Other ACSA Websites

Study Architecture ProPEL

2012 ACSA Annual Business Meeting

/in /by

On Friday, March 2, the ACSA will hold its Annual Business Meeting at the Boston Park Plaza Hotel, in Boston, Mass., from 9:30 to 11:00 am in the Imperial ballroom. The meeting will be preceded by regional caucuses from 8:00 to 9:30 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.

AGENDA

I. Call to Order
 Judith Kinnard, President

II. Member School Registration
 Patricia Kucker, Secretary

III. Introduction of Current and Incoming
 ACSA Board Members and Guests
Judith Kinnard

V. Vice President’s Report
 Donna Robertson

VI. Treasurer’s Report
 Craig Barton

IV. President’s Report

– Judith Kinnard
– Presentation by Kermit Baker, Harvard University and American Institute of Architects
– Questions

VII. Other Business 

  1. Partner Recognition
    Manuel Aguirre Osete, ASINEA
  2. Partner Announcement
    Tau Sigma Delta
  3. Journal of Architectural Education
  4. Memorials

VIII. New Business

IX. Adjournment and Recognition of Outgoing Board Members

 

 

University of Miami

/in /by

Jan Hochstim, a longtime professor at the University of Miami’s School of Architecture who was well known to generations of students for his exacting standards as a historian of the modern movement, passed away on November 5. He was 80.

Hochstim engaged fully in scholarship, teaching, and professional practice. He began his teaching career in 1958 and taught design and the history of architecture. He also practiced, producing work that ranged from the original Mark Light Stadium at UM to remodeling of the Swensen residence in Coral Gables’ French Village.

Hochstim also renovated the 1940’s-era apartment buildings that became the home of the UM School of Architecture in 1984. He practiced in recent years with Adam Krantz.

Hochstim’s classes in the history of modernism fueled his scholarly work, and his book, The Paintings and Sketches of Louis I. Kahn (1991), was a critical success with reviews in the architectural press as well as The New York Times Book Review. His subsequent book, Florida Modern: Residential Architecture 1945-1970 (2005), brought together Hochstim’s intellectual interests as well as his personal associations with Florida’s leading modern practitioners.

The Dade Heritage Trust honored Hochstim last March as a “Living legend for his stellar contributions to Miami’s architectural heritage.”

In addition, he was recently appointed to the board of directors of DOCOMOMO US, an organization for the documentation and conservation of buildings, sites, and neighborhoods of the Modern Movement.

Hochstim was born in Krakow, Poland, in 1931. As an exile during World War II in Uzbekistan, he met his future wife Ruth, also of Poland. After the war, they immigrated to the United States where they were married.

Hochstim earned a bachelor of science degree in architectural engineering from UM in 1954 and a bachelor of architecture from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1958. In 1976, he earned a master’s degree in the history of art and architecture from UM.

Hochstim received the Woodrow W. Wilson Award for Outstanding Teaching at the School of Architecture in 1981-82, and in 1978 his design for Mark Light Stadium received the American Institute of Architects’ Award for Outstanding Concrete Structure in Florida as well as the American Concrete Institute and Florida Concrete and Products Association Award.

Hochstim was predeceased by his wife Ruth and is survived by a brother, Adolf; a son, Richard; and nieces Diana Taylor and Monica Hochstim.

A gathering to celebrate his life was held in the School of Architecture’s courtyard on December 2 at 4 p.m. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made in Jan’s memory to the University of Miami School of Architecture for the Materials Lab, P.O. Box 249178, Coral Gables, FL 33124-5010.

Woodbury University

/in /by

Visiting Assistant Professor Curt Gambetta recently co-edited the August 2012 issue of the Indian journal “Seminar” entitled “Streetscapes: A Symposium on the Future of the Street.” The issue examined the present and future of street life and space in Indian cities, considering issues ranging from architecture, transport, and land use to emerging forms of street culture and activism about public space. Issue content is available at: http://www.india-seminar.com/2012/636.htm

Jeanine Centuori, Professor and LA Undergraduate Chair, and Adjunct Faculty Sonny Ward received funding from the Home Depot Foundation, Backyard Products and More, and Los Angeles Works for a design/build project for the Shadow Hills Riding Club, an equestrian therapy facility.  The first part of this project was published in the Los Angeles Times in May 2012.

Assistant Professor Maxi Spina received a ‘Merit Award’ at the 2012 AIA|LA Design Awards for the Jujuy Redux Apartment Building in Rosario, Argentina (co-designed with PATTERNS). Merit Award recognizes exemplary, innovative and well-resolved design, worthy of professional recognition. In addition, Jujuy Redux appeared in the September issue of ‘The Architect’ Magazine as well as on the Sept-Nov issue of ‘Plot’ Magazine.

Adjunct Faculty Deborah Richmond received an ‘Honor Award’ at the 2012 AIA|LA Design Awards for the Silverwood Lake State Recreation Area Visitors Center in San Bernardino County, CA. Honor Award is the highest award and celebrates extraordinary, thoroughly resolved architectural design, worthy of the profession’s highest regard. Additionally, Deborah, as co-chair of the AIA|LA Committee on the Environment (COTE), has launched a new, citywide campaign entitled ‘(What is) the Nature of Los Angeles?’  The campaign started on October 24th with the panel discussion ‘On Uneasy Earth’ and featured a land artist, engineer and geologist.

Assistant Professor and Chair of the Master of Real Estate Development (MRED), Ted Smith and his firm McCormick Smith & Others received an ‘Honor Award’ at the 2012 AIA|San Diego Design Awards for the Weinman Residence in Del Mar.

Assistant Professor and SD Undergraduate Chair, Catherine Herbst and Adjunct Faculty Todd Rinehart received a ‘Merit Award’ at the 2012 AIA|San Diego Design Awards for their Modest House.

Bloom, an installation at M&A by Professor and LA Graduate Chair Ingalill Wahlroos-Ritter, USC Assistant Professor Doris Sung and Structural Engineer and SCI-Arc Lecturer Matthew Melnyk, was exhibited in October in ACADIA 2012 at California College of the Arts.  ‘Bloom’ was made possible with grants from the LA County Arts Commission, AIA Upjohn Fellowship, Arnold W. Brunner Award, Graham Foundation Grant, USC ASHSS Award, USC URAP Award, Woodbury Faculty Development Award and in-kind donations from Engineered Materials Solutions.

Light fixture designs by Professor Ingalill Wahlroos-Ritter, Julius Shulman Distinguished Professor of Practice Barbara Bestor, Associate Professor Annie Chu, and Adjunct Faculty Francios Perrin were on view at “Light My Way, Stranger”, The MAK Center for Art and Architecture’s first Day of the Dead Auction, on Friday, November 2nd.

University of Southern California

/in /by

Michael Hricak, FAIA, has been appointed a Regional Director for the AIA College of Fellows, using his strong ties with the profession and education to promote licensing and participation in the Intern Development Program (IDP).

Heritage conservation program director Trudi Sandmeier curated a tour of ‘70s and ‘80s architecture in Venice, CA as part of the Getty’s Pacific Standard Time Presents: Modern Architecture in L.A. programming.  She also recently helped to establish the new docomomo_US/Southern California chapter.

New appointments in Landscape Architecture include Alexander Robinson and Alison Hirsch as tenure track Assistant Professors and Charles Anderson and Aroussiak Gabrielian as visiting faculty.

Landscape Architecture Graduate Student Tina Chee has been named one of four 2013 National Olmsted Scholarship finalists. She earned this honor in 2012 as well and thus has the distinction for both years of her MLA degree program.

DSH // architecture, the firm of Adjunct Associate Professor Eric Haas, received 1st Place for small educational facilities in the Modular Building Institute’s 2013 Awards of Distinction for the St. James’ Preschool.

Adjunct Assistant Professor Valery Augustin, AIA, was a panelist at a symposium titled “Does Architecture Matter?” at the Getty Center. A series of Valery’s drawings were selected for the d3:Sketch exhibition at The Lincoln Center Center Gallery in New York.                                        

Assistant professor Alvin Huang was awarded the 2013 AIA Comittee on Design Scholarship to attend the AIA Regional Modernism Conference in Palm Springs, and the 2013 Dale Taylor Visiting Lectureship at the University of Calgary Faculty of Environmental Design which included an exhibition, a lecture, and a 1 week design/build/fabricate student workshop focused on emergent design technologies.  

Alexander Robinson was recently appointed a tenure-track Assistant Professor in the Landscape Architecture Program at the University of Southern California. Also, as part of his on-going research on landscape infrastructures, he led a team proposing summer parks in the LA River that is currently a finalist in a $100k grant and ideas competition. 

Tom Marble’s work has appeared in The Architect’s Newspaper, MONU Magazine, LA Times Magazine, and Metropolis; his After the city, this (is how we live) was published by the LA Forum for Architecture & Urban Design in 2008; he led an urban design studio Urban Successionism in Colorado Springs, at Colorado College Spring 2012; and he is at work on The Expediter, a multi-media urban noir to be completed in late 2013.

Adjunct professor Lorcan O’Herlihy’s firm, LOHA, is currently designing housing projects that will serve UCLA and UC Santa Barbara students and faculty. Lorcan has been honored with nominations for the 2013 Marcus Prize in Architecture and the 2013 Cooper Hewitt National Design Award, and his past work will feature in spring exhibitions at the A+D Museum and MOCA. In addition to his teaching, Lorcan will lecture this fall at the Otis College of Art and Design, the AIA Arizona State Conference, and the AIA Colorado Design Conference.

Lecturer Scott Uriu‘s work is in the Exhibitions: Never Built, Architecture and Design Museum (A+D Museum), opening July 2013.  Baumgartner + Uriu, (B+U) exhibition, INCITE, Bangalore India, Opening June 8th 2013.  Archilab 2013, FRAC center, Orleans, France, opening September 2013.  Uriu’s work is also included in the Publications: Equalbooks-B+U Frank and Kim residence Peakpack, April 2013, DE Architect– B+U animated Apertures, April 2013, Concept magazine- B+U rethinking the window DNA, April 2013, FUTURE magazine- B+U Keelung harbor Cruise ship terminal competition, April 2013 and B1 magazine– B+U animated Apertures, April 2013.  Uriu’s office has received an Architizer A+ Award February 14th, 2013 for “Animated Apertures” Special Mention in the Architecture +Sustainability category.

Professor G. Goetz Schierle was invited to design fabric structures and teach a seminar at Xian University of Architecture and Technology.

Karen M. Kensek has won the USC Mellon Mentoring Award.  The award is given annually to honor individual faculty for helping build a supportive academic environment at USC through faculty-to-student and faculty-to-faculty mentoring.

Joon-Ho Choi is an Assistant Professor of Building Science. Prior to taking the position, he worked as an assistant professor in the Dept. of Civil, Architectural, and Environmental Engineering at Missouri University of Science and Technology. He earned his Ph.D. degree in Building Performance and Diagnostics at Carnegie Mellon University.   Dr. Choi’s primary research interests are in the areas of advanced controls for high performance buildings, bio-sensing controls in the built environment, smart building enclosure, passive building strategies, and human-centered building environmental control.  Six research papers have been published in prestigious journals, such as Building and Environment, and Energy and Buildings, based on his work for recent three years. As an interdisciplinary researcher, he has participated in multiple research projects sponsored by governmental agencies, industry partners and research grant programs including General Services Administration (GSA), Boston Society of Architects/AIA, Green Building Alliance (GBA), ALCOA, SIEMENS, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and UNEP. His research outcomes have been published on prestigious international journals including “Building and Environment”, and “Energy and Buildings”. He is currently a technical committee member of American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE), and is an active member of the International Society of Indoor Air Quality (ISIAQ), and Korean-American Scientists and Engineers Association (KSEA). 

University of Texas at Austin

/in /by

Dr. Nancy Kwallek, Director of the UTSoA Interiors program will host the “Textiles Symposium Weaving the Past and the Present,” at the Univeristy of Texas at Austin.

On September 24, Assistant Professor Benjamin Ibarra Sevilla opened his exhibition “El arte de la cantería Mixteca” (Mixtec Stonecutting Artistry) in the Museum of Arts and Sciences of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).

Dr. Mark Simmons, lecturer at the School of Architecture and research scientist at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, has received a 2013 Honor Award from the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) in the Professional category for his project, “The Lawn is Dead – Long Live the Lawn.”

Assistant Professor Junfeng Jiao—with research assistant at Ball State, Max Dillivan—has just published an article titled “Transit Desert: The Gap between Demand and Supply” in the Journal of Public Transportation, October 2013, Vol. 16.3.

Assistant Professor Dr. Petra Leidl led the Harrington Symposium at the University of Texas at Austin on October 1-4, “EnergyXchange: Munich and Austin: Regional Centers of Sustainable Innovation”.

University of Kansas

/in , /by

 
The Department of Architecture celebrates its centennial with a reunion that will take place in Lawrence April 26-27, 2013. The centennial was launched last spring with the publication of Vitruvius on the Plains: Architectural thought at Kansas, 1912-2012 (The Lowell Press, 2012). Edited by Professor Stephen Grabow, the book offers a brief history of the school and its faculty. It contains a collection of thirty-seven essays written over the last century. The collection illustrates the way various schools of thought have converged at KU during the past 100 years.

Associate Professor Shannon Criss was recently elected to serve as the ACSA West Central Regional Director. She has also been selected to serve a two-year appointment as a University of Kansas Service Learning Faculty Fellow. She will work with faculty and staff to program new initiatives that broaden the understanding of engaged-community learning pedagogy within the university. She also recently presented a paper at the Biannual National Conference of the Design Communication Association at Oklahoma State University in October 2012 entitled  “Drawn Through: The Sectional Perspective as a Tool of Engagement.”

Students in Professor Kent Spreckelmeyer’s Health & Wellness capstone studio won a number of honors for their spring 2012 semester work. Sara Mae Martens, Maia Hoelzinger, Stephen Mayer, and Lindsay Slavin won an honorable mention for their submission to the AIAS/SAGE “Renewing Home” Competition.  Rana Elmghirbi won a third-place award in the Open Political Response category of the [Un]Restricted Access Competition, hosted by Architecture for Humanity. Dan DeWeese won first prize in the open-submission category of the ACSA Steel Competition.  Sara Mae Martens had her thesis project published in the November 2012 issue of the AIA/AAH Academy Journal, and Graham Sinclair had his thesis published in the October 2012 issue of Healthcare Design.

Four graduate students won an honorable mention in the ACSA’s Sustainable Lab Competition. The students, Ike Chinton, Joel Herman, Sara Lichti, and Taylor Maine were in a design studio taught by Associate Professor Paola Sanguinetti.  

The University of Kansas awarded Keith Diaz Moore, Associate Dean of Graduate Studies, one of five Strategic Initiative grants. This grant will support an interdisciplinary examination of the role architecture plays in resilient lifestyles for older adults.  This research involves colleagues in environmental studies, gerontology, nursing, occupational therapy, psychology, political science and urban planning. It is notable for placing architecture and design at the forefront of KU’s efforts to enhance its impact upon the world. 

Assistant Professor Chad Kraus and the students of the design-build Dirt Works Studio completed the Roth Trailhead, a 122-foot-long rammed earth wall and sun-shading canopy. The Roth Trailhead received an Honor Award from AIA Kansas and the Monsters of Design Best-in-Show award from the AIA Kansas City Young Architects Forum. In addition, during the summer of 2012, Professor Kraus presented and published two essays on rammed earth architecture as part of RESTAPIA 2012, the First International Conference on Rammed Earth Conservation in Valencia, Spain.

In June, Architecture Lecturer Bob Coffeen, received a Bose Educational Excellence Award. He also served as chair for the national meeting of the Acoustical Society of America held in Kansas City in October. 

NIls Gore, Associate Professor and Interim Chair, presented a paper at the ACSA Offsite conference entitled “Designing Better Portable Classrooms.” The paper described a design studio process that started with the observation that virtually every school district in the U.S. utilizes portable classroom units as a way of relieving overcrowding and as “short-term” solutions to changing enrollments, shifting demographics, and uncertain funding for capital improvement projects. 

Assistant professors Genevieve Baudoin and Bruce A. Johnson presented a paper entitled, “Off-Site / Off-World: Prefabrication for Extreme Conditions and Unpredictability,” at the ACSA Off-Site Conference in Philadelphia, PA. Their paper is a product of their overlapping research in the integration of systems, structure and site. It explores the techniques employed in parallel industries at the limits of prefabrication as a means of generating site-specific relationships in normative prefabrication.

Chester Dean Lecturer Frank Zilm along with Professors Kent Spreckelmeyer and Keith Diaz Moore, received an honorable mention for their 2012 NCARB Awards proposal. It was titled, “Integrating Specialized Knowledge in Architectural Curricula”. The awards are intended “to challenge conventional teaching pedagogy and create new curricular models for design studios. ”

In August, Studio 804 – led by Dan Rockhill, the Department of Architecture’s J.L. Constant Professor of Architecture – completed Galileo’s Pavilion, a highly sustainable classroom building, for Johnson County Community College, in Overland Park, Kansas. This fall, Studio 804 received two AIA Kansas Honor Awards for Galileo’s Pavilion and another project, the Center for Design Research, completed in 2011.

In early November, the American Institute of Architecture Students sponsored the Midwest Quad Conference. The event, themed “Building Communities” was held in Kansas City, Mo., and drew over 300 students from 13 states. Professor Dan Rockhill gave the keynote, address. The SADP’s Dean, John Gaunt, held a drawing workshop. Faculty members Genevieve Baudoin, Bruce Johnson, Chad Kraus, and Anne Patterson also gave presentations. Assistant Professor Kapila Silva is the KU AIAS faculty advisor.   

Texas A&M University

/in /by

A new mobile app developed by SMARTreview, a startup company co-founded by Mark Clayton, professor of architecture at Texas A&M, provides designers and regulators quick access to fire safety codes adopted in the U.S. and many international regions that provide safeguards for people in homes, schools and workplaces.

The iOS and Android app, SMARTreview Fire Safety, provides calculations and tables from the International Code Council’s Quick Reference Guide to Fire Safety to determine whether a building’s specifications are in compliance with ICC codes. A companion desktop app for the Windows operating system is also available.

“The software represents many years of work to develop a powerful and robust algorithm for checking particular requirements in the building code,” said Clayton. “The app should pay for itself in reduced time on its first use on a project by eliminating the tedium of looking up figures and requirements in building code books, but its real value comes in speeding the process of obtaining a permit and ultimately the completion of a building.”

Additional apps are in development, Clayton said, that address other calculations in the ICC code, the International Energy Conservation Code, the International Residential Code, American Disabilities Act compliance, and other regulations.

“As a start-up company, we expect to hire additional staff as revenue is generated,” he said.

The 14th Annual Texas A&M College of Architecture Research Symposium: Natural, Built, Virtual will take place Monday, Oct. 22 at the Langford Architecture Center on the Texas A&M campus.

This year’s symposium includes invited or refereed presentations and papers from the 2011-12 academic year. The symposium will feature approximately 50 presentations divided into diverse categories and delivered in several concurrent sessions throughout the day. This year’s presentations are grouped in broad categories including invention, energy, modeling, management, policy, pedagogy, aging, innovation, perception, history, archaeology, excogitation and well-being.

The college’s annual symposium was established more than a decade ago to underscore the influence of research on teaching and practice. It also serves as a catalyst for research-informed teaching in the College of Architecture’s five undergraduate and nine graduate degree programs. And, because many of the presentations were originally delivered at scholarly venues abroad, the event also showcases the global influence of research conducted by college faculty.

Rituals developed by ancient Greeks to sustain relationships with their gods will be discussed by Kevin Glowacki, assistant professor of architecture at Texas A&M, at 6:30 p.m. Oct. 9 at the San Antonio Museum of Art.

Glowacki will focus on a sanctuary and architectural remains of Aphrodite and her son Eros, gods of love, marriage and fertility, on the north slope of the Acropolis in Athens. “The open-air sanctuary is an instructive example of a less formal or ‘popular’ shrine, where the ancient Athenians made dedications of sculpted reliefs, marble statuettes, and terracotta figurines,” said Glowacki. He will present an analysis of the three main types of rituals performed at the sanctuary, intended to create and sustain personal relations between mortals and their gods: prayer, sacrifice and dedication.

University of Houston

/in /by
  • Assistant Professor Wendy Fok who has received a $6,000 grant from the New Faculty Research Grant program sponsored by the University of Houston Department of Research to further her research in digital fabrication and tooling. 
  • Gerald D. Hines College of Architecture Industrial Design Student Mariel Pina was named as one of two first prize winners at the 2012 International Housewares Student Design Competition.  The 19th year of juried competition was reviewed by 10 judges, mostly from the housewaresindustry including Umbra and KitchenAid. Mariel’s project, Ambos, was recognized highly by professionals from the 2011 IDSA International Design Conference in New Orleans and the IHA award signifies her excellence. She will receive a cash prize ($ 2,500), and be invited to the 2012 International Home and Housewares show in Chicago from March 8-13, 2012.  

University of Oregon

/in /by

Kingston Heath, Professor and Director of the Graduate Program in Historic Preservation announces that his program recently received a gift of $2.8 million dollars by Art DeMuro, President of the Venerable Group, Inc.  This gift has led to a proposal to move the program from Eugene to Portland to better address content related to “green preservation.”

Heath has been elected for his third term on the Board of the Vernacular Architecture Forum.  He will be chairing a session at the Annual Meeting in Madison, Wisconsin.  His paper on the “Croatia Conservation Field School,” that he founded and co-directs, will be presented at the “Preservation Education: Sharing Practices and Finding Common Ground” symposium September 8 & 9 in Providence, R.I. He will also be presenting a paper, and serving on a panel, at the American Folklore Society forum on Integrating Folklore and Preservation in New Orleans, October 24-27.  

Professor Howard Davis’s new book, Living Over the Store: Architecture and Local Urban Life, has been published by Routledge.  Davis delivered a keynote lecture at the Sixth Annual Meeting of the International Seminar on Vernacular Settlements in Famugusta, North Cyprus, in April.

Brook Muller has been appointed Associate Dean for Academic Affairs in the School of Architecture and Allied Arts beginning June 2012.

Associate Professor Hajo Neis, Ph.D., Director of the Portland Urban Architecture Research Laboratory (PUARL), and his thesis design students presented their advanced studio work on Regenerative Design at the Oregon Design Conference April 2012 in Salishan: “Redesigning andRebuilding Cities, Towns, Neighborhoods, Streets, Buildings and Gardens, Destroyed by War, Terrorism, Natural Disaster, and Human Failure.” The work focuses on real world problems, and students are working with communities, agents, NGO’s and agencies interested in long-term generative recovery in projects in Japan, Haiti, Malawi, Bosnia, Hungary, China, Netherlands, and the US. 

PUARL also co-sponsored the 49th International Making Cities Livable Conference (IMCL) May 2012 in Portland, with the participation of Neis and Emeritius Professor Jim Pettinari.

Associate Professor Mark L. Gillem, PhD, AIA, AICP was part of a teaching team that received the 2011 Workforce Development Through Training Award from the Center for Environmental Innovation and Leadership.  This national award recognizes teaching excellence and was awarded at the GOVGreen Conference in Washington DC on December 1. Dr. Gillem has developed and teaches a series of planning and urban design courses for the federal government. He also recently received a major design award from the American Planning Association’s Federal Planning Division. His firm, The Urban Collaborative, LLC, prepared the Southwest Campus Area Development Plan for Fort Sill, Oklahoma. The jury recognized the plan as the Outstanding Area Development Plan at an award ceremony in Los Angeles in April 2012. While in Los Angeles, he was the Chair of the American Planning Association’s Federal Planning Division Annual Training Workshop. The event attracted over 300 planners working for and with federal agencies. He also recently spoke on sustainable master planning in Los Angeles at a NASA workshop and at George Mason University in Washington DC where he announced the release of a new master planning policy for the Department of Defense that he authored. 

University at Buffalo

/in /by

Korydon Smith reports that “Building Neighborhoods that Build Social and Economic Prosperity: Manual for a Complete Neighborhood” received a Congress for New Urbanism 2013 Global Award for Excellence in Urban Design as well as a 2013 Residential Architect Design Award in the “On the Boards” category. The collaborative project focused on housing design for a hillside settlement in Kigali, Rwanda, and involved the University of Arkansas Community Design Center (Stephen Luoni, Director, and  Jeffrey Huber), Korydon Smith (Associate Professor in the Department of Architecture at UB), Peter Rich (South African architect and recipient of the WAF 2009 World Building of the Year), and Tomà Berlanda (Senior Lecturer at the Kigali Institute of Science and Technology). Smith, along with Rich, led a group of nine architecture students from the University of Arkansas to Rwanda in September 2011. These students and faculty, in partnership with architecture students and faculty from the Kigali Institute of Science and Technology, conducted first-hand research of domestic architecture and life in rural and urban Rwanda, contributing to a semester-long design studio on urban housing in Kigali. Luoni and Huber, along with students and staff at the UACDC, furthered the work with the publishing of the aforementioned manual. The work is ongoing and involves partnerships with planning and government officials in Kigali, as Rich leads the implementation of the proposals. Likewise, Smith is currently completing a book on the work tentatively titled Translating Kigali, Rwanda: Cultural Inquires and Architectural Prospects for a Developing African City. The aforementioned awards are the second and third awards the work has garnered, adding to the 2012-2013 ACSA Collaborative Practice Award received last month.

Joyce Hwang‘s article “Living Among Pests” is published in Volume #35: Everything Under Control.  Volume is published by Archis (Netherlands), with Editor-in-Chief Arjen Oosterman, Managing Editor Brendan Cormier, and Contributing Editors Ole Bouman, Rem Koolhaas, and Mark Wigley. For more info, see: http://archis.org/publications/volume-35-everything-under-control/

 “Jordan Geiger: Very Large Organizations,” a solo exhibition, opened at WUHO Gallery in Los Angeles from April 6-28, 2013. The show tracks a contemporary phenomenon: the convergence of multiple infrastructures and global networks in the built environment. Geiger ascribes the term Very Large Organizations (VLOs) to this confluence of technological, legal, economic, material, and cultural forces. It is through this identification that Geiger makes visible the impact of large-scale systems such as global communications and supranational legal and financial constructs on the construction and inhabitation of space. By identifying these systems, Geiger also finds an embedded field of inquiry rich with opportunities for architectural engagement and action.

Geiger is also conference co-chair, together with professors Mark Shepard and Omar Khan, of the international event, “MediaCity 4: MediaCities.” The conference, exhibition and workshops are hosted for the first time in the United States, and are hosted at the University at Buffalo’s School of Architecture and Planning May 3-5, 2013. Reflecting on pluralities and globalities, on MediaCities everywhere, the event features keynotes and speakers from varied fields and countries all over the world. It opens new lines of inquiry and emergent relations between urbanity and digital media that are found in non-Western cities, in post-Capitalist cities, in cities hosting civic turbulence or crossing international boundaries. The gathering focuses on what urban-medial relations are taking shape differently in urban milieux that may have been heretofore overlooked.

Geiger’s essay, “Maximal Surface Tension: Very Large Organizations and Their Apotheosis in Songdo,” has been published in the journal SCAPEGOAT: Architecture | Landscape | Political Economy, issue 4: Currency. His project, “Emission,” has been selected for publication in the June 2013 issue of the journal MAS Context.

We use cookies and other tracking technologies for performance, analytics, marketing, and more customized site experiences. By continuing to browse this site you are agreeing to our terms. Learn more about these in our Privacy Policy. ACSA reserves the right to delete content and suspend user accounts that it determines to be inappropriate.

OKLearn more