Study Architecture 
ProPEL 
Professor MARY COMERIO received the United Nation’s Green Star Award, from the U.N.’s Environment Programme, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and Green Cross International. Comerio’s primary focus for last 25 years has been the seismic safety of housing and post-disaster recovery. Her research on the costs and benefits of seismic rehabilitation for existing buildings has been widely published; she is an internationally recognized authority on post-disaster reconstruction. Most recently, Comerio provided invaluable advice on UNEP’s post-disaster engagement in Sichuan Province China, evaluating new sustainable building prototypes, and in Haiti, advising UN early-recovery teams on challenges related to damaged structures.
Comerio was also on New Zealand Television. (See it at: at http://tvnz.co.nz/national-news/chch-taking-advice-san-francisco-over-rebuild-4177056)
Assistant Professor Maria Paz Gutierrez has been named to the 2011-2012 Fulbright Regional Network for Applied Research (NEXUS) Scholar Program as part of a 20-member team working to promote best practices in fighting poverty and inequality in the Western Hemisphere. She will work in her native Chile on a sustainable and affordable housing prototype that also could be deployed in an emergency, particularly a flood. Working with her on the project in Chile will be UC Berkeley graduate research assistants Kylie Han and John Faichney. (For more, see http://newscenter.berkeley.edu/2011/04/25/architect-fulbright-nexus-scholar/)
Gutierrez also received the university’s 2011 Sarlo Distinguished Graduate Student Mentoring Award (Junior Faculty). And was named Bentley’s Educator of the Year. (See the latter here: http://www.bentley.com/en-US/Community/Academic/Networking+and+Development/BE+Awards/2011+Winners.htm)
Professor GALEN CRANZ received the 2011 Career Award from the Environmental Design Research Association (EDRA). Past recipients include Amos Rapoport, Donald Appleyard, Robert Gutman, and Edward T Hall – as well as retired UC Berkeley faculty Clare Cooper Marcus and Randy Hester. (See more here: http://www.edra.org/awards-mainmenu-31/career-award-mainmenu-137/565-galen-cranz-wins-2011-edra-career-award)
CRANZ, along with ASSOCIATE Professor RAVEEVARN CHOKSOMBATCHAI and ASSISTANT PROFESSOR RONALD RAEL contributed to a show of novel outdoor seating at San Francisco’s Fort Mason Center which opened in June. Called SEAT, the yearlong exhibition curated by artist and landscape designer Topher Delaney, of Seam Studio, includes work by more than 40 designers, artists, and architects. Each team was given a site on the former Fort’s 13-acre waterfront campus, which now serves as an arts and culture venue.
The College of Environmental Design Library’s Head Librarian Elizabeth Byrne received the Chancellor’s Distinguished Service Award at commencement in May. After joining the Environmental Design Library as its Head in 1984, Byrne established the library as one of finest architecture, landscape, and planning libraries in North America. She also recently co-edited the book Design on the Edge, which traces the history of architectural education at Berkeley.
ASSOCIATE Professor DANA BUNTROCK and Professor SUSAN UBBELOHDE brought a team of graduate students and energy specialists (including a number of alumni now working in Ubbelohde’s firm, Loisos + Ubbelohde) to Tokyo for a four-day energy conservation workshop in June, funded in part by the university’s Center for Japanese Studies. Participants in the workshop included Kengo Kuma, Kazuyo Sejima, Jun Aoki and designers from organizations such as Nikken Sekkei, Takenaka Construction and Kajima; leading academics from the University of Tokyo, Keio, Tokyo Fine Arts University and Tokyo Metropolitan University were also involved.
BUNTROCK was also awarded a one-semester Faculty Residential Research award for Spring, 2012, by the university’s Institute of East Asian Studies, for research titled “Shaped by Disaster: Architectural and Engineering Practices after 3/11.” BUNTROCK’S book, Materials and Meaning in Japanese Architecture was a finalist for the EDRA “Great Places” award and she also recently wrote two book reviews, on Yasuhiro Ishimoto’s photographs of Katsura, for the on-line L.A. Review of Books (http://lareviewofbooks.org/post/7336308794/the-eyes-think) and the May issue of Visual Resources.
GREG CASTILLO was awarded an Associate Professor Fellowship from the Doreen B. Townsend Center for the Humanities for 2011-2012. The program enables faculty members to devote a Spring semester to research while participating in a weekly roundtable composed of senior and junior faculty members and Graduate Dissertation Fellows. Greg’s research project, “Toward an Emotional History of German Reconstruction,” will examine postwar German architecture through methods pioneered by contemporary historians of emotions.
ASSOCIATE Professor Mark Anderson received an Honor Award from the AIA-SF for his “Lips Tower.” (http://blog.archpaper.com/wordpress/archives/15288#more-15288 )* In July, Anderson brought two student teams to Singapore for the Vertical Cities Competition (http://www.verticalcitiesasia.com/). Dean Jennifer Wolch is participating in a related symposium.
ASSISTANT Professor Nicholas de monchaux was a featured speaker at the 2011 “Urban Systems Symposium” in New York City in mid-May and as part of the “Ultra Exposure Forum,” at Little Tokyo Design Week in mid-July with Sylvia Lavin, Elizabeth Diller, Rene Daalder, Machiko Kusahara and Hiroki Azuma.
De Monchaux also spoke about his new book in a number of very cool settings:
• at the Google Mountain View campus in April: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Slr3f4bkLYg
• at the Smithsonian in June:
• at Studio-X New York in June.
• on NPR:
http://www.npr.org/2011/03/25/134855907/How-To-Dress-For-Space-Travel
• in print in the Wall Street Journal
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703712504576233022585211308.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
• & in the Boston Globe.
http://articles.boston.com/2011-05-01/bostonglobe/29493745_1_spacesuits-mac-users-space-program
ASSISTANT Professor Ronald RaeL’s firm, Rael San Fratello, is one of ten finalists in a Van Alen Institute competition considering the environmental, cultural and economic impact of high-speed rail. The finalists were exhibited at the National Building Museum, and participants will engage in panel discussions throughout the country this summer.
Rael also published his project “Border Wall as Architecture” in the refereed journal Environment and Planning D, vol. 29, issue 3 and his review of the book The Masons of Djenné by Trevor H. J. Marchand. (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 2009) was published in the peer-reviewed journal, Museum Anthropology Review. (The first at http://www.envplan.com/abstract.cgi?id=d0410da and the second at (http://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/index.php/mar/issue/current .) Rael takes a moment in the book review to acknowledge JEAN-PAUL BOUDIER’s ground-breaking African Spaces:
Designs for Living in Upper Volta (1985), written with Trinh Minh-ha. Rael also presented the paper Border Wall as Architecture at the International conference “Fences, Walls and Borders: State of Insecurity?,” at the University of Quebec at Montreal and held in association with the Association for Borderlands Studies in May. His firm Rael San Fratello Architects published their 2010 sukkah, now titled “Homeless House” in the new journal SOILED’s debut edition. (http://cartogram.org/soiled.html)
Emeritus Professor Marc Treib a grant form the Graham Foundation for a research project entitled, “National Modernism: The Landscapes of Christopher Tunnard and Sutemi Horiguchi.” (http://grahamfoundation.org/grantees/3973-national-modernism-the-landscapes-of-christopher-tunnard-and-sutemi-horiguchi)
Professor Nezar Alsayyad spoke at New Castle University in March.
And he was also in the news a great deal, for his insights on the built environment in Cairo:
(http://www.congress.org/news/2011/03/23/can_urban_planning_affect_protests)
and on the New York Times op-ed pages.
(http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/14/opinion/14alsayyad.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=nezar%20cairo&st=cse)
The new office for ASSOCIATE Professor lisa iwamoto’s firm IwamotoScott was written up in Metropolis Magazine’s June issue, in an article titled “Space Share”.” (http://www.metropolismag.com/story/20110609/space-share)
The firm was also covered in the San Francisco Examiner:
And IwamotoScott’s “Jellyfish House” is now part of the Architecture & Design Permanent Collection at San Francisco MOMA, exhibited until November in the show “The More Things Change.” Images of the recently reproduced 3D-printed model, its installation at SFMOMA, and the original project drawings are now viewable in a photoset on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/isar/sets/72157626799271833/
Working with 14 students as part of a year-long research studio for graduating M.Arch candidates, Associate Professor Renee Chow developed and tested a new paradigm in integrative urban design, sponsored by grants from the Tianjin Urban Planning and Design Institute and our own department. The project site was located along the edge of a historic district in Tianjin, China; the final projects and design processes were presented in Tianjin in June and have been selected for exhibition at the 2011 Chengdu Biennale in October.
In late May, Professor HARRISON FRAKER gave the Annual David Goldberg Lecture in Architecture to the Arts Council of Princeton.
Professor CRIS BENTON’s aerial photography was paired with the work of landscape photographer Chris Foster in an exhibition at the Pictopia Gallery in Berkeley in June.**
PROGRAM NEWS
1) A conference titled “The Death and Life of ‘Social Factors,’” took place at the University of California Berkeley April 29 to May 1. The conference questioned the status, the boundaries, and the future of social and behavioral research in environmental design. It was organized by Berkeley doctoral students Lusi Morhayim, Georgia Lindsay, and Jonathan Bean, and brought together 200 participants from 35 countries.
PROFESSORS Galen Cranz, Margaret Crawford, & Michael Southworth led keynote panel discussions. Paper sessions covered topics such as special needs populations, design for health, sustainability, perception, place identity, theoretical explorations within the field, and the practice of socially conscious architecture. The digital proceedings are now available at http://arch.ced.berkeley.edu/events/conf/deathandlife.
The Journal of Urban Design will also publish a special issue devoted to papers first presented at the conference, and a Facebook group, “The Death and Life of Social Factors,” will act as a discussion board for continuing conversations and information about the field; membership is open to all.
2) An exhibit entitled “Gardens for Peace” opened in the College of Environmental Design’s Library, in June and runs through late September. The exhibition commemorates a 1985 competition for a National Peace Garden, to be built in the nation’s capital, and was curated by Gar-Yin Lee (MLA ‘11).
3) The Environmental Design Archives was honored with a certificate of appreciation by California Assemblywoman Fiona Ma. The certificate read:
UC Berkeley Environmental Design Archives
Honoring consistent dedication and commitment to perpetuate the maintenance and growth of the history of California’s built environment, and for promoting scholarly research, teaching support, preservation, and public service, thereby benefitting all the people of the City and County of San Francisco and the State of California.
In addition, Curator Waverly Lowell presented work on Greenwood Common to the Society of California Archivists Annual Meeting. Lowell was also invited to participate in a multi-campus Research Group focusing on California Architecture and Design that has received funding from the UC Humanities Research Institute.
Visual Resources collection Librarian Jason Miller will be serving as the Production Editor for the eVRA Bulletin of the Visual Resources Association.
