director, Robert Harris, received the USC Faculty Lifetime Achievement Award.  USC proudly praised his inspiring creativity, compassionate teaching and mentorship, and enduring contributions to the University and the School of Architecture

Associate Professor (Research) Dr. Travis Longcore, published research in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B on the feasibility of configuring LED lamps to minimize insect attraction, with targeted application in the tropics to reduce transmission of insect-borne diseases.  The paper was part of a special issue on the impacts of artificial lighting on biological communities and received significant international media attention.  

Assistant Professor Alison B. Hirsch presented “City Choreography” at Portland State University as part of their annual lecture series. In late March, she was an invited speaker in the “Spatial Politics and the City” symposium at the Belkin Gallery of University of British Columbia.

Associate Professor (Research) Dr. Travis Longcore and Assistant Professor Rachel Berney organized a multi-school talk and discussion on cities and climate change, headlined by USC¹s Director of Graduate Studies in Landscape Architecture, Kelly Shannon, with her talk on “Water Urbanism: Learning from Then and Now.” Visitors included the McKinley Futures joint MLA-MARCH studio from the University of Washington, Seattle, under the direction of Dave Miller and Ben Spencer, and faculty member Måns Tham from KTH in Stockholm, along with students from KTH¹s 5-year architecture program. Tham also gave a guest lecture and workshop on hybrid urban infrastructures in Longcores¹ Urban Nature class.

Assistant Professor Rachel Berney, Assistant Professor of Practice Lauren Matchison and Lecturer Lee Schneider have created a new course, called Visual Storytelling and Entrepreneurship in Media. It will provide graduate students with much needed entrepreneurial expertise and literacy in online media to define and promote design-driven projects. Further, the course offers graduate students new methods of visual research.  It embraces an entrepreneurial approach and addresses current trends in design, data, and research.

Dr. David Gerber has recently published the book ‘Paradigms in Computing’ with eVolo Press. He has also published and presented his research at the Simulation in Architecture and Urban Design annual conference (SimAUD 2015). His work has also been accepted for publication at the CAADFutures 2015 bi-annual conference and will be included in the CAADFutures Book published by Springer.

Vinayak Bharne was elected to the Board of Directors of Pasadena Heritage, one of Southern California oldest heritage non-profits. He was also one of seven invited presenters at the Urban Edge Prize 2015 Seminar – Resilience & Change – at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee.

John Dutton will be a featured speaker for two panels at the 2015 Dwell on Design Conference May 29th -31st at the Los Angeles Convention Center.  He will be presenting new ideas for urban housing for baby-boomers with architect Barbara Bestor as part of their Grey Gardens collaboration. At a second panel, he will present his vision for the transformation of Los Angeles freeways into new networks of greenways.

Assistant Professor Alison B. Hirsch presented “City Choreography” at Portland State University as part of their annual lecture series. In late March, she was an invited speaker in the “Spatial Politics and the City” symposium at the Belkin Gallery of University of British Columbia.

Vittoria Di Palma’s book Wasteland, A History (Yale 2014) has recently been awarded three prizes: the 2015 Louis Gottschalk Book Prize by the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, a 2015 John Brinckerhoff Jackson Book Prize by the Foundation for Landscape Studies, and a 2015 PROSE Awards Honorable Mention in the Architecture and Urban Planning category.

Assistant Professor Kyle Konis, Ph.D, AIA was invited to speak at the 2015 AIA National Convention on his ongoing research focused on daylight and health in buildings.

This year, Doris Sung was named a 2014 US Artist Fellow, joining an impressive list of past architects and artists. She also received an ACSA Faculty Design award for ³eXo” and a National AIA Small Projects Award for ³Bloom”.

Aroussiak Gabrielian’s research will be exhibited at the USC School of Cinematic Arts at the end of this month.  Additionally, she has been invited to present her work at AVANCA|CINEMA 2015: International Conference of Cinema, Art, Technology, and Communication which will take place in Portugal in July, and at the International Visual Methods Conference 2015, taking place in Brighton, UK in the Fall.

Assistant Professor Alvin Huang has been named to Perspective Magazine’s 40 Under 40 2015, a selection of “40 creative stars under the age of 40 who will shape the design world in the decades to come.” Huang will be giving a lecture on his recent work as part of the CalPoly SLO LA Metro Program spring lecture series in May and will be featured in a panel discussion about “3D Printing and the Future of Design” at the Dwell on Design Conference in June at the LA Convention Center.

The work of Patrick Tighe FAIA featured on the cover of the recent issue of Global Architecture / GA Houses 140.

Professor Joon-Ho Choi recently attended the Architectural Research Centers Consortium Conference, held in Chicago, IL. As an ARCC New Investigator Award recipient, he gave a special lecture on “Human-Building Integration: Proactive Indoor Environmental Quality Control Approaches” at the conference. Dr. Choi also presented his recent research outcomes with his students, Spurthy Yogananda (Climate-Responsive Evidence-Based Green Roof Design Decision Support for the U.S. Climate), Chao Yang (Methods for Estimating Energy Use Intensity Based on Building Façade Features), and Yiyu Chen (Building Performance Analysis Considering Climate Changes).  Dr. Choi was invested and gave a special talk on his research, titled “Comprehensive Post-Occupancy Evaluation” to the U.S. Green Building Council – Los Angeles Chapter.

Christopher Warren participated in the group exhibition, “Waiting for Guggenheim,” at the University of Southern California on April 8th, which highlighted faculty submissions to the competition.  He also participated in the panel discussion for the event, which examined the inherent complexities that exist in competitions of this grand scale.  His office, WORD, currently has two projects under construction for French fashion company A.P.C. (in collaboration with French design architect Laurent Deroo), as well as a cafe and new residence in the L.A. area

Hraztan Zeitlian, AIA, LEED BD+C, NCARB, is a Juror this year for the American Institute of Architects California Council (AIACC) Design Awards.

Geoffrey von Oeyen’s work for the 2014 Architectural League Prize will be featured in the book Young Architects 16 by Princeton Architectural Press, to be published in May. In June, Geoffrey will be curating an exhibition of graduate student work and moderating a panel discussion regarding his advanced design studio titled “Performative Composites: Sailing Architecture.” The event will take place on June 16 at the Annenberg Community Beach House in Santa Monica, California, and is sponsored by the USC School of Architecture, The City of Santa Monica, and the Los Angeles Forum for Architecture and Urban Design.

Larchmont Charter at Lafayette Park by DSH // architecture, the firm of Adjunct Associate Professor Eric Haas, was published in the May 2015 issue of Dwell. Haas will present the project, a renovation of Welton Becket’s 1955 New York Life building for a charter middle- and high school, at Dwell on Design in June. DSH’s project Cat’s Cradle will be published in the forthcoming Nanotecture from Phaidon Press.

Laurel Consuelo Broughton and her studio WELCOMEPROJECTS’ diptych, The In Crowd was published in Offramp #9, the SCI_arc architectural journal and the research project Two-Face is forthcoming in the Princeton School of Architecture’s journal, Pidgin #19. In April, Laurel gave the talk and workshop, Things Become Other Things at Syracuse University School of Architecture. This past fall she was selected with Andrew Kovacs to be part of the Los Angeles Forum for Architecture and Urban Design’s Out There Doing It event series where they discussed their own work as related to their collaborative project Gallery Attachment / As Builts. An outdoor installation and companion drawing show, Gallery Attachment / As Builts was sponsored by the Storefront for Art and Architecture and the John Chase Memorial Fund and shown at Jai & Jai Gallery in Los Angeles.  In November, she presented the talk, At Play, as part of the symposium Delight at Princeton University. 

Karen M. Kensek and Douglas Noble were selected to present at the 2015 AIA National Convention on the subject of professional licensing in architecture.

Gail Peter Borden was elected to the AIA College of Fellows as the youngest recipient in the history of California. He was honored with the 2015 USC Mellon Mentoring Award for Undergraduate Students, and was also awarded the USC Associates Award for Artistic Expression, the highest honor the University Faculty bestow on it members for significant Artistic Expression. His book Matter: Material Processes in Architectural Production has been commissioned with a follow-up compilation entitled Lineament: Material Geometry in Architectural Production forthcoming in 2016 and also by Routledge Press.

G. M. Morland, Architect. NCARB. ARCUK. Assoc Professor, curated an exhibit of his work called:   A RETROSPECTIVE: 50+ YEARS OF ARCHITECTURAL DRAWINGS AND SKETCHES: 1963—2015. BC. (before computer).  The work exhibited presumed to be both educational and informative to students of architecture and design at USC today, and hopefully fueled the healthy discussion and debate regarding design description and presentation which now bridges from the soul of emotion with hand drawings, to the current wizardry of digital technology.   An exhibition of work, initiated at the Glasgow school of Art, Scotland, developed at the U of I in Chicago, and realized at USC in Los Angeles, covering a 50+ year period, required the compilation, editing and formatting of hundreds of drawings, generally classified in three categories, namely:

A. The “Sketchbook”.  Images of places and events visited.

B.  Drawings that describe “ Visions of Place”, architectural ideas & projects.

C.  Drawings that inform the anatomy and material assembly of “Place”,  the method and process of  “making and constructing”.  A catalogue of this exhibit will be forthcoming.

The latest built project of Lecturer Nefeli Chatzimina has been nominated for the Mies Van der Rohe Awards 2015 and was featured as a cover for the EK Magazine. Nefeli lectured at the BNCA University of Pune, the University of Mumbai and the Studio-X of Columbia University in Mumbai, India. Nefeli is organizing International Advanced Architectural Workshops in Athens during the Summer. 

Also as founder of X|Atelier recently received a commission for the construction of an interior law office space downtown Los Angeles. 

Lawrence Scarpa’s firm Brooks + Scarpa was selected from the shortlist of Snohetta, BIG, SHOP and NAADA to design the new $75 mil. mixed-use parking structures as part of the $2 billion MCCA Boston Convention Center expansion. Brooks + Scarpa has also been shortlisted to compete for the $370 million Seattle/Sound Transit E360 Metro line extension which includes two stations, a major transit center and pedestrian bridges connecting to the Microsoft Campus in Redmond, WA. Lawrence Scarpa, FAIA also received the 2015 Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Institute of Architects California Council.

UPCOMING CONFERENCE:
Landscape Architecture as Necessity
3-Day Conference, University of Southern California, Los Angeles
Thursday – Saturday, 22-24 September 2016

As climate change rapidly takes its place at the forefront of contemporary global challenges, landscape architecture is becoming an urgent necessity.  Landscape architecture is uniquely able to synthesize ecological systems, scientific data, engineering methods, social practices, and cultural values, and integrate them into the design of the built environment.  At the same time, its creative methods and visual vocabularies can help to shape questions and formulate novel approaches in more traditionally scientific or data-driven fields.  Expanding and sharing platforms and interests will activate greater comprehension of the value of landscape-based strategies in environmental decision-making. Landscape Architecture as Necessity seeks to demonstrate, through international built work and ongoing design research, that the professions of the built environment, together with expertise from a wide range of relevant fields, are essential to moving beyond rhetoric to address the myriad challenges confronting urban and rural territories alike.  A call for papers will be coming shortly. For more information, confirmed speakers and updates, see the conference website: arch.usc.edu/landscapeasnecessity