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Pennsylvania State University

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New Exhibition to Examine the Impact of Extraction Economies on Climate Change

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — A new exhibition examining the long-term spatial and ecological consequences of extraction economies and their impact on climate change will run Jan. 31 through March 4 in the Penn State Stuckeman School’s Rouse Gallery as part of the school’s Lecture and Exhibit Series.

“Sentinel Lands: The Geospace of Mine Fires” delves into the activities that caused the Buck Mountain anthracite vein under the town of Centralia in Columbia County, Pennsylvania to catch fire in 1962. Pep Avilés, one of the exhibition curators and an assistant professor of architecture, reminds that early attempts to extinguish the fire were botched by a host of political and technical miscalculations. As a result of those missteps, the former anthracite mine continues to burn to this day, nearly 60 years later.

“The state of Pennsylvania claimed Centralia under eminent domain in 1992, and most of the inhabitants were relocated using state and federal funds,” said Avilés, “Today, only three houses, a municipal building and three cemeteries remain.”

The show argues that Centralia should not be described as a near-ghost town, despite the frequent use of that term, but as a sentinel land, a reminder of the spatial consequences of our country’s economic model.

The exhibition builds on an interdisciplinary research project that was led by several Stuckeman School faculty members and 2018 architecture alumna Miranda Esposito. A previous version of the project, titled “Scorched Earth,” was featured in the 2019 Oslo Architecture Triennale.

Exhibition co-curator Cynthia White, adjunct research associate in the College of Arts and Architecture’s ­­ (ADRI) and a member of the Penn State Microbiome Center, explains that coal mine fires have always been a constant in human history but the number and impact of them has increased significantly, releasing more harmful levels of methane, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, sulfur and toxic particles into the atmosphere.

“Together, these contaminants contribute to climate change and increase the amount of atmospheric pollution affecting the planet,” White said.

Co-curator Laia Celma, assistant professor of architecture, explained that the exhibition concentrates on the cylinder as a formal metaphor for the relationship that our culture of extraction has established with nature.

“The series of objects, images, models, experiments and historical documents selected for the show address the environmental, cultural and social consequences of past and present modes of industrial extraction and present a series of critical spaces emerging at the intersection of geohistory, geobiology and biopolitics,” said Celma.

Celma and Avilés were assisted in the design of the “Sentinel Lands” exhibition by architecture students Audrey Buck, Brad Feitl, Xi Jin and Daniel Lopatka. Can Sucuoğlu, interim director of the Spatial Analysis and Visualization Initiative at Pratt Institute, provided digital and technical knowledge for the exhibition.

The exhibition, which is free and open to the public, will be open Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. in Rouse Gallery, located at the Stuckeman Family Building.

Pennsylvania State University

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UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The Stuckeman School at Penn State is launching a new podcast series that celebrates diversity in the field of design computing on Jan. 26 with Felecia Davis, associate professor of architecture and director of the Computational Textiles Lab (SOFTLAB) in the Stuckeman Center for Design Computing (SCDC), as the first guest.

Titled “Voices in Design Computing,” the series has been organized by Heather Ligler, assistant teaching professor of architecture and a researcher in the SCDC, as part of her work as an inaugural Stuckeman Diversity and Inclusion Fellow. A total of six podcasts featuring design computing researchers from different disciplines, backgrounds and institutions will be released biweekly over the course of 12 weeks during the spring semester.

“The series emphasizes dialogue as a medium for unpacking interpretations of design computing, which is a fundamental research area within the Stuckeman School across disciplines, and aims to foreground an inclusive cross section of computational designers to represent and attract greater equity in the field,” said Ligler.

The target audience for the series, according to Ligler, is current and future students — especially underrepresented students — who may be interested in advanced research-based degrees or careers as computational designers but may not be sure what the field of computational thinking and design computing is all about.

“By talking about the various ways that computing can be interpreted, explored and applied in design, the ‘Voices’ series will help current and potential students imagine diverse futures in design and research,” she said. “By highlighting the people, disciplines and interpretations of design computing, I hope to generate more interest in computational design as an expansive field of study, with transformative social and cultural implications for a variety of creative disciplines.”

Following the Jan. 26 podcast featuring Davis, the remaining podcast release dates and guests are:

  • 9 – Karla Saldaña Ochoa, assistant professor of architecture and leading researcher at SHARE lab, University of Florida School of Architecture.
  • 23 – Huiwon Lim, assistant professor of graphic design, Stuckeman School.
  • March 9 – Shelby Doyle, associate professor of architecture, Stan G. Thurston Professor of Design Build, co-founder of the Computational and Construction Lab and director of the Architectural Robotics Lab, Iowa State University College of Design.
  • March 23 – Kyuha (Q) Shim, associate professor of design and director of the Computational Creativity Lab, The School of Design at Carnegie Mellon.
  • April 6 – Derek Ham, department head of art and design, associate professor of graphic design and affiliated assistant research professor of architecture, NC State University College of Design.

The podcast episodes will be available via sites.psu.edu/voicesindesigncomputing.

Pennsylvania State University

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UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — A new book co-edited by Rahman Azari, associate professor of architecture at Penn State, offers a variety of perspectives and first-hand experiences from scholars and experts in building science and technology on using various research methods — from simulation-based to experimental methods — in answering the key research questions of the field.

Azari, who is also the director of the RE2 Lab in the Stuckeman School’s Hamer Center for Community Design, co-edited “Research Methods in Building Science and Technology” with Hazem Rashed-Ali, associate professor and associate dean of research and innovation at Texas Tech College of Architecture. It has been published by Springer Nature.

The book covers various methods of data collection and analysis, including measurement-based methods in which data is collected by measuring properties and their variations in ‘actual’ physical systems, simulation-based methods that work with ‘models’ of systems or processes, and data-driven methodologies in which data is collected via measurement or simulation to identify and examine the associations and patterns.

The application of these methods is explored within specific areas of building science and technology, including window systems, building enclosure, energy performance, lighting and daylighting, computational fluid dynamics, indoor and outdoor thermal comfort, and life cycle environmental impacts.

More information on “Research Methods in Building Science and Technology” can be found on the Springer website: link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-73692-7.

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