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Miami University

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Miami University, Associate Professor Diane Fellows and students of arc107 “Global Design”  skyping with Sahar Qawasmi, Architect, RIWAQ, Occupied Palestinian Territory. 

Associate Professor Diane Fellows (Miami University) and Sahar Qawasmi (Architect, RIWAQ, Occupied Palestinian Territory) are co-authors of “Contesting Boundaries:  Academia, Design and Experiencing Global Crises in Real Time regarding the consequence of contemporary Diaspora to people and place within the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The paper is to be presented at the “6th International Conference on Design Principles & Practices, UCLA, January 2012″ and the “Conference in Communication and Media Studies: (Re)Making and Undoing of Peace/Conflict”,  Famagusta, North Cyprus, April, 2012. Sahar Qawasmi is a graduate of the M.Arch program of Miami University, and, currently, lives and works in her home-city of Ramallah. Fellows teaches “arc107 Global Design”, part of the Miami University’s Foundation Plan to engage students across the university disciplines with global concerns and contexts. Fellows and Qawasmi frame the discussion through personal experience and an inter-generational perspective of modern and contemporary Diaspora, as arc107 Global Design students negotiate the discourse while listening to and seeing life in Ramallah unfold in real-time. 

Virginia Tech

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Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University

The LumenHAUS (primary faculty advisors: Associate Professor Joseph Wheeler, A.I.A.; T.A. Carter Professor of Architecture Robert Dunay, F.A.I.A., Director of the Center for Design Research; Professor Robert Schubert, Associate Dean for Research; Visting Instructor David “Chip” Clark) has been selected as one of nine recipients of the 2012 American Institute of Architects Honor Awards for Architecture. The jury commented that the “creative use of materials and the flexibility of its components quickly respond to changes in the environment through automated systems that optimize energy consumption. The plan and section are orchestrated by light and materials to enhance the perception of a small footprint. The interior is cleverly designed with comfortable if compact spaces, compatible materials, and a rationale and clear layout.” It is for the first time that a building conceived, constructed, and built by an architecture school has been awarded with a National AIA Honor award. 

Professor Susan Piedmont-Palladino’s book, Intelligent Cities, was just published in December by the National Building Museum. It’s the culmination of a year-long initiative supported by the Rockefeller Foundation.

Clemson University

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Keith Evan Green, RA, PhD, Professor of Architecture and Electrical & Computer Engineering, co-hosted the Graduate Student Symposium at the ACM Creativity & Cognition 2011 conference, hosted by Georgia Tech. At the same conference, he presented a demonstration of his developing, architectural-robotic “ART” project that is supported by the National Science Foundation in the cross-cutting, ”Smart Health & Wellbeing” Program (NSF award #IIS-1116075, $271k). ART is one component in a suite of intelligent components collectively called home+. home+ aims to increase the quality of life of both healthy individuals, as well as persons with impaired mobility, by intelligently supporting the physical organization of their immediate environment. Green presented developments of the ART project also in San Francisco at the Assistive Robotics workshop of IROS 2011, the International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems. 

University of Arizona

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Professor of Architecture and Environmental Science, Dr. Nader Chalfoun’s paper titled “A Method for Greening University Campus Buildings While Fostering Hands-on Inquiry-Based Students` Learning”, has been accepted for presentation at the 6th International Multi-Conference on Engineering and Technological Innovation (IMETI 2013), to be held in Orlando, USA, on July 9-12, 2013.  The project is part of a multi-year collaboration between the College of Architecture and Landscape Architecture and the University of Arizona Facilities Management where students and faculty conduct level III energy audits on campus buildings.


Associate Professor Beth Weinstein will participate in the Performance Studies International #19 Conference, held at Stanford in June, with the following research/practice projects:  “Borrowed Space and Time”, a paper addressing borrowed temporal and spatial structures and concepts as the springboard for scenographic designs;  “Choreographing Space, Structuring Dance”, a presentation of drawings of choreographed architectures created for dance-based performances; and “Shuttling: Of  Matter, Journey, and Occasion”, a praxis presentation of ephemeral event spaces iteratively developed during a journey.

Linda C. Samuels, Sustainable City Project Director, and her three team members have been selected to attend the Sustainable Cities Design Academy sponsored by the American Architectural Foundation in Washington D.C. this summer. Their application, “Linking the Warehouse Arts District”, was one of eight chosen teams, each of which will receive assistance in further incorporating sustainable initiatives in their urban design problems. 


Dr. Samuels will also lecture on the role of the Sustainable City Project in Tucson’s emerging downtown eco renaissance on April 30th as part of Arizona’s Landscape Architecture Month lecture series. Master of Landscape Architecture candidate, Daniel Morgan, will also discuss how issues of resilience are being explored in Samuels’ current interdisciplinary urban design studio. 

Samuels, Renewable Energy Network director Ardeth Barnhart, and City of Tucson’s Sustainability Director Leslie Ethen’s contribution “Test Case Tucson: Green Walk, Model Block, and Eco Square” has been accepted to the 2013 EcoCity World Summit in Nantes, France.

Assistant Professor Susannah Dickinson will present “Isomorphic City: A Customizable Future Scenario”, co-authored with B.Arch students David Gonzalez and Kyle Szostek at SIMAUD 2013, The Symposium for Simulation in Architecture and Urban Design, in San Diego, April 7-10. 

Dickinson has also published the article, “Balance in Control: The Case of an Urban Design Studio at the University of Arizona” in the March issue of the International Journal of Architectural Research.

Adjunct Lecturers Luis Ibarra and Teresa Rosano, AIA LEED AP, of Ibarra Rosano Design Architects, have had their 2011 lecture at the Universidad San Francisco de Quito, Ecuador published. The book includes images and complete lecture transcripts from all the presenters. (other presenters include: Karen Rogers, Dan Hoffman, Marlon Blackwell, Brian Mackey-Lyons, David Hinson, Steve Badanes, and Daniel Wicke from Rural Studio). Ibarra Rosano Design Architects is a regional winner in the 2010-2012 Sub-Zero Wolf Kitchen Design Competition and will be attending an awards ceremony in Santa Barbara, CA in March, and the national conference in Madison, WI in May.

Using Tablets in Architecture Education

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by Cathryn Ziefle Woodbury University, School of Architecture, San Diego

Barbara Opar, column editor

“Isn’t there an app for that?” is a reasonable question these days and often the answer is, yes. So, when it comes to architecture instruction one should ask, “Isn’t there an app for that?”

Currently, e-books for art and architecture are not plentiful or advanced enough. Nevertheless, most universities do subscribe to e-books.  Most will require the Bluefire Reader app to access them; and all Amazon e-books can be read via the Kindle app.

Ask your librarian what architecture periodicals come with a free digital edition. Otherwise, many architecture periodicals can be purchased through the Zinio app. If you are interested in reading PDFs the GoodReader app allows you to read PDF (and TXT) files of 100MB or more. In addition, you can mark-up the document with text boxes, sticky notes, and free hand drawings. It costs $4.99 but there are free knock-off apps available. Almost all of these apps sync with Dropbox that allows you to access any file that is in your Dropbox from any computer, tablet, or smart phone.

Two of the best apps for reference are Pocket Architect and Buildings. Pocket Architect highlights architectural elements and techniques with pictures, descriptions, and links to more information on the web. Buildings uses GPS-technology to provide information on historic, contemporary, and conceptual buildings around you.

There are a number of apps for sketching and drawing. Depending on what you want to do Penultimate and Sketchbook top the list. Penultimate is the best-selling app for taking notes and sketching. Sketchbook, on the other hand, boasts a complete set of sketching and painting tools for digital art. If it is architectural drawing you want to do, try out the AutoCAD WS or iCad app.

There are quite a few news apps, but Architizer and Design Observer rank among the top. The Architect News app from the website of Architect magazine is also noteworthy.

Perhaps the most innovative apps fall under the “urban studies” category. The ArcGIS app explores the newest ways of using maps. The Business Analyst Online (BAO) app gives demographic and market facts about the U.S. Lastly, although almost everyone is familiar with Google Earth, the app takes it to a new level with access to data like real-time earthquakes, planes in flight, and city tours.

Finally, two apps that are far superior are Urban Augmented Reality (UAR) and Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA). UAR lets you look at buildings past, present, and future in any location (limited to the Netherlands, for now). Moreover, it shares plans, historic photos, biographies, and walking routes. The ZHA app allows you to search the practice’s current portfolio, but more importantly, features augmented reality tours when you visit the buildings.

For a more extensive list of apps and slide show of this article scan the QR code on this page.

Tulane University

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Favrot Professor of Architecture Ammar Eloueini, Intl. Assoc. AIA and principal of Ammar Eloueini Digit-all Studio is one of the five finalist for the prestigious 2012 MoMA PS1 Young Architects Program. He is competing for the opportunity to design and construct an installation within MoMA PS1’s courtyard in Long Island City, Queens. The winners will be announced in February 2012.


Tulane School of Architecture is pleased to announce the publication of Robert R. Taylor and Tuskegee: An African American Architect Designs for Booker T. Washington by Professor Emerita Ellen Weiss from Newsouth Books with a foreword by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. This text interweaves the life of the first academically trained African American architect with his life’s work—the campus of Booker T. Washington’s Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute. Professor Weiss has taught architectural and planning history at many prestigious universities for nearly half a century. She has served on the boards of the Society of Architectural Historians, the Vernacular Architecture Forum, and the Southeast Society of Architectural Historians.

University of Texas at Austin

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As part of the School of Architecture’s continued interest in Latin America, an agreement with the University of São Paulo was signed by UTSOA’s Dean Fritz Steiner and FAU-USP’s Dean Carlos Alberto Ferreira Martins on June 3, 2013. The agreement will create joint programs in architectural history and theory at both universities and will be coordinated by Associate Professor Fernando Lara at UT Austin and Professor Renato Anelli at USP. The agreement is expected to facilitate the exchange of faculty and graduate students between both programs, as well as open other funding opportunities.

In 2013–2014, the University of Texas at Austin, School of Architecture is pleased to welcome Assistant Professors Gabriel Díaz Montemayor, Benjamin Ibarra-Sevilla, and Sarah Lopez to the faculty. 

O’Neil Ford Duograph 5: Paraguay, edited by Barbara Hoidn, was published this summer by the O’Neil Ford Centennial Chair and the Center for American Architecture and Design.

Assistant Professor Matt Fajkus has been honored with a 2013 University of Texas System Regents’ Outstanding Teaching Award, its highest teaching honor.

Wilfried Wang, O’Neil Ford Centennial Professor in Architecture, co-curated the exhibition “Culture:City” with Matthias Sauerbruch, of Sauerbruch Hutton, Berlin, which showed at the Akademie der Künste, Berlin, from 14 March to 26 May 2013. The exhibition continues at the Kunsthaus Graz from 28 June to 13 October 2103. 

Professor Wang served as a member of the jury for the XII Bienal Española de Arquitectura y Urbanismo in Madrid, Spain and as a reviewer for the IX Congreso Internacional Historia de la Arquitectura Moderna Española at the Universidad de Navarra, Pamplona.

Associate Professor Fernando Lara, has authored “Urbanidades.” Those who read Portuguese can follow his writings at: revistaforum.com.br/urbanidades/.

Associate Professor Ming Zhang has co-authored an article, “Predicting Transportation Outcomes for LEED Projects,” in the Journal of Planning Education and Research.

At the request of the Italian Ministry of Culture, Associate Professor Danilo Udovi_ki-Selb has completed a review of fourteen scholarly papers, essays, and articles. The newly established Italian government agency invited internationally selected scholars to evaluate through a peer reviewing process the level and quality of scholarly production in Italy. The field of architectural history and theory was directed by Professor Carlo Olmo from the Politécnico di Milano. The Ministry of Culture announced the work completed on July 19, and the results of the 20-month work were published at ANVUR.org.

Natalie de Blois, pioneering architect at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) and former UTSOA faculty member, died in Chicago, on Monday, July 22, at the age of 92. 

Assistant Professor Petra Liedl is leading the Energy (Ex) Change Conference, being host by the School of Architecture at the University of Texas at Austin.

The conference will investigate By what processes have Munich and Austin come to be recognized as regional centers of energy innovation? What is each doing to enhance energy performance in the built environment, and what could be improved? Most importantly, how can this knowledge be optimized and translated to other regions? The conference is planned for October 1st and 2nd and more information may be found at http://energy-ex-change.com/

Lawrence Technological University

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Associate Professor Joongsub Kim, Ph.D., AIA, AICP received the inaugural Michael Brill Grant Award in Urban Communication and Environmental Design, sponsored by the Urban Communication Foundation and the Environmental Design Research Association. Professor Kim’s study focuses on urban communication and citizen participation in the Rust Belt Region. Professor Kim also presented a poster entitled “The Role of Urban Agriculture in the Design and Planning of Cities and Communities” at the 2011 ACSA National Conference, Montreal, Canada. Professor Kim chairs the American Institute of Architects Detroit Chapter Urban Priorities Committee, which organized the four-month long event called “Detroit: By Design” this past spring and summer. Designers from several countries and the USA participated in the three symposiums and exhibits at the Detroit Public Library, focusing on transportation, urban centers, and urban agriculture.

LTU hosted nearly 100 visitors from the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy to the Wright-designed Gregor Affleck House in August as part of the Conservancy’s Destination Detroit weekend event. Visitors from sixteen states toured the house along with two other Wright designs in the area: the Melvyn and Sara Smith House in Bloomfield Hills and the Dorothy Turkel House in Detroit. Associate Professor and Wright Conservancy Board of Directors member Dale Allen Gyure, Ph.D., organized the Affleck visit and acted as host.

Assistant Professor Jim Stevens organized and conducted a digital fabrication and parametric workshop at Universiteti POLIS in Tirana, Albania.

The College of Architecture and Design (CoAD) is proud to announce the successful completion of the inaugural year of its Master of Urban Design [M.U.D.] Program. Assistant Professor Constance Bodurow, Program Coordinator, reports many successes, including the first student  cohort and graduates, the first annual Sustainable Urbanism dialogue + lecture with Dr. Mitchell Joachim, and the first annual celebration and dinner at the LTU’s Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Affleck House. For more information, go to http://www.ltu.edu/architecture_and_design/urbandesign_curriculum.asp

Fourth-year Architecture students Adam Murray and Mark Schovers took third place in the Integrated Building Design category of the 2011 American Society of Heating, Refrigeration and Air- Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) competition. The students competed against undergraduate and graduate students from around the world as part of Associate Professor Daniel Faoro’s Sustainable Design Studio last Spring. The project outline called for a 23,000 square foot renovation and addition  to The Drakewell Museum in Pennsylvania, Florida. Jurors included members of the LTU University Center for Sustainability and Associate Professor Edward Orlowski, LEED, Professor Will Allen, Assistant Professor Ashraf Rageb, Ph.D, Adjunct Instructors Celeste Novak and Deirdre Hennebury adjunct faculty, and co-advisor Associate Professor Janice Means, PE, assisted the students at quarterly reviews. Their computer models utilized the Green Building Studio® whole building energy analysis software. Athena® software was used to access the LCA and embodied energy data for the project. Profs. Faoro and Means will attend the ASHRAE awards ceremony in January, where the project will be exhibited.

Adjunct Instructor Corrie Baldauf has been awarded a prestigious Kresge Artist Fellowship, sponsored by the Troy-based Kresge Foundation. The twelve award winners will each receive $25,000. They were chosen from among 450 applications from visual artists in the Detroit metro area. This year’s judges included Nick Cave from the Art Institute of Chicago; Mary Fortuna, exhibitions director at Rochester’s Paint Creek Center for the Arts; Mame Jackson, professor emeritus at Wayne State University; Anne Pasternak of Creative Time, Inc.; and Fred Wilson, artist and MacArthur Fellow.

Paul Urbanek, AIA, LEED AP, B.S.Arch.’81, B.Arch.’82, design director and vice president at the Detroit office of SmithGroup, one of the largest architecture and engineering firms in the country, has been named the 2011 recipient of LTU’s Distinguished Architecture Alumni Award. Urbanek’s design portfolio includes civic, commercial, academic, and cultural commissions for national and international clients. His work has been widely published and has received numerous awards at the local, state, and national levels. Recent design accomplishments include the state-of-the-art Clinical & Translational Research Building at the University of Louisville and the James Clarkston Environmental Discovery Center at Indian Springs Metropark.

The work of retired Professors John Sheoris, FAIA, Joseph Savin, and Harvey Ferrero was displayed in the gallery of the University Technology and Learning Center as part of the new Master Practitioner Folio Series presented by the CoAD. Sheoris joined the full-time faculty at Lawrence Tech in 1981 and taught until 2001. A graduate of Yale University with two degrees in architecture, he came to Detroit in 1953 to serve as director of design at Harley, Ellington, and Day. In 1963, he moved to Smith, Hinchman & Grylls Associates, where he became corporate vice president and director of the health facilities division. Sheoris was responsible for the design of major local, national and international health facilities, including a trauma/clinic center in Taipei, Taiwan, and a military hospital in Nuremberg, Germany.

Between 1969 and 2010, Savin taught architectural design at LTU from 1969 to 2010, along with six years at the University of Michigan, where he earned his bachelor’s degree in architecture in 1955. One of Savin’s early jobs was with Eero Saarinen & Associates in Bloomfield Hills where he worked on the TWA Terminal Building. He later became president of Savin, Wycoff, Phillips Architects before branching off to form his own office.

Ferrero taught architecture from 1962 to 2002 and also worked as an architectural illustrator. A 1955 graduate of LTU, he worked as an illustrator for the U.S. Army and later apprenticed with Bruce Goff in Oklahoma for two years before returning to Detroit to become a registered architect and a professor.

Virginia Tech

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Professor Robert Dunay, F.A.I.A., Associate Professor Joseph Wheeler, A.I.A., and Professor Robert Schubert contributed the chapter “Lumenhaus© and the Eclipsis Sun Control System©” to the book Design and Construction of High-Performance Homes. Building Envelopes, Renewable Energies and Integrated Practice (edited by Franca Trubiano; London & New York: Routledge, 2013, p. 235-248).

Professor Robert Dunay, F.A.I.A. and Associate Professor Joseph Wheeler, A.I.A., led a team of six students in a three-week workshop in collaboration with SOM in Chicago. This second workshop over the past year embodies an experimental protocol for the Center for Design Research that integrates teaching and research within an innovative linking of the profession and the academy. The result of this effort is the document, SOM/CDR: Industrial Fabrication, Energy, and the Urban Dwelling. In addition, Dunay and Wheeler delivered lectures at Aalto University in Helsinki, Finland. A conference sponsored by the U.S. Embassy focused on recent research into sustainability and net-zeor energy dwellings. Dunay’s lecture focused on Innovations in Energy Efficient Buildings. Wheeler presented LumenHAUS, winner of the 2010 Solar Decathlon Europe competition, as a case study.

Professor Robert Dunay, F.A.I.A., ACSA Distinguished Professor, was named Design Intelligence Most Admired Professor. This is the third consecutive year (fourth overall) Professor Dunay has been recognized. DesignIntelligence honors excellence in education and education administration by naming 30 exemplary professionals in these fields. The 2013 class of education role models was selected with extensive input from thousands of design professionals, academic department heads, and students.

Associate Professor Dr. Markus Breitschmid, Ph.D., S.I.A., chair of the Core Professional Bachelor of Architecture Program, authored a new book on the œuvre of Basel-based architects Christ & Gantenbein. The book is co-authored with Victoria Easton. The book is published by the German press Hatje & Cantz in an English/German languages edition. 

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