We are delighted to welcome Stefano Schiavon as a new Assistant Professor in the area of Sustainability, Energy & Environment.  Schiavon received an MS in Mechanical Engineering and a PhD in Building Science and Energy Engineering from Italy’s Padua University, and has held research appointments at the International Center for Indoor Environment and Energy in Denmark, Tsinghua University in Beijing, and at UC Berkeley.  Schiavon has an impressive record of achievement, focusing on reducing energy consumption while increasing indoor environmental quality and occupant well-being and productivity; he is also enthusiastically finding ways his work can influence design practice and policy. 

The University of California, Berkeley, brings practicing architects to the campus as endowed teaching fellows each year:  The 2011 Esherick Visiting Professor is Jordi Truco, a partner at HYBRIDa, Barcelona and the Director of the Advanced Design and Digital Architecture at the ELISAVA Masters Program. HYBRIDa’s adaptive architecture focuses on architecture using new technologies: parametric-associative software systems, CAD-CAM output and speculative material investigations.

There will be three Friedman Visiting Professors this Fall: Wes Jones, Eric Kahn, Gary Paige. 

Wes Jones is the founder of Jones, Partners: Architecture, a California-based practice founded in 1993. Jones is, in a sense, coming home: he received a AB with Highest Honors from UC Berkeley in 1980. In the Fall of 2007, Princeton Architectural Press published a second monograph of his work, covering the period from 1998 to date, titled El Segundo.

Los Angeles architect Eric Kahn is a partner at IDEA Office (IO). Recent work includes a donor wall in the lobby of the Walt Disney Concert Hall, the winning entry in the Dead Malls Competition, a new student services building at Los Angeles Community College, the VPM prototype for the Dwell Home Invitational, and a series of compelling single family houses in Los Angeles, New York and Tokyo. They were finalists in a housing competition for Livable Places, and the recipient of both the Young Architects Award and the Emerging Voices series sponsored by the Architectural League of New York.

Gary Paige is a principal of Gary Paige / Studio [GP/S], a Los Angeles-based multi-disciplinary design firm engaged in projects ranging from architecture and urbanism to furniture and graphic design. The studio fuses the pragmatic with the poetic. Work includes an awarding-winning installation for the Venice Biennale; the design and renovation of the Freight Depot for SCI-Arc; Manifold House; and the recent “Variegated Mat-scape,” a finalist in the Los Angeles Forum Dingbat 2.0 Competition.

Assistant Professor Nicholas de Monchaux’s book Spacesuit: Fashioning Apollo (MIT: 2011) continued to receive enthusiastic press, in The Australian (http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/arts/if-the-spacesuit-fits-we-have-lift-off/story-e6frg8nf-1226098387880).  He also wrote an op-ed on the subject for the New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/21/opinion/21deMonchaux.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=de%20monchaux&st=cse).  De Monchaux’s most recent design work, meanwhile, was charmingly described as “urban acupuncture” in The Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/sustainable-business/urban-acupuncture-community-localised-renewal-projects).

Galen Cranz was interviewed ON the principles of body-conscious design and research that led to her boo The Chair, in early July, for “Full Circle,” a cultural affairs program at KPFA 94.FM.  (Hear it at: http://chienchinoise.wordpress.com/2011/07/20/back-pain-and-postural-health/)

Miranda Hambro, Environmental Design Archives Assistant Curator and Jason Miller, Visual Resources Librarian are co-curating the exhibit: “Off Hours: Environments for Entertainment” [September 27-December 22, 2011, Environmental Design Library] This exhibit highlights the buildings and landscapes in which we spend leisure time for respite from the stresses of daily life.  Grouped thematically as things to watch, play, eat and buy, the focus is on spaces such as theaters, restaurants, playgrounds, country clubs, stores and sports facilities. 

Environmental Design Archives Curator Waverly Lowell made a presentation on Geraldine Scott and Thomas Church at a SPUR panel discussion: “Modern Landscape Design” in September and led a tour of Greenwood Common as part of the Cultural Landscape Foundation’s “What’s Out There Weekend: San Francisco,” also in September.

Nezar Alsayyad speaks to local TV about the Berkeley grad students still being held in Iran: http://www.ktvu.com/news/28734709/detail.html

An intriguing event held at SF-MOMA: a poetry reading riffing on iwamoto-Scott’s Jellyfish House in early August: http://www.sfmoma.org/view/page.mobile/event/content.event/1910

Nicholas de monchaux’s book Spacesuit: Fashioning Apollo (MIT: 2011) was also featured on on-line magazines and blogs:

Kyle Steinfeld discussing data in a very brief YouTube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBzvVfKB5sw

Margaret Crawford’s very amusing comment made earlier on a odd utopian plan got picked up in the U.K: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2024761/Atlas-Shrugged-Silicon-Valley-billionaire-reveals-plan-launch-floating-start-country-coast-San-Francisco.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

Robert Gonzales, who received his PhD from Berkeley in 2002, will be the new director of the Architecture Program at Texas Tech in El Paso.  Gonzales was also a lecturer on our faculty in 1998.

http://today.ttu.edu/2011/06/texas-tech-university-at-el-paso-welcomes-new-director-of-architecture/

More on Robert here: http://elpasoinc.com/readArticle.aspx?issueid=350&xrec=6694