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University of Southern California

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USC professors have won a highly prestigious NASA research award to develop new robotic construction technologies for building structures on the Moon and Mars. Professors Behrokh Khoshnevis (Industrial Engineering), Anders Carlson (Architecture), Neil Leach (Architecture) and Madhu Thangavelu (Astronautics) have been awarded a Phase 2 NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts [NIAC] research award for a project entitled, ‘ISRU Based Robotic Construction Technologies for Lunar and Martian Infrastructure’. The project is based on the concept of ‘In Situ Resource Utilization’ [ISRU], and seeks to use resources readily available on the Moon and Mars as construction materials for novel robotic construction technologies in order to build infrastructure components such as roads, landing pads, blast walls and storage spaces. The project builds upon the success of an earlier NIAC Phase 1 award won by the team for a project entitled, ‘Contour Crafting Simulation Plan for Lunar Settlement Infrastructure’.

Assistant Professor Anders Carlson is Co-PI on the project. He is examining the environmental variables affecting infrastructure design including extreme thermal cycling, radiation, micrometeorite impacts, vacuum, and moon or Mars gravity. Integrated design is being investigated to understand the importance of each environmental constraint and its comparison to design on earth. His focus is on assessing the viability of different structural forms influenced by the Lunar and Martian environments, construction methods and sequencing, and heat transfer. The research will rely on informed parametric design to conduct optimal form-finding based on environmentally imposed constraints and various competing objectives including material processing, transport and quantity.

The recent promise of Landscape Architecture is predicated on capturing an expanded territory of the urban matrix. Landscape Urbanism positions the profession to engage with the entire “horizontal body” of the city, suggesting that landscape architects are poised to succeed in this complex negotiation.

However, while the profession has enjoyed a growing role in planning, it often finds itself sidelined in determining the morphology of urban infrastructure – the instrumental built form that patterns the vast majority of the urban condition.

The work of the Landscape Morphologies Lab, directed by USC landscape architecture professor Alexander Robinson, seeks to build tools and methodologies for advancing the craft and agency of design practices in instrumental territories, where performance issues overshadow most design agendas.

One such project, in collaboration with Andrew Atwood, includes the development of a landscape prototyping machine to improve the design of dust mitigation landscapes at the Owens Lake in Lone Pine, California. The prototyping machine hybridizes engineering metrics, physical modeling, robotic technology, digital projection, and 3D scanning to create a multi-sensory design platform for addressing the complex issues present on the lake. The machine creates a common ground where designers, engineers, and the public can dynamically engage in the multiple agendas inherent to the lake.

University of Tennessee-Knoxville

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A group of students and faculty from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, has won the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s P3: People, Prosperity, and the Planet Student Design Competition for Sustainability.Their project will receive up to $90,000 in grant funding to turn the designs into real-world applications and implement them in the marketplace.

The UT Green Oak Project developed oak construction techniques that use undried oak, which is known as “green” oak, as an energy-efficient and carbon-friendly wood product. The project received $15,000 in the first phase of the competition to investigate the material. Associate Professor Ted Shelton of the UT School of Architecture is the lead principal investigator on the project.

 

University projects from across the country competed on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. from April 25 to 27 as part of the National Sustainable Design Expo. UT’s team was one of seven winners selected by a panel of experts from the American Association for the Advancement of Science. It was the only project in an architecture-related discipline to claim a prize. 

 

University of Tennessee-Knoxville

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Philip Enquist, partner in charge of urban design and planning and leader of the City Design Practice at Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, has been named the 16th University of Tennessee-Oak Ridge National Laboratory Governor’s Chair. Skidmore, Owings and Merrill is one of the world’s leading urban planning, architecture and engineering firms.

Enquist and a select research team will serve as Governor’s Chair for High Performance Energy Practices in Urban Environments and will be affiliated with and administer projects through the UT College of Architecture and Design.

The Governor’s Chair team will be a research partnership among many designers at the firm who specialize in sustainable urbanism and high-performance buildings. Skidmore, Owings and Merrill’s City Design Practice is the world’s most highly awarded urban planning group.

The contract between ORNL, UT and the design firm is pending.

“This position will surely lead to innovative discoveries and enhance our reputation as a leader in the field of design and urban environments,” said UT Chancellor Jimmy G. Cheek. “This is yet another step toward our university becoming a Top 25 research institution.”

The Governor’s Chair was selected following a national search. Only those candidates from firms with a research division and capable of providing a collaborative team as part of their appointment were considered.

“Enquist and his studios have improved the quality and efficiency of city living on five continents,” said Scott Poole, dean of the College of Architecture and Design. “Skidmore, Owings and Merrill has erected the tallest man-made structures in the world, created advanced building technologies and material systems and been central to the planning of cities across the world.”

Funded by the state of Tennessee and ORNL, the Governor’s Chair program attracts top researchers to broaden and enhance the unique research partnership that exists between the state’s flagship university and the nation’s largest multi-program laboratory.

Poole noted that by 2015, more than 80 percent of the U.S. population will be living in urban areas. This creates multiple environmental challenges that will be solved by a combination of cultural shifts and technological advances in the fields of regional planning, architecture, engineering and the building sciences.

“High-performance buildings in dense urban settings will be a key feature of a better, more secure energy feature, and Skidmore, Owings and Merrill is a world leader in this area,” Poole said.

The Governor’s Chair will use ORNL’s Build¬ing Technologies Research and Integration Center. The center aims to push new energy-efficient building products to the market.

“The creation of this position is further evidence of the commitment Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the University of Tennessee have to lending their nationally recognized expertise to advance sustainability on a local and global scale,” said Martin Keller, ORNL’s associate lab director for energy and environmental sciences.

Skidmore, Owings and Merrill and its team of designers will promote innovative energy practices for new and existing buildings in urban areas, encourage interdisciplinary collaboration, create the foundation for new UT graduate programs and develop new models for the contemporary construction industry.

Enquist is an authority on holistic city building. His global experience includes city revitalization throughout China, the Canary Wharf Master Plan in London and National Planning Development Strategies for the Kingdom of Bahrain. Enquist leads SOM’s pro bono initiative, begun in 2009, to develop a 100-year design vision for the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River region.

In the U.S., his work includes numerous planning strategies for leading universities, the Chicago Central Area Plan, the Millennium Park Master Plan in Chicago and the District of Columbia Height Master Plan Modeling Analysis.

“The new Governor’s Chair will be a catalyst for change, bringing new re¬search in emerging clean energy technologies and sustainable practices to traditional urban design practices,” Poole said. “The Chair will lead the development of new forms of urban design practice. Its applied research will be a powerful contributor to urban development and economic growth of the state of Tennessee and the region. “

UT Knoxville currently has 14 of the 16 positions in the statewide program.

To learn more about the Governor’s Chair program, visit http://www.utk.edu/govchairs.

To learn more about ORNL, visit http://ornl.gov.

To learn more about the UT College of Architecture and Design and follow the progress of the research, visit http://archdesign.utk.edu

To learn more about Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, visit http://www.som.com. 

ÒOnce IÕm an Internationally-Renowned Architect, When Am I Ever Going to Use This Stuff?": Architectural Information Literacy Instruction Based on Real World Problems

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Barbara Opar and Barret Havens, column editors
Article submitted by Barret Havens, Assistant Professor and Outreach Librarian, Woodbury University

 

As an architecture librarian I know that the research concepts and techniques that we convey to students are crucial to their success. However, teaching can still be a tough sell for many of us. As members of the Google generation, many students have trouble understanding why the resources they need are only obtainable through a multi-step process and why many of those resources are available solely in print. This makes teaching the architecture-specific information literacy course that I teach at Woodbury University a challenge. In addition to being entertaining enough to keep students who have just pulled all-nighters in the studio from sleeping with their eyes open–an art which architecture students seem to have mastered—I must relate each and every exercise and assignment to the design process in order to stave off, by answering continually, the question that students often ponder in their non-studio courses: “once I’m an internationally-renowned architect, when am I ever going to use this stuff?”

My approach to resolving this conundrum has been to present information as the foundation and inspiration for design. Along those lines, two semesters ago, I began structuring my course around the same issue that triggers the need for design: a real-world problem. Throughout the semester, students seek out, evaluate, and compile information resources in a variety of formats that revolve around the challenge of designing the most effective temporary shelter for those who may be displaced by coastal climate change or natural disasters. We take an interdisciplinary approach to this. To design an effective shelter, in addition to relevant architectural precedents, students would need to consider the climate of the site and a variety of perspectives about the people who would inhabit the shelters such as their eating habits, typical family size, medical needs, etc. Since I implemented this approach, the pass rate for my class (and Woodbury dictates that students must get a “C” in order to pass) has risen by 24% and course evaluations reflect students’ appreciation of a problem-based curriculum.  Class discussions throughout the semester have been more lively as well, and this overarching theme gives the course cohesion and helps students to place where they are in the process and to recall how they arrived there.

However, the work that my students have been doing, though it has been focused on a problem that deserves attention, is artificial in the sense that no one will actually use the information that the students organize into annotated bibliographies to build a structure of any kind. It will never gain a wider audience than me, their professor. Next fall, I hope to change that by combining forces with Jeanine Centuori, the founder of Woodbury University’s Architecture + Civic Engagement (ACE) Center. Recently, Woodbury students, in conjunction with ACE, designed and built a variety of structures at Taking the Reins, a local organization that offers urban farming and equestrian programs for girls “facing the challenge of adolescence in high-risk environments” and also at Shadow Hills Equestrian Center, which offers a therapeutic horsemanship program.

ACE is currently exploring the possibility of designing and building a streetscape in inner-city Los Angeles that would unify a neighborhood and draw residents into public spaces. If the timing works out, I will have my students join the effort by compiling a comprehensive list of sources that will inform the streetscape design process by offering perspectives on the history and politics of the neighborhood, as well as case-studies of similar projects. It is my hope that my students will be inspired by the fact that their work will be integrated into a process that will make a tangible difference in a local community. I will let you know how it goes!

Have you integrated real-world problems into your teaching, whether in credit-bearing courses or “one-shot” instruction? If so, please share!

University of Southern California

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AA Visiting School Los Angeles  This summer the USC School of Architecture and Architectural Association will be hosting the 1st ever AA Visiting School Los Angeles, co-directed by Alvin Huang (USC), Kevin Patrick McClellan (UTSA) & coordinated by Danielle Rago.  http://losangeles.aaschool.ac.uk/ 

Registration is open to students and professionals alike, who are interested in participating in a 10 day design charette focused on exploring the legacy of experimental housing in LA through the lens of contemporary design methodologies.  Expect to explore computational design strategies, implement digital fabrication processes, work with a global network of like-minded designers, researchers, and educators, and experience the iconic legacy of LA’s mid-century modernist homes.

Confirmed design instructors include:

  • Marc Fornes, TheVeryMany, Harvard GSD
  • Jenny Wu, Oyler Wu Collaborative, Sci-Arc
  • Adam Marcus, Variable Projects, CCA
  • David Freeland, FreelandBuck, Sci-Arc
  • Kevin Patrick McClellan, TexFab, UTSA
  • Alvin Huang, Synthesis Design + Architecture, USC 

Confirmed guest lectures include:

  • Neil Denari, NMDA, UCLA
  • Heather Roberge, Murmur, UCLA
  • Tom Wiscombe, Principal, Tom Wiscombe Design, Sci-Arc

Event Details:

  • June 16-27, 2014 at the USC School of Architecture
  • the Visiting School program is a global initiative by the Architectural Association to explore methods of design thinking developed at the AA in various global locations
  • an intensive 10 day design charrette bringing 50-60 students/professionals from around the world to LA to explore the applications of parametric modelling and digital fabrication to investigate a contemporary take on the Case Study movement.
  • event coincides with LA Design Festival and Dwell on Design 
  • We will host a public exhbition and panel discussion at Dwell on Design
  • we will host tours and visits to various iconic LA residential projects including the Goldstein Villa, Case Study 22, Eames House, and Neutra VDL.

University of Texas at Austin

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On April 10, 2014, the Trustees of the American Academy in Rome announced the winners of the 118th annual Rome Prize Competition at a prize ceremony in New York City. Associate Professor Vincent Snyder received the James R. Lamantia, Jr. Rome Prize, awarded in the architecture discipline.

Wilfried Wang, O’Neil Ford Centennial Professor in Architecture, co-organized two discussion sessions at the Akademie der Künste, Berlin, on the future of the Kulturforum Berlin.

Stephen Sharpe’s thoughtful article, “Headspace: Psychology and Architecture,” in aia.org’s Practicing Architecture column looks at how design affects the psychological outlook of people experiencing their built environment. The article focuses on the ongoing collaboration between Associate Dean Elizabeth Danze, FAIA, and Professor Stephen Sonnenberg, M.D., who organized the Space+Mind Symposium and co-edited the book Space & Psyche, published in 2013 by the Center for American Architecture and Design.

Associate Professor Allan W. Shearer presented the paper, “Mid-Century Modernism and the Invention of ‘Microclimate'” at the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture Conference held in Baltimore, Maryland.

Assistant Professor Benjamin Ibarra Sevilla opened his exhibition, “Mixtec Stonecutting Artistry,” at the Centro Cultural Clavijero in the World Heritage City of Morelia, Mexico. The exhibition is displayed in one of the magnificent rooms of the eighteenth-century Palacio Clavijero, located in the core of the historic center of Morelia.

Assistant Professor Gabriel Díaz Montemayor presented a talk at the “Urban Space and Climate Change” Colloquium organized by the School of Architecture of the Autonomous University of Sinaloa, Mexico, in Culiacán. Additionally, Díaz Montemayor presented talks on professional and academic works to the Municipal Planning Institute of Culiacán, the Planning Council of Culiacán (composed of representatives of various government levels, universities, developers, and commerce-industry associations), and the staff of Culiacán’s Botanical Garden.

Assistant Professor Clay Odom made two presentations at the 2014 Interior Design Educators Council (IDEC) Annual Conference, held in New Orleans. He was awarded the 2014 IDEC Creative Scholarship Award, Best In Category Design as Interior for his presentation of work titled “Temporary Atmospheres: Installations for the Experience of Sound and Light.”

 

 

University of Southern California

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NotLY was invented at USC by Professor Karen M. Kensek and professor Douglas Noble just over seven years ago

NotLY means “Not Licensed Yet.”

— USC has the largest and most aggressive architecture licensing program in the country.  It is called “NotLY.”
 
— Just last Saturday, more than 250 people were here at USC all day taking NotLY classes covering three of the exams.  The classes were free.  We do these classes very often.

— Next month, USC will host 25 NotLY classes in four full days.  All are free.  More than 500 people are signed up already.  They each signed up for about 5 or 6 classes.  Several classes are already full (we should not say “sold-out” since they are free). See attached schedule.

— NotLY organized study groups that will meet this week in Riverside, Santa Monica, the City of Orange, Sherman Oaks, and downtown.  Typical study groups meet five consecutive weeks for one day a week. They average about 12 people in each.

— 325 lecture classes in 7 years, not counting study groups.

— over 13000 individual registrations for the lecture classes.  This number will climb way up after the May 2014 sessions (we are expecting about 4000 registrations for those four days).

— the licensing rate in California is up substantially since we started.  420 people were licensed in California the year NotLY started.  595 were licensed last year.  These numbers are still too small, but licensing is up 40% since we started.  40% is a lot.  We are pushing for even higher numbers.

— almost 100 different instructors have taught just this year.  They are all volunteers.

— all-volunteer programs, and never a fee of any kind.

— NotLY won a National ACSA award in 2014 for extraordinary achievement.

— NotLY was invited to present at AIA Chicago as a model program for national expansion. We are going.

— NotLY offers lectures, study groups, email support, social media, peer-support and more.

— NotLY has just under 1700 members (no fees, ever).

— Multiple NotLY classes at USC every month.  Everyone is welcome (you do not have to be USC alumnus).

University of Southern California

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Michele Saee has been named IAA Professor for the International Academy of Architecture.  Academic Council at its XXXVIII session (12 April 2014). The “Michele Saee Monograph” is near completion and will be published in English and Chinese by China Architectural Press. This is the second monograph of Michele Saee’s work that reflects his work in the last eighteen years. The first book was published by Rizzoli. Prof. Saee has two new projects in construction in Los Angeles; one Tahiti Marina Apartments and Docks (a 149 unit apartment building in the Marina del Rey) and a house in Bel Air.

Adjunct Associate faculty member Warren Techentin recently opened an exhibition at the Materials & Applications gallery in Los Angeles, entitled La Cage aux Folles. This experimental bent steel tube structure explores the craft of pipe bending and joins form, computational procedures, and fabrication processes into a complex structure that assumes can challenges the notion of occupation and enclosure.

Leonard Marvin is currently Senior Design Manager in USC Capital Construction responsible for the “USC Village” project which is the largest USC project designed and constructed on either the University Park Campus or the Health Science Campus.

Assistant Professor Kyle Konis’ paper entitled:” Predicting visual comfort in side-lit open-plan core zones: Results of a field study pairing high dynamic range images with subjective responses,” was recently published in the journal Energy and Buildings. (Volume 77, July 2014, Pages 67–79).

Adjunct Professor Lorcan O’Herlihy’s firm, LOHA, is currently designing three mixed-use developments in the heart of Downtown LA’s Arts District and two university housing projects. On a smaller but just as important scale, LOHA has been rethinking urban infrastructure and has billboard structures and bus shelters going up throughout the LA region. Further afield, LOHA was recently selected as one of five shortlisted architects in an international competition to design a port terminal in Taiwan.

Professors Douglas Noble and Karen Kensek are coordinating a four-day architecture licensing lecture series in Los Angeles, May 29 – June 1, 2014.  More than 25 individual classes, and all are free and open to everyone. RSVP is required on the website (search for “NotLY USC”)

Assistant Professor Rachel Berney has developed a new online course for the Fall 2014 term. Created to run jointly with USC’s Public Health Program in the Keck School of Medicine, the course, ARCH 521 Health and the Design Environment, will explore the relationship between human health and well-being and designed environments through the lenses of landscape, place, and architecture.

Assistant Professor Alison Hirsch’s book, City Choreographer: Lawrence Halprin in Urban Renewal America was released in early April (University of Minnesota Press). Her essay “Visualizing Ceaseless Change” came out in the new book, Design in the Terrain of Water (edited by Anuradha Mathur and Dilip da Cunha). She recently received the James H. Zumberge Research Grant for the development of her next book. 

Ken Breisch will be giving a lecture to the Santa Monica Conservancy on the Los Angeles architect, John Byers, on June 1, 2014.

Assistant Professor Alvin Huang will be presenting the paper “Pure Tension: Intuition, Engineering, & Fabrication” at the The 19th International Conference of the Association for Computer-Aided Architectural Design Research in Asia in Kyoto, Japan.  He has also been invited to speak as part of the “New Materials, New World” panel at Dwell on Design organized by Dwell Magazine in Los Angeles and at “Perspective 2014” the annual design meeting organized by The Plan Magazine in Venice, Italy. His firm Synthesis Design + Architecture was recently announced the winner of an invited competition to design a public art installation for the Slauson Metro Station in South Central Los Angeles.  He is currently co-directing the upcoming AA Visiting School Los Angeles (June 16-27) and co-chairing the 2014 ACADIA Conference (October 23-26).

Geoffrey von Oeyen, Lecturer, was awarded the 2014 Architectural League Prize by the Architectural League of New York. The League Prize is one of North America_s most prestigious awards for young architects. This year’s theme for the portfolio competition, Overlay, asks how the idea of overlay (iterative, conceptual, and notational) drives discourse, tension between iterations, design solutions, and the parameters by which work is reviewed. Open to designers ten years or less out of school, the competition draws entrants from around North America. Winners will lecture in June and display their work in an exhibition on view through the summer. Their ideas and work will also be featured in original interviews and video on the League_s website. One of six winners, von Oeyen will lecture about his work on June 24, 2014 with two other firms, followed by an opening reception for the group exhibition.

Lecture:

Tuesday, June 24, 2014, 7:00 p.m.
Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Auditorium
Sheila C. Johnson Design Center
Parsons The New School for Design
66 Fifth Avenue

Exhibition:  June 24—August 1, 2014

The exhibition will be open daily 12:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. and late Thursday evenings until 8:00 p.m. The exhibition will also be open on the evenings of the lectures.

 

Auburn University

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Students in the Bachelor of Interior Architecture (ARIA) program held an exhibition of their work in the Dudley Gallery on March 6 in memory of Auburn University professor and alumnus Michael Hubbs. Hubbs, who died last year at age 63, was an interior architecture adjunct professor at Auburn University for nine years and a 1974 graduate of the interior design program. A group of alumni raised $2,070 dollars for a one-time scholarship in memory of Hubbs; the scholarship will be awarded at the end of spring semester to a rising fifth year thesis student in interior architecture.

Designer, urbanist and social innovator Liz Ogbu presented the final lecture in the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture’s spring 2014 lecture series, “Renegades + Outlaws: Design Thinking at the Edge.” Ogbu runs her own multidisciplinary design and consulting practice, is a faculty member at UC Berkeley and Stanford’s d school and is an IDEO.org fellow. Her lecture, “Creative Disruption: Designing Opportunities for Impact,” was on Wednesday, April 9.

The Environmental Design Program in the College of Architecture, Design and Construction (CADC) hosted Open Ground: Conversations about Communities, Design Thinking + Social Entrepreneurship, on Thursday, April 10. The forum, open to anyone interested in design thinking and socially conscious entrepreneurship, involved presentations and dialogue with thought leaders Liz Ogbu, an IDEO.org fellow from Oakland, CA, who is also on the faculty at Berkeley and the Stanford d school; Blake Canterbury from Dime Creative in Atlanta, GA; and Sara Williamson and Grant Brigham from Jones Valley Teaching Farm in Birmingham, AL.

On April 24 an exhibit of work from the NCARB Award “Urban Healthcare” studio, which will include the Alagasco winners and finalists, will open at the AIA Center for Architecture in Birmingham. Alagasco is sponsoring the opening reception and the exhibit will be up until May 3. To read more about the 52nd annual Alagasco Competition, please visit StudioAPLA.

Congratulations to School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture Rural Studio alumni Robert Gay and Lucy Begg on the inclusion of three of their projects, Santa Anna, Escaped Infrastructure, and Chromatic Confluence, in the 2014 AIA Emerging Professionals Annual Exhibition. (thoughtbarn.com)

Assistant Professor of Community Planning, Dr. Jay Mittal, spoke at the seventh session of the World Urban Forum in Medellín, Columbia on April 7. A technical forum developed by the United Nations Human Settlements Program (UN-Habitat), the Forum occurs every two years to examine issues facing global human settlements.

 

University of Kansas

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The University of Kansas School of Architecture, Design & Planning hosted a 3-day symposium on “Water”, that included: an all-School design charrette, a round table discussion on the future of water and climate change moderated by Hadley and Peter Arnold, Ward Lyles, assistant professor of urban planning, and Steve Padget, associate professor of architecture, and a keynote presentation by Peter and Hadley Arnold of the Arid Land Institute. Sixty students participated in the charrette, in which collaborative teams composed of students from the departments of Architecture, Design and Urban Planning developed highly water-efficient, prototypical designs to respond to future conditions that could include both drought and flooding. The KU campus was chosen as the site for these projects. All the events were open to, and well attended by, members of the School, University, and the community.

A gateway designed and built last spring by Dirt Works Studio – a design-build studio, led by assistant professor Chad Kraus – has earned two awards. The Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture gave it its Design-Build Award: https://www.acsa-arch.org/docs/default-source/13-14-award-winners/-prairie-earth.pdf?sfvrsn=0. And, the Architect’s Newspaper just gave the structure an honorable mention in the student-built work category of its Best Of Design Awards: http://www.archpaper.com/news/articles.asp?id=7072. Sixteen third-year students completed the gateway in May. The structure is located at the Field Station’s research and operations center and Armitage Education Center. It fulfills a key wayfinding function for visitors attending special events and for visiting researchers. This is the second structure at the Field Station built by Dirt Works Studio. The first, the Stanley D. and Janet B. Roth Trailhead, built in 2012, won two awards from the American Institute of Architects. The gateway is the fourth project commissioned by the Kansas Biological Survey at the Field Station through the KU School of Architecture, Design & Planning.

Professor Dan Rockhill has been named a 2013-2014 ACSA distinguished professor for his outstanding contribution to advancement of architectural education through teaching and design scholarship. Professor Rockhill established “Studio 804” in 1995, a not-for-profit committed to the continued research and development of sustainable, affordable, and inventive building solutions. In collaboration with the University of Kansas School of Architecture, Design and Planning, Studio 804 offers a yearlong design-build studio for the final year students of the Masters of Architecture program. Over the past 20 years Studio 804 has received multiple national awards, pioneered new technologies, and advanced construction techniques, including four LEED Platinum projects completed to date. 

A drawing by Anne Patterson, assistant professor of architecture, has been given an award of excellence by the American Society of Architectural Illustrators. It will be shown in the ASAI’s 29th annual Architecture in Perspective exhibition, Oct. 14-19 in Dallas. It will also be published in the society’s annual. The drawing was named after Patterson’s home, “1142 Rhode Island Home.” She drew it in a notebook in about 50 minutes using a ballpoint pen. It is one of approximately sixty pieces, chosen from hundreds of entries from around the world, which will be displayed at the show.

The Resilient Lifestyles Lab, a collaboration of the School of Architecture and the Gerontology Center at the University of Kansas led by Associate Dean Keith Diaz Moore, has recently received two grants. One, from the Alzheimer’s Disease Center, is to retrospectively examine the correlates between objective characteristics of neighborhood and selected health outcomes in older adults that are pre-clinical dementia.  The other is a grant from the Reeve Foundation to develop an informational tool to enhance visitability in residential environments.  The Lab is also spearheading an international collaboration with Johns Hopkins University, the Centre on Ageing and Supportive Environments at the University of Lund and the Institute on Gerontology at Simon Fraser University to examine residential accessibility and its disparate impact on health outcomes in minority populations.

This fall a team that includes associate professors of architecture Shannon Criss and Nils Gore received a $29,000 Tier II Research Grant from the Office of the Provost to build what they call a Mobile Collaboratory for Civic Engagement, or MoCoLab. KU’s Research Investment Council made the award. A used Airstream trailer purchased in September is the starting point for the project. During the spring semester Department of Architecture students will transform it into a community-room on wheels to “take scholars to the people.” The MoCoLab will be a resource that researchers and faculty can check out for specific projects, and driven to and set up in Kansas communities for any number of purposes: needs assessments, the seeking of opportunities, or to devise and initiate projects that hopefully will prove to be transformative. In addition to Criss and Gore, research participants include Andrea Witczak, director, Center for Civic and Social Responsibility; Vicki Collie-Akers, assistant research professor, Life Span Institute; Marilu Goodyear, director, School of Public Affairs and Administration, and Yo Jackson, associate professor, Applied Behavioral Science.

Check out their website at: http://bit.ly/18lM59u

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