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University of Houston

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Recent graduates: Daphne Dow and Christina Zelbak win First Prize and People’s Choice Award for the Sukkahville Competition in Toronto.

HEGEMONIKON

  • Christina Zeibak and Daphne Dow
  • From Houston, TX

Christina Zeibak and Daphne Dow were classmates at the University of Houston Gerald D. Hines College of Architecture. They both constantly pursue their creative passions not only through architecture, but also through art, photography, competitions, and other forms of design. Recently graduated, they came upon the Sukkahville Design Competition excited and ready for the design-build challenge. They are both currently searching for opportunities to increase and refine their knowledge and skill set as designers and very excited about starting a career in architecture and design.

The inspiration behind Hegemonikon’s design is based on the philosophy of the cube. The Hegemonikon is the seat of the soul which rules and guides all the others, and it is considered to exist within the heart of all things. The complete development of the human Hegemonikon comprises absolute rationality; it chooses action according to reason. The design captures the juxtaposition between the simplicity of the cube and the complexity of the human.

Here are some construction photos as well as commentary on our design winning first prize: 

University of Arkansas

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The University of Arkansas Community Design Center (UACDC), in partnership with the Downtown Little Rock Community Development Corporation (DLRDC), received a $30,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) to prepare a Neighborhood Revitalization Plan for the Pettaway Neighborhood in downtown Little Rock. The grant is one of approximately 20 to 25 grants typically scheduled in the NEA’s annual Access to Artistic Excellence program emphasizing preservation of cultural and historic districts. Planning work will take approximately 10 months and begin this summer.

 In the spirit of the Obama administration’s livable communities initiative, the Pettaway revitalization plan will combine urban redevelopment with affordable housing and public transit planning. The plan will incorporate “low impact development” watershed management featuring green streets that link underutilized parks with new pocket parks, drainage corridors, community gardens, recreation, and pedestrian plazas. A Regulating Street Plan will address transit development patterns in anticipation of a streetcar transit line connecting Pettaway with the downtown business district. A land-use plan will feature pocket neighborhoods with diverse, affordable housing types and mixed uses. The revitalization plan will use townscaping principles with public art to link existing and new neighborhood fabrics that create imagable places within the Pettaway neighborhood.

For the second year, the school partnered with a Little Rock group to design and build an affordable, sustainable home for the historic Pettaway neighborhood. The result is a two-story, 1,000-square-foot, cantilevered home.

Students started the fall semester creating designs in pairs, under the direction of Mark Wise, Visiting Professor. They narrowed those six down to three options – the core, the curtain, and the cantilever designs – that they presented to the community. The cantilever concept won them over, with its two rectangles, stacked and perpendicularly rotated. “It was probably the most exciting and the most kind of conceptually clear design,” Wise said. With four students returning from last year’s project, this house was also a departure from that design. Students built the two modules in a warehouse in south Fayetteville and, in May, shipped them to Little Rock, to finish working on the house.

The house will go on the market for purchase through a continued collaboration with the Downtown Little Rock Community Development Corp. This collaboration on design build homes, expected to continue for the next several years, is intended to help revitalize this neighborhood, which was struck by a 1999 tornado.

The size of the lot — about 40 by 100 — required a compact design to fit the house and onsite parking. The house has two bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs, with an open living, dining and kitchen area downstairs, with a half-bath. Over time, the yellow hue of the cypress rainscreen will weather into a subtle silver, resembling an old barn. To carry the weight of the cantilever — 18 1/2 feet on the front and 11 feet on the back — the long, north and south walls of the top level are big steel trusses. Porches are created in the front and back, expanding the amount of livable space from the small interior footprint. The north wall on the top level is made of Polygal, a translucent polycarbonate material. They wanted this for its insulation value, cost and look. The translucent wall exposes the truss required for the cantilever.

This optional studio is a uniquely holistic educational experience for students, Wise said. “They have a better understanding of the whole process — from design to doing drawings to building it. And the more they know about how things go together, the better they can put things together.” In this program, students also interact with and learn to have empathy for professionals connected to architecture. They realize the importance of clear drawings, as well as timelines, budgets, and being able to adapt when issues arise during the construction process. 

Clemson University

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Clemson School of Architecture Celebrates Centennial with Symposium on “The Architecture of Regionalism in the Age of Globalization”

CLEMSON, SC— Clemson University’s School of Architecture will celebrate its 100th year of architectural education with a symposium on the timely subject of “The Architecture of Regionalism in the Age of Globalization” on Friday, October 18, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. in Lee Hall.

Speakers include noted architectural historian-theorists Alexander Tzonis and Liane Lefaivre, and award-winning, Southeast-based practitioners and educators Marlon Blackwell, Merrill Elam, and Frank Harmon.

Since its founding in 1913, architectural education at Clemson has sought a balance between service to the state of South Carolina and connections to the wider world. Exemplifying this tradition, founder Rudolph “Pop” Lee (1874-1959)—namesake of Clemson’s award-winning Lee Hall—studied engineering at Clemson Agricultural College, a land grant school, but was trained in architecture at Cornell and University of Pennsylvania.

Since then, Clemson’s architecture program has been mindful of the connections between the local and the global, creating a “Fluid Campus” including full-time study centers in the cities of Charleston, SC, Genoa, Italy, and Barcelona, Spain. This geographical approach defined the centennial theme, “Southern Roots + Global Reach.”

The subject of regionalism in architecture has a long history, yet remains timely. Recently, “critical regionalism”—a term coined by symposium keynote speakers Alexander Tzonis and Liane Lefaivre in 1981—was the theme of the August edition of the American Institute of Architects’ magazine Architect.

As Tzonis and Lefaivre noted in their recent book, Architecture of Regionalism in the Age of Globalization: Peaks and Valleys in the Flat World (2012), regionalism is a “never ending challenge” that has become increasingly significant for architects and regional cultures in an increasingly “flat” and interconnected world.

In the symposium, Tzonis and Lefaivre’s global and historical perspective will be complimented by talks from award-winning architects and educators Marlon Blackwell, Merrill Elam, and Frank Harmon. All based in the Southeast, their experiences have been influenced by familiar engagements with local and global cultures, and uniquely fluid geographies and careers.

The symposium, to be followed by a Beaux Arts Ball, marks the fourth and final major event of the school’s centennial year. In March, Clemson celebrated the 40th anniversary of the Charles E. Daniel Center for Building Research and Urban Studies in Genoa. In May, the school celebrated the 25th anniversary of the Clemson Architecture Center in Charleston. And in August, the school celebrated the 45th anniversary of its Architecture + Health Program.

The symposium webpage can be found at http://www.clemson.edu/caah/architecture/celebration/symposium.html.

The event is free, but registration is requested at https://secure.touchnet.net/C20569_ustores/web/store_main.jsp?STOREID=30&SINGLESTORE=true.

 

Contacts:

Kate Schwennsen, FAIA
Chair of the Clemson University School of Architecture
Email: kschwen@clemson.edu
Phone: 864-656-3895

Peter L. Laurence, PhD, Director of Graduate Studies
Email: plauren@clemson.edu
Phone: 864-656-1499

Media Contact:
Jeannie Davis
Email: eugenia@clemson.edu
Phone: 864-656-1821

 

University of Texas at Arlington

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Landscape Architecture students from the University of Texas at Arlington were among the winners of the recently announced Texas ASLA Student Awards for 2011.  The award winners were officially announced at the Texas Chapter of ASLA 2011 State Conference in Galveston, April 27-29, 2011.  Winning entries were also displayed during the conference.

The award winners from UT Arlington were:

  • Overall Winner (Highest Recognition) in Analysis & Planning Category.  Environmental Planning Studio IV Group Project: “Alliance, Texas: Environmental Inventory, Analysis, Planning, Vision”  Recipient Team: Susan Alford, Alexandra Leister, Cuiyan Mei, Yao Lin, Nakjune Seong, Chia-Yin Wu, Sara Kuehn, Yunhui Zhou, with contributions by graduated team member Rhonda Fields.
  • Honor Award Winner (Second Highest Recognition) in Design Category. Urban Landscape/Design Studio V Individual Project: “Re-inventing Junius Heights”.  Recipient: Nakjune Seong.

Both of the projects receiving awards were undertaken by landscape architecture studios at UT Arlington taught by Dr. Taner R. Ozdil as community partnership projects.  The Overall Winner in the Analysis & Planning Category, the Alliance Group Project, was developed in Studio 4 Environmental Planning, in partnership with the Hillwood Development Company. The Re-inventing Junius Heights Project, selected as the Honor Award Winner in the Design Category, was developed in Studio 5 Urban Design and Landscape Studio in partnership with Junius Heights Neighborhood Association.

The mission of the American Society of Landscape Architects is to lead, to educate, and to participate in the careful stewardship, wise planning, and artful design of our cultural and natural environments.

University of Texas at Austin

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Assistant Professor Tamie Glass is the recipient of a 2011 ASID Educator Design Excellence Award for her work on the Mountain Villa Residence. The American Society of Interior Designers recognizes the significant contribution of educators in interior design and this peer reviewed, juried competition honors interior design work at a national level

Associate Professor Danilo Udoviãki-Selb

has published an article, “Facing Hitler’s Pavilion: The Uses of Modernity in the Soviet Pavilion at the 1937 Paris International Exhibition,” in the January 2012 edition of SAGE. Additionally, Il Giornale dell’Architettura has just published Dr. Udoviãki’s review of Renzo Piano’s addition to the Boston Gardner Museum in its January 2012 issue. 

Dean Fritz Steiner‘s and Danilo Palazzo’s book, Urban Ecological Design: A Process for Regenerative Places, was reviewed in a January 24, 2012, posting on the American Society of Landscape Architects’ blog, “The Dirt.”

“Structures For Inclusion” March 24-25, to be held at The University of Texas at Austin is an annual conference that brings together leaders, community activists, designers, students, professionals, and communities alike to reflect, brainstorm, and push forward the field of Public Interest Design. Speakers at the conference will be the 2012 SEED Award recipients. For registration and more information, including pricing and honorary speakers, please visit: https://designcorps.org/sfi-conference/designcorps.org/sfi-conference/.

California College of the Arts

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CCA Adjunct Professor Matt Hutchinson has been selected to participate in the DesCours 2011 art and architecture event in New Orleans. The project, Bayou-Luminescence fuses material surface, structural volume and lighting effects into an immersive spatial experience. It is a collaborative effort, developed and fabricated with Igor Siddiqui, Assistant Professor at University of Texas at Austin.


CCA Adjunct Professor Katherine Rinne’s book, The Waters of Rome: Aqueducts, Fountains, and the Birth of The Baroque City (Yale University Press) won the 2011 John Brinkerhoff Jackson Award for Landscape History from the Foundation for Landscape Studies. Most recently she has lectured about her Roman water research at the University of California at Berkeley, the University of Colorado at Denver, the University of Washington, Drury University, and at Pratt Institute in Rome. Her web-based cartographic research project, Aquae Urbis Romae: the Waters of the City of Rome, <www3.iath.virginia.edu/waters> has been chosen by the Italian Consiglio Nazionale delle Richerche, as one of five international water research projects to be featured at the “World Heritage and Water Strategy” conference to be held in Rome in March 2012.


Museums of the City, an experimental history project by David Gissen, CCA Associate Professor, and commissioned by Geoff Manaugh, appears in the exhibition Landscape Futures,  Center for Art and Environment, Nevada Museum of Art. A catalog of the exhibition is forthcoming from Actar. David recently spoke about Museums of the City at the Event “What is to be Written: A new generation of scholar/critics speaks out”, held at the Graduate School of Design Harvard.

Dr. Mona El Khafif, Assoc. Prof of Architecture at CCA, gave a lecture at the ART CITY BERLIN 2020 conference, organized by Heinrich Boell Stiftung, on July 21st. El Khafif’s presentation introduced a panel discussion and workshop dedicated to operational strategies, defined as cultural impulses, for public space. The session was attended by the artist Harry Sachs from Kunstrepublik, architect Matthias Rick from Raumlabor, curator Ute Vorkoeper, and Mona El Khafif. Returning to San Francisco, El Khafif participated in a panel discussion, titled WHAT IS LANDSCAPE URBANISM? at the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association (SPUR) on July 27th. Her input introduced a range of urban design and research projects developed by students and faculty at the CCA URBANlab that deal with new approaches to ecological urbanism. A selection of this work was also presented on October 15th at the ACSA conference in Houston, titled Local Identities Global Challenges, where El Khafif and CCA colleague Antje Steinmuller presented the paper MADE FOR CHINA: Transcoding Local Patterns into Ecologically High-Performing Urban Prototypes.

CCA Assistant Professor Jason Kelly Johnson and Associate Professor Nataly Gattegno were awarded the 2011 Architectural League Prize for Young Architects. Future Cities Lab, their experimental research practice has also recently won several design awards and commissions including the Trilux Pavilion in San Francisco; Thermaespheres in Athens, Greece; and they were finalists for the Henry Art Gallery Facade project in Seattle. Jason will also serve as co-chair of the upcoming ACADIA 2012 Conference to be hosted at CCA in October 2012. The conference is titled “CRAFTING DIGITAL ECOLOGIES” and is being organized with partners from UC Berkeley and UC Cal Poly.         

CCA Lecturer Liz Ogbu was made a Senior Fellow of the Design Futures Council (http://www.di.net/about/senior_fellows/). She was also selected as part of the inaugural class of “Innovators in Residence” by IDEO.Org (http://ideo.org/fellows), a new nonprofit dedicated to reducing poverty through design and innovation.

CCA Adjunct Professor Liz Ranieri and her partner Byron Kuth’s award winning entry for the 2009 Rising Tides competition, Folding Water, is on view now at the Aquarium of the Pacific’s permanent new exhibit, “Rising Seas.” Their work on elder-care housing was highlighted in a recent interview, “Mixing it up with Elders,” for the online publication ArchNewsNow. In October, Liz and Byron lectured at University of Texas at Austin. The accompanying exhibit “Reflections on Process and Recent Work” is on view at UTSoA’s Membane gallery.


University of Houston

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Professor Patrick Peters and his Graduate Design/Build Studio won the Mayor’s Proud Partner award,  for the second year in a row, for their Solar Shade Tree at McReynolds Middle School. 

The work of Assistant Professor Wendy W. Fok will be featured in various venues:

  • Dubai, UAE – Exhibition: ARA Gallery, Burj Khalifa, Artists – Wendy W Fok / Mona Faisal Al Gurg, Title: “Stereotypical Cultures”, Visual/Aural installation.

  • Hong Kong, HK – Exhibition: HKSZ Bi-City Biennale of Architecture/ Urbanism Exhibitor Selection, Installation: TETRA, Collaboration with: six students from the Chinese University of Hong Kong and Taubman College University of Michigan, curated by Terence Riley and HKIA.

  • Toronto, Canada – Presentation: Pecha Kucha Toronto, 1 of 8 selected practices, presentation for Toronto #10, as Emerging Canadian Design Practice (WE-DESIGNS.ORG, LLC) on 30 September 2011 @ 8pm, Harbourfront Centre, Toronto, Canada, part of the Fall 2011 Architecture Exhibitions.

  • Shanghai, China – Publication: Tongji Architectural Press, part of the CAUP/USC/AAC Exhibition and Publication of DigitalFUTURE, edited and curated by Neil Leach and Philip Yuan. To be published in Chinese and English. Publication date: TBA.

Joe Meppelink, Director of Applied Research,  joined Andrew Schneider on “Bauer Business Focus” to discuss the school’s Green Building Components Initiative.
http://app1.kuhf.org/articles/1311270711-Bauer-Business-Focus-Joseph-Meppelink.html

Patrick Peters, Professor
The University of Houston (UH) has received a prestigious Our Town grant from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), one of only 51 grants of this kind awarded nationwide. The university will receive $100,000 to support the Third Ward Arts Initiative, a series of public art installations, new media initiatives and cultural planning activities in the neighborhood surrounding the central campus.

Industrial Design Juniors – 3 Competition Winners (EunSook Kwon, PhD, Associate Professor + Director of Industrial Design Program)
Three competition winners, Beehive (bee keeper’s jacket), Out of Sight and Out of Mind (glass collecting machine), and Safety Extension Cords (for building construction) were invited to present a poster at the Prevention Through Design Conference, August 22-23, and to deliver a 20 minute presentation at the lunch, August 23.

Dean Oliver hosted Nancy Sutley, chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, during her visit to the College of Architecture. For complete story visit http://app1.kuhf.org/articles/1309299194-White-House-Environmental-Policy-Adviser-visits.html

Under the expert guidance of professor Barry Moore, FAIA, Adjunct Associate Professor, longtime preservationist advocate and practicing architect ,10 graduating architecture students provided their perspectives for transforming the historic Imperial Sugar site in Sugar Land, Texas.

David Ladewig participated in a very ambitious, intensive and interesting International program hosted by the prestigious Bauman Moscow  State Technical University (MGTU) from July 1 – 13. Olga Bannova, Research Associate Professor was selected to serve as a group leader for the event. The US participation was sponsored by the James A. Baker  III Institute for Public Policy (Rice University). Participating students were selected on a competitive basis. The unique international program “Space Development – Theory and Practice” has been hosted by the Bauman University for the past 23 years. This year’s participation included students from the USA, Mexico, Switzerland, Australia, UK, Germany, France, Greece, Sweden, Italy, South Korea and Russia/MGTU. 

The press release on the event can be found on the Russian Space Agency Mission Control website: http://www.roscosmos.ru/main.php?id=2&nid=6668 (You will need to click the link, click English up near the top left, and then hit the back button to be able to read the article if you don’t read Russian)

UH COA student films produced in architecture + film  have been selected to be screened at Architecture Center Houston’s 1st Annual Film Festival (August 11-13).  
The short films had been produced  by COA students (Prof. Dietmar Froehlich) in cooperation with students from the School of Communication (Prof. Keith Houk), University of Houston.
 For more information about the festival and admission fees please visit the
Architecture Center Houston’s 1st Annual Film Festival website.
The feature films selected for the 2011 ArCH Film festival speak to the broad topic of Architecture with each central character challenging any static definition. Humanitarian, aesthete, modernist. Each evening the featured film will be preceded by a collection of juried short films by students. Student films were made as a part of supplemental curriculum and are not necessarily about architecture, students, school, or anything in particular. Come see what plays in the minds of future architects…

Assistant Professor Gregory Marinic’s New York-based architectural practice, Arquipelago, recently has revceived various awards:  The projects were produced this summer with his interns:

  • They recently won the ‘Faith & Form Journal Award for Religious Architecture’ for their project, ‘Capilla de Guadalupe’.  The project will be published in Faith & Form Journal in late 2011.
  • Their project ‘Estonian Flyway’ was selected for exhibition at the Tallinn Architecture Biennale ‘Street 2020’.  The project is currently on exhibit at the Estonian Architecture Museum in Tallinn and proposes a landscape urbanism intervention for central Tallinn. 
  • They recently won the Socio-Design Foundation Award for their project ‘Baltimore Calling’, an urban design intervention for the Baltimore Red Line transit corridor construction zones. 
  • Their projects ‘Mercado La Victoria’ and ‘Baltimore Calling’ were selected for the ‘Leverage, Strengthening Neighborhoods through Design’ exhibition at the Center for Architecture in Philadelphia opening in October. 
  • Their project, ‘Raleigh Racks’ was selected for exhibition at the Urban Design Center in Raleigh in September. 
  • Their project, ‘Cleveland International School’ was exhibited in the 2011 Cleveland Design Exhibition at Cleveland State University in August.
  • Six of their recent projects will be published in two forthcoming books by Seoul-based DAMDI Architectural Publishers Ltd. going to press in late 2011. 
  • ‘Estonian Flyway’ and ‘Baltimore Calling’ will be published in ‘Process’, a special themed edition of AIA Forward journal in Spring 2012.

Ryerson University

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The Department of Architectural Science at Ryerson University is pleased to announce the appointment of Colin Ripley as new departmental chair. Professor Ripley, who has been at Ryerson since 2003, is a partner and director of the architectural firm RVTR (www.rvtr.com), and has been the recipient of a number of awards, including the 2009 Canada Council Professional Prix de Rome in Architecture. He has been published widely both in Canada and abroad and has co-edited the book In the Place of Sound: Architecture|Music|Acoustics.

Beyond his academic and professional engagements, Colin brings to the department a new vision for architectural education for the 21st century – one that is responsive to emergent technologies and encourages cross-disciplinary research. He anticipates that the future will see less emphasis placed on the architect as visionary artist and more on the collaborative work of many professionals – architects, building scientists, project managers. It will be about the coordination of complex processes and teams, operating across global and virtual networks, in collaboration with both human and non-human partners.

“I hope to renew Ryerson’s longstanding commitment to the holistic education of professionals for the AEC industry,” says Ripley,  “and to update that commitment to face the challenges of coming decades.”

Catholic University of America

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Associate Professor, Eric J. Jenkins published the chapter, “A Bit of Europe in Maryland: The Bata Colony in Belcamp” in the book Company Towns of the Bata Concern (Franz Steiner Verlag) edited by Ondrej Sevecek and Martin Jemelka).  In addition, Jenkins’ book Drawn to Design: Analyzing Architecture Through Freehand Drawing (Birkhauser) has been released as an EPUB electronic book and is available on iTunes. The EPUB is unique in that drawings can be reviewed at full scale and the searchable index allows for non-linear readings. Jenkins also lectured and directed a workshop on analytical freehand sketching at Marywood University in Scranton, Pennsylvania.

Associate Professor Adnan Morshed received a publication grant from the Wyeth Foundation for American Art in Spring 2013. In addition, Professor Morshed was one of the organizers of a conference focusing on the challenges of sustainable growth in developing economies at Berkeley in February and a guest speaker in the Spring Lecture Series of the University of Utah’s School of Architecture in March.

Associate Professor Julie Ju-Youn Kim will present the work of the Comprehensive Building Design Studio, entitled “Down the Rabbit Hole and Out Again: Building Technology in the Design Studio” at the BTES 2013 Conference in Rhode Island.  Kim was has also been invited to present her research project on the body, architecture and dwelling (Villa of Veils + Unwrapping the Hanbok) at the Third Annual International Conference on Architecture in Athens, Greece in June 2013.  Recently the studio in which Kim partners, c2architecturestudio, was recognized with an Award of Merit for infoCUBE: light monitors by the 2013 AIA DC Unbuilt Competition.

Adjunct Professor Mark McInturff, FAIA was awarded two Washingtonian Residential Design Awards for his Chesapeake Bay House and Gresser Johnson House.

Visiting Critics and E/L Studio firm principals Elizabeth Emerson and Mark Lawrence earned Washingtonian Residential Design Awards for their 63rd Avenue and Lincoln Street residences.

Each summer, CUA School of Architecture and Planning features numerous undergraduate and graduate level courses. Among these are design studios and elective courses, including history of architecture, graphics, furniture design, theory and computer-aided design/fabrication. The CUA 2013 Summer Institute for Architecture (SIA) is pleased to offer the NADAAA Design studio, led by Nader Tehrani, as the feature summer studio. Julian Palacio, Lecturer, will collaborate with Tehrani in offering this advanced level design studio. The SIA will also host a summer speaker series with Mark Sexton (Krueck and Sexton, Chicago); Lyn Rice (Rice+Lipka, NYC); Nader Tehrani (NADAAA, Boston); and Andrea Leers (Leers Weinzapfel, Boston). Please visit the CUArch website (architecture.cua.edu) or contact SIA Director Julie Kim for more information.

Two CUArch students received awards in the 2013 AIA DC Unbuilt Competition, Andrew Baldwin received an Award of Excellence for his thesis project, Lacrosse as Sacred Iroquois Tradition: The Architecture of Cultural Representation, and Philip Goolkasian received an Award of Merit for his project, the South Capitol Natatorium.

Photo Andrew Baldwin, AIA DC Unbuilt Award 2013

A UCLA-SAHARA Architectural Image Collaboration

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Janine Henri and Alivia Zappas
University of California, Los Angeles Arts Library    

Like many faculty who have been teaching with images for several decades, UCLA Art History Professor Dell Upton’s office is filled with slides. There are drawers upon drawers of images of Quaker meeting halls, Machu Picchu’s ruins, and Jean Nouvel’s Institut du Monde Arabe. In spring 2011, UCLA Architecture, Design, and Digital Services librarian Janine Henri supervised library science graduate student Alivia Zappas, and collaborated with Professor Upton to upload and create records in SAHARA for over 400 of these images, digitized from slides.

The collaborative nature of this project was very much in line with the principles upon which SAHARA was built. SAHARA, the Society of Architectural Historians Architecture Resources Archive was conceived to

“…provide an opportunity for the leaders of SAH, architectural historians, librarians, publishers, technologists, and higher education administrators to study, develop, and implement educational and discipline-based strategies to advance scholarly communication in the context of the ongoing digital revolution in the field of architectural history.”[i]

The collaboration between a professor, a librarian, and a graduate student, enriched the experience and enhanced the image records. The creation of an image’s descriptive record often necessitates research. For images of well-known buildings or sites, minimal research needs to be done: the needed information can be gleaned from consulting a book or authoritative source.  Other less known buildings require a great deal more research.

Professor Upton’s records provided building name and location information only. Janine Henri and Alivia Zappas resorted to creative and rigorous reference work to track down appropriate additional information such as dates, materials, and structural elements.  Zappas was then able to build up the records with detailed technical and descriptive metadata: a feature which will greatly increase the retrievability of the records. Henri and Zappas relied on their knowledge of architecture students’ research needs (gleaned from experience answering reference questions) to determine the appropriate amount of descriptive data needed for each image.

Creating image records in SAHARA turned into a valuable learning experience. An unexpected, but enjoyable benefit of the research undertaken in order to describe images was the opportunity to learn about monuments and sites or the history of construction techniques and built works. The mosques of Cape Town were particularly fascinating. Describing these images involved an exploration of the history of the Bo-Kaap, or Malay Quarter, of Cape Town.

The most rewarding aspect of this project was also one of its most interesting components. Professor Upton’s wide-ranging and high quality slides offered some incredible images.  Many feature vernacular architecture or provide visual information that is not readily available elsewhere.  Making these images available, discoverable, and useful through descriptive data was a productive and satisfying project that will help enhance the teaching and study of architecture. Increasing access to these images (and as a result to architectural information) was addictive, challenging, and delightful!  We encourage other groups of faculty, librarians, and graduate students to take on similar projects and contribute further to SAHARA.

 

[i] Whiteside, Ann, “SAH Architecture Resources Archive: A Collaboration in Changing Scholarship,” Art Documentation, 28 (1) 2009; 4-8.

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