ACSANewsDigest - Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture

October 2011 Issue 1
ACSANewsDigest
A Publication of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture
NORTHEAST
DREXEL UNIVERSITY
After 37 years on the Drexel faculty and
25 years of leadership Paul M. Hirshorn,
AIA has retired at the end of the academic
year 2010-2011. Hirshorn was Head of
the Department of Architecture from 1986
to 2007, Head of the Department of Architecture + Interiors from 2007 to 2010
and served as Architecture Program Director this past year. Under his leadership the
Arfaa Lecture Series was established, the
Architecture Program’s off-campus studies
programs were launched and the unique
2+4 architecture degree program was created. Paul Hirshorn has worked tirelessly
for the Department, the Program and for
Drexel University and we would like to
thank and acknowledge him for his many
contributions.
Assistant Professor Dr. Ulrike AltenmüllerLewis, AIA has assumed the position of
Program Director for Architecture in July
2011. Dr. Altenmüller-Lewis had served as
Associate Director of the Architecture Program since she began teaching at Drexel in
September 2008. This past spring Professor Altenmüller-Lewis won the prestigious
Allen Rothwarf Award for Teaching Excellence, Drexel’ University’s highest teaching
award.
Erik Sundquist has joined the Department
of Architecture + Interiors as an Assistant
Teaching Professor in the Architecture Program. Prior to his appointment at Drexel
University, Sundquist taught at the Col-
lege of Architecture and the Arts at Florida
International University in Miami Florida.
As a practicing architectural designer he
has collaborated with architects, artists,
industrial designers and interior designers on high profile projects that span four
continents. Eric Sundquist received his BA
in Psychology and Economics from The
University of Massachusetts, a MA in Political Psychology from SUNY Stony Brook
and his MArch from Florida International
University. In his teaching and research,
he has explored the role of sustainability
in professional practice and effects of digital based design on traditional notions of
building tectonics and scale.
Nicole Koltick has been promoted to Assistant Professor in the Department of Architecture + Interiors. She coordinates the
technology course work and digital initiatives in the Interiors Design undergraduate and Interior Architecture and Design
graduate programs. Nicole Koltick received
an M. Arch. from UCLA and a BFA, in Art
with University Honors, from Carnegie Mellon University. She is a principal of the
trans-dicsiplinary design firm lutz/koltick.
Koltick’s current research interests include
future speculation, robotics, computation,
artificial intelligence and interactive environments. She is interested in exploring
the boundaries between technology, science, the “natural,” the built environment
and its inhabitants. Nicole Koltick works
with complex and fantastical narratives as
well as multi-agent systems and advanced
computational strategies to envision new
landscapes, environments and territories
for inhabitation.
ACSANews Digest is published once monthly and is distributed digitally to all fulltime faculty in ACSA member schools via the ACSA Update membership email. These
Regional School items were originally published on the ACSA website, which offers
extensive coverage of member schools activities updated daily.
Visit www.acsa-arch.org/ACSANews/read for more news.
© Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture 2011
CORNELL UNIVERSITY
Cornell University’s Milstein Hall – the
first new building in over 100 years for
the renowned College of Architecture, Art
and Planning (AAP) – opened its studios
for students in late August with completion coming in October 2011. Led by OMA
partner Shohei Shigematsu, who directs
the New York office, and Pritzker Prizewinner Rem Koolhaas, the design for the
47,000-square-foot building physically
unites the AAP’s long-separated facilities
to form a platform for interdisciplinary collaboration.
“Milstein Hall operates on many levels,”
says AAP dean Kent Kleinman. “It redefines the entry for the northern edge of the
campus; it provides a permeable boundary
between academic space and the public;
it offers extraordinary spatial relationships
between internal programmatic elements;
and it offers a landscape of studios that
fosters a level of interaction between our
undergraduate and graduate architecture
students that we have never enjoyed before.”
Milstein Hall’s large horizontal plate connects the second levels of the AAP’s existing Sibley Hall and Rand Hall to provide
25,000 square feet of studio space with
panoramic views of the surrounding environment. Enclosed by floor-to-ceiling glass
and a green roof with 41 skylights, this
“upper plate” cantilevers almost 50 feet
over University Avenue to establish a relationship with the Foundry, a third existing
AAP facility. The wide-open expanse of the
plate — structurally supported by a hybrid
truss system — stimulates interaction and
allows flexible use over time.
Beneath the hovering studio plate, the
ground level accommodates major program
elements including a 253-seat auditorium,
and a dome that encloses a 5,000 square
foot circular critique space. The dome
serves multiple functions: it supports the
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raked auditorium seating, it becomes the
stairs leading up to the studio plate above,
and it is the artificial ground for an array
of exterior seating pods fostering public
activities.
Associate Professor Mark Cruvellier was appointed to a three-year term as the department chair of architecture effective July 1,
2011. As noted in AAP dean Kent Kleinman’s announcement, “[Cruvellier] has a
long administrative track record, but even
more importantly, he has the skills and disposition to support a strong team.” Cruvellier takes over as chair from Dagmar Richter who begins as a department chair at the
Pratt Institute this January.
Associate Professor Lily Chi was appointed
director of graduate studies (Field of Architecture), and Associate Professor Andrea
Simitch was named director of the B.Arch.
program. A search for the Edgar A. Tafel
Professor of Architecture / Director of Professional M.Arch. Program is underway.
AfterTaste: Expanded Practices in Interior
Design, coedited by AAP dean Kent Kleinman, will be released in October 2011. The
book includes texts, interviews, and portfolios based on the annual AfterTaste symposia hosted by Parsons The New School
for Design. The materials document new
theories and emerging critical practices
that argue that the field of interior design
is inadequately served by its historical reliance on taste-making and taste-makers,
and attempt to promote new voices and
perspectives in both the theory and practice of the discipline.
SOUTHEAST
CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA
The School of Architecture and Planning
at The Catholic University of America instituted a new position for an Associate Dean
for Research to coordinate and support research/creative work efforts at the school.
Professor Barry D. Yatt, FAIA, CSI, was appointed the first ADR.
Professor Barry Yatt, FAIA, CSI, co-wrote
with Joseph McCade, Ed.D, a chapter ti-
tled “Defining Creativity and Design” for
an upcoming book by CTTE, the Council on
Technology Teacher Education. This spring,
he also will be presenting a three-part national webinar for CSI on the National CAD
Standard (NCS), based on the work of a
CSI Task Team. He continues to work on
the manuscript of his book on predesign
analysis Definition: Gaining Insight,. Professor Yatt is also working with a team of
experts in artificial intelligence, systems
architecture, and space sciences on a
grant from DARPA, the Defense Advanced
Research Projects Agency. They are developing an “adaptive” (that learns from its
experiences) but “psychologically stable”
computer program that develops optimized
designs for the complex systems applicable
to space missions and that are responsive
to evolving needs, resources, and conditions. Prof. Yatt’s contribution to the team
is in the area of predesign analysis, stakeholder facilitation, and graphic design.
The school recently established a new
Center for Building Stewardship as the
research arm of the Master of Science in
Sustainable Design program.
Professor Julius Levine, FAICP, is nearing
completion of a book titled Reweaving a
Neighborhood Fabric: Perpetuating Diversity, Buttressing Shepherd Park through
the next generation of Ohev Shalom congregants.
Associate Professor Eric Jenkins, AIA,
continues to research the links between
analytical freehand sketching and design
education by examining recent studies in
cognitive psychology and in human physiology. He is completing work on a book
titled Design by Drawing to be published
by Routledge with a grant from the Graham
Foundation.
Associate Professor Chris Grech, RIBA, director of the MSSD program is carrying out
research for the Athena Sustainable Materials Institute on a database of building
materials in the Washington, DC area.
Associate Professor Miriam Gusevich presented two papers this past summer. Urban
Pentimento: Redeeming the Metropolitan
Landscape, was presented at the EURA
conference in Copenhagen and Architec-
ture, Ecology and Economy was presented
at the Economy Conference at the School
of Architecture in Cardiff, Wales.
Assistant Professor Brad Guy, Assoc AIA,
LEED AP, received a grant for $10,009
from the Construction Materials Recycling
Association to research and develop a
national standard for certification of construction and demolition debris processing
facility recycling rates, tentatively titled
“Certification of Recycling Rates” (CORR).
The School of Architecture and Planning
at The Catholic University of America is
celebrating its 100th anniversary this year.
Highlighting this milestone is a three-day
symposium in October on “Transcending
Architecture – Aesthetics and Ethics of
the Numinous.” Lectures on sacred architecture will be led by a field of renowned
scholars and practitioners from disciplines
ranging from architecture and religion to
philosophy and social work. The symposium is organized by Associate Professor
Dr. Julio Bermudez, director of the Sacred
Space and Cultural Studies graduate concentration. For more information check:
http://www.sacred-space.net/symposium/
Architect Juhani Pallasmaa is the Professor in Residence at CUArch this Fall 2011.
He is directing a month long graduate studio investigating the relationship between
architecture and spirituality. He is also
thoroughly involved in the life of the school
through guest talks, reviews, and spontaneous engagement with students. Juhani
Pallasmaa’s residence is made possible
in part by the Clarence Walton Fund for
Catholic Architecture. Past Walton Critics
include architects Antoine Predock (2009)
and Craig Hartman (2010). Visit CUAArch
site at http://publicaffairs.cua.edu/releases/2011/ArchVisitor.cfm for more information.
Assistant Professor Hollee Hitchcock
Becker and Associate Professor Julie JuYoun Kim joined The Catholic University of
America in August. Professor Becker comes
to CUA from Kent State University and has
degrees from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Kent State University. She will be
teaching Structures and doing research on
environmentally-adaptive facades and prefabricated disaster resistant replacement
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housing. Professor Kim comes from The
University of Mercy at Detroit where she
also directed the March program. She has
degrees from Wellesley College and MIT
and is the founder of c2architecturestudio, an award-winning design practice included in Architectural Record’s Emerging
Architect series (06/10). This is also one
of 12 architectural firms included by the
Korean Architects Association as “Young
Korean Architects in the Global Context.”
Professor Kim will be teaching Design Studios, building technology and directing the
2012 Summer Institute for Architecture.
Professor Randy Ott, Dean of the School
of Architecture, was recognized with an
award of the AIA Washington DC chapter in
the ‘Unbuilt’ category. The “Salt Chapel”
on the edge of Utah’s Great Salt Lake was
chosen among more than 100 submissions
presented. The jury found the project an
adventurous exploration or form, context,
and poetry.
Associate Professor Dr. Adnan Morshed,
was invited by the Woodrow Wilson Center
in Washington, DC, to present the paper,
“The Central Threat: Dhaka as a Frontier
in the Climate-Change Narrative of Bangladesh.” Dr. Morshed’s article, “Ascending
with Nine Chains to the Moon: Buckminster Fuller’s ideation of the Genius,” was
published in the GSD journal New Geographies. His review of the National Building
Museum exhibition, Designing Tomorrow:
America’s World’s Fairs of the 1930s, is
forthcoming in the Journal of the Society of
Architectural Historians.
Associate Professor Eric Jenkins presented
the paper “Belcamp: A Little Bit of Europe
in Maryland” at the Conference on Company Towns of the Bata Concern held in
Prague, March 2011.
Professor of Practice Dr. Raj Barr-Kumar,
FAIA RIBA, was the keynote speaker at the
Memorial Celebration honoring Architect
Raimund Abraham held at the Austrian
Embassy in Washington DC last September.
His award-winning design of the restaurant
‘Bibiana’ in Washington DC was featured in
the Fall issue of Architecture DC. He was
also the keynote speaker at the City School
of Architecture and the Sri Lanka Institute
of Architects, and a featured speaker at
the Pacific Area Quantity Surveyors World
Congress. The Financial Times of Sri Lanka
published a full page interview with Dr Barr
entitled “Go Green to Make Green.”
tute of Architects, providing distinguished
service and leadership throughout a tumultuous time in the nation’s economy.
VIRGINIA TECH
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.
NORTH CAROLINA STATE UNIVERSITY
Dean Marvin J. Malecha, FAIA, of the College of Design at North Carolina State University was awarded the 2011 F. Carter
Williams Gold Medal during the annual AIA
North Carolina conference held at the Raleigh Convention Center September 8-10.
The F. Carter Williams Gold Medal is the
highest honor presented by the chapter to
a member of AIA North Carolina in recognition of a distinguished career or extraordinary accomplishments as an architect.
Malecha was honored for his immense contributions to the architecture profession
including seventeen years as an architect
and educator in the state of North Carolina
with a career spanning over five decades
between two coasts. “He’s accomplished
more in his career to date than other distinguished professionals have accomplished
in this state in a life time,” says alumnus
John Atkins III, FAIA. In 2009, Malecha
served as president of the American Insti-
Dean Marvin J. Malecha
Alumnus Phil Freelon, FAIA, says, “He’s
a leader in the academic and professional
world. One could argue that Dean Malecha’s most significant and lasting contribution has been his effort to bring these
two factions together. He has written extensively on this topic and he continues to
work tirelessly to bridge the gap between
architecture education and practice.”
UNIVERSITY OF TENNESSEE-KNOXVILLE
The University of Tennessee College of Architecture and Design is hosting its first
college-wide Open House, Friday, November 11, in tandem with university-wide
Open House, Saturday, November 12
http://admissions.utk.edu/undergraduate.
Home to diverse and internationally recognized practitioners, scholars, and teachers,
the college offers a wide array of programs:
first-professional undergraduate degrees
in architecture and interior design, firstprofessional graduate degrees in architecture and landscape architecture, and postprofessional programs in architecture and
landscape architecture http://www.arch.
utk.edu/Academic_Programs/academicpro-
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grams.shtml. The all-day event begins on
the university’s Knoxville campus and includes presentations by faculty and students, tours of our award winning facility
and multi-disciplinary design-build projects such as The New Norris House www.
thenewnorrishouse.com and the Living
Light Solar Decathlon House livinglightutk.
com, the historic Norris Dam, and the university gardens. The day will conclude with
a talk by local historian and author Jack
Neely, and a reception at the university’s
Downtown Gallery of art. The event is free
of charge but spaces are limited. Please
contact Ms. Vanessa Arthur (varthur@utk.
edu). For more information consult: http://
www.arch.utk.edu.
Prof. Oliver holds a Masters in Architecture
from Columbia University and has taught
at the City College of New York, Parsons
School of Design, the Cooper Union and
the University of Puerto Rico. Prof. Toledo
will be conducting the course on Industrial
Design.
POLYTECHNIC UNIVERSITY OF
PUERTO RICO
Professor Javier Santiago lectured at the
University of Puerto Rico, Recinto de Carolina, on the topics of Interior Design and
Social Responsibility, and on a research focused on the quality of life of young Puerto
Rican homosexuals. He was awarded a
Bronze Award Nude/Body Category fro the
2011 Single Image Contest, Color Photography Magazine. His photographic work
was included in Professor Miguel Rodriguez Casellas article Puertorricanism or living in the surface, published in the Harvard
Design Magazine.
Professor Beatriz del Cueto became the
first Puerto Rican woman and the second
person on the island to receive the Rome
Prize Award for 2011 in the category of Architectural Preservation and Conservation.
The prize includes a scholarship for a period of six (6) months to two (2) years at the
academy in Rome.
Professor Andres Mignucci, FAIA has been
named Visiting Scholar and Maxfield Lecturer 2011-2012 at the School of Architecture at Miami University in Oxford,
Ohio. Mignucci recently published his book
Jesus Eduardo Amaral Architect, a monograph on one of Puerto Rico’s leading modern architects and founder of the School
of Architecture at the University of Puerto
Rico.
Professor Smyrna Mauras Modesti has
joined the faculty this Fall and is the Coordinator of the Interior Design Program.
Professors Yara Maite Colon, Sotirios
Kotoulas, Claudia Rosa Lopez, Maria Isabel Oliver, and Nelly Toledo have joined the
faculty this Fall. Prof. Colon holds a Ph.D.
in History and Theory of Architecture from
the Escuela Tecnica Superior d’ Arquitectura de Barcelona; Prof. Kotoulas holds a
Masters in Architecture and History and
Theory of Architecture from Mc Gill University in Canada; Prof. Claudia Rosa Lopez holds a Master of Fine Arts and Design
from Savannah College of Art and Design;
Professor Yara Maite Colon was invited to
participate on the VII International Congress of Modern History of Architecture in
Spain. Colon’s lecture ‘Los principios de
Cuadernos de Arquitectura (1944-1950):
convicciones entre lineas durante la posguerra’ will be part of the conference regarding the propaganda and manifestos of
journals between 1900-1975.
Professor Yazmin Crespo was a speaker at
the Federation of Caribbean Architecture
Association Conference in Ponce.
Professor Francisco de la Cruz was awarded
Third Place for the photographic work Art
and City at the 2010-2011 Puerto Rico
Design Exchange Competition.
Dean Carlos Betancourt has invited professors Yazmin Crespo, Heather Crichfield,
Andres Mignucci, Maria Isabel Oliver (coordinator), and Maricelis Ramos, to participate in the new editorial board of the next
issue of the Politecnica School of Architecture journal Polimorfo.
Former editor Oscar Oliver Didier will be
the new editor of the Colegio de Arquitectos y Arquitectos Paisajistas de Puerto Rico
journal Entorno, and former editor Marcelo
Lopez Dinardi is conducting graduate studies at Columbia University.
FLORIDA ATLANTIC UNIVERSITY
Florida Atlantic University School of Architecture (FAUSoA) is pleased to announce
that the National Architectural Accrediting
Board has granted a full 6-year accreditation term to the FAUSoA Bachelor of Architecture Program.
FAUSoA is also pleased to announce that
Keith Van de Riet (PhD Candidate) will
be joining the faculty in the Fall semester of 2012. Keith Van de Riet comes to
FAU from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
(RPI) and The Center for Architecture, Science and Ecology (CASE). Prior to joining
RPI and CASE, he worked in construction
and architectural practice in Kansas and
New York on projects that integrated green
roof and photovoltaic technologies, with
emphasis on the interface between building envelope and environmental context.
Keith has particular interest in the use
of integrated bioremediation strategies to
address the environmental challenges of
large-scale urban development. He is working in the Tropical Coastline Remediation
research area with faculty at CASE and in
collaboration with international biologists,
ecologists, geotechnical and structural engineers, and experts in ecosystem modeling. Keith received a Bachelor’s degree in
architecture from The University of Kansas
in 2004 and has a Master’s in Science of
Architectural Science from the Built Ecologies program at Rensselaer.
Anthony Abbate, AIA, NCARB has been
promoted to Professor at the School of Architecture and Associate Provost for the
Broward Campuses at Florida Atlantic University. Mr Abbate, Rosemary Kennedy, Senior Lecturer at Queensland University of
Technology (Australia) and Kasama Polakit,
Ph.D. Assistant Professor at FAU School of
Urban and Regional Planning have co-edited the Proceedings from the biennial international conference, Subtropical Cities
2011, held in Fort Lauderdale last Spring.
Associate Professor Francis Lyn has been
appointed Director of the Broward Community Design Collaborative (BCDC). The
mission of the BCDC is to build interdisciplinary collaboration to develop smart urban design oriented solutions at multiple
scales, with the objective to address the
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global challenges of climate change, help
build healthy communities in south Florida
that are walkable, livable, and equitable.
While the focus of our efforts is on the local
context, the geographic center of a metropolitan region with a population of approximately 6 million, our academic mission
is to look at sustainable design solutions
within an urban and suburban sub-tropical
setting. Mr. Lyn has also been appointed as
Thesis Phase Coordinator for the School of
Architecture.
Associate Professor Philippe d’Anjou has
recently published a series of articles in
three prominent journals. These include:
“An Alternative Model for Ethical DecisionMaking in Design: a Sartrean Approach” in
Design Studies; “An Ethics of Authenticity
in the Client-Designer Relationship” in The
Design Journal; and “An Ethics of Freedom
for Architectural Design Practice” in Journal of Architectural Education. These articles are part of professor d’Anjou’s ongoing
research in design philosophy and ethics
that aims at articulating new theoretical
foundations of design and architecture.
Assistant Professor Henning Haupt has received a grant from Broward County to realize an installation of his research. This
Color-Space Construction will be installed
in January of 2012.
tember 24 -October 24, 2011. Cranbrook
Design was conceived as a laboratory for
design exploration and experiment for current students and recent alumni of Cranbrook’s Design and Architecture programs
to contextualize their work as a product of
the ‘the network society.’
Assistant Professor Steven Coy’s work as
the “Hygienic Dress League” was featured
in a photo exhibition at the Hamtramck,
Michigan Public Pool gallery in October.
Coy and his wife Dorota created the League
– a faux company that exists as a real corporation – as a commentary on corporate
advertising and branding.
Associate Professor Dale Allen Gyure presented a paper entitled “The crowning feature of our system”: Nineteenth-Century
High Schools and American Middle Class
Aspirations and Anxieties,” at the History
of Education Society Annual Conference in
Chicago. He also presented a public lecture, “Nature, Light, and Beauty: Minoru
Yamasaki’s Design for the North Shore Congregation Israel” in Yamasaki’s sanctuary at
North Shore in Glencoe, Illinois.
UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY
EAST CENTRAL
LAWRENCE TECHNOLOGICAL
UNIVERSITY
Adjunct Instructor Peter Lichomski had a
number of watercolor paintings accepted
into juried exhibitions recently, including
the 2011 Michigan Fine Art Competition
(sponsored by the Birmingham Bloomfield
Art Center), the Birmingham Community
House “Our Town” art show, the Northville Art House “Outside In,” exhibit, and
1st Annual Donna A. Vogelheim Memorial
“Healing Power of Art” exhibition.
Adjunct Instructors Christopher Schanck
and Aaron Blendowski were featured in
the show, “Cranbrook Design: Into the Network,” at Studio Couture in Detroit, Sep-
Professor Richard S. Levine
Professor Richard S. Levine has recently
retired from teaching after 46 years at the
School of Architecture at the University of
Kentucky. From early in his architectural
career, Prof. Levine has been a pioneer and
advocate for sustainability-oriented architecture. He has over 200 publications on
solar energy and sustainable cities and has
done sustainable city research and projects
in Italy, Austria, China, the Middle East as
well as in Kentucky.
He is now devoting his energies to his architectural and urban design practice at
the Center for Sustainable Cities Design
Studio (CSC Design Studio). Dick Levine’s
practice in design has encompassed such
areas as structural systems, hospitals, design process, solar oriented architecture
and sustainable cities. In the mid ‘70’s his
widely published Raven Run Solar Home
was the first to incorporate active and passive solar, super insulation, earth tubes,
composting toilets, attached greenhouse,
and many other integrated features in a
single project. The patented active air collectors developed in that project are part of
one of the most efficient and least expensive solar collection and storage systems
ever devised.
The Hooker Building in Niagara Falls,
NY (1978) for which Levine was energy
and design consultant, was projected to
consume 88% less energy than that of a
conventional office building and received
the Owens-Corning Energy Conservation
Award. Thirteen years later, Norman Foster
reproduced Hooker’s double glass wall with
its computer operated aluminum louvers in
an office building in Duisburg, Germany,
sparking a transformation in Europe of energy efficient commercial buildings whose
design strategies are now being emulated
in the US.
In the mid 1980’s, Prof. Levine, along with
his colleague Ernest J. Yanarella, started
the Center for Sustainable Cities (CSC)
at the University of Kentucky, to advance
the theory and practice of sustainability. In
1994 Levine became the principal author
of the European Charter of Cities and Towns
Towards Sustainability (the Aalborg Charter), the main vehicle in Europe for carrying
out the Local Agenda 21 provisions of the
Rio Earth Charter (1992). He also gave the
keynote address at the Charter ratification
conference.
Partnering with Dr. Heidi Dumreicher, director of Oikodrom: the Vienna Institute for
Urban Sustainability, the CSC focused on
the city-region as the appropriate scale at
which homeostatic relationships between
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social, environmental and economic issues
could be realistically pursued to become
the exemplar for the proliferation of sustainability throughout the globe. This was a
pivotal determination that would lead to the
formulation of the first Operational Definition of Sustainability. In the early 1990’s,
the CSC and Oikodrom partnered to work
on a series of three commissioned designs
for a Sustainable City-as-a-Hill to be built
over the Westbahnhof rail-yard in Vienna,
Austria. Using Levine’s patented CoupledPan Space-Frame (CPSF) structural system
as the city’s underlying structural framework a rich, diverse and sustainability
driven urban fabric was developed. Late in
his life Lou Kahn had visited an early test
of the CPSF and commented, “You should
build a museum around it.” The City-as-aHill urban form, the Sustainable Urban Implantation, the Partnerland Principle, the
Sustainable Area Budget, the Operational
Definition of Sustainability, the Multiple,
Participatory, Alternative Scenario-Building
Process and other sustainable urban design
principles were elaborated and integrated
in the Westbahnhof project and continue to
be studied and expanded upon today.
From 2002-2005, Prof. Levine worked on
the European Commission sponsored SUCCESS project which developed sustainable future scenarios for rural villages in
six Chinese provinces. This was followed
by two successive EC projects focused
on the renewal of the Islamic bath house
(Hammam) tradition in six Mediterranean
countries with the intention of developing
and enhancing empowered, sustainable,
civil society processes. In 2005, the CSC
Design Studio (CSCDS) was formed as an
extension of the CSC and Prof. Levine’s
private architectural practice. In 2007, the
CSCDS, headed by Prof. Levine, organized
a system-dynamics modeling seminar in
Fez, Morocco. This was part of the ongoing development of the “Sustainable City
Game™”, the Sustainability Engine™, and
the SCIM (Sustainable City Information
Modeling) process.
As a recognition of his leadership and lifetime of work, in 2010 the American Solar
Energy Society awarded Dick Levine its
“Passive Solar Pioneer” award. Levine is
currently engaged in the design and construction of a number of low cost, zero net
energy houses using the passive house
standard. His research and publications
continue including his just published book
with Ernest J. Yanarella titled, “The City as
Fulcrum of Global Sustainability,” (Anthem
Press, 2011). His web site is: www.centerforsustainablecities.com.
WEST CENTRAL
UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA
Gould Hall, University of Oklahoma
The University of Oklahoma dedicated
Gould Hall for the College of Architecture
in a public ceremony on Wednesday, Sept.
14. It is the first time that students from
all five disciplines – architecture, construction science, interior design, landscape architecture, and regional and city planning
– are housed under one roof. The result,
says College of Architecture Dean Charles
Graham, will be greater opportunities for
interdisciplinary study and a more rounded
learning experience. The newly renovated
building features a two-story, vaulted gallery – the Buskuhl Gallery – that allows for
the flexibility of lighting and space necessary to adequately accommodate the students’ work in a professional manner, as
well as a beautiful space in which to host
receptions, symposia and traveling exhib-
its. Among the innovative features of the
new building are a “Super Studio,” featuring two 40-inch plasma televisions and an
interactive technology table, which allows
six students to share their work with the
professor and other students, and a full
and mini “Learn Lab.” Learn Labs differ
from traditional classrooms in that they
have no typical “front”; rather, space is arranged in such a way as to encourage interaction among the students and professor.
Three projectors allow students to share
their work on one or all of the screens, and
a ceiling-view document camera can be
used to zoom in on an object and display
it on one or more of the projector screens.
Oklahoma educator and urban designer
Blair Humphreys was named Executive Director of the Institute for Quality Communities at the OU College of Architecture. The
Institute for Quality Communities, founded
in 2008, builds on OU’s success as an outstanding research university. Humphreys
will guide the Institute in its work to build
more vibrant, sustainable and equitable
communities throughout Oklahoma and
provide more research and educational
opportunities for OU students. In spring
2011, Humphreys was the faculty adviser
for a group of students from OU’s College
of Architecture and Michael F. Price College of Business competing in a national
urban design competition for The Urban
Land Institute. The team placed in the top
four, competing against 152 others from
across the United States and Canada.
Ron Frantz, an architect who specializes
in small-town design and preservation has
joined the Institute for Quality Communities as the director of Small Town Studios.
Frantz, who has done extensive work with
both national and state Main Street programs, also has been named a Wick Carey
Professor and will teach in the college’s Division of Architecture. Frantz will provide
design and planning experience by pairing
faculty and students to projects in small
towns across the state.
KANSAS STATE UNIVERSITY
Architecture Professor David Seamon attended the 30th annual International Human Research Science Conference, held in
Oxford, England, July 27-30, 2011. He organized a symposium, “Lived Relationali-
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ties among Place, Space, and Environmental Embodiment.” The three symposium
presenters were health sociologist Dr. Andrew Moore, a research associate with the
Arthritis Research UK Primary Care Centre
at Keele University in Staffordshire, England; Dr. Sam Griffiths, a Lecturer in urban
morphology and theory at University College London’s Bartlett School of Architecture; and Seamon, whose presentation was
entitled, “‘Seeing’ Merleau-Ponty’s Perception: Possibilities in the Urban Photographs of New York City Photographer Saul
Leiter. Seamon also presented “Homeworld, Alienworld, and Being at Home in
Alan Ball’s HBO Television Series, Six Feet
Under,” a blind-reviewed paper presented
at the 7th annual Religion, Literature, and
the Arts conference held at the University
of Iowa, Iowa City, August 27. The conference theme was “Uncanny Homecomings:
Narrative, Structures, Existential Questions, Theological Visions.”
Professor Donald Watts joined more than
one hundred former Peace Corps Volunteers
who had served in Afghanistan as part of
the 50th Anniversary of the founding of the
Peace Corps in Washington D.C. He represented our college at a special reception for
former Peace Corps Afghanistan volunteers
hosted by His Excellency, Ambassador Eklil
Hakimi at the Afghan Embassy in Washington. Watts served as the architectural coordinator of the Kansas State University /
Kabul University Partnership Program occurring between 2007 and 2010.
Assistant Professors Nathan Howe and
Sam Zeller with the help of fourth-year
students Ethan Rhoades, Hana Havlova,
Matthew Whetstone and Scott Davis entered and won the international design
competition The 2011 Friends of Seger
Park Playground Sprayground in Philadelphia, PA. This competition was to look at
the site of their existing water feature and
envision a design that would be contemporary, interactive and provide an icon for
their park. The team has now been commissioned to produce a promotional model
and construction documents while Seger
Park continues to raise funds for the project’s implementation.
Greg Sheldon, James Pfeiffer, and Rick
Schladweiler from the Kansas City-based
firm BNIM are co-teaching a fourth-year
design studio this fall. The trio is quite
enthusiastic about diving into teaching
design. Sheldon, associate principal at the
firm, and 2006 Architect of the Year for the
AIA Kansas City chapter, taught building
construction techniques to beginning students at the KC campus of the University
of Missouri, but has never taught studio.
The trio intends to fold verifiable design
techniques into the studio’s semester-long
project.
SOUTHWEST
UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN
Lois Weinthal, associate professor and
graduate advisor for the Master of Interior
Design Program, is pleased to announce
the release of her book, Toward a New Interior: An Anthology of Interior Design Theory, published by Princeton Architectural
Press. In this anthology, Weinthal frames
the interior in a range of scales, from the
clothing we wear to the city we inhabit. Between these scales is an array of layers that
can be pulled apart and further investigated, often revealing an identity by which we
surround ourselves. From clothing to the
closet to the concept of domesticity, interior design can be seen as the stage set
by which we act out our lives as we move
fluidly between these layers.
Weinthal presented a book talk in the
School of Constructed Environments at
Parsons The New School for Design on
Thursday, October 20.
Wilfried Wang, O’Neil Ford Centennial Professor in Architecture, along with three colleagues, will present keynote lectures at the
“Spatial Cognition for Architectural Design
(SCAD)” Symposium, to be held November 16 to 19 at the German House in New
York City. The symposium will address the
theoretical and methodological achievements of the cognitive and computational
disciplines in the domain of architectural
design. Wang will speak on “On the notions
of Cognitive Entities and Cognitive Identities in Architecture.”
The October 21, 2011, edition of The Daily
Texan featured the article, “Dean of Architecture Emphasizes Green Construction,”
highlighting Dean Fritz Steiner’s participation in the Texas Book Festival, which will
take place October 22 and 23 at the State
Capitol in Austin.
Assistant Professor Matt Fajkus’ Bat House
Visitor Center project was selected for inclusion in “More Than Architecture” exhibit, up through October 30 in the Fine Arts
Building on the UT campus. Fajkus won
2nd and 3rd places in AIA Napkin Sketch
Competition. The exhibit is up through October 31 at the Austin AIA office.
The University of Texas at Austin School of
Architecture will honor the life and work of
Associate Dean Kent Butler at a memorial
symposium on October 1 at the UTSOA. Dr.
Butler, a long-time faculty member, died
during a hiking trip in Yosemite National
Park in May.
The Center for Sustainable Development
(CSD) is a proud co-sponsor of the 2011
UT Campus Sustainability Symposium
September 23, 2011, led by the President’s Sustainability Steering Committee,
with support from UT’s Office of Sustainability, the Center for Sustainable Development, the Campus Environmental Center,
the Environmental Science Institute, and
the UT Energy Institute.
Dean Fritz Steiner will moderate the panel
discussion, “How Green is My City?,” at the,
www.texastribune.org/festival/home,Texas
Tribune Festival, which will take place on
September 24 and 25 in Austin.
On Wednesday, November 3, Houston Tomorrow Distinguished Speaker Series luncheon, Dean Fritz Steiner will discuss his
latest book, Design for a Vulnerable Planet,
and his ideas for a sustainable future based
on new regionalism-a theory of design
which holds that structure and landscape
should be inspired by the surrounding ecosystem. Steiner frequently works with local,
state, and federal agencies on diverse environmental plans and designs. He is a member of the Steering Committee of America
2050 and is current president of the Hill
Country Conservancy and board member of
Envision Central Texas.
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Pollen Architecture & Design’s Balcones
House will be featured on the 2011 American Institute of Architects http://www.
aiaaustin.org/firm_project/balcones-house
Austin Homes Tour, October 1 and 2. Lecturers Elizabeth Alford and Dason Whitsett
[B.Arch. ‘95, M.S.S.D. ‘05] are principals of Pollen Architecture (with Michael
Young).
Associate Dean Kevin Alter was a featured
speaker at the American Institute of Architects Arkansas 2011 State Convention
in Hot Springs, on September 17, where
he presented selected work from his firm,
http://alterstudio.net/ alterstudio architects, llp.
Assistant Professor Fernando Lara recently
published two articles. “Incomplete Utopias: Embedded Inequalities in Brazilian
Modern Architecture,” appeared in the
June 2011 edition of the Architectural Research Quarterly, published by Cambridge
University Press. The article, “New (Sub)
Urbanism and Old Inequalities in Brazilian
Gated Communities,” was published in the
August 2011 edition of the Journal of Urban Design, published by Taylor & Francis
Group.
Senior Lecturer Joyce Rosner’s work in
the exhibition, “SLICE: Connections and
Deviations,” will be displayed at the Kreft
Center Gallery, Concordia University, Ann
Arbor, Michigan, from October 25 to December 4.. A central theme in Rosner’s
work is the idea of an iterative collection.
Through the interplay of hand and material,
narrative tension is developed between the
subject and its recorded evidence.
Dr. Steven Moore, Bartlett Cocke Regents
Professor of Architecture and Planning;
Dr. David Adelman, Harry M. Reasoner Regents Chair in Law; and Dr. Barbara Brown
Wilson, director of the UT Austin Center
for Sustainable Development, have been
awarded a National Science Foundation
Workshop Grant to host “Sequencing and
Targeting Climate Change Policy for Architecture: An Interdisciplinary and International Approach.”
On September 27, Dr. Nancy Kwallek,
Gene Edward Mikesa Endowed Chair in
Interior Design and Director of the Interior
Design Program, presented a lecture on
color palettes from the 1950s, in conjunction with Mika Tajima’s exhibition, “The
Architect’s Garden,” at the UT Austin Visual Arts Center. Dr. Kwallek used Herman
Miller and Knoll as examples to discuss the
impact of color on our senses.
Wilfried Wang, O’Neil Ford Centennial Professor in Architecture, led the Quito Travel
Studio with 13 students to Ecuador. Besides seeing the impressive work of José
Maria Saez Vaquero and Adrian Moreno,
both visiting professors at the School of
Architecture this semester, the group met
José Miguel Mantilla and the office of El
Borde: David Barragan and Pascual Gangotena. The students visited a number of
outstanding pieces of contemporary architecture, as well as museums with PreColumbian art. While in Ecuador, Wang
presented a lecture on “Changing Paradigms: The Challenge of Sustainability to
Architecture” at the Universidad Católica
de Santiago Guayaquil and a lecture on
“Judging Architecture” at the Universidad
de Guayaquil.
Adjunct Associate Professor Barbara Hoidn
was an invited participant in the Jane Jacobs Revisited: A Bellagio Conference” at
the Rockefeller Foundation at Villa Serbelloni in Bellagio, Italy, which took place
from September 29 to October 3, 2011.
TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY
Dr. Anat Geva, Associate Professor, Department of Architecture, Texas A&M University is pleased to announce the publication
of her book Frank Lloyd Wright Sacred Architecture: Faith, Form, and Building Technology, Routledge, September, 2011.
Frank Lloyd Wright designed more than
thirty houses of worship, of which only ten
were built. This book serves as the first
comprehensive study of all of Wright’s sacred architecture and is the first book to
introduce a theoretical framework of the
conceptual model that illustrates the relationship between faith, form, and building
technology in sacred architecture. The book
offers scholarly discussion on the application of this conceptual model to Wright’s
religious projects with analytical drawings
and photographs. This unique contribu-
tion will be useful to all those interested in
Wright’sarchitecture and theory as well as
in the study of sacred architecture.
Students in Texas A&M’s University Honors
Program honored the mentoring efforts of
Dr. Stephen Caffey, assistant professor of
architecture, by casting enough votes for
him to earn the Wells Fargo Honors Faculty
Mentor Award.
“Award recipients,” wrote Kyle Mox on the
honors program blog, “distinguish themselves by extending the mentoring relationship beyond the confines of the classroom,
encouraging a spirit of inquiry in their students, being thoughtful teachers, and exhibiting the strongest desire to train a new
generation of thinkers and creators.”
Caffey and fellow recipient David Bergbreiter, professor of chemistry were presented
the awards by the honors student council
during a May 12 ceremony at the College
Station Hilton Convention Center.
Caffey, who joined the Texas A&M faculty
in 2008, earned a Ph.D. in Art History in
2008, a Master of Art History degree in
2001 and Bachelor of American Studies
degree in 1992, all at the University of
Texas at Austin.
His research interests include empire and
identity, visual and spatial literacies, neuroscience of aesthetic perception and the
aesthetics of sustainability.
TULANE UNIVERSITY
Professor Eugene Cizek will receive the
prestigious James Marston Fitch Award
from the National Council of Preservation
Educators at a dinner in his honor on October 21st at the National Trust for Historic
Preservation annual national conference
in Buffalo, New York. Gene has practiced
historic preservation since the mid-1970’s
beginning with his pioneering advocacy
work and restoration projects in Faubourg
Marigny located adjacent to the Vieux Carree. In 1997 Gene founded the Masters
in Preservation Studies graduate program
within the Tulane School of Architecture
that has since served as a principal training
opportunity in architectural preservation in
the state of Louisiana. Gene’s keen eye for
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worthwhile architectural preservation projects, his wide range of accomplishments as
a teacher, and his unmatched enthusiasm
and skills as an advocate and preservation
planner have made him a mainstay of the
preservation scene in New Orleans and the
nation. Tulane University congratulates
him heartily on this award of distinction.
Tulane University is pleased to announce
the establishment of USGBC Students - Tulane Group, initiated by the members of the
new MSRED program. USGBC Students is
a national initiative to recruit, connect and
equip the next generation of green building
leaders by empowering them to transform
their campuses, communities and careers.
Over 50 charter class members have been
recruited, ranging in disciplines from real
estate development, architecture, biology,
and business. The activities for the fall
includes lectures with local professionals
focused on sustainable practices in the
fields of business, ecological studies, and
historic renovation and various community
service initiatives. The group also intends
to provide tools for members to become
LEED accredited, as well as help connect
them to the national USGBC community.
Favrot Professor of Architecture Errol Barron’s visionary architectural work is featured in the Symposium and Exhibition,
Speculative Propositions: Heightened Acuity, hosted by the University of Louisiana
at Lafayette’s School of Architecture and
Design.
Assistant Professor of Architecture Kentaro
Tsubaki’s article Tumbling Units: Tectonics
of Indeterminate Extension is in the new
book, Matter: Material Processes in Architectural Production, edited by Gail Peter
Borden and Michael Meredith, published
by Rutledge Press. The article explores the
nature of extension and aims to raise a fundamental question about the way current
architectural practice engages the matter
and the act of making.
eight other locations throughout the world.
The MRC was founded with educational
value in mind, allowing free access to all
University students. It provides a tangible,
out-of-classroom experience for architecture students who are used to seeing just
pictures of materials.
Assistant Professor Gregory Marinic’s New
York-based practice, Arquipelago, has been
awarded an honorable mention for his
submission “Seoul Market System” to the
2011 Seoul Public Design Competition.
The competition is sponsored by the Seoul
Metropolitan Government.
The library includes over 100 materials
that allow students to find materials by
visual preferences or by criteria. They are
able to feel the texture and how light or
how heavy an object is.
UH College of Architecture Students Finalists in the INTERNATIONAL ARCHITECTURE COMPETITION: SC2011 SPAINCHINA MADRID + HANGZHOU Madrid:
Hyper Building – Vertical City. The UH
students Emily Yong, Andre Simapranata,
Juan Pablo Fuentes, Cristhian Bisso, and
Jessica Yong were the only team from the
United States to be recognized.
Materials are labeled in a way that makes
it easy for them to find in the database, including even a QR code that you can scan
with a specialized phone app.
UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS
Director and Associate Professor Donna
Kacmar worked with the dean to bring the
collection to the University.
Together, they worked out a collaboration
with area professionals that includes Page
Sotherland Page, Kendall/Heaton Associates, Gensler and Ziegler Cooper. (excerpt
from the UH Daily Cougar)
Associate Professor Michelangelo Sabatino, PhD, of the Gerald D. Hines College of
Architecture received a number of awards
for his recent book Pride in Modesty: Modernist Architecture and the Vernacular Tradition in Italy (2010): Best Book of 2010
from the American Association of Italian
Studies, Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize
from the Modern Language Association
and Best Book of 2010 from the Southeast Chapter of the Society of Architectural
Historians (SESAH). His Modern Architecture and the Mediterranean: Vernacular
Dialogues and Contested Identities (with
Jean-François Lejeune, 2010) was shortlisted and received a Commendation for the
2011 CICA (UIA) Bruno Zevi Book Award.
During the summer of 2011, Sabatino was
a Visiting Scholar at the Canadian Centre
for Architecture completing his forthcoming book on Arthur Erickson.
UNIVERSITY OF HOUSTON
This fall, the Gerald D. Hines College of
Architecture opened the doors of the Materials Research Collaborative, which is an
outlet of Material Connexion, a database
that has physical collection libraries in only
The Southeast Chapter of the Society of
Architectural Historians has selected GD
Hines College of Architecture Associate
Professor Michelangelo Sabatino’s book,
Pride in Modesty, as this year’s SESAH
book award winner.
Justin Hershberger has joined the faculty
as a visiting assistant professor, co-teaching in the Fall 2nd year Design Studio and
assisting the Design-Build Studio led by
Mark Wise.
Justin grew up in rural Indiana where he
spent his spare time working in his father’s
cabinetry shop. He earned his M.Arch from
the University of Virginia School of Architecture in 2011 and received the American
Institute of Architects’ Henry Adams Medal
as well as Faculty of Architecture Awards
for both Design Excellence and Public Service. In 2010, he received the Sarah McArthur Nix Fellowship to study three concrete
churches in France. While in graduate
school, Hershberger was consistently involved in teaching assistantships at both
the graduate and undergraduate level focused on craft, making, and building. His
thesis work focused on how construction
influences and can provide an impetus for
design.
Hershberger also holds a B.S. in Architecture from the University of Virginia School
of Architecture (2005). Before returning to
school in 2009, he worked in a fine concrete fabrication shop in Charlottesville,
Virginia producing countertops, bathtubs,
vanities, etc. As the shop manager, he oversaw projects from the initial design phase
to installation. Through the work, Hershberger developed his interest in fabrication, craft, and the details of architecture
that influence everyday life.
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Santiago R. Pérez, Assistant Professor and
21st Century Chair in Integrated Practice
has published “Towards an Ecology of
Making,” a chapter in a new book edited
by Gail Peter Borden and Michael Meredith
titled: Matter: Material Process in Architectural Production.
Pérez has established a new FABLAB at
the Fay Jones School of Architecture, focusing on a merger of Craft + Advanced
Digital Fabrication, questioning contemporary digital practices and reframing 20th
century material - component systems by
direct critical engagement through making,
in what he terms FABCRAFT.
The winners of the Hnedak Bobo competition have been announced, with entries
submitted by our international programs
students who have completed a semester in Rome or Mexico. The Rome Study
Center is directed by Professor David Vitalie, and the summer program in Mexico
is led by Adjunct Assistant Professor Russell Rudzinski. The competitive prize is
sponsored by the Memphis based Hnedak
Bobo Group. Jury members Justin Hershberger, Steve Luoni and Santiago Pérez
joined Mark Weaver from Hnedak Bobo in
discussions to determine the final winners.
The prize was awarded to 5th year student
Erica Blansit, for her Rome Program submission- a “Ludoteka” or children’s play
and learning center in Trastevere, and a
three-student team from the summer 2011
Mexico program; Kenneth Hiley, Akihiro
Moriya and Tanner Sutton.
A visionary handbook for designing low impact development, created by the University of Arkansas Community Design Center,
has garnered a second national award. The
book Low Impact Development: a design
manual for urban areas won a 2011 Award
of Excellence in Communications from the
American Society of Landscape Architects.
This award category recognizes publications, journals and books on landscape architecture with honor awards and one top
award for excellence. The manual will be
featured at the 2011 ASLA Annual Meeting and Expo in October in San Diego, and
in the October issue of Landscape Architecture Magazine. The Community Design
Center is an outreach program of the Fay
Jones School of Architecture.
The jury called the manual “beautifully
composed and very accessibly written” and
“clear, brilliant, attractive, useful, and pertinent. All young people should read this
– boy, does it communicate.” It is already
a required text in some university engineering courses nationwide.The Community
Design Center and the university’s Ecological Engineering Group developed the book
under a grant from the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency and the Arkansas Natural Resources Commission.
Mark Wilcken, a producer at the Arkansas
Educational Television Network in Little
Rock, has created the 55-minute documentary, Clean Lines, Open Spaces: A View
of Mid-Century Modern Architecture. The
film, shot with high-definition technology,
will be screened in four cities around the
state this month, including one on Oct. 9 at
the University of Arkansas Global Campus
in downtown Fayetteville. It will premiere
on AETN at 9 p.m. Nov. 14. Production of
the film was funded through grants from
the Arkansas Humanities Council and the
Arkansas chapter of the American Institute
of Architects. Wilcken interviewed architects, architecture professors, homeowners
and a representative of the Historic Preservation Alliance of Arkansas. All offered
helpful tips and advice for finding people
and properties. Architecture school faculty
members interviewed were Greg Herman,
associate professor; Marlon Blackwell, distinguished professor and head of the architecture department, and Ethel GoodsteinMurphree, professor and associate dean,
who served as architectural historical consultant on the film. Alumni interviewed include Ernie Jacks (B.A. Architecture ’50),
Bob Laser (B.A. Architecture ’50), Charley
Penix (B.Arch. ’80) and Reese Rowland
(B.Arch. ’90). Hicks Stone, son of Edward
Durell Stone, also contributed.
Marlon Blackwell is a member of one of five
multidisciplinary creative teams selected to
participate in Portal to the Point: A Design
Ideas Exploration. The teams will focus on
public art and design at Point State Park,
the most visible landmark in Pittsburgh.
About 40 firms from across the country
were invited to submit proposals. The final
five were selected based on an evaluation
of the merits of their proposals and how
they’d approach this project, as well as
their professional track record, Blackwell
said. Blackwell’s firm is the leader of an
impressive team that also includes Kendall Buster, a nationally renowned sculptor and a professor in the department of
sculpture and extended media at Virginia
Commonwealth University; Guy Nordenson
and Associates, a structural engineering
firm in New York; dlandstudio of Brooklyn,
N.Y., led by principal landscape architect
and architect Susannah Drake; and Renfro Design Group, an architectural lighting
design firm founded by Richard Renfro in
New York.
Blackwell is a Distinguished Professor and
head of the architecture department in the
Fay Jones School of Architecture at the
University of Arkansas. His firm, Marlon
Blackwell Architect, is based in Fayetteville. Blackwell has worked previously with
Nordenson, who was the structural engineer for his Ruth Lilly Visitors Pavilion,
located in 100 Acres: The Virginia B. Fairbanks Art and Nature Park, which opened
in June 2010 at the Indianapolis Museum
of Art. A piece of site-specific artwork by
Buster, the emerald green fiberglass and
steel Stratum Pier, is also part of the museum’s art and nature park. Buster and
Nordenson were also both guest lecturers
on the University of Arkansas campus, as
part of the school’s annual lecture series
last year. Renfro graduated from the University of Arkansas in 1979 with a Bachelor of Architecture. An exhibition of the
designs will be held October 19-23 at the
Heinz Architectural Center at the Carnegie
Museum of Art in Pittsburgh. A public symposium with all the participants is planned
for early 2012. A book that documents the
process and the resulting designs will be
available online, establishing an extended
platform for the dissemination of information about the project.
WEST
MONTANA STATE UNIVERSITY
Associate Professor Chris Livingston and
Assistant Professor Zuzanna Karczewska
attended an international conference in
Delft, Netherlands organized by European
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Association of Envisioning Architecture.
Chris Livingston’s paper was entitled “The
‘Surgeon-Anatomist’ - Architecture, Medicine and possible trajectories for Visualization within Building Information Modeling”
and Zuzanna Karczewska’s “Tangibility and
Duration of Drawing”.
Associate Professor Maire O’Neill has an
upcoming exhibit titled “Taking Stock – A
morphology: field documentation of agricultural buildings” at the Ravalli County
Museum in Hamilton, Montana. This exhibit includes building documentation and
interpretive drawings reflecting the evolving building practices of livestock producers and farmers settling the intermountain
west. It includes a typological and morphological analysis and will take place October
through December 2011.
A proposal written by Milenka Jirasko was
one of three international winners of the
Berkeley Prize Travel Fellowship Competition allowing her to research the former
Auschwitz concentration camp in rural Poland this summer. She won a $3,200 travel stipend to allow her to research sacred
spaces that are open to the public under
the guidance of Associate Professor Maire
O’Neill. Fellow students Carson Booth, Rachel Haugen, Britni Jezirorski and Chris
Taleff were among 33 semifinalists selected overall. The prize is given by the University of California, Berkeley and the Berkeley Prize Endowment to enable winners to
travel to gain a deeper understanding of the
social art of architecture.
A team of Montana State University students has won a competition to design
an 85-foot ice-climbing tower as part of
an attempt to lure the 2013 world cup of
ice climbing championship to the Gallatin
County Fairgrounds in Bozeman. The team
led by Michael Spencer of Willow Creek,
a recent graduate of the MSU School of
Architecture, with Tymer Tilton of Missoula a current architecture student, and
MSU engineering student P.J. Kolnik, won
the MSU-based competition to design the
Bozeman Ice Tower under the guidance of
Associate Professor Mike Everts. Everts
says “the winning design is composed of
angled climbing surfaces that attach to
stacked, side-cycled shipping containers.
The containers, in addition to being eco-
University of Southern California
nomical and sustainable, are designed to
be temporary lodging for visiting athletes”.
The winning design, which can be seen on
the Web, bozemanicetower.wordpress.com,
includes a tower that can be used for ice or
traditional climbing surrounded by a spectator area that will allow the structure to be
used as an outdoor concert venue.
Associate Professor Mike Everts received
an Honorable mention for the 2011
NCARB Prize. The submission titled “The
Next Generation of Mountain Architects”
was recognized by the jury for teaching
students leadership skills, communications skills, and how to participate in the
community decision-marking process. With
guidance from non-faculty architect practitioners and professors, students researched
and designed a culturally and environmentally sensitive community center in Phortse, Nepal near Mt. Everest. Students then
traveled to Nepal to work with local officials, contractors, and villagers to dig the
foundation and construct critical building
component prototypes.
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
M. Brian Tichenor, AIA has just completed the restoration of a four-acre Thomas
Church garden in Pebble Beach, and is
in the final stages of planning for the first
large residence built to Passivhaus standards in Monterey County.
Adjunct Associate Professor, Gerdo Aquino, is President of SWA, and Principal at
the Los Angeles studio. He recently coauthored a book, published by Birkhauser/
Actar, entitled Landscape Infrastructure:
Case Studies by SWA. For the fall/winter of
2011 he lectured at GSD Harvard, Cal Poly
Pomona, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and the
University of Virginia on “Transportational
Futures” and Landscape Infrastructure.
He has recently been awarded the 2011
Westside Prize Merit Award, Open Space
Category for Milton Street Park, Marina
Del Rey, CA. He is currently working on the
recently awarded Shanghai Disney Project
(Residential, Dining and Entertainment
Area), a pedestrian streetscape in El Paso,
Texas, and a linear urban park along Ballona Creek in Marina Del Rey. Gerdo will be
speaking on a panel on October 28th at the
ULI Conference entitled: From Eye Sore to
“A Must See:” Creating Urban Parks from
Thin Air and Adding Real Estate Value.
Visiting Assistant Professor Ying-Yu Hung
is Managing Principal of SWA Los Angeles, and co-founder of the Infrastructure
Research Initiative (I.R.I.S.), recently coauthoring the book “Landscape Infrastructure: Case Studies by SWA”, published
by Birkhauser/Actar. She was a finalist for
the 2011 ULI Awards for Excellence: Asia
Pacific Competition for Gubei Pedestrian
Promenade in Shanghai, China. Hung is
an active lecturer and recently presented a
panel on the topic of landscape infrastruc-
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ture at this year’s National American Planning Association conference held in Boston and CELA in Los Angeles. In the fall/
winter of 2011 she lectured at GSD Harvard, Cal Poly Pomona, Cal Poly San Luis
Obispo and the University of Virginia on
“Transportational Futures” and Landscape
Infrastructure. In August, SWA Los Angeles
won 2nd Place in the 2016 Rio Olympic
Competition in Rio de Janerio, Brazil. Her
current projects include the Fuyang Riverfront Concept Master Plan in China.
Adjunct Assistant Professor Eric Haas, AIA
received a Preservation Design Award from
the California Preservation Foundation for
the restoration of R.M. Schindler’s Bubeshko Apartments. He also presented the project on the panel “Renovating an Icon” at
Dwell on Design 2011 in Los Angeles.
Professor Marc Schiler tested and evaluated the reflective and specular implications of using a foamed aluminum material
on the exterior of the LUMA Foundation in
Arles, France, designed by Frank Gehry.
Gehry continues to push the envelope in
using new materials. Professor Schiler also
documented the interesting instances of
solar convergence over the span of a day
at the Vdara Hotel in Las Vegas, designed
by Rafael Vinoly. Preliminary results were
presented at the Facades Tectonics conference at USC.
Visiting Assistant Professor Kristine Mun
has been invited to participate in the LA
Downtown Artwalk event from October
13-18, 2011. She will be showcasing her
Studio402 projects, entitled “Architecture
and the Logic Machine: Behavior and Material Application”
Assistant Professor Karen M. Kensek is organizing the sixth annual BIM conference
to be held in Los Angeles on July 13, 2012.
Faculty members Doris Sung and Rob Ley
were awarded the 2011 AIA National Upjohn Grant to support ongoing research
that their respective design offices have
engaged dealing with responsive materials within architecture. Both Rob and Doris have separately received support from
previous Upjohn Grants, this year’s award
marks the first time that they will be working together on a new project.
Lecturer Carlo Aiello co-edited the new
book ‘Evolo Skyscrapers’ which is an investigation on the future of vertical density.
The publication was presented last September at the 2011 Interior Design Show
West (IDSWest) in Vancouver. It received
instant praise by the public and critics.
Assistant Professor Ken Breisch has been
asked to join the “Los Angeles Architecture,
1940-1990” Exhibition Advisory Committee for the Getty Research Institute, as well
as the Los Angeles Arboretum Preservation
Advisory Group, and the Survey LA Review
Committee.
Adjunct Professor Veronica G. Galen, Assoc. AIA, IES, LEED AP BD+C, designed
the lighing for the Silver Award winning
Dream Home 2011 Custom Contemporary
Home of the Year and Best Whole House
Remodel for residential projects with Kollin
Altomare Architects, and was part of the
team awarded an Illuminating Engineering
Society of North America Award of Merit for
the lighting design of Chase Bank Colorado
Boulevard.
Adjunct Professor Regula Campbell, AIA
authored a presentation in June at the
International Federation of Landscape
Architecture World Congress: “Scales of
Nature”, Zurich, Switzerland on the topic:
Biodiversity in the City: Enrichment for Urban Life and Work – “Making It Personal,
Making It Real”.
Adjunct Professor Doug Campbell, ASLA
will be recognized by the Government of
Hangzhou, China this October for his contribution to the region’s “Quality of Life”
through his design of a recently completed
sustainable new town re-visioning a former
industrial site in the City’s northern district.
An exhibition featuring design work addressing the proposed USC/Hybrid High
Charter School by School of Architecture
Associate Professor Chuck Lagreco’s 2011
spring topic studio students will be on
display at a reception in the new Rossier
School of Education Computing Center
- part of a continuing collaboration on
educational facilities by the two schools
focusing on the neighborhoods around the
campus.
Studio work on the Owens Lake dust mitigation project influenced the Los Angeles
Department of Water and Power to hire
three local landscape architecture firms to
be part of the current phase of design and
construction for over 2.7 square miles of
the lake. He has also joined the team in an
advanced research capacity.
Architecture Lecturer, Christine Lampert’s
firm, Lampert Dias Architects, Inc. has just
finished the construction administration
phase for the 8000 square foot San Clemente Senior’s Community Center that they
designed in downtown San Clemente. The
Center officially opened on Monday October 3, 2011.
Cory Ticktin, AIA who is a Design Principal with AECOM in Los Angeles currently
oversees the Studio’s International work
in Asia. Mr. Ticktin is currently working on
a number of projects in Asia including a
130,000 M² Mixed-Use commercial development in Bangkok, Thailand currently
under construction, a 45,000 M² Corporate
Headquarters for Unilever also in Bangkok,
an 80 meter tall office tower in Bangalore,
India, two 130 meter tall residential towers also in Bangalore and a 100 meter tall
residential tower in Pune, India.
Associate Professor Trudi Sandmeier is
the new Director of USC Graduate Historic
Preservation Programs. She recently curated an L.A. Food Noir film event at the
historic Orpheum Theatre and will be both
a panelist and moderator for the upcoming
Historic Preservation Symposium at Cornell
University.
Ed Woll reports that construction is substantially complete for Young Burlington
Apartments (affordable supportive housing for young people) in Los Angeles’ Koreatown neighborhood and 60% complete
for Jovenes Houses (transitional housing
for disadvantaged youth) in East Los Angeles. Projects on the boards include developments in Eagle Rock and in Pomona
providing affordable supportive housing for
families, seniors and homeless veterans.
The projects in Eagle Rock and Pomona
will have substantial urban-farming components.
ACSANewsDigest
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Victor Regnier, FAIA, Vice Dean + Professor of Architecture will present the keynote
address for the 14th Annual Sarnat Symposium on Geriatric Care in Los Angeles,
CA. In November, he will keynote the Caser
Foundation International Conference on Architectural Design and Long Term Care in
Madrid, Spain.
Gary Paige’s architecture project, “Type
Variant Houses” and artwork, “Ruled
Surfaces” is the subject of an exhibition
entitled “Other Works” at the School of
Architecture at UC Berkeley, along with
architects Wes Jones and IDEA Office partners Eric Kahn and Russell Thomsen.
Michael Hricak, FAIA, Adjunct Associate
Professor, served as a panelist and presented a talk on urban design and public health
to a gathering of elected leaders, city managers and agency officials and staff from
88 municipalities and at the Los Angeles
2011 BIKE SUMMIT, sponsored by LA
County Department of Public Health, and
hosted by the City of Long Beach.
Professor James Steele is organizing a
Symposium called the “Critics Forum”
about the History of USC School of Architecture, which will also appear as a book in
a years time, and he is eagerly anticipating the publication of a monograph on Sidney Eisenshtat that he edited for the USC
School of Architecture Guild Press, in May.
Vinayak Bharne has been named a contributing editor of Kyoto Journal in Japan. He
will serve as the south Asian commentator
providing perspectives on architecture, urbanism & cultural anthropology. He is also
contributing a chapter in the forthcoming
book “Planning Los Angeles” (APA Planners Press 2012).
Lecturer Mina Chow, AIA, NCARB, dZI Media, Inc. have completed their “rough cut”
for a new web series on innovative architecture. The series was created with the City
of Los Angeles Mayor’s office with Prof.
Jim Steele and Getty Research Institute
Wim de Witt as humanities advisors. You
may view the “rough cut” at: http://vimeo.
com/29752344
Assistant Professor Victor Jones and the
Watts House Project were awarded a 2011
Graham Grant to complete work for the
Watts House Project’s Platform fence,
pocket park, and façade improvement. He
will be a visiting scholar at the American
Academy in Rome in December to pursue
research on the Italian Structural Engineer,
Sergio Musmeci. He delivered a project
presentation “Cultivating Cultures” at the
2011 ACSA Fall Conference / Houston entitled “Local Identities Global Challenges”
Douglas Noble, FAIA, Ph.D., is organizing
the 8th FACADE TECTONICS conference,
to be held in Los Angeles June 28-July 1,
2012. The Call for papers is at: http://wwwbcf.usc.edu/~dnoble/facadetectonics8.htm
Adjunct Associate Professor Michael Hricak, FAIA, and his Venice based design
firm recently received city approval for an
innovative hotel and conference center
to be built in Redondo Beach, California
which promises to set new standards for
design and sustainability in this beachside
community.
Professor Graeme M. Morland recently
delivered lecture demonstration entitled,
“SKETCHING WITHOUT FEAR” on the occasion of USC’s “GET YOUR HANDS DIRTY
with the ARTS” annual event. For many
people, picking up a pencil to sketch what
they see is intimidating and disappointing
as the resultant image bears little resemblance to the subject before them. Invariably, this moment of frustration is translated as failure and they are persuaded that
they cannot draw. This “crash course” was
designed to alay these fears by demonstration and guidance, walking novice students
through the process of constructing a drawing, establishing “datums”, understanding
the rudiments of perspective, the limits of
“vision”, graphic heirarchy, and the basics
of skiagraphy.
The work of lecturer Rebecca Lowry will
be on display at Los Angeles Gallery g825,
opening October 15, and at Cain Schulte
Gallery in San Francisco, opening November 3. The LA show will present a new body
of work, focussing on representations of
music, while the SF show will present a
broad sampling of work from the last three
years.
Visiting Professor Jennifer Siegal was
awarded a Visions and Voices grant to produce the symposium Motopia: A New Age
for Modular Construction to be held at USC
on November, 2, 2011. Find out more at
web-app.usc.edu/ws/eo2/calendar/113/
event/893725.
UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA
The Biosphere 2 Landscape Evolution Observatory (LEO) will consist of three massive landscapes constructed inside an environmentally controlled greenhouse facility.
A scale-model built by Assistant Professor
Susannah Dickinson and two third-year
architecture students, David Kim and
James Carrico, will be displayed for visitors at Biosphere 2. For more info visit: leo.
b2science.org/node/36.
OF ARCH #118: International Magazine of
Architecture and Design features the Tucson Zoo and Natatorium in Reid Park, by
Burns Wald-Hopkins Shambach Architects
with design consultation on fabric structures by Professor R. Larry Medlin.
Adjunct Lecturers Teresa Rosano and Luis
Ibarra (Ibarra Rosano Design Architects,
Inc.) have three projects featured in Contemporary Villas, Strahan, McMillan, and
McMillan, eds. (Atglen, PA: Schiffer Pub
Ltd, 2011).
WOODBURY UNIVERSITY
The Center for Community Research and
Design’s “Rethinking Accessibility,” supported by the National Endowment for
the Arts, is part of a national exhibition
at the Community Design Collaborative in
Philadelphia called “Leverage”; the exhibition showcases community engagement
practices around the United States. The
CCRD’s Darfur school project is curently
in the planning stages, with student Art
Nesterenko’s project chosen by the Darfur
Rehabilitation Project. Plans are underway
to raise funds for the project to be built in
Chad, Africa.
BArch. Chair Jeanine Centuori’s work with
partner UrbanRock Design (Russell Rock,
collaboration) “Conditional Reflections”
has been featured in “Modern in Denver
Magazine.” It is an integrated public art
project with architects Semple Brown in
ACSANewsDigest
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Denver. The project transforms three glass
facades of the public pool structure into
meditations on the three states of water.
They are accompanied by a courtyard design. Also, Jeanine’s practice recently completed a Public Art Master Plan for the city
of Tucson that articulates a vision for a fivemile stretch of Grant Road. The plan has
been adopted by the city.
Visiting Assistant Professor, Chandler
Ahrens, has projects published in the recently released book Performalism, Form
and Performance in Digital Architecture edited by Eran Neuman and Yasha Grobman.
Eran Neuman is a partner of Chandler’s in
the practice, Open Source Architecture,
along with Aaron Sprecher. Open Source
Architecture co-designed the exhibition
Performalism, Form and Performance in
Digital Architecture at the Tel Aviv Museum
of Art in 2008 with Yasha Grobman.
Jose Parral, Assistant Professor and Rene
Peralta, Director of the Master’s in Landscape + Urbanism will be lecturing on Octobre 31st, as part of the Education Sessions in the 2011 American Landscape
Architecture Annual Meeting to be held
in San Diego, CA. The title of the session
is: The San Diego-Tijuana Border: A Cause
and Effect Relationship.
Assistant Professor Maxi Spina’s housing
Building in Argentina Jujuy Redux (codesigned with P-a-t-t-e-r-n-s) appeared in
the Book “Pulsation in Architecture”, by
Eric Goldemberg, as well as in the symposium and book launch held at Columbia
University. The book highlights the role of
digital design as catalyst for a new spatial
sensibility related to rhythmic perception
while it proposes a novel critical reception
of computational architecture based on the
ability of digital design to move beyond
mere instrumentality, engaging with core
aspects of the discipline.
Professor Paulette Singley and Assistant
Professor Linda Taalman join a stellar
speaker line-up for the MAK Center Fall
Fundraiser 2011 on October 16 at the
Lovell Beach House in Newport Beach.
Los Angeles Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne singled out Julius Shulman distinguished Professor in Practice
Barbara Bestor’s design for Intelligentsia
Coffee in Silver Lake as one of the best
commercial and retail interiors in Los Angeles.
WATERMARKS: Acqua Alta, Resiliency,
and Precise Meanders Exhibition by Professor of Practice Jennifer Bonner was featured by the LA Weekly and ArchDaily. LA
Weekly writer Tibby Rothman called the installation at the WUHO gallery “an ephemeral meditation on life in the time of global
warming.”
Working Rivers. 2011 projects focused
on the Willamette River North Reach, the
city’s industrial waterfront. This year’s work
addresses the Willamette Central Reach,
Portland’s Downtown Riverfront. An exhibit
of the first year of work was opened by Mayor Sam Adams at City Hall in June, with a
second event planned for June ‘12.
CANADA
UNIVERSITY OF OREGON
UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY
The University of Oregon Department of Architecture is pleased to welcome Assistant
Professors Daisy-O’lice Williams and Philip
Speranza, new faculty in design communications.
Professor Jim Love was co-applicant for
a successful $5 million award granted
by the Natural Sciences and Engineering
Research Council of Canada, to establish
a “Smart Net Zero Energy Buildings Research Network.” The Ralph Klein Environmental Education Centre in Calgary won a
2011 Sustainable Architecture and Building Magazine award. Adjunct Professor
Chris Roberts was project architect, while
Jim Love was the LEED coordinator and energy and commissioning consultant.
The 2011 Pietro Belluschi Distinguished
Visiting Professor in Architectural Design is
John Paul Jones, FAIA, principal of Jones
and Jones, Seattle. John Paul Jones earned
his bachelor of architecture from the UO
in 1967. His firm received the ASLA Firm
Award in 2003. Johnpaul is a Fellow in the
AIA and his honors also include the AIA
Seattle Medal of Honor, the Executive Excellence Award from the American Indian
Science and Engineering Society, and the
1998 Elis F. Lawrence Medal from the UO
School of Architecture & Allied Arts.
Professor Howard Davis was the recipient
of the Thomas F. Herman Award, the highest teaching honor for senior faculty members at the University of Oregon.
Professor Kevin Nute’s chapter on ‘Japanese Art as a Means to Organic Architecture’ will appear in a forthcoming book
published by the French School of Far
Eastern Studies in Paris, Reception et
diffusion en Occident de l’espace architectural et de l’art des jardins du Japon,
Paris, 2012. His paper ‘Frank Lloyd Wright
and the Woodblock Print’ will appear in the
Bulletin de l’Association Franco-Japonaise,
Paris, in March 2012.
Professor Gerald Gast’s design thesis students at the University of Oregon’s Portland
Program are working on a two-year project
with the City of Portland’s Office of Healthy
Dr. Brian R. Sinclair, FRAIC, had his new
book entitled “Campus Design + Planning: Culture, Context and the Pursuit of
Sustainability” published by the Canada
Green Building Council (CaGBC). He recently completed a lecture tour in the
Middle East, including the Inaugural Address in the “Sustainability Lecture Series”
sponsored by the Responsible Urbanism
Research Laboratory (RURL) at Zayed University (Abu Dhabi). In 2010 Dr. Sinclair
received the President’s Medal of Distinguished Achievement by the International
Institute for Advanced Studies in Systems
Research and Cybernetics in Germany.
David Monteyne published his book, “Fallout Shelter: Designing for Defense in the
Cold War,” with the University of Minnesota Press.
Graham Livesey has published the following contributions to books in the last year:
“Assemblage,” “Fold + Architecture,”
“Rhizome + Architecture,” and “Space +
Architecture,” in A. Parr, ed., The Deleuze
Dictionary (Edinburgh University Press);
“Event Theory and Creative Agency,” in
ACSANewsDigest
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Faber, Krips, and Pettus, eds., Event and
Decision: Ontology and Politics in Badiou,
Deleuze and Whitehead (Cambridge Scholars Publishing); and, “Ecologies, Assemblages and the Patchwork City,” in A. Parr,
and M. Zaretsky, eds. New Directions in
Sustainable Design (Routledge).
tecture and urban design who are pushing
the boundaries of their discipline.
MEMORIALS
The Architecture Program recently hosted
the ACADIA 2011 Annual Conference (Association for Computer Aided Design in
Architecture). This international event was
organized by faculty members Jason Johnson, Josh Taron, Vera Parlac, and Branko
Kolarevic.
In 2011, the program has hosted the following distinguished scholars in our short
course series: the William Lyon Somerville
design charrette in January was taught by
architect Adam Caruso of London; the Taylor Visiting Lecturer in February was Drura
Parrish of the University of Kentucky; and
the Gillmor Theory Seminar in October was
taught by Dr. Jane Rendell of the Bartlett
School of Architecture, London.
UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA
Blair Satterfield has co-authored an essay
with his HouMinn partner, Marc Swackhamer titled “Built to Change: A Case for
Disintegration and Obsolescence.” This essay appears in the newly published book
“Matter: Material Processes in Architectural Production,” edited by Gail Peter Borden and Michael Meredith and published
by Rutledge Press.
Professor Satterfield’s practice, HouMinn,
in collaboration with the architects VJAA
and artist Diane Willow, was shortlisted to
submit a scheme for the redesign of the
Mississippi River Plaza on the University
of Minnesota campus. An exhibition of
the teams’ entries will be on display at the
Weisman Art Museum’s grand re-opening
on October 2, 2011. Teams will present
their work to a jury on October 26, when a
winner will be decided.
Matthew Soules’ practice MSA is featured
in Twenty + Change this year in Toronto,
Ontario. Twenty + Change is a biennial exhibition and publication series dedicated
to promoting emerging Canadian designers
working in architecture, landscape archi-
Professor Emeritus George Marcou
CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA
The School of Architecture and Planning of
The Catholic University of America proudly
presents Professor Adèle Naudé Santos,
Dean of the MIT School of Architecture and
Planning in the Inaugural Lecture honoring
George T. Marcou, FAICP Professor Emeritus, on Wednesday 10/26/11, 5:30pm at
the Koubek Auditorium of the Crough Center for Architectural Studies, 620 Michigan
Ave. NE, Washington, DC 20064.
Professor George Themistoclis Marcou
taught at The Catholic University of America from 1962 to 2002. Born in Cairo,
Egypt, he attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology earning a bachelor’s
degree in Architecture in 1953, and a
master’s degree in city planning in 1955.
During those years, he met a fellow student
and the woman who would become his beloved wife during 56 years, Margaret, who
also graduated from MIT. Both raised five
children, three golden retrievers, and later
enjoyed their eleven grandchildren. Professor Marcou was widely known for his professionalism, wonderful sense of humor,
and practical approach to problem solving.
Traveling around the world with Margaret,
whether it was for business or for pleasure,
was a great passion where his fluency in
Arabic, Greek and French came in handy.
His career as an urban planner began in
1962, when he founded Marcou, O’Leary
and Associates, a planning and urban
development consulting firm. There he
directed projects for numerous counties
and cities both in the United States and
abroad. The firm received urban design
awards from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, including an
award for its preservation plan and program
for the Vieux Carré Historic District in New
Orleans.
Projects in the Washington area included
Fiscal Impact Analyses for Montgomery
County, a program for revitalization of
downtown Frederick, Maryland, campus
plans for George Washington University
and the National Institutes of Health, planning studies for Fairfax County and a study
of Washington’s skyline for the National
Capital Planning Commission. The firm
was acquired by Westinghouse in 1973. In
1977, Professor Marcou became the first
manager of the Community Development
Bureau of the Metropolitan Washington
Board of Trade, developing policy and action programs for the business community
dealing with public issues.
Later in 1979, he was appointed Deputy
Executive Director of the American Planning Association (APA) where he was responsible for its policy and lobbying program. He also served on the APA’s Political
and Legislative Committee. In 1993, Governor Schaffer of Maryland awarded Professor Marcou the Governor’s Award for
Professional Excellence and the following
year appointed him to the State of Maryland Economic Growth, Resource Protection and Planning Commission on which he
served for five years. He was often asked
to be a guest lecturer at conferences and
universities in the U.S. and abroad. These
invitations took him to Denmark, Greece,
Italy, and the Netherlands. He was a longstanding member of Lambda Alpha International, an honorary land economics society and the American Institute of Certified
Planners.
Professor Emeritus George Marcou passed
away on April 28, 2011 in Bethesda, Maryland.