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University at Buffalo, SUNY

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Design for Manufacturing and Construction Degree to Be Offered at the University at Buffalo Next Fall

 

The University at Buffalo School of Architecture and Planning will soon offer a new degree concentration, called design for manufacturing and construction (D-MAC), that combines design, fabrication and construction.

This graduate degree concentration for students in the Master of Science in Architecture program was recently approved by the New York State Education Department for implementation in fall 2026. D-MAC is intended to meet the demand for skilled designers who can bridge the gap between design, architectural fabrication and construction to manage and deliver complex projects at different scales.

Led by Nicholas Bruscia, assistant professor in the Department of Architecture, this program will prepare students by giving them direct access to advanced digital and manual tools in the school’s 11,000-square-foot Fabrication Workshop, where they will engage in industry-leading design methods. As a 36-credit track, the program can be completed in one academic year, culminating in a summer studio that engages industry partners.

“This program will open doors to exciting career opportunities for our students,” says Erkin Özay, chair of the Department of Architecture. “We aim to help students build a versatile skillset, graduating as creative and adaptable designers.”

Graduates can expect to build a working knowledge of production-aware digital practices, material behavior, form optimization and design-to-fabrication workflows. From hands-on studios to advanced research, D-MAC dives into visualization techniques, technically driven inquiry, architectural geometry, construction and digital fabrication.

The university estimates that over 20 students will be enrolled in D-MAC by the fifth year of the program. Qualified Master of Architecture students in the school’s research track can elevate their experience by adding the D-MAC concentration, gaining enhanced access to design and fabrication opportunities with minimal extra requirements.

“This degree program is just the beginning, as we are already in the process of developing additional new programs for desired focus-areas across our disciplines,” says Julia Czerniak, dean of the School of Architecture and Planning. “We look forward to bringing more programs into the fold to offer truly interdisciplinary degree programs.”

The School of Architecture and Planning’s Fabrication Workshop is the hub of the school’s learning-through-making curriculum. Equipped for fabrication of all types, the shop serves both as a space to execute coursework and as a think-tank and makerspace for collaborative research with design practice and industry.

The Fabrication Workshop comprises distinct areas in Parker Hall on UB’s South Campus, including a shop for woodworking, metalworking and assembly, and the digital FabLab, giving students and faculty the versatility to work across multiple scales, from model and component building to full-scale prototyping and installations.

For preferred scholarship consideration, students should apply by Jan. 15, 2026. More information can be found on the school’s website.

University at Buffalo, SUNY

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The Resilient Campus Competition Selects Teams

The University at Buffalo’s School of Architecture and Planning has finalized teams for The Resilient Campus, an international design competition — and ensuing traveling exhibition, public event, and publication — that seeks to thoughtfully advance, widely disseminate, and purposely promote transdisciplinary and transformative knowledge on designing for resilience.

“We received strong entries from around the globe from a wide variety of firms and disciplines that each suggest diverse approaches to the call,” says Jason Sowell, the competition’s professional adviser and an associate professor of architecture at UB.

The selected teams represent 27 cities, 13 countries, and four continents. This international cohort highlights transdisciplinary perspectives in design while fostering global dialogue, uniting academics, students, and professionals, and addressing shared challenges through creativity and innovation.

The competition steering committee has selected the following seven teams that will compete in Stage Two:

  • STOSS Landscape Urbanism + Höweler Yoon Architecture.
  • OBRA Architects + LOLA Landscape Architects.
  • MVRDV + RIOS.
  • MASS Design Group | EinwillerKuehl Landscape Architecture | SITELAB | Second Nature Ecology + Design.
  • LTL Architects + Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects.
  • Barkow Leibinger + TOPOTEK1 + Transsolar KlimaEngineering.
  • ASPECT Studios and Woods Bagot.

The Resilient Campus will leverage the South Campus — an urban campus on its way to becoming carbon-neutral — as its centerpiece. The teams will soon travel to Buffalo for a daylong information session with competition organizers, School of Architecture and Planning faculty-student groups, and university specialists. The competition also provides a great opportunity for UB students to learn from outstanding mentors in their fields.

Teams will have 16 weeks to develop their designs. Submissions will undergo a technical review before being juried by a carefully curated group of design and allied professionals, city representatives, and university administrators.

The winning team will receive $50,000.

Additional information is available at The Resilient Campus’ website.

The project is being funded by the School of Architecture and Planning, with assistance provided by UB’s Graduate School of Education, School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Office of Sustainability, University Facilities and Campus Planning, Design, and Construction.

New York Institute of Technology

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New York Institute of Technology School of Architecture and Design Faculty Release New Book: Alvar Aalto and Urban Design

 


New York Institute of Technology School of Architecture and Design faculty—Robert Cody, AIA LEED AP, M.Arch, Director and Associate Professor, and Angela Amoia, Adjunct Associate Professor—have released their second collaborative book, Alvar Aalto and Urban Design, a follow-up to Alvar Aalto and the Future of Architecture.

This book provides a fresh look at Alvar Aalto’s regional and community planning work, particularly the ways in which he incorporated sustainability, resiliency, energy, and health, and examines how contemporary architects and planners can learn from this approach for the betterment of 21st-century urban design and our future cities. The Alvar Aalto Atelier planned and promoted regional development that combined ecological features, considered density, and offered a framework for informality, including flexible, adaptable infrastructures, with physical plans integrating communities with nature. These plans were largely suburban and contained vital lessons on how to deal with sprawl, traffic, landscape, energy, labor, and industry. This book analyzes letters, writings, and drawings not seen outside the Alvar Aalto Foundation, to review alternative ways to examine suburban landscapes and urban typologies, through sustainability, ecology, and use of digital technologies. This is an essential read for all those interested in the urban design work of Alvar Aalto. Written in an accessible way for those new to the work of Aalto, Architecture and Urban Design students of all levels will also find this a helpful guide on ecologically and socially responsible design.

Alvar Aalto and Urban Design

ISBN 9781032779362

307 Pages 16 Color & 74 B/W Illustrations

The book releases on October 24, 2025, and is available for preorder at https://www.routledge.com/Alvar-Aalto-and-Urban-Design/Cody-Amoia/p/book/9781032779362.

Penn State

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Stuckeman Architecture Lab’s Work To Be Featured at 2025 Beaux Arts Ball in NY

 

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — A new installation by Penn State architecture graduate students under the guidance of Felecia Davis, associate professor of architecture and director of the Computational Textiles Lab (SOFTLAB) in the College of Arts and Architecture’s Stuckeman School, will be unveiled Oct. 3 at the 2025 Beaux Arts Ball, hosted by the Architectural League of New York in the MADE Bush Terminal in Sunset Park, Brooklyn.

Long considered the premier annual gathering of New York’s architecture and design community, the theme for this year’s event is “Pattern Recognition,” and is dedicated to New York’s manufacturers, artisans, designers and entrepreneurs through a reimagined lens provided by Davis and her team, according to the event website.

Davis was approached by the Architectural League of New York’s executive director about the commissioned event opportunity in August 2025, following the popularity of the SOFTLAB team’s responsive textiles work in both the 18th Venice Biennale in 2023 and the “Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America” exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in 2021.

The installation for this year’s Beaux Arts Ball features 12 colorful programmed lamps produced by architecture master’s degree students and Davis’ SOFTLAB team members Seterah Farashzadeh, Yasaman Ghaffarian, Mahtab Khabir and Joshua Jolly in collaboration with Davis, Lee Washesky, lecturer in architecture, and Jamie Heilman, supervisor of the Digital Fabrication Lab in the Stuckeman School. In collaboration with Davis, the lamps will be programmed by Joel Fitzpatrick Lighting Studio.

Shayleigh Larsen, a master’s degree student and research assistant in the Zeis Knitting Lab in the Wilson College of Textiles at North Carolina State University, and Zoe Hezrony, Zeis Lab manager, produced the knitted patterns using Shima Seiki machine technology and flatbed knitting. The knitted fabrics are used to make the body of the lamps that will be mounted in the MADE Bush Terminal space.

The fabric was knitted by Larsen and reveals loose floats or yarns that travel across the interior and face of the material making new traces, according to Davis.

“We also collaborated with William Storms Studio, a Brooklyn-based weaver, to produce three large woven panels depicting historic and current maps of the Bush Terminal area in Brooklyn,” said Davis, who is a researcher in the Stuckeman Center for Design Computing.

The 2025 ball is one of the first events to be held in the terminal, which is being renovated “as a creative, light industrial and manufacturing hub” by the New York Economic Development Corporation, according to Davis.

Learn more about the installation, which “celebrates the quiet attention required to uncover patterns, and the critical imagination required to design new templates for what’s to come,” and find ticket information on the event website.

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