Co-chaired by Dr. Saleh Uddin from Kennesaw State University and Dr. So-yeon Yoon from Cornell University, KSU Architecture was well-represented by Dr. Saleh Uddin and Associate Professors Kathryn Bedette, Chris Welty and Michael Carroll at the recent Design Communication Association (DCA) hosted by Cornell University in Ithaca, NY.
Prof. Carroll’s paper on ‘Digital_Hand_Materiality’ was part of a session looking at Virtual and Actual: Process and Product moderated by Prof. Chris Welty, AIA. Examining creative processes, Prof. Kathryn Bedette, AIA paper on Drawing Motion through Stillness: Comparing Disciplinary Approaches; Prof. Chris Welty, AIA paper co-authored with Dr. Arief Seitawan paper entitled Embracing Slowness, Methods to Digital Fluency; and Dr. Saleh Uddin’s paper Current Decline of Design Grammar during the Rise of the Digital Fabrication Era all challenged the relationship between digital/analog and its influence on the way we link the process and product of design.
We are also very proud to note that Architecture Student Kathryn Stapleton received the DCA Juror’s Choice Award in Undergraduate Design Foundation for her “Kinetic Structural System from Geometry.” Congratulations!
Department of Architecture, University at Buffalo.
Assistant Prof. Jin Young Song.presented ‘Flutter Fin’ at the international conference Advance Buildng Skins in Bern,Switzerland n October 2018. His proposal for a façade prototype has been designed to harness electrical energy from the building envelope and shares insights on the potential of elastic instability in the building industry. The Conference contributed to multi-disciplinary design and integrated planning approaches to reducing the energy consumption of buildings and brought together architects, engineers, scientists, and fabricators from around the world.
Professor Edward Steinfeld, Distinguished Professor of Architecture at the University at Buffalo, was a keynote speaker at the annual meeting of the Utah AIA in Salt Lake City on September 21. His lecture was entitled ‘Beyond the ADA: Practicing Universal Design’. He was also a guest speaker at the School of Architecture at Hasselt University in Belgium where he presented ‘Increasing Adoption of Universal Design’
The Center for Inclusive Design and Environmental Access at UB has been approved for a five year cycle for the Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center on Accessible Public Transportation. The prime grantee of the $5million grant is the Robotics Institute of Carnegie Mellon University. The Center’s work will include research on accessibility of automated vehicles in partnership with major automobile manufacturers and SAE mobility companies. .
Assistant Professor Erkin Ozay organized the symposium ‘Strategies of Empowerment: A survey of Emerging Urban Practices in Weak Market Cities’ at UB in October. The panelists included Daniel D’Oca (Harvard, GSD), Jennifer Goold (Neighborhood Design Center, Baltimore), Patty Heyda (Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts), and Marc Norman (University of Michigan, Taubman College).
Assistant Professors. Erkin Ozay and Nic Rajkovich directed a team of graduate students from UB’s Urban Design Graduate Research Group in the Mid-West Urban Design Charrette in Toledo, Ohio from October 5-7. The team of faculty and students worked with peers to develop proposals for the revitalization of the Junction Neighborhood.
Assistant Professor Julia Jamrozik’s “Growing up Modern – Oral History as Architectural Preservation’ was published in JAE Vol.72 alongside photographs by Adjunct Assistant Professor Coryn Kempster.
Assistant Professor Julia Jamrozik, Adjunct Assistant Professor Coryn Kempsterand Adjunct InstructorVirginia Melnyck were selected designers of installations for PLAY/GROUND – the transformation of a former school in Medina, NY..
Professor Bran Carter was an invited speaker in the Toronto Public Library Culture & Arts Program on October 18. The title of his lecture was ‘Ancient + Modern – I.M.Pei’.
UB NOMAS Chapter was awarded first prize in the 2018 NOMAS Design Competition in Chicago in October. The Chapter, which includes undergraduate and graduate students, developed a proposal entitled ‘Roots’ that advanced ideas for urban agriculture in Woodlawn. This was their third consecutive award in this national design competition that is held annually.
Steffen Lehmann Named New Director of UNLV School of Architecture
A renowned architectural educator, Lehmann comes to UNLV from the University of Portsmouth, United Kingdom.
Nancy J. Uscher, dean of UNLV’s College of Fine Arts, is pleased to welcome architectural designer, educator, researcher, and writer Steffen Lehmann as director of the School of Architecture and professor of architecture. Previously, he served as a professor for sustainable architecture as well as director of the Cluster for Sustainable Cities at the University of Portsmouth.
Born in Stuttgart, West Germany, Lehmann was educated at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London and the Technical University of Berlin. Prior to the UK, Lehmann served for 13 years as full professor at leading universities in Australia, where he held a range of senior leadership roles, including as head of school, and leading teams of more than 100 academic faculty. He is the author of 19 books and numerous publications on sustainable architecture and future cities. In 2008, he was appointed a UNESCO chair for sustainable urban development in the Asia-Pacific region.
The founder of Steffen Lehmann Architekten Berlin, he has been teaching advanced design studios at leading universities in six countries since 1991. He became a licensed architect in Berlin in 1993, and in the 1990s was actively involved in the creation of the “New Berlin,” where he was responsible for a number of key buildings in the city center.
“At the School of Architecture, our people are our biggest asset, and I see it as an immense privilege to lead this team,” Lehmann said. “SoA will focus on setting a clear and successful vision for the school’s future aligned with university and college strategies, making the School of Architecture a great place to study and work.”
“The main goal over the next three years for the School of Architecture will be to continue its clear focus on the student experience and teaching excellence to enrich the learning experience,” he continued. “At the same time, we also want to advance research and impact through the development of a strong and supportive research culture to maximize our influential outputs and our positive impact in society. And, last but not least, growing the school’s internationalization to become recognized internationally as a leader in relevant architectural education in a desert context, providing great opportunities for entrepreneurship and more international students to join. I believe we can capitalize on our unique geographical location. I look forward to working with everyone across all three of the brilliant disciplines in the school.”
AASL Column, October 2018 Lucy Campbell and Barbara Opar, column editors
Column by Allison Fulford, Architecture Librarian, Dalhousie University Libraries, Dalhousie University Halifax, NS Canada
It is incredible what can be accomplished when circumstances demand novel solutions, creativity, and perseverance. In 2008, a staffing reorganization at Dalhousie University’s Sexton Design & Technology Library, prompted the creation of a Digitization Team. Though most Team members had no related experience, their transferable skills included attention to detail, and expertise in the procedures of providing access to print and electronic library material.
Coincident with the reorganization was a request from the Society for the Study of Architecture in Canada (SSAC), to digitize the Society’s Journal from 1975 to the present, and to provide access through a freely accessible website. The Journal is bilingual and refereed, covering Canadian architecture from all historical periods and from diverse cultural traditions. The reorganization and this well-timed request from the Society propelled the Team forward into the world of digitization.
But where to start? A digitization infrastructure was needed. The Dalhousie University Archives donated a large flatbed scanner and computer, including the Creative Suite software; the Dalhousie Libraries provided secure file storage space. Through reading and workshop attendance Team members learned the technical aspects of digitization, scanning procedures and specifications, PDF creation, Optical Character Recognition (OCR), and website construction. Trial and error played big roles too, with steps forward and backward.
The Team of six started scanning but soon decided that the resulting scans, though legible, were not all that pretty. A decision was made to ‘clean-up’ each scan. The Team straightened and resized pages, adjusted colours, and removed marks and stamps – a tremendous amount of work that ran from mid-2009 to early 2011. The results were definitely worth the effort and elevated the quality of the entire project. Next, the Team created issue-level PDFs, ran them through OCR software to allow keyword searching, and loaded them on the project website (http://sextondigital.library.dal.ca/jssac/).______________ Launched in 2012, the digitized Journal garnered gratifying feedback from the Society, which boosted Team confidence. This confidence would be necessary as a second, even larger project, soon came along.
Later in 2012, we agreed to digitize the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada’s (RAIC) Journal from 1924 to 1974. The publication offered an important documentary history of the development of architecture and of architectural practices in Canada. What was fundamental in bringing about the collaboration with the RAIC, was the quality of work that the Team had produced on the SSAC’s digital archive.
The vast RAIC project was not one that the Team could undertake on its own – extra staff and funding were needed. With backing from RAIC, a Canada Council for the Arts grant, and support from the University Librarian at Dalhousie, the project could commence.
The Team hired two keen and dedicated School of Information Management students who improved and updated procedures relating to scanned image clean-up in Photoshop. Even so, the project crept along – the volume of work was enormous – not just the scope of the Journal archive, but the length of some issues. Procedures were streamlined and then streamlined even further in an effort to complete the project in a realistic time frame. The Team leader even took a six-month sabbatical in 2016 to devote as much time as possible to the project. After some staff retirements and new work assignments for remaining Team members, clean-up was eventually dropped all together. Project work was finally completed in the summer of 2018. Most PDF issues are on the open access website (http://sextondigital.library.dal.ca/RAIC/index.html), and final issues continue to be added.
We never thought we’d see the end of the RAIC project. Persistence, patience, and adaptability characterized our ten years of experience in the digitization field. With support from the SSAC, the RAIC, the Canada Council, the Dalhousie Libraries, and from colleagues, we succeeded in providing online, open access to two journals significant to the study of architecture in Canada.
Title: Richard Campanella Appointed Associate Dean for Research
Oct 18, 2018
The Tulane University School of Architecture has named Senior Professor of Practice Richard Campanella as Associate Dean for Research. In this role, he will facilitate the production, publication and dissemination of new knowledge and innovative ideas, reinforcing the School of Architecture’s commitment to research.
Campanella brings a prolific portfolio of award-winning research to the position, including 10 books and more than 200 other publications on New Orleans and Louisiana geography, history, architecture, urbanism, culture and related topics.
As Associate Dean for Research, Campanella will identify and curate external research opportunities, assemble multidisciplinary research teams to respond to proposals, and coordinate faculty, staff and students pursuing research grant funding.
Campanella has worked at Tulane since 2000 and in the School of Architecture since 2012.
Exciting afternoon of presentations at Kennesaw State University for the 3-Minute Thesis Preliminary Round, where 22- architecture students competed for the final round. The exercise challenges students to present a compelling oration on their thesis topic and its significance in just three minutes. 3MT® is a research communication competition developed by The University of Queensland (UQ).
Professor George Dodds, PhD, has been re-appointed to another term (2018-23) as the University of Tennessee’s Alvin and Sally Beaman Professor in the College of Architecture and Design. There are 10-12 Beaman Professorships at the university at any given time. According to Interim Provost John Zomchick, the professorship recognizes “our very best teacher-scholars.” In May, 2018, Dodds presented the paper: “Re-architecting Practice: Duvall Decker’s Addition to Tougallo College,” (co-authored with Professor Jori Erdman, LSU) at the International ARCC Conference at Temple and Drexel Universities in Philadelphia.
Title: Yamuna River Project Wins International Architectural Book Award
Oct 16, 2018
Yamuna River Project, New Delhi Urban Ecology, by Tulane School of Architecture Dean and Koch Chair in Architecture Iñaki Alday and University of Virginia architecture professor Pankaj Vir Gupta, was recently selected as one of the top 10 architectural books of the year by the Frankfurt Book Fair and German Architecture Museum (DAM).
The highly-respected International DAM Architectural Book Award attracted submissions from 96 architectural and art publishers this year. A jury of external experts and DAM representatives judged the 238 total entries on design, content, quality of material and finishing, innovation and topicality.
The Yamuna River Project, founded by Alday and Vir Gupta at UVA in 2014, is a long-term interdisciplinary research initiative working to revitalize both the ecology of the heavily polluted Yamuna River and the essential relationship between the river and life in New Delhi.
As one of the most rapidly urbanizing cities in the developing world, New Delhi faces enormous challenges of urban and social equity at a time of economic and climatic uncertainty. Consequentially, the citizens of the world’s largest democracy live amidst extreme environmental degradation. Existing government structures have been hard pressed to cope with the pace of the complex and rapidly evolving dynamics of economic and climate change.
Yamuna River Project, New Delhi Urban Ecology details five years of research with the goal of engaging government agencies, experts and activists to reimagine and transform the river through a holistic, multidisciplinary approach.
The book is published by Actar and available for purchase online.
Shortly after I was nominated in late 2015 for the future president of our association, I took a quick look at the long list of past presidents to see how many of them were from Canadian schools. To my surprise, there was only one – Blanche Lemco van Ginkel, from the University of Toronto, who served in 1986-1987. Out of curiosity, I searched for more information about her and, needless to say, I was very impressed by what I learned.
Blanche Lemco van Ginkel was a pioneering woman in fields dominated by men, architecture and planning. She was the first woman to lead a faculty of architecture in Canada (and in North America), as dean at the University of Toronto from 1977 to 1982. She was the first woman to be elected an officer and a fellow of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada (RAIC).
She was also the first woman elected president of ACSA.
As an architect, planner, and educator, Blanche has had a distinguished career as an award-winning practitioner and teacher who taught architecture and urban design in several schools in the United States and Canada. Born in 1923 in Britain, she grew up in Montreal, where she graduated with an architecture degree from McGill University. Upon obtaining a degree in planning from Harvard, she taught for several years at the University of Pennsylvania and at Harvard before moving back to Montreal. She developed the first courses in urban design at Université de Montréal and then at McGill, before accepting a leadership position at the University of Toronto in 1977, a city where she lives today.
In recognition of Blanche’s outstanding contributions, McGill University presented her with the honorary Doctor of Science in 2014. As noted on McGill’s website, Blanche, with her late husband Sandy, had “a key role in preserving Old Montreal during the 1960s and courageously led the charge to protect the south slope of Mount Royal from urban developers.” The two of them then “helped design Montreal’s Expo ’67, the immediately successful international exhibition that came to symbolize Canada’s cultural effervescence in its centennial year.” To honor this remarkable legacy, there is a prize for urbanism in Québec given in Blanche’s name. She is also featured in the forthcoming documentary movie “City Dreamers” (Rêveuses de villes), alongside Phyllis Lambert, Denise Scott Brown, and Cornelia Hahn Oberlander, as women “who carved out a place for themselves in a man’s world, dreamt of human-scale cities and began drawing the urban centres of our future.”
I hope it comes as no surprise that ACSA Board of Directors has decided to recognize Blanche’s exceptional career in architectural education with an ACSA Distinguished Service Award, which will be formally presented at the upcoming Administrators Conference in Québec City, October 25 –27, 2018. We hope that many of you will join us then at Chateau Frontenac to honor this remarkable member of our community.
Associate Professor Peter Olshavsky’s essay “Reconfiguring Architectural Agency” appeared in the catalogue for Steven Holl’s exhibition at the Dorsky Museum. As part of the museum’s Hudson Valley Master series, Steven Holl: Making Architecture, examines the work of one of the world’s foremost architects (http://www.stevenholl.com/exhibits/126).
Curated by Nina Stritzler-Levine in collaboration with Steven Holl Architects, the exhibition reveals Holl’s intricate and distinctive process of making architecture through approximately one hundred models and related sketches and other studies created for nine recent projects, among them the Arts Building at Franklin and Marshall College, Pennsylvania; The Kennedy Center Expansion, Washington D.C.; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and Maggie’s Cancer Care Center in London.
Dr. Olshavsky was invited to write an essay linking Holl’s work to architectural phenomenology. The essay argues that Holl’s recent architecture is rooted in a reconfigured notion of architectural agency. This reconfiguration provides three opportunities.
“It enables us to re-describe Holl’s important relation to the tradition of phenomenology. It shows architecture’s active comportment in socially embedded settings,” said Olshavsky. “It advances the insight: architecture makes us what we are”.
With a research focus in history, theory and design, Dr. Olshavsky was a clear choice for selection. “As a scholar in architectural history and theory, this was a wonderful opportunity to help shape the discourse on Holl’s recent work. Holl and the Dorsky Museum were very engaged and supportive,” commented Olshavsky. “I hope we will be able to work together again in the future.”
The exhibition is currently at Soongsil University Gallery in Seoul, Korea and will continue to travel internationally.
“Dr. Olshavsky’s invitation to author the essay exemplifies the quality of scholarly work produced by our renowned faculty. It is gratifying to see Peter’s work continually showcased on an international stage,” said College of Architecture Dean Katherine Ankerson.
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Co-chaired by Dr. Saleh Uddin from Kennesaw State University and Dr. So-yeon Yoon from Cornell University, KSU Architecture was well-represented by Dr. Saleh Uddin and Associate Professors Kathryn Bedette, Chris Welty and Michael Carroll at the recent Design Communication Association (DCA) hosted by Cornell University in Ithaca, NY.
