The School of Architecture received news of a $1 million grant from the Still Water Foundation, an Austin-based foundation that supports the arts and other causes. The award is to support the renovation of the school’s Battle Hall (Cass Gilbert 1910), the West Mall Office Building, and to build the John S. Chase addition to the School of Architecture.
Associate Professor Emeritus Owen Cappleman passed away in Austin, Texas, on September 25, 2014, at the age of 76.
The T3 Parking Structure, designed by Associate Dean Elizabeth Danze and Senior Lecturer John Blood, Danze Blood Architects, has won the American Architecture Award for 2014 from The Chicago Athenaeum Museum of Architecture and Design, together with The European Center for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies and Metropolitan Arts Press.
Two UTSOA faculty members have received 2014 University Co-op Research Awards.
Assistant Professor Benjamin Ibarra-Sevilla was awarded a $5,000 Creative Research Award for “Mixtec Stonecutting Artistry: 16th Century Ribbed Vaults in Mixteca, Mexico,” an exhibit that showcases three cathedral vaults using a 3-D laser point scanner and printer. Senior Lecturer Rachael Rawlins was awarded the $5,000 Best Research Paper Award for “Planning for Fracking on the Barnett Shale: Urban Air Pollution, Improving Health Based Regulation, and the Role of Local Governments,” Virginia Environmental Law Journal. The article undertakes the most comprehensive review and analysis of air quality monitoring, regulation, and health effects assessment on the Barnett Shale.
Assistant Professor Danelle Briscoe presented the Guadalupe Garage Green Wall project research at the ACADIA 2014 Conference.
Written by Barbara Opar Barbara Opar and Barret Havens, column editors
Internet giant, Google, reports that the impact of older journal articles is growing. This impact is being measured by citations.
Google Inc. researchers state that the impact of older articles is growing rather than decreasing. In 2013, 36 percent of citations referred to articles that were at least 10 years old, up 28 percent since 1990. Google staff determined nine broad areas of research and 261 specific subject categories when beginning their work. The subject categories were taken from the 2014 edition of Scholar Metrics.
Scholar Metrics is Google Scholar’s tool to measure the visibility and influence of scholarly articles in a specific field. Scholar Metrics lists the twenty top publications in each subject category, generally limiting them to English language publications. The Scholar Metrics inclusion criteria requires a minimum of 100 articles published, at least one article from the journal between the years 2009 and 2013 to be cited, as well as adherence to Google Scholar’s indexing guidelines. Architecture is included as a subdivision of the social sciences. See the results at: http://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=top_venues&hl=en&vq=soc_architecture.
According to Google, the impact of older articles has grown in seven of the nine subject categories and 231 of the 261 subject divisions. To quote the article:
“In the introduction, we mentioned two broad trends that have the potential to influence the fraction of older citations. First, finding and reading relevant older articles is now about as easy as finding and reading recently published articles. This has made it easier for researchers to cite the most relevant articles for their work regardless of the age of the articles. Second, there has been a dramatic growth in the number of articles published per-year. This has significantly increased the number of recent articles that researchers need to situate their work in relation to by citing.
Our results suggest that of the two trends, the ease of finding and reading the most relevant articles, irrespective of their age, has had the larger impact. For most fields, retrospective digitization as well as inclusion in a broad-based search service with relevance ranking occurred in the second half of the period of study. As mentioned earlier, this is also the period that saw a larger growth in the fraction of older citations.”
Perhaps not surprisingly the highest growth has been in the category of Humanities, Literature & Arts where 51 percent of the citations for 2013 were to older articles. The Social Sciences saw a 43 percent rise in the use of older citations. Business, Economics and Management also saw significant change. Chemical, Material Science and Engineering, though, have seen a drop in the number of older citations used.
With respect to architecture, the journals included as well as the articles cited may be somewhat surprising to those in the education field. Certainly there is an emphasis on the technical, be it digital fabrication or sustainability. One would presume given this predilection that the user would be looking for the newest articles on the topic of daylighting. However, coinciding with Google’s findings, the articles consulted in the included journal titles are on average at least four years old, many in the realm of the “older” distinction of ten years.
As the full article notes, there have been other and earlier impact studies, some with different results. But Google contends that online availability does not result in use only of recent materials, but rather makes for ease of use of all articles, thus allowing the scholar to find the best and most appropriate body of knowledge to support the research. Online repositories and other means of scholarly communication as well as groups like Hathi Trust have helped make this happen. Thus older articles are now being cited with far greater frequency.
Online Voting Below is information on the 2015 ACSA election, including candidate information. Official ballots were emailed to all full-member ACSA schools’ Faculty Councilors, who are the the voting representatives. Faculty Councilors must complete the online ballot by close of business, February 10, 2015.
2015 ACSA PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES The President-Elect will serve on the Board for a three-year term, beginning on July 1, 2015, with the first year served as Vice President, the second year served as President, and the third year served as Past President. The links below include campaign statements written by each candidate and short curriculum vitae.
Bruce Lindsey, AIA, Washington University in St. Louis
Kate Schwennsen, FAIA, Clemson University
2015 ACSA TREASURER CANDIDATES The Treasurer serves for a two-year term, beginning on July 1, 2015. The links below include campaign statements written by each candidate and short curriculum vitae.
Christopher Jarrett, University of North Carolina at Charlotte
Rashida Ng, Temple University
2015 ACSA Regional Director Candidates The Regional Director will serve on the Board for a three-year term, beginning on July 1, 2015. Regional Directors serve as leaders of their regional constituent associations and chair meetings of their respective regional councils. They maintain regional records and have responsibility for the fiscal affairs of the constituent associations, and are accountable to their regional council for these funds. They provide assistance to regional schools and organizations applying for institutional membership. They prepare annual reports of regional activities for publication in the Association’s Annual Report. They participate in the nomination and election of their respective succeeding regional directors; and perform such other duties as may be assigned by the board, Regional Directors also sit on the ACSA board and are required to attend up to three board meetings a year. The links below include campaign statements written by each candidate and short curriculum vitae.
2015 GULF DIRECTOR CANDIDATES
Elizabeth Martin-Malikian, Southern Polytechnic State University
Scott L. Ruff, Tulane University
2015 WEST CENTRAL DIRECTOR CANDIDATES
Nadia M. Anderson, Iowa State University
Daniel Butko, University of Oklahoma
ACSA Election Process ACSA Bylaws, Article IX, Section 3: Election Process: “Elections shall be held in accordance with the Rules of the Board of Directors. Faculty Councilors of member schools shall be responsible for encouraging colleagues to express their views regarding candidates for Association elections, and shall submit the vote of the member school they represent on behalf of all members of the faculty. The Association shall announce the results of elections and appointments as soon as feasible, consistent with the Rules of the Board of Directors”. The Faculty Councilor from each ACSA full-member school is the voting representative. Faculty Councilors must complete the online ballot by close of business, February 10, 2015.
2015 ACSA Board Election Timeline
January 9, 2015
Ballots emailed to all Full-member Schools, Faculty Councilors
February 10, 2015
Deadline for receipt of ballots in ACSA office
March 2015
Winners announced at ACSA Annual Business Meeting in Toronto
The Faculty Councilor from each ACSA full-member school is the voting representative and must completed the online ballot by close of business, February 10, 2015.
Miguel Guitart has published the article “Reshaping Robert Adams’ Landscape” in ZARCH Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies in Architecture and Urbanism Vol.2 (Rethinking, Remaking). The peer-reviewed journal is the official publication of the Department of Architecture at the University of Zaragoza. Guitart’s article explores Adams’ vision on the transforming landscape of the American West in the 1960’s due to the disurbanization of American cities during the Cold War years.
Currently on research leave from SPSU, Liz Martin-Malikian is conducting fieldwork exploring postwar reconstruction in Beirut, Lebanon as part of the University of Edinburgh postgraduate program. While there, Liz also curating a Pop-up Studio-X Beirutfor Columbia University’s global networking program creating an educational forum to explore the future of the city. Made-up of local practitioners, academic scholars and neighborhood activists, the forum works as a global network for sharing ideas and projects about the built environment in postwar Beirut.
Mississippi State University’s School of Architecture and Building Construction Science Program, in cooperation with the Architecture and Construction Alliance (A+CA) announce the Integrated Project Delivery Theater. This interactive symposium is designed to introduce the exciting but complex world of Integrated Practice.
The two-day symposium features the project team responsible for the commission, design, and construction of the New Orleans Bio Innovation Center, a LEED Gold building. Featured presenters include Jose Alvarez, AIA, LEED AP, Project Architect and Principle with the 2014 AIA Firm of the Year Eskew+Dumez+Ripple; Kevin N. Overton, LEED AP BD+C, Senior Project Manager for Turner Construction Company; and Brian Bozeman, LEED AP, Executive Director ADAMS, (client’s representative) for the New Orleans Bio Innovation Center. Coupled with this dynamic project team, integrated practice educators Assistant Professor Michele M. Herrmann, Esq.; Assistant Professor Emily M. McGlohn, Assoc. AIA, LEED AP; and Associate Professor Hans C. Herrmann, AIA, NCARB, LEED Green Assoc. will offer an exceptional educational opportunity. The unique interactive theater-like presentation includes problem-based learning activities and illustrative visual and verbal presentations designed to generate synthetic comprehension of IPD. The A+CA, through its generous sponsorship, has enabled the MSU faculty to develop this special event. As a critical component to the symposium’s success, the A+CA and MSU School of Architecture and Building Construction Science Program invite students and faculty members from all programs of study engaged in Integrated Project Delivery to attend. The symposium will be held in Giles Hall on the MSU campus in charming Starkville, MS.
Symposium Date: January 29–30, 2015 Location: School of Architecture Giles Hall, Mississippi State University, Mississippi State, MS 39762 Local Accommodations: Hotel Chester, Downtown Starkville, MS
2016 ACSA Representatives on NAAB Visiting Team Roster Deadline: February 25, 2015
The ACSA Board of Directors seeks nominees for 2016 ACSA representatives on the National Architectural Accrediting Board (NAAB) school visitation team roster member for a term of four years. The final selection of faculty members participating in the accrediting process will be made by NAAB.
Nominating Procedure
Members of ACSA schools shall be nominated annually by the ACSA Board of Directors for inclusion on a roster of members available to serve on visiting teams for a term of four years.
Proposals for nomination shall be solicited from the membership via ACSA News. Proposals must include a 2-page curriculum vitae (please include any accreditation experience).
The ACSA Nominations Committee shall examine dossiers submitted and recommend to the board candidates for inclusion on visitation team rosters.
Nominee Qualifications
The candidate should demonstrate:
Reasonable length and breadth of full-time teaching experience;
A record of acknowledged scholarship or professional work;
Administrative experience; and
An association with several different schools.
Each candidate will be assessed on personal merit, and may not answer completely to all these criteria; however, a nominee must be a full-time faculty member in an accredited architectural program (including faculty on sabbatical or on temporary leave of absence.)
ACSA Nominee Selection Candidates for NAAB team members shall be selected to represent geographic distribution of ACSA regional groupings. The number of candidates submitted to NAAB will be limited in order to increase the likelihood of their timely selection by NAAB for service.
Description of Team and Visit Pending acceptance of the Architectural Program Report (APR), a team is selected to visit the school. The site visit is intended to validate and supplement the school’s APR through direct observation. During the visit, the team evaluates the school and its architecture programs through a process of both structured and unstructured interactions. The visit is intended to allow NAAB to develop an in-depth assessment of the school and its programs, and to consider the tangible aspects of the school’s nature. It also identifies concerns that were not effectively communicated in the APR.
The visit is not independent of the other parts of the accreditation process. The visiting team submits a report to NAAB; NAAB then makes a decision regarding accreditation based on the school’s documentation, the team report, and other communications.
Team Selection The visiting team consists of a chairperson and members selected from a roster of candidates submitted to NAAB by NCARB, ACSA, the AIA, and AIAS. Each of these organizations is invited to update its roster annually by providing resumes of prospective team members.
A team generally consists of four members, one each from ACSA, NCARB, AIA, and AIAS. NAAB selects the team and submits the list to the school to be visited. The school may question the appointment of members where a conflict of interest arises. The selection of the chairperson is at the discretion of NAAB. The board will consider all challenges. For the purposes of a challenge, conflict of interest may be cited if:
The nominee comes from the same geographic area and is affiliated with a rival institution;
The nominee has had a previous affiliation with the institution;
The school can demonstrate that the nominee is not competent to evaluate the program.
NAAB tends to rely on experienced team members in order to maintain the quality level of its visits and reports, and to comply with COPA and U.S. Department of Education guidelines. Each team member shall have had previous visit experience, either as a team member or observer, or shall be required to attend a training/briefing session at the ACSA Administrators Conference or ACSA Annual Meeting.
Nominations Deadline and Calendar The deadline for receipt of letters of nomination, including a 2-page curriculum vitae (please include any accreditation experience), is February 25, 2015. E-mail nomination preferred; please send all nomination information to eellis@acsa-arch.org. ACSA will notify those nominees whose names will be forwarded to NAAB by May 2015. ACSA nominees selected to participate on a visiting team will be required to complete and submit a standard NAAB Visiting Team Nomination form. NAAB will issue the roster of faculty members selected for 2015-2016 team visits in November 2015.
Nominations should be sent to: ACSA, Board Nominations 1735 New York Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20006 Email: eellis@acsa-arch.org
The Department of Architecture welcomes Robert Alexander to join the faculty as an Assistant Professor Design and Digital Instruction. Robert Alexander, principal of BobCat Studio received his bachelor’s degree in Architecture from Cal Poly Pomona in 2001. In 2005 he received his Masters in Architecture from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design. In addition to his professional experience on a wide variety of projects with the architecture firms Rafael Vinoly Architects, Behnisch Architekten, and Daly Genik. In 2008, Mr. Alexander won the Cavin Fellowship and received the Boston Society of Architect’s Rotch Scholarship in 2013, which started his current research on the urban effects of large-scale incomplete building projects in Europe.
Associate Professor and Chair, Sarah Lorenzen recently co-curated the widely acclaimed Competing Utopias exhibit at the Neutra VDL House
Professors Lauren Weiss Bricker and Luis Hoyos have contributed articles to the forthcoming catalog Barton Myers: Works of Architecture and Urbanism, which accompanies an exhibition of the same name on view at the Art, Architecture & Design Museum, UCSB from September 12-December 12, 2014. Professor Bricker has also written “Civic and Educational ‘Architecture As Environmental Expression,’” which will be included in the catalog accompanying the exhibition An Eloquent Modernist: E. Stewart Williams, Architect, the inaugural exhibition of the Palm Springs Art Museum Architecture and Design Center, Edwards Harris Pavilion; the exhibition November 9, 2014-February 22, 2015.
Professor Hofu Wu, recently presented “Outside Forces – Academic Perspective” to showcase the status of the Cal Poly Pomona Healthcare Initiative from the students innovative researches and designs at the American College of Healthcare Architects (ACHA) California Health facility Forum in Oakland, CA.
Associate Professor Pablo La Roche recently published an article in the journal Energy and Buildings entitled Comfort and Energy in Smart Green Roofs. He also presented papers at three recent conferences including the California Higher Education Sustainability Conference, and two papers the World Sustainable Building Conference SB14. He has presented eight recent lectures including, the American Solar Energy Society National Conference ASES 2014, the Society of Building Science Educators Annual Retreat, the Instituto de Ciencias de la Construcción Eduardo Torroja, Madrid, the Practica y Enseñanza de la Arquitectura en California International Workshop Sustainability in the Built Environment, Seville, Spain, and the Façade Tectonics Conference at the University of Southern California. He is the current President of SBSE, the Society of Building Science Educators.
Associate Professor Michael Fox recently presented a paper at the 2014 ACADIA, (Association for Computer Aided Design in Architecture) conference on the Eco-29 project which is a fully interactive kinetic event Hall in Israel. He also wrote the preface to the conference proceedings and is the current president of the Organization. He recently authored a chapter in the book “Building Dynamics”, by Routledge Press, edited by Branko Kolarevic and Vera Parlac. He also contributed to the book, “Space Architecture: The New Frontier for Design Research” edited by Neil Leach,by AD. He authored a chapter in the journal PAJ 109 on Performance and Architecture, edited by Chris Perry and Catheryn Dwyre.
Associate Professor Juintow Lin recently led an attempt to revitalize the California State Parks system, where 12 Cal Poly Pomona graduate architecture students took on the challenge of redesigning a modern cabin and succeeded. The California Parks Forward Commission is making an effort to reach out to students for creative and innovative ideas, as younger generations are not visiting state parks. The students began their project in spring 2014. The timing was just right for the project because of available funding. The Resources Legacy Fund, a consortium of major foundations in California, funded the project. The 150-square-foot cabin is made from recycled and prefabricated elements. It includes a full-sized bed, a bunk bed, and a bench that can accommodate four people. High triangular windows, French doors, and a sloped roof allows for maximum light to enter the cabin. The first prototype was constructed in 4 days in a factory in Phoenix AZ, by CAVCO.
Lecturer Barry Milofsky was appointed by Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti to the Cultural Heritage Commission of the City of Los Angeles, the five-member commission that considers nominations of sites as City Historic-Cultural Monuments (designated City landmarks) and reviews proposed project work affecting more than 1000 existing Historic-Cultural Monuments. The Commission also serves as the city’s primary forum for the discussion of historic preservation policy. Recommendations of the Cultural Heritage Commission are forwarded to the City Council for their final action. The Cultural Heritage Ordinance also gives the Commission the authority to temporarily delay alteration or demolition of historically significant structures until a proper review can be completed.
Lecturer Katrin Terstegen is a Designer and Project Manager with Johnston Marklee & Associates in Los Angeles, where she recently completed “Various Small Fires”, an art gallery in Hollywood, as well as the “Vault House” in Oxnard.
Lecturer Jose Herrasti’s firm MUTUO is currently working on a 5 acre park in the Coachella Valley in collaboration with KDI, a nonprofit dedicated to the creation of low cost, high impact environments that improve the physical, economic, and social quality of life of under-served communities. MUTUO has also been working with a developer in El Paso, TX to transform an area of dilapidated buildings into a thriving community. They are also beginning construction of a three single family development in the Hollywood Hills and a residence in Cordoba, Mexico.
Architecture/Machine. Programs, processes, and performances
Conference 30/31 January 2015 ETH Zurich
From the mid-eighteenth century through to the present day, architecture has been repeatedly imagined, defined or designed as a machine. While a strongly deterministic reading – as in “machine for living”– has held sway ever since the term was coined in the 1920s, usage of the machine concept actually needs to be understood in a much broader sense. Describing architecture as a machine has in various epochs and in the light of changing technologies always also implied paying attention to its performative properties in the context of certain processes and procedures, ranging from design to construction and use. Such performative properties may manifest themselves in spatial dimensions or contexts, in technical apparatus, or in other physical conditions. What distinguishes the concept of architecture-as-machine – considered from a genealogical perspective and independently of its various semantic nuances – is that the respective requirements of any architectural program can be individually thematized and hence also individually planned. The ‘machinic’ of the architecture/machine accordingly implies not merely a context of production or a normative mechanism but, primarily and fundamentally, a relationship between the architectural object and the processes it involves.
The conference examines the history of the architecture/machine from the mid-eighteenth century to the present day in the light of the above. It focuses not necessarily on literal machine metaphors but generally on historical instances of discursive or material articulation that formulate a relationship between architecture and machines. The conference contributions will be pursuing this theme through analyses of concrete buildings, spaces, devices, or apparatus, respectively the ways in which these are represented or described.
PROGRAM
FRIDAY, 30 JANUARY 2015
09:00 Welcome & Coffee
09:30-10:00 Laurent Stalder: Introduction
Panel 1: Flow Chair: Martino Stierli
10:00-10:30 Moritz Gleich: Équipements 10:30-11:00 Julian Jachmann: Water/Space 11:00-11:30 Dustin R. Valen: Indoor Environments 11:30-12:00 Discussion
12.00-14:00 Lunch Break
Panel 2: (Dis-)Connection Chair: Martino Stierli
14:00-14:30 Daniel Gethmann: Walls 14:30-15:00 John Harwood: Wires 15:00-15:30 Michael Osman: Steel 15:30-16:00 Discussion
16:00-16:30 Coffee Break
Panel 3: Delegation Chair: Ita Heinze-Greenberg
16:30-17:00 Reinhold Martin: Personhood 17:00-17:30 Martin Bressani: Prothèse 17:30-18:00 Monika Dommann: Trading Pit 18:00-18:30 Discussion
Organisation: Department of Architecture Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture Chair for the Theory of Architecture Dr. Laurent Stalder, Moritz Gleich
Alpha Rho Chi (APX) is a national co-ed fraternity for architecture and allied arts. The Andronicus Chapter of Alpha Rho at the University of Southern California has been a fixture of the school from the earliest days of the founding of the School of Architecture. The USC Chapter of Alpha Rho Chi has won many national awards, and the membership represents some of the best students at USC. Each year, the fraternity welcomes new incoming students and hosts educational sessions to help them navigate the program. The Alpha Rho Chi chapter house is a registered landmark in Los Angeles (see photo).
In December 2014, Professor Diane Ghirardo’s edited volume on Aldo Rossi’s Town Hall at Borgoricco was published and launched in the Council Room of the Town Hall. The book is published in both English and Italian, with the title “Aldo Rossi. Il Municipio e Centro Civico a Borgoricco.” Professor Ghirardo was also interviewed by the Italian State Television network, RAI, for a documentary on Lucrezia Borgia, her letters and land reclamation activities.
Prof. Kyle Konis, Ph.D, AIA was recently awarded a $150,000 Energy Efficiency Small Grant (EISG) from the California Energy Commission for an 18-month research and development project entitled: “The Occupant Mobile Gateway.” The California Energy Commission supports academic and industry research that serves the public interest for energy efficiency and environmental quality. The O.M.G. project received the highest-ranking in technical review among all proposals. More details will be posted on the CEC website and here: http://arch.usc.edu/faculty/kkonis
Amy Murphy, Associate Professor, presented her current research on the relationship between contemporary post-apocalytpic cinematic narratives and future urban life at the “New Visions. Cinema and Cinematic Practices in Times of Radical Urban Transformation“ workshop held at the Center for Metropolitan Studies in Berlin Germany, December 2014.
In October and November USC School of Architecture faculty Victor Regnier and Charles Lagreco visited sites in Portugal and Spain to study urban development and housing in the region as part of Professor Regniers year-long Fulbright leave in Portugal.
Hraztan Zeitlian, AIA, LEED BD+C, NCARB, received the Presidential Citation Award from the American Institute of Architects California Council in October 2014. “You have helped confirm the Architect’s Role and responsibility to society on a larger scale”, the Citation read in part. Hraztan Zeitlian directed the design of the Hacienda Heights Community Center at DLR. The Center had a very successful opening in November 2014 and was praised in the San Gabriel Valley Tribune.
Aroussiak Gabrielian was an invited participant in a cinematic world-building workshop to envision the Downtown Los Angeles Innovation Corridor organized by the USC Annenberg Innovation Lab.
Prof. G. Goetz Schierle is collecting data for his joint venture book: Tensile Structures
Graeme M. Morland, Assoc Professor, is currently preparing a major 50 year retrospective of Architectural drawings and sketches, undertaken from 1965, at the Glasgow School of art, until 2015 BC, (before computer). This exhibit will be at the USC school of Architecture Gallery, Feb 1-15.
Geoffrey von Oeyen’s gallery interview and slide lecture from the 2014 Architectural League Prize has been published on the League website: http://archleague.org/2014/10/geoffrey-von-oeyen-design/. During a residency fellowship to The MacDowell Colony in December 2014 and January 2015, von Oeyen will pursue writings and drawings following his USC School of Architecture event Performative Composites: Sailing Architecture.
Dr. Joon-Ho Choi, Assistant Professor of Building Science in Architecture attended the Defense Energy Summit, held in Austin, TX, and presented one of his research projects, entitled “Bio-Sensing Adaptive Thermal & Lighting System Controls in the Built Environment.” In addition, a research paper, as a
part of the research, titled “Investigation of the Potential Use of Human Eye Pupil Sizes to Estimate Visual Sensations in the Workplace Environment,” has been accepted and will be officially published in December 2014. Another research, “Climate-Responsive Evidence-Based Green Roof Design Decision Support for the U.S. Climate” has been selected to receive a research grant from the Roof Construction Institute Foundation, and the proposed research will be conducted with a financial support for one year in 2015.
The Board of Directors of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) voted today for Ehrlich Architects to receive the 2015 AIA Architecture Firm Award. The firm will be honored at the 2015 AIA National Convention in Atlanta. Ehrlich Architects is renowned for fluidly melding classic California Modernist style with multicultural and vernacular design elements by including marginalized design languages and traditions. The AIA Architecture Firm Award, given annually, is the highest honor the AIA bestows on an architecture firm and recognizes a practice that consistently has produced distinguished architecture for at least 10 years. The work of Ehrlich Architects covers a wide variety of program types (residential, commercial, institutional, educational) and uses a much richer palette of materials and textures than the typical California Modernist-influenced firm. However, they are most distinguished by the subtle and complex way they blend Modernist and multicultural design elements. Before founding his Los Angeles-based firm in 1979, visiting professor Steven Ehrlich, FAIA, spent time working with the Peace Corps in Africa. There Ehrlich gained an appreciation for simple, natural materials and vernacular solutions to energy, sustainability, and building performance challenges. Back in Southern California, Ehrlich found opportunities to renovate properties designed by architects high up in the California Modernist canon (like Richard Neutra, FAIA), which helped him to develop a confident, loose-limbed, but still traditional Modernist aesthetic. But his experiences in Africa, with building traditions created years before Modernism demanded a total rupture with the past, pushed him to develop an architecture that was more inclusive, responsible, and responsive than pure Modernism.
The City of Los Angeles and the USGS have published a report, “Resilience by Design,” this week describing a broad range of actions the city should take to improve its seismic resilience. Assistant Professor Anders Carlson was on the Technical Task Force working directly with Dr. Lucy Jones on the year-long study.
Lorcan O’Herlihy, FAIA, will be a featured participant in an exhibition opening January 31st at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, PA, titled “Sketch to Structure.” The museum has acquired a selection of O’Herlihy’s sketches and models and, in conjunction with the show, Lorcan will be lecturing and hosting an event at Carnegie Mellon University in March 2015.
Nefeli Chatzimina will be organizing and teaching the international X|A Advanced Architectural Design Workshop, ‘X|Pixelism’ , from 15th – 23rd of December 2014 at the Benaki Museum in Athens, Greece.
Adjunct Associate Professor Eric Haas presented DSH // architecture’s rehabilitation of R.M. Schindler’s Bubeshko Apartments at the Getty Center in December, as part of the Getty Conservation Institute’s Conserving Modern Architecture Initiative.
Olivier Touraine reports that the USC school of Architecture Spring program in Italy is invited by the prestigious MaXXi museum to pair with Roma 3 school of architecture in a research project “Roma 20-25”. 20 teams from the worlds’ most prestigious schools of architecture will be pairing with 20 Italian teams. The city of Rome will supervise the projects addressing urban redevelopments in the extended suburbs of the capital city. The 20 projects, each addressing a specific grid area, will be exhibited at the MaXXi museum in Fall 2015.
Sofia Borges, lecturer, published the article “Stromae Navigates the Unnavigable” in the latest issue of Mark Magazine and “Designing Desire” in Amarello Magazine. She released two new books in August. Hide and Seek:The Architecture of Cabins and Hide-Outs and Building Better: Sustainable Architecture for Family Homes are now available on Amazon and bookstores worldwide. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/25/hidden-homes-gestalten-book_n_5846062.html?1411664026
Ted Bosley reports that the School of Architecture has received a $100,000 grant from the Ralph M. Parsons Foundation to create a new “contemplative” garden at the Gamble House. Isabelle Greene, FASLA, granddaughter of architect Henry Mather Greene, has designed the proposed garden to resonate with the Gambles’ original cutting garden in the same area, and to give today’s visitors a place to rest and appreciate views of the house. Installation is expected to begin in early 2015.
James Steele was a presenter at the 4 th Annual Cultural Heritage Forum in Abha, Saudi Arabia, from Dec. 8th through 12, as well as presenting and acting as a Session Chair at the IASTE Conference ” Whose Tradition” in Kuala Lumpur Malaysia from Dec.14- 17, 2014. Steele has also been invited to present a paper at The Architectural Forum of Southwest China in Chengdu, January 8-12 2015.
In October Ken Breisch was a speaker at the symposium, “Bakersfield Built: 1930s Architecture,” which was sponsored by the School of Arts and Humanities, California State University, Bakersfield, as part of their celebration of the 75th anniversary of the publication of John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath.
Assistant Professor Alvin Huang’s Pure Tension Pavilion, a portable solar-powered pavilion for the Volvo V60 electric car made it’s Chinese debut at the Guangzhou Auto Show in November. Huang also gave a lecture on his recent work at the South China University of Technology in Guanzhou. Huang has also recently been announced as a juror for two international awards – the 2014 World Architecture News Colour in Architecture Award, and the ArchDaily + IIDEX Canada Virtual Spaces Design Competition.
Esther Margulies, Lecturer in the Landscape Architecture program has launched a new firm known as The Office of the Designed Landscape. She was recently appointed to the West Los Angeles Area Planning Commission and collaborated on The River Art Project, an LA 2050 proposal.
Professor Victor Regnier has received a Fulbright Award to teach and conduct research in the architecture graduate program of the Catholic University in Portugal. He will be giving five topical lectures in the Fall and conducting a studio class in the Spring centered on purpose-built housing for older people. This summer he completed a 74-page monograph entitled “Motion Picture Television Fund Apartment for Life” that chronicles the work of his Spring 2014 402/605 studio in designing a mixed-use, 82-unit housing project for a 3.0 acre site on their Woodland Hills campus–a free pdf is available on request (regnier@usc.edu).
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