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Pennsylvania State University

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Architecture professor’s firm named Emerging Voices competition winner

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Low Design Office (LOWDO), an architecture and integrated design firm co-founded by DK Osseo-Asare, assistant professor of architecture and engineering design at Penn State, has been named a winner of the Architectural League of New York’s Emerging Voices 21 competition.

Established in 1982, the Emerging Voices award spotlights individuals and firms based in the United States, Canada and Mexico with distinct design voices and the potential to influence the disciplines of architecture, landscape design and urbanism.

Based in Austin, Texas, and Tema, Ghana, LOWDO explores the links between sustainability, technology and geopolitics. The firm’s projects search to find optimal balance between design and resource consumption — to achieve the “most” with the “least.”

LOWDO has earned numerous international accolades in recent years and was named one of the 50 best emerging architecture practices in the world Domus magazine in 2020. The firm was featured in Architect magazine’s “Next Progressives” list in 2019, was a finalist for the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and MoMA PS1 Young Architects Program that same year and was recognized as an emerging architecture firm in the December 2017/January 2018 issues of Architectural Review.

Osseo-Asare and Ryan Bollom, LOWDO co-founders and principals, started the practice in 2006 while they were students at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. The firm was created around the idea that transformative innovation in creative fields “most often originates when the creator must overcome limited means and resources to provide meaning in their work.”

LOWDO will be featured in the Emerging Voices lecture series at 6 p.m. on March 18. More information about the event, which is free and open to the public but requires advanced registration, can be found on the Architecture League’s website.

The City College of New York

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Spring 2021 Sciame Lecture Series

Date: Mar 25, 2021 05:30 PM Eastern Time

Please join us for the new SCIAME Lecture Series, titled And/Or. “Geographies of Absence and Loss” will feature Maram Masarwi and Ahlam Shibli, hosted by Sean Anderson, for a discussion of art and architecture.

Free and open to the public – Please register for this Zoom event here.

In this online series, curators Viren Brahmbhatt, Ali C. Höcek, and Martin Stigsgaard argue that the traditional format of a single lecturer speaking to an audience sets up a binary opposite all of its own — speaker/listener, which simply reinforces the power structure between those who “possess” knowledge and those who “consume” it. In its place, the &/Or Online Dialogues will present two speakers in conversation with each other, moderated by a third. The series features prominent artists, activists, and architects from across the globe who will discuss their work and the unique political and environmental challenges they confront.

Maram Masarwi is currently a lecturer and researcher at Tel Aviv University and the head of the Education Department at Al Qasemi College of Education.  Masarwi holds a PhD from the Department of Social Work at Hebrew University. Her dissertation addressed “gender differences in bereavement and trauma among Palestinian parents who lost their children in the Al-Aqsa Intifada.”  Masarwi was a postdoctoral Fellow at the Europe in the Middle East-The Middle East in Europe (EUME), Forum of Transregional Studies at the Free University of Berlin. Her areas of research have included Palestinian archives, memory and commemoration in Palestinian society, loss and bereavement in Palestinian society, and gender and nationalism in the Middle East. Among her resent publications are The Bereavement of Martyred Palestinian Children: Gendered, Religious and National Perspectives (2019) and “Dialectic of the National Identities in Palestinian Society and Israeli Society: Nationalism and Binationalism,” in The Arab and Jewish Questions, Geographies of Engagement in Palestine and Beyond (2020).

Ahlam Shibli was born in 1970, in Palestine. Through a documentary aesthetic, her photographic work addresses the contradictory implications of the notion of home; it deals with its loss of and the fight against that loss, as well as with the restrictions and limitations that the idea of home imposes on individuals and communities marked by repressive identity politics.

Shibli’s work has been presented in solo and group exhibitions internationally. Her work includes the photographic series Staring (2016–2017), photographed in both al-Khalil/Hebron (Palestine) and Kassel (Germany). Her series Heimat (2016–2017) refers to expellees and refugees of German descent and the so-called guest workers, or Gastarbeiter, from the Mediterranean region, both of whom migrated to Kassel and the surrounding area as a result of the Second World War. Occupation (2016–2017), another series of photographs, is based on the destruction of Palestinian livelihoods in al-Khalil/Hebron and the occupied territories by the Israeli colonial regime and the actions of Zionist settlers. Ramallah Archive (2014) points to ways of reorganizing collective and individual existence encountered in files and photographic negatives found in the Ramallah Municipality Archive. Death (2011–2012) shows the efforts of Palestinian society to preserve the presence of those who have lost their lives fighting against the Israeli occupation. Eastern LGBT (2004/2006) illustrates the bodies of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people from Oriental societies as a contested primary home. These and other of Shibli’s works have been extensively exhibited and published, including the monographs, Ahlam Shibli (2020) and Ahlam Shibli: Phantom Home (2013).

Sean Anderson is Associate Curator in the Department of Architecture and Design at The Museum of Modern Art. A Fellow of the American Academy in Rome, he has practiced as an architect and taught in Afghanistan, Australia, India, Italy, Morocco, Sri Lanka and the U.A.E. His second book, In-Visible Colonies: Modern Architecture and its Representation in Colonial Eritrea (2015), was nominated for an AIFC Book Prize in Non-Fiction. In 2020, he co-curated the exhibition On Muzharul Islam: Surfacing Intention at the Dhaka Art Summit. At MoMA, he has organized the exhibitions Insecurities: Tracing Displacement and Shelter (2016-17), Thinking Machines: Art and Design in the Computer Age, 1959-89 (2017-2018), as well as collaborative collection displays including Surrounds (2019), Inner and Outer Space (2019-2020), and Building Citizens (Present). Sean manages the Young Architects Program (YAP) and the Issues in Contemporary Architecture series. His next exhibition, co-organized with Mabel O. Wilson, Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America, opens on February 20, 2021.

The City College of New York

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Spring 2021 Sciame Lecture Series

Date: Apr 22, 2021 05:30 PM Eastern Time

Please join us for the new SCIAME Lecture Series, titled And/Or. “Architecture and Geographies of Difference” will feature Balkrishna Doshi and Barry Bergdoll for a discussion of art and architecture.

Free and open to the public – Please register for this Zoom event here.

In this online series, curators Viren Brahmbhatt, Ali C. Höcek, and Martin Stigsgaard argue that the traditional format of a single lecturer speaking to an audience sets up a binary opposite all of its own — speaker/listener, which simply reinforces the power structure between those who “possess” knowledge and those who “consume” it. In its place, the &/Or Online Dialogues will present two speakers in conversation with each other, moderated by a third. The series features prominent artists, activists, and architects from across the globe who will discuss their work and the unique political and environmental challenges they confront.

Balkrishna Doshi (B.V. Doshi), the first from India to be awarded the prestigious Pritzker Prize (2018), is one of the pioneers of modernist architecture in India. In a career spanning about seven decades, Doshi completed more than 100 projects, many of which were public institutions based in India: schools, libraries, art centers, and low-cost housing. His understated buildings adapted the principles he learned from working with Le Corbusier and Louis Kahn to the needs of people while considering India’s traditions, lifestyles, and environment. Doshi is an important figure in Indian architecture and noted for his contribution to the evolution of architectural discourse in India.

His more noteworthy designs include the IIM Bangalore, IIM Udaipur, NIFT Delhi, Amdavad ni Gufa, CEPT University, and the Aranya Low-Cost Housing development in Indore which was awarded the Aga Khan Award for Architecture. He has also been awarded the Padma Shri and the Padma Bhushan — two of the four highest civilian awards conferred by the Government of India.

Barry Bergdoll is the Meyer Schapiro Professor of Art History at Columbia University and the former Chief Curator in the Department of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (2007-2014).  A specialist in the history of modern architecture, he has curated exhibitions at MoMA, the Canadian Centre for Architecture, the Musée d’Orsay, and other venues, including Mies in Berlin (2001), Bauhaus 1919–1933: Workshops for Modernity (2009-2010), Rising Currents: Projects for New York’s Waterfront (2010), Latin America in Construction: Architecture 1955-1980 (2015) and Frank Lloyd Wright at 150: Unpacking the Archive (2017). In addition to the catalogues for those exhibitions he is the author of  numerous books and articles including most recently of Marcel Breuer: Building Global Institutions (2017; with Jonathan Massey), European Architecture 1750-1890 (2000), and Karl Friedrich Schinkel: An Architecture for Prussia (1994).

A former President of the Society of Architectural Historians, Bergdoll is the President of the Board of the Center for Architecture, New York.

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

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Illinois School Of Architecture Announces New Cesar Pelli Distinguished Lecture Series

The Illinois School of Architecture is pleased to announce the establishment of the César Pelli Distinguished Lecture Series. The Pelli Lecture Series has been made possible through the generous estate gift of world-renowned architect and celebrated Illinois Architecture alumnus César Pelli. Pelli received his Master of Science in Architecture degree in 1954 from the University of Illinois and went on to design some of the world’s most iconic buildings, most notably the Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur.

Rafael Pelli reflected on his father’s fond memories of the University of Illinois campus, “Coming to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign from Argentina was a seminal moment in my father’s life and career. I remember walking on campus with him while our firm was working on the BIF [Gies College of Business Instructional Facility] project. He remembered his time here very fondly and was very appreciative of the support the University gave to a young man away from his country and family for the first time with no money or connections. The Dean of Students helped him with housing and some teaching work. The Director of the School of Architecture introduced him to an acquaintance in Eero Saarinen’s office for a summer job interview, and he later spent 10 years with the firm. He was struck by the communal aspect of University life, so different than his school experience in Argentina, and my parents always remembered the joy of spending evenings in the Illini Union. He was forever grateful for the opportunity to start a new life at UIUC.”

The Illinois School of Architecture will welcome internationally recognized architect Toshiko Mori as the inaugural César Pelli Visiting Lecturer. Toshiko Mori, founder of the New York-based Toshiko Mori Architect firm and the think tank Vision Arc, will kick off the César Pelli Distinguished Lecture Series on March 3. Mori, a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Design and the Robert P. Hubbard Professor in the Practice of Architecture at Harvard University Graduate School of Design, is well known for her research-based approach to design. Visiting lecturers, like Mori, will engage students in multi-day co-teaching efforts of graduate studio learning and discussion sessions with faculty and students.

“We are extremely fortunate to have Toshiko Mori as our inaugural Pelli Lecturer,” shared Francisco Rodríguez-Suárez, director of the Illinois School of Architecture. “Aside from knowing César personally, Toshiko is well respected both as a professor and a practitioner. Our academic community will benefit immensely from the various events in which we will share her ideas and experience. This is exactly the kind of energy I wish to imbue within the ethos of our School.”

Other upcoming distinguished visiting lecturers include Mark Raymond, Illinois School of Architecture’s Plym Distinguished Professor and prominent Illinois Architecture alumna Trina Sandschafer. Raymond, director of the Graduate School of Architecture (GSA) in Johannesburg, will lead a joint studio between students in Urbana and Africa, and Sandschafer will co-teach an urban housing studio in Chicago with Christina Bollo. You can register for the Toshiko Mori lecture and other upcoming Cesar Pelli Lectures by visiting arch.illinois.edu/about-us/events.

CONTACT: Joshua Hall, 217-244-1368, hall48@illinois.edu

University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

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Social Justice Advocate and Urban Designer Destiny Thomas to Deliver Causier Lecture at UW-Milwaukee

 

MILWAUKEE – Destiny Thomas, a noted anthropologist, entrepreneur and social justice advocate, will deliver the 2021 Charles Causier Memorial Lecture at the School of Architecture and Urban Planning at UW-Milwaukee.

Thomas’ talk, titled “Un-planning Cities: reparative design and atonement in the built environment,” will be take place online on Friday, March 5, at 2 p.m. Please register for the Department of Urban Planning’s annual keynote lecture at this UWM webpage.

Thomas, founder and CEO of the Thrivance Group, is recognized as a national thought leader in designing more equitable cities. Her perspectives help challenge the status quo of professional practices and envision a more equitable and just future.

Thomas’ ideas are particularly relevant for Milwaukee, often ranked as one of the nation’s most segregated urban areas, and in light of protests over racial and social inequality during the last year in southeastern Wisconsin and around rest of the country.

An anthropologist planner from Oakland, California, Thomas has a combined 15 years of experience in nonprofit management and project management in government agencies, including the California Department of Transportation and the City of Los Angeles. Thomas has led advancements in racial equity initiatives in California for more than a decade. She focuses on urban planning, policy writing and organizational development in communities most affected by racial inequities.

“Thomas challenges urban planners and other urbanists to examine their own role in creating racial injustice, particularly in the built environment,” said Robert Schneider, an associate professor of urban planning at UWM. The department recruited Thomas specifically for her emphasis on equity issues associated with planning.

Land-use and infrastructure patterns in southeastern Wisconsin play a role in erecting barriers and denying equal opportunities for residents, particularly those living in the central city, Schneider said. Actions by policymakers, residents, stakeholders and urban planners can contribute to segregated neighborhoods, limited opportunities to access jobs and health care via public transit and streets that prioritize high-speed traffic over local resident interaction and foot traffic for businesses.

Thomas’ interests include: harm-reductive planning, implementing the dignity-infused community engagement methodology, anti-displacement studies, healing environmental and infrastructural trauma, and bolstering agency and voice in marginalized communities within municipal planning processes. She launched the Thrivance Group in 2020 to address these issues. As a culturally rooted, trauma-informed enterprise, Thrivance works to build capacity for those values within municipal agencies, direct service providers and advocacy organizations.

“Milwaukee is an important place to begin the work of improving urban spaces for all, especially the groups Dr. Thomas identifies as marginalized,” Schneider said. “We welcome her to help open our minds to policies and practices that better advance equity and justice in the built environment.”

Thomas was featured on ABC’s “Good Morning America” in July 2020 for her work. Thomas and the Thrivance Group also host the Unurbanist Assembly, a 23-hour, digital event in which more than 8,000 people last year participated in a virtual teach-in that focused on anti-racist frameworks in urban planning, public health and social services sectors. The next Unurbanist Assembly is scheduled to take place in June.

Schneider is available for interviews ahead of the Causier lecture by contacting him at rjschnei@uwm.edu. Thomas also is available for interviews and can be contacted through Schneider.

2021 ACSA Board Candidates and Results

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2021 Election Results

 

The ACSA Board of Directors is pleased to announce the results of the 2021 ACSA Election:

Second Vice President: Mo Zell

At-Large Director: Catherine Hamel

At-Large Director: Kwesi Daniels

They will be joined by Shannon Defranza (Roger Williams University / AIAS) as the incoming ACSA Student Director.

Congratulations to all of the new board members.

 

Candidates and Online Voting

Below is information on the 2021 ACSA election, including candidate information. Official ballots were emailed to all full-member ACSA schools’ Faculty Councilors, who are the voting representatives. Faculty Councilors must complete the online ballot by close of business, February 12, 2021.

+ Download a single PDF of all candidates’ statements & short curriculum vitae 

2021  ACSA SECOND VICE PRESIDENT CANDIDATES

 

The Second Vice President serves on the Board for a four-year term, beginning on July 1, 2021, with the first year served as Second Vice President, the second year served as First Vice President/President-Elect, the third year served as President, and the fourth year served as Past President. The links below include campaign statements written by each candidate and short curriculum vitae.

 
Hazem Rashed-Ali 
University of Texas at San Antonio		Mo Zell
University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
2021 AT-LARGE DIRECTOR POSITION CANDIDATES – POSITION 1

 

The At-Large Directors serve for a three-year term, beginning on July 1, 2021. At-Large Directors serve as voting members of the Board. In addition, they have the following roles and responsibilities: (A) Liaison with Member Schools, including participating in organized business meetings; maintaining contact with Faculty Councilors and others associated with member schools; assisting member schools upon request; advising candidate or affiliated schools; and advising the Board of issues and concerns raised by members; (B) Contributing to the Work of the Board through actively serving on Board committees and contributing to collective deliberations; and (C) Performing other duties, as provided by the Rules of the Board of Directors or requested by the Board. The links below include campaign statements written by each candidate and short curriculum vitae.

 
Kwesi Daniels
Tuskegee University		Vincent Hui
Ryerson University
2021 AT-LARGE DIRECTOR POSITION CANDIDATES – POSITION 2

 

 
Diogo Burnay
Dalhousie University		Catherine Hamel
University of Calgary

                                        

ACSA Election Process

 

ACSA Bylaws, Article VIII. Nominations, Elections, and Recall, Section 3: Election Process: “Elections shall be held in accordance with the Rules of the Board of Directors. Faculty Councilors of member schools shall be responsible for encouraging colleagues to express their views regarding candidates for Association elections, and shall submit the vote of the member school they represent on behalf of all members of the faculty. The Association shall announce the results of elections and appointments as soon as feasible, consistent with the Rules of the Board of Directors.”

The Faculty Councilor from each ACSA full-member school is the voting representative. Faculty Councilors must complete the online ballot by close of business, February 12, 2021.

+ Download a single PDF of all candidates’ statements & short curriculum vitae

 

Timeline

January 13, 2021        Ballots emailed to all full-member schools, Faculty Councilors*
February 12, 2021       Deadline for receipt of completed online ballots
March 2021                  Winners introduced at ACSA Annual Business Meeting

 

* The Faculty Councilor from each ACSA full-member school is the voting representative and must complete the online ballot by close of business, February 12, 2021.

QUESTIONS

ACSA Info

Michelle Sturges
Membership Manager
202-785-2324
msturges@acsa-arch.org

Kennesaw State University

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Liz Martin-Malikian named AIAS Educator of the Year 2020

Kennesaw State University professor Liz Martin-Malikian was recently named Educator of the Year at the American Institute of Architecture Students (AIAS) Honor Awards.

Martin-Malikian, thesis coordinator and professor of architecture in KSU’s College of Architecture and Construction Management, was recognized by AIAS for her outstanding contribution to the education of architecture students, the impact she has made on the education of architecture students and for championing the virtues of excellence in architecture and the environment to the general public. The award also honors educators who align with the AIAS mission to “advance leadership, design and service among architecture students.”

“This award confirms what we already knew about Liz – that she is a first-rate educator who embodies KSU’s value of putting students first,” said Andrew Payne, dean of the College of Architecture and Construction Management. “We are privileged to have her among the faculty in the Department of Architecture, and I’m sure many more accolades will come her way in the future.”

Martin-Malikian has taught at the University since 2006 and has since become the thesis coordinator of the architecture department’s advanced core sequence, one of the few programs nationwide that requires students to pursue thesis projects while earning an architecture degree. Aside from her involvement with thesis sequences, Martin-Malikian teaches courses on environmental technology, materials and methods, third-year studios and urban design. She taught in Auburn University’s School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture as the Paul Rudolph Visiting Professor of Practice prior to arriving at Kennesaw State.

See Kennesaw State University News Link HERE

Dalhousie University

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We are happy to invite you to the Robert H. Winters lecture series Resistance as Practice: Acts of Anti-Racism through Architecture and Planning! The event is hosted by the Dalhousie University Faculty of Architecture and Planning’s Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Committee, in partnership with the SHIFT: Connect conference. Our next event will be on Wednesday, February 25th at 7pm AST, and will be a lecture by Dr. Vernelle Noel. Noel is an architect, design scholar, artist, TED speaker and the director of the Situated Computation + Design Lab at the University of Florida. Through this work she challenges narratives that have excluded traditional ways of making by incorporating them into the practices of automated making, investigating human-computer interaction, interdisciplinary creativity and intersections of these practices with society. Please see the attached announcement for more details on the panelists and the event, and register through Eventbright here.  

The series will extend into March of 2021, and featured architects, planners, scholars and activists whose work focuses on anti-racism on scales local to Halifax, in other Canadian contexts, and internationally. We will end with a panel on institutional barriers to anti-racist work featuring Frank Palermo, Jennifer Llewelyn, and Ingrid Waldron.    

We are organizing this series at a critical moment for architects, planners and other disciplines grappling with difficult histories and professional cultures. This means questioning how designed spaces are embedded with power structures that stratify our society, and how practitioners are implicated in this. Just as importantly, we must acknowledge that this is not a new conversation or area of analysis: racialized communities have developed their own planning and design practices in cities when they have not been heard by the faces of power. This lecture series builds on the ongoing powerful response to racialized violence by presenting the work of practitioners, academics and activists who have pursued these acts of anti-racism as a central focus of their work.

We hope that you’ll join us, and stay tuned for information on events in the rest of the series!

Eventbrite link: https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/dr-vernelle-noel-on-resistance-as-practice-robert-h-winters-series-tickets-140837987211

In Solidarity,

The Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Committee

Dalhousie University Faculty of Architecture and Planning  

New Jersey Institute of Technology

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Spring Symposium eLCAd: Environmental Life Cycle Assessment in Design March 30- April 1, 2021

Organized and sponsored by the New Jersey Institute of Technology and the American Center for Life Cycle Assessment

Truly sustainable design is increasingly driven by a steady stream of reliable data. What was once a field that relied almost completely on heuristics, sustainable design now leverages computationally guided workflows in conjunction with robust databases. How does this data-driven approach to sustainability liberate design where appearance is now decoupled from substance?

The designer’s primary job is to present compelling synthetic solutions that meet people’s needs. Good design, at every scale, stirs emotions while satisfying multiple utilitarian requirements. At this point in human evolution, however, it is necessary –  and possible – to do more. Environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) provides a fact-based scientific approach to evaluate design decisions. It is grounded in a deep understanding of the environmental impacts associated with human-directed natural resource flows and the industrial processes that transform them. Tracking current human impacts on the ecosphere in increasingly detailed ways is critical to reducing and even reversing the negative environmental effects of providing for a global population of nearly 8 billion people.

This inaugural symposium unites these two parallel but separate cultures engaged in dynamic systems thinking. It will explore areas of common cause and mission in two sectors: building and transportation. Through three half days of presentations and working sessions, we will come together to define current and future opportunities brought about through leaps in computational power that promise to augment and improve sustainable design processes at multiple scales.

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