Student Alex Froehlich (B.Arch) will be attending the upcoming "Structures for  Inclusion" conference in Minneapolis, March 23-24, as a representative of designBridge. This conference is hosted by Design Corps, whose mission is to create positive change in communities by providing architecture and planning services.

Adjunct professor Michael Pyatok, Principal at Pyatok Architects, was awarded the AIA Thomas Jefferson Award for Public Architecture for his contribution to improving the quality of design for affordable housing and community planning. Pyatok also wrote a chapter in the recently published book Beyond Zuccotti Park: Freedom of Assembly and the Occupation of Public Space. The chapter describes his competition-winning design for the Oakland City Hall Plaza and Park in 1985 and how it was able to serve the recent Occupy Wall Street demonstrations. And in November, Pyatok spent a week in Taipei as an invited charrette leader helping their affordable housing advocates and the City government of Taipei to develop plans for the restoration and expansion of a 3300-unit public housing project.

Associate Professor Hajo Neis, Ph.D., Director of the Portland Urban Architecture Research Laboratory (PUARL), finished a book with Professor Christopher Alexander as the main author and HansJoachim Neis and Maggie Moore as contributors and co-authors. The book is entitled: The Battle for the Life and Beauty of the Earth, and is published by Oxford University Press, November 2012. While the main title implies a larger perspective on our current state of life on earth, the subtitle of the book A Struggle between two World-Systems suggests that there is dispute and opposition between two fundamentally different ways of shaping and forming our world. One system places emphasis on life, feeling, the process of adaptation, and subtleties, as well as fit and finesse in the local context. The other system is concerned with efficiency, money, power and control, stressing the more gross aspects of size, speed and profit.