Pennsylvania State University

Bringing the spirit of a legendary artist and educator to a new generation

UNIVERSITY PARK, PA. – Robert Reed, an influential artist best known for his use of geometric abstraction, dedicated most of his life to art and teaching. He spent more than half a century as an educator in higher learning, holding positions at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and Skidmore College before joining the Yale School of Art in 1962, which is where he remained on the faculty for 45 years until his death in 2014.

Reed was the first – and remains the only – African American professor tenured by the Yale School of Art, and he was the recipient of the 2004 College Art Association Distinguished Teaching of Art Award.

When he wasn’t working on his own artwork, which he kept under wraps so his students wouldn’t feel influenced, Reed was a busy man. He curated exhibits, hosted drawing workshops and lectured at other colleges and universities around the world, all the while encouraging thousands of students to think beyond their preconceived notions about art and drawing.

Reed was relentless in both his passion for educating students and his belief that foundation studies were the basis for artistic development. According to many of his former students and associates, he believed the creative process is founded on observation and discipline, and that anyone who was given the time and encouragement could create something wonderful, no matter their chosen discipline of study.

“He wanted his students to check what they thought they knew about art at the door when they came in his classroom,” said Clint Jukkala, dean of the School of Fine Arts at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and a former teaching assistant and colleague of Reed’s at Yale. “He was interested in really immersing students into a creative exploration rather than focusing on the end result.”

One of the ways he did that, explained Jukkala, was to have students get their whole bodies involved when creating a drawing. The physicality of his approach pushed students beyond the boundaries of their comfort zones but also allowed them to focus on the process and less on the product they created at the end of the exercise.

Another student who was inspired by Reed’s unique approach to teaching is Cathy Braasch, assistant professor of architecture in the Stuckeman School at Penn State. The impact of Reed’s courses has guided Braasch in both her work as an architect and educator.

“He had a unique way of approaching drawing that translates across disciplines,” she said. “In my teaching, I am always thinking about his innovative assignments and the amazing studio culture he created. I wanted to bring that energy he had to others.”

Despite many of his former students crediting Reed for his influence and unique creative process, Braasch said that his teaching and pedagogy was undocumented. So, she set out to make sure Reed’s teachings and methods could be shared with a new generation of students.

Thanks to funding and services provided by organizations at Penn State (Africana Research Center, Center for Pedagogy in Arts and Design, College of Arts and Architecture, Palmer Museum of Art, President’s Fund for Research in Undergraduate Education, Schreyer Institute for Teaching Excellence, School of Visual Arts and Stuckeman School) and external sources (Blick Art Materials, Hunter College Department of Art and Art History, the Estate of Robert Reed, Whitney Museum of American Art, Wkshps, Yale Alumni Association of Central Pennsylvania and an anonymous donor), Braasch was able to organize the Robert Reed Drawing Workshops earlier this year at Penn State and in New York City.

At Penn State, almost 200 students from different colleges and universities and 25 instructors attended three days of lectures, panel discussions and, of course, drawing workshops that centered around Reed’s work and pedagogy. In New York, another 100 students and 23 instructors attended workshops and panels at Hunter College and the Whitney Museum of American Art. Braasch also organized exhibitions of Reed’s work and pedagogy at both the Palmer Museum of Art and the Rouse Gallery at Penn State, and at Hunter College in New York.

Workshop topics varied – from sensory material to drawing in three dimensions and negative space to drawing on the page versus drawing on the floor –  but the energy and spirit of the events were “very Robert Reed-esque,” said Jukkala, who served as an instructor and moderator at the Penn State events.

“There was very much a celebratory feel throughout the workshops and discussions but yet students were there to work, and they worked hard, often times far outside of their comfort zones. That is exactly how Reed workshops were run,” he said.

Reed, explained Braasch, referred to class assignments as investigations, which allowed students down a path of exploration and discovery in their drawing. He was very demanding of his students, she said, but he was also very nurturing of their individual ideas and thought processes.

“He had very high expectations of his students, but he was much more interested in the effort and care they put into their work than their raw talent,” commented Jukkala.

Like Jukkala and Braasch, most of the workshop instructors, panelists and moderators were either Reed’s pupils or his teaching assistants, including Dylan DeWitt, a former graduate student of Reed’s at Yale who is now a clinical assistant professor of drawing at the University of Arkansas School of Art. DeWitt led workshops both at Penn State and in New York and said the spirit of Reed’s pedagogy was carried throughout all of the events.

“What stands out to me most [about Reed], and what I’m always trying to achieve in my teaching, is his way of balancing rigor and flexibility in the classroom,” DeWitt said. “He had a series of steps students had to take in his drawing classes, but it wasn’t a formulaic process and he ultimately let us reconsider the direction we would take our drawings. I felt that approach in these workshops and it was really great to see students trust the process and really create some amazing pieces along the way.”

Jukkala agreed that Reed’s touch was felt throughout the workshops but was happy to see the presenters offer their own spin on their topics.

“There was a fun, energetic, almost think tank-like environment throughout the workshops and it was so great to see how instructors drew inspiration from Reed and all had different approaches to leading their exercises,” he said.

Alec Spangler, assistant professor of landscape architecture at Penn State, said that while he hadn’t specifically heard of Reed before Braasch put out a call for workshop proposals, he recognized what may have been some of Reed’s influence from his days in art school. Spangler earned a bachelor’s degree in visual arts, a master’s in fine arts and a master’s in landscape architecture.

“A practice of Reed’s that I think is important, particularly when I am teaching introduction and skills courses, is his idea that drawing is a form of calisthenics,” continued Spangler. “It’s about rigorously and repetitively training not only the muscles in your hands and arms, but also training your brain and your creative muscles to think about drawing as a process. I think it allows students to focus less on the end product and more on the creative process.”

Elizabeth Rothrock, a master’s degree student in architecture at Penn State, participated in the events on campus because, she says, there aren’t many academic options in her studies that focus exclusively on drawing.

“It was great to engage my mind in an architectural way without some of the same constraints I’ve been so accustomed to,” she said. “I think I learned a lot about my personal ways of expressing my ideas as well as seeing so many other views.”

Braasch says that while she is “absolutely thrilled” by the reception of the Robert Reed Drawing Workshops, she has set her sights even higher and will be writing a book to help educate even more people on Reed’s influence, work and pedagogy.

The book, she says, will be an opportunity to document his influence on teaching art and design in higher education and to share his teaching with new audiences.

“I’m just one of his many students who has been forever transformed by his teaching.” Braasch explained. “I feel grateful that I have had the opportunity to share his work with a larger audience and to make his legacy more visible.”


For more information on Pennsylvania State University, visit their profile page.

Accreditation Changes on the Horizon

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The ACSA Board of Directors met in July alongside the boards and appointed representatives of the other four collaterals, AIANCARBNAAB, and AIAS, as well as the Presidents of NOMA and the CCCAP to provide feedback on the 2020 conditions and procedures for accreditation. Bruce Mau provided a thought-provoking keynote to launch the three-day Accreditation Review Forum (ARForum19), reflecting on the critical ways in which design shapes the world around us. Mau challenged the group to think bigger, in consideration of the health, safety, and welfare of all livings things, not just humans. He also reflected on the rapid pace of societal changes and the mandate to prepare students to engage in this unpredictable context during the span of their careers.

Mau’s words provided a fitting foundation for the next two days of meetings. However, the planning process for ARForum19 began over a year earlier through the formation of the Steering Committee and Task Force. Comprised of representatives from all five collaterals, these committees collectively authored “Draft 0” of the new conditions and procedures for accreditation that were released for public comment in May 2019. On behalf of the ACSA Board of Directors, I would like to express my appreciation to Bruce Lindsey, Rebecca O’Neal Dagg, and Michaele Pride for their work on the Steering Committee and John Cays, Tom Fisher, and David Hinson for their contributions to the Task Force. The committees sought to advance the accreditation process by promoting excellence and innovation; allowing greater flexibility; encouraging program distinctiveness; supporting equity, diversity, and inclusion; increasing access to the profession; stimulating the generation of new knowledge; and protecting the public interest.

The “Draft 0” documents propose numerous and substantial changes to the accreditation process for architecture schools. Most notably, Realms and SPC have been replaced with Program Accreditation Criteria and Student Accreditation Criteria, with significant revisions to the evidence requirements for student work. Evidence would no longer be required for criteria at the level of “understanding.” In its place, programs would submit course materials such as syllabi, tests, etc. as documentation. These materials would be provided to the visiting team 45 days before the visit with the potential of shortening the in-person visit by a day. The conditions also place greater emphasis on self-assessment processes in lieu of student evidence. In addition, the terms for continuing accreditation would also change, eliminating the four-year term, and two and five-year interim progress reports. Under the proposed procedures, schools would receive an eight-year term if all conditions have been met, or an eight-year term with a plan to correct, requiring programs to address any deficiencies within three years.

ACSA received numerous detailed comments on the “Draft 0” documents, which were shared with the NAAB and discussed by the board prior to accreditation conference. (Refer to this link for ACSA’s response.) The comments generally focused on the cohesiveness, consistency, and clarity of expectations and requirements of programs. During the forum meetings, the ACSA board and representatives engaged in productive dialogue with the other attendees to provide feedback to the NAAB as it prepares for the release of “Draft 1” of the standards, expected to be available in early September. ACSA will host a workshop to discuss the new documents at the Administrators’ Conference in New Orleans on Thursday, November 7, 2019. The public comment period for the next draft will end a few weeks later on November 22, 2019. Please take time to review the draft conditions and procedures and share your feedback with ACSA. We value your input.

Through the convening of the full boards of all five collaterals in architecture, ARForum19 provided a meaningful opportunity to achieve short-term outcomes while also engaging in long-term visioning. In addition to the feedback shared on the accreditation documents, we also responded to Bruce Mau’s prompt to think bigger and to consider the collective goals and ambitions that we share for the future of architecture. The next meeting of the Presidents of the five collaterals in October 2019 will be dedicated to prioritizing and advancing many of the long-term shared goals identified in the meeting.

I would like to thank Kevin Flynn, NAAB President, and Helene Combs Dreiling, Interim NAAB Director, for their leadership and efforts to ensure the success of the forum, and for their dedication to the advancement of architecture education.

Rashida Ng, ACSA President

arch_TECHA_ture: An Interview with Cathryn Copper

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AASL Column, August 2019
Lucy Campbell and Barbara Opar, column editors
Column by Cathryn Copper, Head of the Art & Architecture Library, Virginia Tech
Cathryn Copper addresses a list of questions compiled by Lucy Campbell on a new initiative she is undertaking at Virginia Tech

arch_TECHA_ture: An Interview with Cathryn Copper

arch_TECHA_ture (“techa” a play on technology and bibliotheca, Latin for library) is a curation project created by Cathryn Copper that gathers information at the intersection of art, architecture, and design-related fields, technology and education. We sat down with her to hear more.

Hi Cathryn. How did you first get involved in technology and the creative disciplines?

It was partially serendipitous. I did my graduate work at the University of Toronto’s iSchool. There I focused on information systems and interned with a few architecture firms and think tanks. Fast forward a few years, I attended a conference session solely because the presenters were librarians at the University of Toronto. The session was on the use of iPad apps which gave me the idea to research mobile apps for architecture. That idea really took off and opened a lot of doors for me. I noticed a lot of art and architecture librarians were interested in technology but not a lot was being done on the topic.

You describe this as a “curation project” where do you see it going?

I use the term curation project because arch_TECHA_ture offers a quick look at topics at the intersection of design, information, and technology. I always provide links to more information, so readers can make informed decisions on a topic. As of current, I’m gauging interest. If it turns out it’s worth my energy, then I’d like to see it evolve into a more critical platform where we can have healthy discussions on these topics. I’d love to get more voices involved. Then it could truly be a platform to connect with people from across disciplines and launch projects together—still a curation project, but on a larger scale.

Can you tell us more about the educator-as-futurist model you have adopted, and what makes it distinctive?

I use the term “educator-as-futurist” to mean forward-thinking. But, there are no expectations and it’s not meant to be extremist. It’s really about being okay with experimentation and failure or the willingness to try something new. What makes arch_TECHA_ture distinctive is that there is no other place on the Internet, that I know of, addressing the intersection of design, technology, and education from the perspective of a librarian, someone that sits on the edge of all three.

As an art and architecture aficionado and tech lover, what are some of the technology trends you see impacting libraries and the design disciplines?

Without hesitation, augmented reality and virtual reality. There is so much potential for those technologies in libraries and the design disciplines alike. For libraries in particular, artificial intelligence. Information can be delivered in much better and more personalized ways and future generations are going to expect it.

What new projects are you working on that are destined to be included in arch_TECHA_ture?

There definitely will be no shortage of content. First, the Art & Architecture Library is experimenting with hybrid collections. We will be testing the use of our physical collections as an access point to our electronic collections through the use of interactive touch screens. Building on the transition for physical to digital, we are exploring 3D scanning technologies, which should be especially interesting to arch_TECHA_ture readers. More long-term projects include applying for a grant to develop augmented reality for libraries, and the development of Virginia Tech’s Innovation Campus.

What has surprised you most in your research into tech and libraries?

The slowness. There are a million amazing ideas. Only a few come to fruition because of limited time and money. It’s frustrating because I see the potential for libraries to interact with users in much better ways. I’ve been thinking about artificial intelligence in libraries for over a decade, and just this year I attended my first conference presentation on the topic, which was at a macro-level. So, it takes time.

What do you see as some of the big changes in academic libraries over the next five years?

In libraries generally, a shift to collaborative spaces is already happening. Academic libraries have the potential to function a lot like a WeWork, which are shared workspaces for startups. Also, I see more attention on dispersed libraries and library networks. Our footprint can spread much further if we don’t think of a library as one central space. Drone delivery would be cool too, but that’s probably closer to 10 years away. Art and architecture libraries face unique opportunities, in that our users generally want more traditional library spaces, and that’s okay. It adds diversity to the library landscape.

University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

The Illinois School of Architecture Appoints Suchi Reddy as the 2019 Plym Distinguished Visiting Professor.

For Immediate Release
August 6, 2019

The Illinois School of Architecture is pleased to announce that Suchi Reddy, Founding Principal of New York based architecture and design practice, Reddymade, has been appointed as the Plym Distinguished Visiting Professor in Architecture for the Fall 2019 semester. Professor Reddy will lecture and conduct a graduate design studio co-taught with Kevin Erickson, Associate Director and Associate Professor in the School of Architecture.

The studio will continue Reddy’s architectural pursuit of “form follows feeling,” exploring the idea that qualities of space calibrated carefully to the human, can influence physical and emotional well-being. Students will examine contemporary architectural experience through the lens of neuroaesthetics, neurophenomenology, and sensory design, with the goal of creating an expanded vision of the ways in which architecture can influence emotional and physical well-being.

A recent project illuminating this sensibility is “A Space for Being,” Reddymade’s Milan Design Week installation for Google, in collaboration with Muuto and the International Arts + Mind Lab (IAMLab) at the Brain Science Institute at Johns Hopkins University. Reddymade has won numerous awards including NYCxDesign, AIA Brooklyn + Queens Award, AIA New York State Excelsior Award and Interior Design’s Best of Year awards. Reddy is a member of the Van Alen Institute Leadership Council and Board Member of the Design Trust for Public Space and Storefront for Art and Architecture.

The Plym Distinguished Visiting Professorship has been made possible by a gift to the School in 1981 by the late Lawrence J. Plym. Past Plym Professors have included Gunnar Birkerts, Paul Rudolph, Joseph Esherick, Minoru Takeyama, Edmund Bacon, Thom Mayne, Carme Pinos, Dominique Perrault, Frances Halsband, Norman Crowe, Ken Yeang, Kengo Kuma, Kenneth Frampton, and most recently Gong Dong of Vector Architects.

Tulane University

Title: Archinect Interviews Dean Iñaki Alday

Aug 6, 2019

Archinect magazine recently interviewed Tulane School of Architecture Dean Iñaki Alday as part of its Deans List interview series with the leaders of architecture schools, worldwide. The series profiles the school’s programming, as defined by the dean – giving an invaluable perspective into the institution’s unique curriculum, faculty and academic environment.

For this installment, Archinect spoke with Iñaki Alday, the new dean at the Tulane School of Architecture. The school hosts a variety of degree and specialized programs that combine architecture, real estate development, historic preservation, and community-driven focuses to provide a holistic design education. Dean Alday recently took the reins of the school with the aim of leading the Gulf Coast region and country, overall, in terms of “what it means to live with water.”

Read below for the full story or click here for the original piece in Archinect by Managing Editor Antonio Pacheco (TSA *14).

Briefly describe Tulane School of Architecture’s pedagogical stance on architecture education.

Tulane School of Architecture has a history of commitment to real, pressing issues, and, especially after Hurricane Katrina, a history of leadership in helping our communities rebuild. We are not interested in the endogamic discourses that have occupied academia for decades, taking us away from society and relevancy. In the past, many schools of architecture have failed as educators and as leaders of our societies. Therefore, our school focuses on urgent problems, not self-indulgent fictions. The school is in the heart of the “Third Coast”–the American Gulf Coast–where all the challenges of human inhabitation of the planet are at play. This exceptional location, being in the Mississippi Delta, also provides us with the opportunity to define the role that architecture can take in facing climate change—including other ecological crises, as well as in the process of urbanization under these circumstances—and the challenges of social and environmental justice that follow.

What insights from your past professional experience are you hoping to integrate/adopt as dean?

A significant part of my professional practice is focused on the connection between cities, and buildings, with rivers and their dynamics. For example, my partner Margarita Jover and I were among the first to “design” the flood that occupies a public space and a building (an arena) in Spain, starting a line of investigation that changes the idea of flooding (and all river dynamics) from a catastrophic event into a positive asset. Since then we have been planning, designing, and building “hybrid infrastructures” in Spain, Asia, and Latin America, and also, working as regular experts for the World Bank. This type of creative, innovative design work is key for Tulane as it seeks to lead the region and country in terms of what it means to live with water.

Academically, I enjoyed being chair of the Department of Architecture at the University of Virginia (2011-16), where I founded the Yamuna River Project together with Pankaj Vir Gupta, an interdisciplinary research program whose objective is to revitalize the ecology of the Yamuna River in New Delhi, thus reconnecting India’s capital city back to the water. This project is proof of how architecture and urbanism can approach complex problems holistically while incorporating multiple fields (history, art history, engineering, economics, religious studies, entrepreneurship, engineering, environmental sciences, and politics, for example). It is a great example of making an impact in one of the toughest urban crises. We are continuing with the project at Tulane, expanding it to other cities in India and the Global South.

Rivers and their associated communities are at the frontline of climate impacts. Globally, river basins provide the majority of the world’s food and freshwater, and more than 500 million people live on river deltas, which also form the major ports of the world. Along the roughly 2,300 miles of the Mississippi River alone are situated at least seven major urban centers, while 50 cities rely on the Mississippi to provide drinking water for 20 million people. The Mississippi River Basin, the world’s fourth largest river basin, spans 31 states and two Canadian provinces, providing more than 40-percent of US agriculture with water while producing $400 billion of economic activity. It is among the leading locations facing significant conditions of accelerating risk, as well. Similar conditions are replicated in multiple river basins across the planet, especially in the Global South, where regions are facing the crises of pollution, floods, and scarcity, and, most critically, in urbanized contexts and in the rapidly growing megalopolises in South East Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

What kind of student do you think would flourish at Tulane University and why?

At Tulane, a student needs to be committed, not only to excellence but also to stepping out of her or his comfort zone, collaborating with other fields inside the school (architecture, preservation, sustainable real estate), and with those outside the school (science and engineering, social sciences, economics, humanities, and law). And above all, our students are encouraged to look beyond themselves, to avoid cherry-picking problems, and to committing to positively impacting the lives of others. The Albert and Tina Small Center for Collaborative Design works directly with communities, URBANbuild produces a yearly miracle of an affordable house designed and built by students, and our river and delta urbanism research offers a unique approach and a track record of substantial impact in the cities set alongside the Mississippi River and alongside the rivers of India, Argentina, and Ethiopia.

What are the biggest challenges, academically and professionally, facing students?

The recovery of architecture as a relevant discipline in the collective imagination is the biggest challenge. Architecture needs to be at the table where big decisions are made. This is the challenge that our students need to take on, and will become experts in, after 50 years of architecture being isolated in disconnected academic discourses or assuming the role of pure service provider. The new generations have the mandate of recovering the leadership role that society and the planet need.

What are some of the larger issues of “today” that you feel an architecture school should be preparing its students for?

We are in the midst of the most significant environmental and social crises, one that is even threatening our own existence on the earth. We urgently need to change the way in which we are inhabiting the planet, change how new buildings perform, how they serve people, how they look, and where they are located. And similarly, we need to rethink what and how to preserve, where and how to develop, and how our cities should be symbiotic with natural elements. Right now, architecture is losing relevance in discussions about the built environment in many countries around the world, and most strikingly, in the United States.

At Tulane, we train students with a holistic approach, giving them interdisciplinary tools to help them learn to identify which are the most pressing issues so they can figure out how to apply their design, preservation, or sustainable real estate development education in order to address them. We advocate for the production of knowledge and innovation through design, which for us, is understood as the creative management of complexity. When we, as architects, are able to go beyond our personal preferences, there is no other kind of professional better prepared for dealing with the complex and uncertain world around us.

What are some of the advantages of the school’s context—being housed within Tulane University as well as in New Orleans—and how do you think they help make the program unique?

Tulane University is a top-tier research university, and the perfect size for interdisciplinary collaborations, which is a priority of the university president, provost and all the deans here. From my perspective, “curiosity” and “ambition” are the two words that define Tulane today and that’s what attracted me here. New Orleans is also the northernmost tip of the Global South. Both facts together position Tulane uniquely as the only top research university that is located in a place that deals with all the challenges—social, environmental, economic—in the most exciting, dynamic, and needed region in the world. And our university is committed to work that brings innovation by crossing disciplinary boundaries. This is the only school of architecture that has fully committed to rebuilding a city after a major catastrophe like Hurricane Katrina. Solving urgent problems, housing people, working with communities to bring them back, developing new scenarios to inhabit our rivers and deltas—those issues are deeply rooted in Tulane’s identity. Because of the uniqueness of Tulane, the School of Architecture is a school that has no parallel.

Tulane needs to keep growing and positioning itself as a genuine voice, very different to our peers due to our unique ecosystem and concerns. We are already a driving force in New Orleans and the region; however, we should also become an international reference working on comparative methods. Our challenges are the world’s challenges, and the best way to learn and move forward is to hold a continuous back and forth between our attention to the local conditions and the lessons learned globally.

Tulane School of Architecture has a significant record of working within the New Orleans community, how will you take on that legacy?

First of all, we should probably say “communities,” as New Orleans is a diverse city with many different communities. They are always complex and contradictory—And there is never a single belonging, but often multiple and always nested systems of them. That being said, New Orleans epitomizes the challenges of thousands of towns, cities, and metropolises set alongside American rivers. We are at the intersection of floods, scarcity, pollution, land loss, and other riverine environmental issues, and we are dealing with the societal impact of those as well as the impacts of post-industrial economic stagnation, transportation crises, and other social challenges. Working from New Orleans—a microcosm of global issues—the Tulane School of Architecture is well positioned to lead the work in terms of how to relate our cities and our rivers in a completely different way. Floods are here to stay, and we have to design our spaces to make them productive—instead of catastrophic—by turning floods into an opportunity rather than a threat. Instead of walls, our rivers and cities deserve public spaces that can navigate the changes and recover healthy ecologies. Buildings need to be adapted to leverage the river or the delta, as well. This is a natural human inclination, but now we must apply it in a different way, undergoing proper transformation.

Can you speak to the nature of collaboration that exists between Tulane School of Architecture’s various programs (Architecture, Preservation, Real Estate Development, the Albert and Tina Small Center for Collaborative Design, URBANbuild, Social Innovation and Social Entrepreneurship) and your plans for those efforts?

Tulane School of Architecture offers the essentials we need to rethink how to inhabit our planet: what and how to preserve, where and how to sustainably develop the land, and how to design buildings, public spaces, and cities. Dual degrees are excellent choices that round-out an effective education and prepare our graduates for thinking broadly, creatively, and responsibly. We have interdisciplinary studios among the three programs, design-build studios with our community partners, and a wide range of courses open to all Tulane students. All in all, every student has the opportunity to excel in her or his degree while being knowledgeable about other areas. An architect needs to know how to deal with existing buildings and to understand the logics of real estate development. Similarly, historic preservationists incorporate design and advanced digital tools while understanding the economic implications of their work, including the risk of gentrification. And a developer of the future cannot be anything other than sustainable, must understand the potential of reusing our heritage, and know how high-quality design improves the conditions of life.

Tulane University

Title: First-ever Research Studios Announced

Jul 31, 2019

Starting Fall 2019, students at Tulane School of Architecture will be part of design research that tackles some of the world’s most pressing contemporary problems through architecture. The school recently selected its first-ever Research Studios that will focus on a single topic, place, or phenomenon over three years, delving into greater detail and complexity in each cycle. Each studio will work toward the production of scholarly outputs such as books, monographs, articles, symposia, and exhibits. Students will have the opportunity to select several of these studios during their time at Tulane.

Call for Nominations - 2020-2021 ACSA Board of Directors

2020-2021 ACSA Board of Directors
Deadline: October 16, 2019

The ACSA invites nominations and self-nominations for three positions on the Board of Directors. Please review the following eligibility requirements, timeline, and background information that describes the organization’s intended directions in the coming years.

Open Board Positions: Second Vice President, Secretary/Treasurer, At-Large Director

Eligible nominees for all Board positions must meet the following requirements:

  • Second Vice President. Candidates shall be full-time, tenured, tenure-track, or fixed-term faculty members of a Full Member school at the time of nomination and throughout the four-year term of office.
  • Secretary/Treasurer. Candidates shall be full-time, tenured, tenure-track, or fixed-term faculty members of a Full Member school at the time of nomination and throughout the three-year term of office.
  • At-Large Director. The ACSA Bylaws permit no more than one At-Large Director to come from a school that is not a Full Member. For the 2020-21 Board, the Nominations Committee may consider a candidate from a Candidate or Affiliate Member school that has been a member of ACSA for at least two full years. Nominations of candidates from Full Member schools continue to be encouraged for At-Large Director positions.

Position Descriptions

Terms for directors begin on July 1, 2020, with terms of service noted below. All directors are expected to attend three board meetings a year: a fall meeting, which typically occurs in conjunction with the Administrators Conference; a spring meeting, which typically occurs in conjunction with the ACSA Annual Meeting; and a summer meeting, typically held in Washington, DC, in late July or early August. Additionally, board members serve on committees, which may entail travel to a meeting one time per year and conference calls one to two times per month.

The Second Vice President serves a four-year term. The elected person serves for one year, respectively, as Second Vice President, First Vice President/President-Elect, President, and Past President. The President is responsible for calling meetings of the Board of Directors, preparing an agenda, and presiding at such meetings. The President coordinates activities of the board, ACSA committees, and liaison representatives. The President serves as ACSA liaison with the officers of the American Institute of Architects, the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards, the National Architectural Accrediting Board, and the American Institute of Architecture Students; and serves as ACSA representative to the Five Presidents Council. During the term of office, the President also prepares a brief report of activities of the organization and the Board of Directors for dissemination to the constituent associations. As First Vice President, the person will chair the Planning Committee, and, as Past President, the person will serve as chair of the Nominations Committee.

The Secretary/Treasurer serves for a three-year term and is responsible for the corporate and financial records of the Association. In fulfilling these responsibilities, the Secretary/Treasurer oversees preparation of minutes of meetings and maintenance of the Bylaws of the Association, the Rules of the Board of Directors, and other policy documents. The Secretary/Treasurer oversees the financial affairs of the organization by serving as Chair of the Finance Committee and working with the staff and independent accounting personal on organizational budgets, reports, and annual audits.

The At-Large Directors serve a three-year term as voting members of the Board. In addition, they serve as liaison to 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 Affiliate member schools; and advising the Board of issues and concerns raised by members. At-Large Directors contribute to the work of the Board through actively serving on Board committees, contributing to collective deliberations, and performing other duties as provided by the Rules of the Board of Directors or as requested by the Board.

2019-20 Nominations Committee

Branko Kolarevic, Past President, New Jersey Institute of Technology (chair)
José L.S. Gámez, At-Large Director, University of North Carolina at Charlotte
Courtney Crosson, At-Large Director, University of Arizona
Corey Griffin, External Member, Penn State University, Altoona
Kelly Bair, External Member, University of Illinois at Chicago
Barbara Klinkhammer, External Member, Thomas Jefferson University

Timeline
As part of a 2017 governance change, ACSA now publishes a preliminary slate of Board-approved candidates in November 2018, followed by a period during which members may petition for the inclusion of additional candidates to the slate. A final slate of candidates, including candidates by petition, will be published in early January when the online balloting process will open. Candidates will be notified of the results in mid-February. The results of this election will be announced online and at the ACSA Annual Meeting in San Diego in March 2020.

October 16, 2019          Deadline for nominations

November 15, 2019     Preliminary slate of candidate names announced

December 27, 2019     Deadline for submission of petitions to add candidates to the slate

January 8, 2020            Final slate of candidates and ballot materials published and sent to ACSA Full Member schools

February 7, 2020          Deadline for ballot submissions

Nomination Requirements
Nominations for all ACSA Board positions should include a CV, a letter of interest from the nominee indicating a willingness to serve, and a candidate statement. The deadline for receipt of nominations is October 16, 2019.

Nominations should be sent to:

Email (preferred): msturges@acsa-arch.org
Michelle Sturges, Membership Manager
ACSA Nominations, 1735 New York Ave. NW, Washington, DC 20006

DESIRED COMPETENCIES AND BACKGROUNDS FOR NOMINEES
ACSA actively seeks equitable and representative involvement by a broad range of people on its Board and other volunteer bodies. The Board of Directors should represent a diversity of background, experience, expertise, and geography. This shall also include racial, ethnic, and gender diversity.

Prospective candidates and nominators are encouraged to review the strategic initiatives and priority objectives, included below, to understand future directions for ACSA board activities. The areas described below include (but are not limited to) experience producing scholarship and/or funded research, understanding processes for recruiting students from a variety of backgrounds, and experience communicating the value of architecture, whether in a disciplinary or professional context. However, the desired competencies of board members should not be narrowly understood. Regional and racial, ethnic, and gender diversity are also important to the ACSA. The vacancies on the board come from directors whose primary affiliations are in the Gulf, East Central, and West regions. Ensuring regional diversity, therefore, is among the Board’s priorities. Finally, previous experience with ACSA committees, conference leadership, or other Board appointments is desired.

Strategic Initiatives: 2019-2022
In 2018-19 ACSA revised its three-year strategic plan, and for the first time identified a set of strategic initiatives that give greater shape to the goals and objectives of the strategic plan. Development and execution of many of these strategies are left to ACSA’s three Program Committees, which are appointed annually by the Board and charged with specific deliverables. Following are the strategic initiatives.

Enhancing Research
ACSA supports the spectrum of research paradigms within the discipline and profession internationally, evidenced in changes to the Annual Meeting, its international conference partnerships for 2019 to 2021, and in its support for the Journal of Architectural Educationand TAD Journal. ACSA also seeks to position architectural research relative to the wider research environment. Our recent White Papers by the Research and Scholarship Committee are intended to support faculty as they progress in their careers.

Increasing Access and Promoting Equity
ACSA commits to increasing equity and inclusion within the institution and the profession. With education as the first barrier, ACSA will advocate for the value of architecture and architectural education to prospective students from a range of demographic and socioeconomic backgrounds, and we will engage community colleges, non-accredited programs, and international institutions through a range of in-person and online faculty development opportunities.

Enriching Pedagogy
ACSA contributes to an innovative future for architectural pedagogy. Uniquely positioned to advance architectural education since 1912, ACSA continues to seek scholarly exchanges within the United States and Canada as well as internationally. Through partnerships with collateral organizations, ACSA continues to create relevant content for faculty across the curriculum, and we aim to increase support for documenting best practices in teaching and learning.

University of Oregon

On Power and Place: A Call for Proposals

In partnership with Places Journal, the College of Design has announced a request for proposals for the new biennial Oregon | Places Prize with the theme of “Power and Place.”

The prize has been established to support ambitious public scholarship—or publicly engaged research, teaching, and programming—on the practices, institutions, spaces, and aesthetics that encourage or obstruct urban equity and environmental justice, as well as the relationship of the disciplines to the larger structures of power.

“We chose this theme because some of the most pressing issues today are linked to power,” said Liska Chan, Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture at the College of Design. Chan is the chair of the Oregon | Places Prize selection committee.

“There are strong connections between place and power; one can see it in a city, for example, from disparities in socio-economics and the kind of power we use as energy to the aesthetics of an urban environment,” said Chan.

In the context of this call for proposals, power can mean anything from energy use (e.g, solar, coal, gas) to socio-economic or political power.

For the Oregon | Places Prize, the College of Design and Places Journal are looking for applicants who not only engage in academic writing but write for a broader audience as well. Applicants must be mid-career or senior scholars and can come from all disciplines that focus on the built environment or place, from architecture and landscape to policy and planning.

The winner of the Oregon | Places Prize will receive an honorarium of $7,500 to produce a major work of public scholarship for publication in Places Journal and for presentation in a public lecture at the College of Design in Eugene, Oregon. The Prize recipient will have a period of one year to complete both the article and lecture.

Deadline for application is 5 pm (PST) Monday, September 16, 2019. For more information and application requirements, visit the Oregon | Places Prize page.

Pennsylvania State University

Alexandra Staub named to Architectural Research Centers Consortium board

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. – Alexandra Staub, a professor in the Department of Architecture at Penn State, has been elected to the 2019-20 Architectural Research Centers Consortium (ARCC) board of directors.

Staub, who is an affiliate faculty member of the Rock Ethics Institute where she was awarded a 2019-20 Faculty Fellowship, has been an active member of the AARC since 2006.

Her research interests focus on how the built environments shapes, and is shaped by, our understanding of culture. Through her research and teaching, Staub explores design processes and their social implications; the economic, ecological and social sustainability of architecture and urban systems; interpretations of private and public spaces; architectural ethics understood as questions of power and empowerment; and how social class and/or gender shapes people’s expectations for the use of space.

She has presented her work at international venues, including most recently the ARCC annual conferences, the Bauhaus Archive in Berlin, the Technical University of Berlin, the University of Stuttgart and the University of Bremen.

Founded in 1976, the AARC is an international association of architectural research centers committed to the expansion of the research culture and a supporting infrastructure in architecture and related design disciplines. ARCC members are traditionally schools of architecture that are engaged in sponsored research and in graduate studies “intended to develop a more comprehensive research infrastructure for architecture.”

Pennsylvania State University

Stuckeman student’s design selected for new East Coast Music Hall of Fame Museum

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. – A design by Penn State architecture student Nicholas Fudali has been selected to become the look of the new East Coast Music Hall of Fame (ECMHOF) Museum in Wildwood, New Jersey.

Fudali’s winning design was unanimously chosen by the ECMHOF board of directors following an open call for proposals. According to Bill Grieco, vice president of the organization, Fudali’s renderings made it to the short list of three finalists and was the only proposal submitted by a student. A number of architectural drawings were submitted but, according to Grieco, most of them seemed “too simple or too flashy in design.”

Fudali first learned about the development of the new museum on Facebook and was encouraged by Grieco, who is a family friend, to submit his own renderings.

“My design was inspired by the style already used by the ECMHOF board. They are really zeroing in on a retro aesthetic which New Jersey’s music culture stems from,” explained Fudali, who is a native of East Brunswick, New Jersey. “My goal was to stay true to the retro feel and translate it into a three-dimensional representation.”

To achieve his vision, Fudali incorporated elements such as neon tube lights which run around the roof overhang, a vinyl record-inspired entrance to create a memorable first impression of the building experience, and a large music note which serves as a sign and architectural symbol of the building.

“Nick’s design is clean and simple, and really stood out from the beginning. The building looks inviting and resembles a theater, which is fitting since we are celebrating artists and performers,” he said. “It is just amazing. Nick is incredibly talented and has exceptional vision, which will take him far.”

Fudali, who is interning this summer with Nastasi Architects in Hoboken, New Jersey, says he is honored to have had his design selected. He also expressed his gratitude to the entire EMHOF board, and Grieco specifically, for the opportunity to submit his vision.

“I have pursued this profession to create impactful designs and this is such an exciting project to get me started,” he added.

Grieco says he anticipates construction of the building, which will also serve as the organization’s world headquarters, to begin by the end of the year with an expected opening in summer 2020. At that time, the EMCHOF – which celebrates the music of the 1950s, 60s and 70s – will be honoring its first class of inductees, including Connie Francis, Tony Orlando, Bobby Rydell, Frankie Avalon and Chubby Checker.

If all goes as planned, the building will open shortly after Fudali graduates from Penn State with his B.Arch. degree in May 2020.