2014 ACSA Annual Business Meeting

On Friday, April 11 at 10:00am, the ACSA will hold its Annual Business Meeting in the Pompeii Room at the EDEN ROC Hotel in Miami Beach. The meeting will be preceded by regional caucuses from 8:30 to 10:00am at the hotel. 

ACSA members are invited to attend. Faculty councilors or other school representatives may register starting 30 minutes in advance in order to participate in any official business during the meeting. 

ANNUAL BUSINESS MEETING AGENDA

I. Call to Order
Norman Millar, President 
 
II. Member School Registration 
Jori Erdman, Secretary–Designate
 
III. Introduction of Current and Incoming 
ACSA Board Members and Guests 
Norman Millar
 
IV. Vice President’s Report 
Hsinming Fung
 
V. Treasurer’s Report 
Jori Erdman
 
VI. President’s Report 
Norman Millar

VII. Other Business 

1. ACSA Atlas 
2. Journal of Architectural Education – Marc J. Neveu
3. Partner Announcement — AIAS
4. Memorials – Norman Millar

VIII. New Business
 
IX. Adjournment and Recognition of Outgoing Board Members

Download and print a PDF version here

Florida International University

The national fraternity of architecture students, Alpha Rho Chi, honored Associate Professor David Rifkind with the organization’s highest award at its centennial convention last week. Professor Rifkind was initiated into FIU’s Alpha Rho Chi chapter, Nicon, last year as one of two faculty brothers, along with Malik Benjamin. The Alpha Rho Chi Gold Medal requires the approval of at least three-quarters of the fraternity’s chapters and alumni associations, which demonstrates the commitment of FIU students in recognizing their faculty. This is the first award of the Gold Medal in the past 15 years. Previous winners include I.M. Pei, R. Buckminster Fuller and Samuel Balen, FAIA.
FIU architecture student Eneida Piñon, the Worthy Architect of Nicon Chapter, was named one of three John R. Ross Scholars at the banquet celebrating Alpha Rho Chi’s centennial. Pinon was cited for her tremendous service to the her fellow students and to the university. Her award includes a scholarship.
The FIU architecture, landscape architecture and interior architecture students who comprise Nicon Chapter were recognized with the annual “So” Whitten Award as the APX chapter with the highest cumulative grade point average. The honor demonstrates our students’ commitment to academic excellence, alongside their collegiality and devotion to fostering an academic community.

American University of Sharjah

Four projects associated with the College of Architecture, Art and Design (CAAD) were recognized at the first American Institute of Architects Middle East Region Design Honor Awards. The jury was chaired by Larry Scarpa of Brooks + Scarpa in Los Angeles, CA and jury members included Lorcan O’herlihy and Alice Kim.

Assistant Professor Bill Sarnecky received a Merit Award in the Interior Architecture category for CAAD’s Booth designed and built for SaloneSatellite 2012 at the Salone Internazionale del Mobile in Milan, Italy. The jury also awarded Sarnecky a Merit Award in the Unbuilt category for the Tarkeeb group design-build project. The project will result in a new entry and display wall at the College of Architecture, Art and Design at AUS.

The jury awarded Assistant Professors Christine Yogiaman and Ken Tracy a Merit Award for Cast Thicket, a prototypical installation that furthers earlier research into tensile concrete molds through the use of plastic form-work and a layered structural network.

The jury also awarded Assistant Professor George Newlands a Citation Award for a contemporary addition to a traditional adobe residence in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Assistant Professor Emily Baker presented her research, Spin-Valence, in a talk entitled “Search for a Rooted Aesthetic” at the Fabricate 2014 conference held in Zurich, Switzerland.  Her paper of the same title is published in “Fabricate: Negotiating Design & Making.” 

Assistant Professor Faysal Tabbarah, in collaboration with Mobius Design Studio, has been awarded first place in the first Maraya Art Park Competition for their entry, Parasol. The proposal will be constructed in mid-2014.

Associate Professor Michael Hughes’ PORCH_house Prefab received an AIA Design Honor Award from the Louisiana AIA and an AIA Design Merit Award from the Arkansas AIA. Hughes also contributed a chapter titled “Constructing a Contingent Pedagogy” to the new book “Architecture Live Projects: Pedagogy into Practice” edited by Harriet Harriss and Lynnette Widder. Publication by Routledge is scheduled for summer 2014.

 

Southern California Institute of Architecture


Cultural studies professor David Bergman recently completed several urban planning studies, including a Downtown Overlay Plan for the City of Lancaster, a Land Use and Economic Plan for Saticoy, Los Angeles and a Film Studio Feasibility Plan for the City of Washington, D.C. He also contributed an opinion piece focusing on the LA River Master Plan, published by the LA Business Journal.

Design faculty Joe Day (M.Arch ‘94) published his research into the overlap between prison and museum design in his new book, Corrections and Collections: Architectures for Art and Crime, published by Routledge Press. Day also completed two Southern California residential projects, the C-Glass House in Marin and the 4/Way House in Topanga.

Graduate Programs Chair Hernan Diaz Alonso completed the design for the Center of Experience and Media for Boeing’s Seattle outpost, where construction is scheduled to start in April. Most recently, Diaz Alonso received several architectural awards including The Architectural Review’s Emerging Architecture Award 2014, and one of Architect Magazine’s 2014 P/A Citation Awards. He was also named Baumer Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Knowlton School of Architecture at The Ohio State University.

Design faculty Ramiro Diaz Granados (B.Arch ‘96) was commissioned to design a permanent installation for the Oregon State University’s Student Experience Center. He also recently exhibited his work in a group show at the Santa Barbara Museum of Contemporary Art, Almost Anything Goes: Architecture & Inclusivity.

SCI-Arc Director of Academic Affairs Ming Fung and partner Craig Hodgetts received an AIA LA Next LA Award for Building Blocks, a modular classroom infrastructure designed for the Los Angeles Unified School District. Fung currently serves as President-Elect of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA), and will assume the role of President of ACSA in July 2014.

Cultural Studies Coordinator Todd Gannon edited a new book published by the Wexner Center for the Arts at The Ohio State University. Gannon’s Et in Suburbia Ego: Jose Oubrerie’s Miller House gathers new commentary and interpretation by leading voices in contemporary architecture, alongside a wealth of newly commissioned photographs and never-before-published drawings and models from Oubrerie’s archive which documents the house at a level of detail not normally seen in architectural monographs.

Design faculty Marcelyn Gow participated in the Archilab group exhibition on view at the FRAC Center in Orleans, France from September 2013—March 2014. She also contributed written essays to architectural publications including Minutiae: In Thesis Now and Onramp #4, both published by SCI-Arc Press, the Archilab Exhibition Catalog published by the FRAC Center, and contributed to the In Taboos and Tatoos pamphlet series produced by UrbanOps in Los Angeles.

Design faculty Margaret Griffin and SCI-Arc Undergraduate Programs Chair John Enright received an AIA LA Award for the design of the St. Thomas Apostle School. Margaret Griffin was also awarded the John S. Bolles Fellowship from the AIA California Council, and received a certificate of appreciation from the AIA LA Board of Directors.

Design faculty Elena Manferdini recently exhibited her work in the Almost Anything Goes group exhibition exhibited at the Santa Barbara Museum of Modern Art and in the Erasmus Effect group show at the MAXXI in Rome, Italy. Manferdini was awarded the 2013 Educator’s Award by the AIA Los Angeles, and received the ACADIA Innovative Research Award of Excellence for her research contributions to digital design in architecture.

Cultural studies faculty Ilaria Mazzoleni published her research into biomimetic architecture in her new book, Architecture Follows Nature: Biomimetic Principles for Innovative Design, co-edited with evolutionary biologist Shauna Price.

SCI-Arc Director Eric Owen Moss received a Progressive Architecture Citation Award from Architect magazine for his Albuquerque Rail Yards Master Plan to convert a 27.3-acre site just south of Downtown Albuquerque into a mixed-use development. Metropolis magazine featured Moss on the cover of its January 2014 “Game Changers” issue, highlighting Hayden Tract, the architect’s decades-long urban project in Culver City, west of downtown Los Angeles. 

Design faculty Anna Neimark and her practice First Office completed Paranormal Panorama, an installation for the screening of Cold Rehearsal, an experimental film by directors Constanze Rhum and Christine Lang screened at the MAK Center in Los Angeles from November 2013-March 2014. Niemark also exhibited work in the LA Forum’s Out There Doing It Series, and contributed the “mess, n.” essay to Onramp #4: Another Fine Mess, published by SCI-Arc Press, and the essay How to Domesticate a Mountain to Perspecta 46.

Design faculty Florencia Pita and Jackilin Hah Bloom were shortlisted for the MoMA P.S. 1 Young Architects Program, a high profile annual competition challenging emerging architects to design a temporary installation within the walls of the P.S. 1 courtyard. Pita also exhibited her work with FPmod in a solo show on view in the SCI-Arc Library. Curated by Joseph Rosa, the UMMA Table & Objects exhibition was previously installed at the University of Michigan Museum of Modern Art.

SCI-Arc design faculty John Southern‘s critical field survey, Wilshire Star Maps, was part of the Archizines exhibition on view at the University of Hong Kong/Shanghai Study Centre through March 9, 2014. The two-part, limited-run publication produced by Southern and his LA-based office, Urban Operations, presents the latent formal and programmatic potential of the otherwise unnoticed skyscrapers along Wilshire Boulevard.

Design faculty Peter Testa and Devyn Weiser completed the Carbon Beach House and Studio in Malibu, Calif., which represents the first instantiation of Testa/Weiser’s all composite Carbon Tape House prototype. They collaborated with Greg Lynn on his exhibition, Archeology of the Digital exhibited at the Canadian Center for Architecture, Montreal and at Yale University. Peter Testa’s essay Autonomous Translations, addressing representation in architecture and next generation digital interfaces appeared in the newly release book by SCI-Arc Press, Fabrication and Fabrication.

Applied Studies Coordinator Tom Wiscombe advanced into Stage II of the international competition for the Kinmen Port Terminal in Taiwan. Stage I competition finalists included Visual Studies Coordinator Andrew Zago.

University of Southern California

Assistant Professor Alvin Huang and his firm Synthesis Design + Architecture’s recently completed Pure Tension Pavilion have been awarded a 2014 AIA National Small Project Award as well as being honored for the 2014 Architects Journal Small Projects Review (shortlist), 2014 Architizer A+ Award for Architecture & Mobility (Finalist), and 2014 Architizer A+ Award for Pavilions (Special Mention). He has been invited to speak about his recent work at the upcoming Progressive Architecture Symposium in Mexico City (April 7-8), Salone di Mobile in Milan (April 9), ACSA Conference in Miami (April 10-12), CAADRIA conference in Kyoto (May 14-17) and Dwell on Design in Los Angeles (June 21-22).  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).

Associate Professor Amy Murphy is designing an upcoming exhibition for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art entitled “Haunted Screens German Cinema in the 1920’s” with Michael Maltzan Architecture. The exhibit will open in early fall. 

Geoffrey von Oeyen, Lecturer, was elected to the Board of Directors of the Los Angeles Forum for Architecture and Urban Design. The LA Forum for Architecture and Urban Design provides a framework for design professionals and members of the general public to explore, evaluate, and impact the development of architecture in Los Angeles. To learn more about the work of the LA Forum, please visit: laforum.org 

Assistant Professor Kyle Konis, Ph.D, AIA was recently invited by faculty of the University Ute (Universidad Tecnologica Equinoccial), Ecuador to conduct a week-long sustainability workshop and design-build project in Quito.

Karen M. Kensek, LEED AP BD+C, Assoc. AIA has completed a new book:  Technical Design Series: Building Information Modeling is an overview of BIM in the profession at an introductory, but comprehensive level. This book addresses many key roles that BIM is playing in shaping professional offices and project delivery processes. The book is divided into two parts: Fundamentals (BIM overview, stakeholders and BIM’s many roles, data exchange and interoperability, BIM implementation, and beyond basic BIM) and Application (four case studies).

Karen M. Kensek, LEED AP BD+C, Assoc. AIA

Karen M. Kensek and Doug Noble also collaborated on a new book:

Building Information Modeling: BIM in Current and Future Practice is an edited compilation of provocative essays providing a forum for these leadership voices in the marketplace of ideas about building information modeling in architecture. They provide clarity and direction for thinking about the current practice and the future directions of BIM, instigating commentary by foremost thinkers about both research about BIM and speculation into the future of BIM. The 26 chapters are grouped together thematically in six sections that present both complementary and sometimes incompatible positions: Design Thinking and BIM, BIM Analytics, Comprehensive BIM, Reasoning with BIM, Professional BIM, and BIM Speculations.  In addition, full color digital material (pdf, PowerPoint, animations) is available for professors to augment the use of this book in their classes: case studies by architecture firms, engineering firm, contractors, two faculty bonus papers, and sample teaching material.

Assistant Professor Alison Hirsch published an article, co-authored with Lecturer Aroussiak Gabrielian, in International Journal of Interior Architecture and Spatial Design (Jan 2014) on a project developed through their design practice foreground design agency. She will present two papers at the annual CELA conference at the end of this month. She is leading a research seminar called “Contested Territories: Geopolitics, Media & Design in Southern California” for Harvard GSD graduate students in Architecture and Landscape Architecture studying in Los Angeles for the semester. Her book, City Choreographer, will be released next month through University of Minnesota Press, as will the book she co-edited with James Corner, The Landscape Imagination (Princeton Architectural Press). 

Lawrence Scarpa, FAIA and his firm Brooks + Scarpa have won the $29 Mil Design/Build Competition for the Angle Lake Light Rail Transit Station in Seattle, WA.  The Project will begin construction in late 2014.  He also recently won three AIA Los Angeles Design Awards, six AIA California Council Design Awards, a Presidential Award from the City of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs, and a National AIA Housing Award. 

Assistant Professor Kenneth Breisch will take over as President of the Society of Architectural Historians (SAH) on April 9.

Chu+Gooding Architects has recently completed the new Wellness Center at the Historic General Hospital in Boyle Heights. A 45,000 SF Center for Health Care related non-profit organizations. Rick Gooding’s Subterranea drawing exhibit in the Chang Gallery at Kansas State University from March 3-21

Lecturer and filmmaker Mina M. Chow is directing/producing “100 Years of Architecture” short film in celebration of the USC School of Architecture’s centennial anniversary.

Aroussiak Gabrielian, Lecturer, will be presenting a paper on her design-research at the annual CELA conference in Baltimore at the end of this month.  A recent project (‘Recipe Landscape’) by her research practice, foreground design agency, was featured in the latest volume of Studies in the History of Gardens and Designed Landscapes, as well as in the 15th edition of 306090 books, (Non-) Essential Knowledge for (New) Architecture.  A peer-reviewed essay Aroussiak co-wrote with her partner at foreground (Assistant Professor Alison Hirsch), came out in last month’s issue of International Journal of Interior Architecture and Spatial Design themed ‘Corporeal Complexities.’

The book Structure and Design by Professor G. Goetz Schierle has received very positive reviews.

Lecturer Nefeli Chatzimina will be organizing International Architectural Design Workshops in Europe [Athens and Innsbruck] during Summer 2014. Selected students from USC will participate in this design academic research with the title ‘Functionless’ using the latest computational design techniques and digital fabrication technologies. X|Atelier workshops are based on Nefeli’s current PhD Research as a selected candidate from the University of Athens in Greece.

University of Arizona

Associate Dean Mary Hardin received two awards from AIA Southern Arizona in a December, 2013 awards ceremony. She received an Honor Award for the “Split House”, a low-cost residence designed and constructed in Tucson with her design-build studio in 2011-12. The residence is a hybrid of rammed earth and frame construction, designed to conserve energy by the strategic placement of thermal mass walls, framed walls with apertures, and roof overhangs. The residence also employs a roof water collection system to reduce water use for the landscaping around it. It was purchased by a low-income family in June, 2012. She also received a Merit Award for the “Barrio Rowhouse”, her own courtyard residence built on an infill lot near downtown Tucson. For both projects, Hardin served as architect and contractor.

Lecturer Luis Ibarra and Adjunct Lecturer Teresa Rosano, AIA LEED AP, of Ibarra Rosano Design Architects have won Best of Houzz 2014 for design. They designed three of the “12 Desert Buildings Raising Arizona’s Architectural Profile” on Architizer’s blog: http://architizer.com/blog/desert-homes/  The Levin Residence, one of the three projects, was featured on ArchDaily and HGTV’s Extreme Homes.

Design Intelligence has named Lecturer Michael Kothke one of 30 most admired educators for 2014. 

Adjunct Lecturer Teresa Rosano was a speaker at the AIA Women’s Leadership Summit in October 2013.

Sustainable City Project director and Architecture department faculty member Dr. Linda C. Samuels has been awarded a $60,000 grant from the University of Arizona’s Renewable Energy Network. These funds support her interdisciplinary urban design studio and ongoing research focused on the I-11 SuperCorridor connecting Las Vegas to Nogales. This studio is working collaboratively with studios on the same topic at UNLV (under Ken Mccown, Director of UNLV’s downtown design center) and ASU (under Jason Boyer of Gensler Architects, Phoenix). An additional $70,000 has been awarded to the i11 SuperCorridor studio and research work by the Walton Sustainable Solutions initiative at the Global Institute of Sustainability at ASU. 

Assistant professor Chris Trumble’s paper, titled “An Introductory Pedagogy of Sustainable Structures for Architecture Students” has been accepted for publication and presentation at the 2014 Sustainable Structures Symposium at Portland State University, April 17-18. His paper titled “Bus Shelter Prototypes in the Sonoran Desert” has been accepted for publication in the July 2014 Special Issue of the Journal of Architecture and Planning (JAP) of King Saud University on “Sustainability in Hot Arid Regions”. 

Chris Trumble has been awarded a $24,000 public art commission for the City of Tempe, Arizona. He was initially selected as the Public Artist for the University Drive Streetscape Project. The commission has since been transferred to the El Paso Gas Line Multi-use Path Project. 

Four of Chris Trumble’s projects have been accepted for presentation and exhibition at the 2014 ACSA Annual Meeting in Miami Beach, April 10-12: “Research + Application | Bus Shelter Prototypes for the Sonoran Desert” (Design Research in the Studio Context),  “What’s in a Bus Shelter?” (Urbanism), “Interstitial Installation | Site Specific Furniture as an Architectural Microcosm”  (Architecture in an Expanded Field), and “Wood Cantilevers” (Materials). 

Chris Trumble has been named an executive board member on the “Thinking While Doing” grant, a $2.48m endeavor led by Ted Cavanagh of Dalhousie University, sponsored by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada; other board members include Ted Cavanagh and Arlene Oak (University of Alberta). The grant is dedicated to studying best practices in educational design build. Chris has also been named director of the design build Exchange (dbX), an initiative to facilitate the exchange of information, knowledge, and practices critical to educational design build endeavors in North America.  Members of dbX include Ted Cavanagh, Geoff Gjertson (University of Louisiana Lafayette), Patrick Harrop (University of Manitoba), Greg Snyder (University of North Carolina Charlotte), and Stephen Verderber (University of Toronto).  The dbX will be holding a working session at the ACSA Annual Meeting.

In collaboration with Coastal Studio led by Ted Cavanagh of Dalhousie University, Chris Trumble is directing a design build studio delivering a 4000sf gridshell dining hall for the Ross Creek Centre for the Arts, near Canning, Nova Scotia.

Beth Weinstein, Associate Professor, has been appointed the new Master of Architecture Program Chair.  In relation to her research on Theater and Performance Design, Prof. Weinstein will participate in the July 2014 Performance Studies International Conference, at the Shanghai Theater Academy. With Dr Dorita Hannah (Aalto University, Finland) she will be spearheading PSi’s new Performance+Design working group and holding that group’s first panel session and workshop. In addition she will present a paper, “UN|DISCIPLINED,” on her research into interdisciplinary collaborations that push the boundaries of and critique disciplinary border, and in late July she will participate in the 2014 World Congress of the International Federation for Theater Research (IFTR-FIRT), held at the University of Warwick (July 28-August 1). Her presentation will address “Bringing Performativity into Architectural Pedagogy.”

University of Texas at Austin

The T3 Parking Structure by Danze Blood Architects (Associate Professor Elizabeth Danze, FAIA, and Senior Lecturer John Blood, AIA) is one of five finalists in the parking garage category of the Architizer A+ Awards, a global awards program with over 1,500 project entries from more than 100 countries.

Dean Fritz Steiner has been appointed to the Urban Committee of the National Park System Advisory Board.

Assistant Professor Robert F. Young‘s article “Planting the Living City,” published by the Journal of the American Planning Association in 2011, is on the current top ten list of the journal’s “most read” articles. 

Assistant Professor Junfeng Jiao has co-authored an article, titled “Access to Supermarkets and Fruit and Vegetable Consumption,” in the American Journal of Public Health. 

Assistant Professor Igor Siddiqui spoke to Artforum about his latest innovation, the use of bioplastics in creating his architectural work, which is the focal point of his “Protoplastic” exhibition, recently displayed at TOPS Gallery in Memphis.

 

ACSA Attendees: Welcome to Sunny Miami from the Association of Architecture School Librarians

Barbara Opar and Barret Havens, column editors

Coming to Miami for ACSA?  AASL members would like to invite you to join us -as your time permits. Here are some sessions that may be of interest to you as architectural educators:

 

Friday, April 11

3:45-5:15 Lightning Rounds

Library as Client
John Schinkle from Roger Williams University talks about his experiences working as a client with students in a course on digital manufacturing. In addition to showing the initial designs for a system to display student work in the Library, John talks about the successes and failures of both the process and the chosen design.

New Uses for GIS
Want to know more about new ways of using GIS software?  University of Florida and Florida International University staff are engaged in two grant-funded projects using GIS and digital technologies to document the histories of St. Augustine and Coral Gables.

Acquisitions and New Media
Want to hear about what we need to do in order to acquire new kinds of resources?  Martha Walker from Cornell describes the challenges of ordering a 3-D map.

The Visual Thinker
Jesse Vestermark from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo discusses his use of drawing software to illustrate library concepts.

Tumblr and the Library Collection
Tumblr is being used at the Indianapolis Museum of Art to promote the collections.

 

Saturday, April 12

9:15-11:15 Materials Collections in Libraries- A Panel Discussion
Join Mark Pompelia from RISD as he chairs a discussion about materials collections in libraries.  Different approaches to acquiring and organizing physical materials samples will be presented along with comments from participants on their experiences with such media. Fiona Anastas from Material Connexion is among the presenters.

11:30-1:00 The Post Digital Library
AASL will also take up the issue of the library in the post-digital era. Chaired by Hannah Bennett from Princeton University, a panel of members will pick up where the ACSA’s conference theme, “Globalizing Architecture: Flows and Disruptions” leaves off. The panel will address how traditional roles and services have changed to accommodate new developments in the design school or firm, be it through global practice, technological advances, curricular reshaping, or the ever-morphing interdisciplinarity of design.

 

 

Auburn University

McAlpine Tankersley Architecture and McAlpine Booth & Ferrier Interiors were selected to be among the AD100, Architectural Digest magazine’s biennial list of the top talents in architecture and interior design. The new list was announced November 2013. McAlpine Tankersley Architecture was founded in Montgomery in 1983 and is the partnership of Alabama natives and Auburn School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture (APLA) graduates Bobby McAlpine (’81), Greg Tankersley (’85), John Sease (’92) and Chris Tippett (’92).

Matthew Leavell, Project Director at Alabama Innovation Engine, was recently recognized in Birmingham magazine’s Groundbreaker’s series for his work with Engine on the Cahaba Blueway. Labeled by the Smithsonian as one of the top biologically diverse ecologies in the United States, Leavell, advocates that the Cahaba River is far more than a blue line that runs through the state, but has the potential to be a dynamic resource that can initiate economic development throughout the state in rural and urban communities.

APLA faculty (Professors Justin Miller, Robert Sproull and David Hinson) and the Alabama Association of Habitat Affiliates (AAHA) have been awarded second year funding of external grant which will support continued improvement in the quality of affordable housing in the state and affiliate training in best practices related to whole building performance. The state affiliates participating in the grant program, Green Home Alabama, will construct 16 Energy Star certified homes this upcoming spring and summer. The DESIGNhabitat program will be involved in the design of the two HERS 24 index homes, commonly referred to as a net zero ready home. Professors Miller and Sproull will lead this initiative, working with a team of undergraduate students this spring to design these net zero ready demonstration homes in close collaboration with the partner affiliates and future homeowners.

Rural Studio’s Newbern Town Hall was voted the 2014 Building of the Year in the category of Public Architecture by ArchDaily readers. From over 3,500 projects from around the world, its readership chose the best architecture in 14 categories. The Auburn student design team of Brett Bowers, David Frazier, Mallory Garrett and Zane Morgan worked with the Town of Newbern and its civic leaders to develop a formal gathering place for community functions. The Newbern Town Hall was completed in 2013 and, along with the Newbern Volunteer Fire Department (a 2005 Rural Studio Project), creates a civic space in Newbern, Alabama.

The Safe House Museum in Greensboro, Alabama was the Third Place winner in the public voting of World-architects eMagazine Building of the Year American-Architects 2013. The student team of Chris Currie, Cassandra Kellogg, and Candace Rimes restored the museum’s two existing shotgun houses and linked the buildings together. They also added a new gallery space for African-American art. The Safe House Museum is of great historical significance to the Civil Rights movement in Hale County, where once the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. sought refuge from the Ku Klux Klan.

The 2013–2014 Lecture Series of the Auburn University School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture is entitled Renegades + Outlaws: Design Thinking at the Edge.” The series is conceived as a way to consider perceptual outliers within the design profession and includes the following visiting lecturers:  Richard Weller – Professor and Chair of Landscape Architecture, Martin and Margy Meyerson Chair of Urbanism, University of Pennsylvania; Gina Reichert – Founding Principal, Design 99; William O’Brien, Jr. – Founding Principal, WOJR; Jon Coddington – Professor and Head, Department of Architecture + Interiors, Drexel University; Liz Ogbu – Designer, Urbanist, Researcher, Social Innovation Strategist. For more information, please visit:  http://cadc.auburn.edu/architecture/special-programs/lecture-series

Charlene M. LeBleu, Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture in the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture, has been elected Vice President for Research of the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture (CELA) for 2014_2016. As Vice President for Research, LeBleu will guide a national research agenda of developing areas of knowledge in landscape architecture including collaborating with related organizations in establishing research priorities. LeBleu will serve a two-year term from March 2014_March 2016.

Rod Barnett, Chair of the Master of Landscape Architecture program, gave the Olmsted Lecture at the Harvard GSD in November 2013. His presentation, called Nonlinear Encounters, focused on aspects of his recent book Emergence in Landscape Architecture, which the publisher Routledge says is selling “brilliantly.” To view the lecture, please visit:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=820vwFYR2lU

Maria Hines, a recent graduate of the Environmental Design program, and student in the Master of Landscape Architecture program at Auburn, had an article accepted in the Spring 2014 issue of AUJUS (The Auburn University Journal of Undergraduate Design). 

University of Southern California

Assistant Professor Rachel Berney has been appointed to USC’s University Research Committee for the 2013-2014 school year where she is working with a team of faculty from across the university on topics such as improving research mentorship and external collaboration. 

Andy Ku, Lecturer, was recently invited as a jury member to evaluate and judge the Art Center Faculty Enrichment Grant applications. These grants were made possible by a Samsung Corporation endowment. 

Lecturer Geoffrey von Oeyen‘s symposium proposal for the 2014-15 USC Visions and Voices Arts and Humanities Initiative, titled “Sailing Architecture,” has advanced to the University level. Featuring internationally acclaimed designers and fabricators, the symposium explores how contemporary yacht racing is creating new opportunities for multidisciplinary collaboration and innovation.