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University of Nebraska-Lincoln

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Project will use drones to survey wetland habitats

Nebraska researchers are turning to the air to help monitor wetland habitat conditions.

Funded through a $203,220 Environmental Protection Agency award, the University of Nebraska–Lincoln’s Zhenghong Tang and Wayne Woldt plan to develop a methodology to use unmanned aircraft systems to conduct dynamic monitoring and precise assessments of playa wetland habitats. Areas the team plans to focus on include hydrological conditions, vegetation and energy levels, and wildlife usage in the Nebraska Rainwater Basin.

Surveying the public waterfowl production and wildlife management areas across the basin will require multiple field trips to complete the data collection during the spring and fall migratory seasons.

During the drone flights, the team will use multispectral sensors for detection of soil moisture levels and mapping of wetland inundation during spring migration season; thermal imaging cameras and oblique photogrammetry for evaluation of wildlife use and its distribution on playa wetlands; and 3D imagery for surveys of plant community conditions, estimations of energy availability and assessments of vegetation management effectiveness.

The use of UAS is a huge improvement over the traditional large, plane or ground surveying methods commonly used. This method will provide improved imaging with greater resolution and detail in a cost-efficient, timely and flexible manner. The new surveying tools and applicable protocols will offer wetland managers a greater understanding of wetland spring inundation conditions. If this method proves effective, the methodology can be replicated elsewhere. Having this information for wildlife managers will advance conservation efforts.

“Conducting timely monitoring and accurate assessment is extremely important for wetland managers to implement appropriate conservation programs to increase the quantity and quality of wetlands,” said Jeff Drahota, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist with the Rainwater Basin Wetland Management District. “This Unmanned Aircraft System provides an advanced new tool to conduct more rapid, precise monitoring and assessment for playa wetlands.”

In the past, environmental disruptions such as reduction in water flow because of upstream diversions, sediment, invasive species and poor water quality have contributed to major losses in playa habitat. By keeping a closer eye on the situation, wildlife managers will be able to identify threats before they negatively influence the wetlands or reach a point that will be very costly and time intensive to restore. With successful adoption of the proposed methodologies, this project has the potential to transform reactive wildlife management to a proactive and efficient system.

The data analyzed during the assessment stage will help close the information gap and help wildlife managers implement proven restoration practices, choose more effective treatments and create a better understanding of this delicate ecosystem throughout its annual cycle.

“It is important to test and verify the innovative UAS methodology in wetland monitoring and assessment,” Tang said. “This project is a great first step to an exciting new way to conserve our wetlands.”

Tang is an associate professor of community and regional planning in the College of Architecture. Woldt is an associate professor of biological systems engineering. Tang and Woldt are co-principal investigators on the research project.

University of Nebraska-Lincoln

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University of Nebraska’s College of Architecture Among Awardees at AIA-NE Annual Gala

 

At this year’s Excellence in Design Gala, the American Institute of Architects, Nebraska Chapter (AIA-NE) presented five Honor Awards and eleven Merit Awards selected from Nebraska architects’ submissions and evaluated by Ohio jurors.
Faculty, students and alumni from the College of Architecture were among the honorees. 

Architectural Program Director Jeffrey L. Day (and his Omaha and San Francisco based architectural firm Min | Day) won two distinguished honors at the event. Min | Day was presented with the following awards on September 29th:

 

  • • Honor Award in the Architecture category for their project entitled “Blue Barn Theatre & Box Car 10” Omaha, Nebraska.  This project was conceived as a new arts hub in a rapidly changing district near downtown Omaha. The experimental theatre opens to the city outdoors through a public open space anchored with a mixed-use building.
  • • Merit Award in the Unbuilt Architecture category for their project entitled “Hexad” Lincoln, NE. 

Hexad is a caretaker’s house for a private estate in a sculpture garden. The 832 sq. ft. building separates the basic functions of home into living, eating, bathing and sleeping, into four 160 sq. ft. wings. Current M.Arch student Jacob Doyle also worked on the Hexad project while an intern at Min | Day in 2016.

 

College of Architecture recent graduates were recognized as well. David Alcala and Joshua Puppe, both currently employed in BVH’s Lincoln office, won a Merit Award in the Emerging Professionals category for their project entitled “Ephemerality – St. Joseph’s Catholic Church,” a project they designed in ARCH 410 under studio instructor Mark Bacon’s direction.

In this design, the church is strengthened through the employment of light, material logic and the concept of ascension through architecture. The project’s goals were achieved through designing spaces around light such as the main chapel and other areas in darkness such as the private chapel to reflect the program of the room. The project was previously recognized with an SGH / Dri-Design scholarship.

 

Several College of Architecture alumni had their work recognized with the AIA-NE Excellence in Design awards and the full award list may be accessed through www.aiane.org website. The Excellence in Design program is an annual event for Nebraska architects who submit built and unbuilt projects for consideration. Categories for consideration include Architecture, Interior Architecture, Unbuilt, Excellence in Masonry and Details. For Emerging Architects the categories are Unbuilt Design and Architectural Detail.

 

Projects were judged based on a variety of features, including unique design, originality, extended use attributes, sustainability, budget and use of environmental surroundings. More information about each of these projects can be found at

 

http://www.aiane.org/aia_design_awards/2016_excellence_in_design_awards/.

 

University of Southern California

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Victor Regnier FAIA has been invited to reflect on the meaning and purpose of his research in the upcoming book “Environments in an Aging Society: Autobiographical Perspectives in Environmental Gerontology. The book includes the work of 17 researchers from seven countries who’s life work has created the basis for the discipline

Prof. G. Goetz Schierle has been invited as keynote speaker at the IEREK Conference in Cairo 2017 Cities through Architecture and Arts.

Patrick Tighe, FAIA, (Adjunct Professor) was awarded a 2015 AIACC Honor Award form the American Institute of Architects, California Council.

The proposal of Adjunct Associate Professor Michael Hricak, FAIA,  “Leadership and Creativity: What it takes to Lead Talented Individuals” has been accepted by the National AIA and he will be presenting at the 2007 AIA Convention in Orlando, FL. The material for this course was originally developed  for the summer professional EXED program at USC.

Hadrian Predock juried the LAGI – Land Art Generator Initiative in May, will be conducting a workshop and lecturing at UNLV school of architecture on October 8-10, and will be lecturing at Cal Poly Pomona on October 21st. He is beginning work on a multi-generational housing project in Muncie, Indiana. The catalog for Errors, Estrangement, Messes and Fictions – an exhibition curated by Hadrian for the USC School of Architecture – is now being widely disseminated. 

Maria Esnaola and her studio KnitKnot architecture started the construction of a school project for Nicaragua in El Jicarito. EL JICARITO SCHOOL is an innovative low-cost school design that brings a community together through collaborative construction.  On November 5th, Knit Knot will be one of the guest speakers at the TEDX at University of Macedonia 2016. Under the title “Gravity of Thoughts”, we will also organize a Workshop and installation that evaluates collaborative design techniques and construction.

Dr. Joon-Ho Choi received the USC Zumberge Research Innovation Fund based on one of his research topics, titled “Bio-Sensing Data-Driven Thermal Comfort Model.” His Human-Building Integration Research was invited to the International Energy Agency – Energy in Buildings and Communities Programs Annex 66 Expert Meeting, held in Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada. He presented “Impacts of Occupants on Building Performance: Extracting Information from Building Data” at the meeting. Dr. Choi has been invited to the 9th International Conference on Indoor Air Quality Ventilation & Energy Conservation” as a scientific committee, and he will make a presentation about two of his recent researches: Comprehensive Post-Occupancy Evaluation, and User-behavioral impacts on Building Energy Performance. He is also invited as an indoor environmental quality expert panel to the Workshop on the Value of Designing for the Occupant, held at the Catholic University of America in D.C., where user-centered environmental control and environmental/physiological benefits of sustainable design will be discussed.

Rob Berry with his firm Berry and Linné recently completed work on Todos Juntos, a new public space in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles. The project was the subject of a feature article in the April 26, 2016, West Edition of The Architect’s Newspaper. In May, Rob and his project collaborator Siobhán Burke of Lyric Design & Planning led a public tour of the project focused on the role of community outreach and creative culture in the design process. The tour was hosted by the design advocacy group Design East of La Brea (de LaB) as part of their Making LA series.

Jason Kerwin’s office, OKB Architecture, recently completed project for Newmark Grubb Knight Frank in downtown Los Angeles won a national award from Shaw Contract – Design Is Competition – and was featured in the latest NeoCon in Chicago. 

In April 2016 Sarah Cowles co-organized the international symposium” “THIS IS A TEST” at Knowlton School at The Ohio State University, on the role of testing and prototyping in landscape architecture. Her chapter “Bigger MPs (management practices) on the role of representation and landscape identity in watershed planning was recently published in Representing Landscapes: Hybrid by Nadia Amoroso (Routledge). In the fall of 2016 she will lead the seminar “Sylviculture: The Forest Garden in the 21st Century” at the Harvard Forest in Petersham, Massachusetts, and is returning Sweden in October to continue research on the Swedish Landscape Laboratory in Alnarp, Sweden with Roland Gustavsson.

Alvin Huang, AIA was invited to teach a visiting design workshop and give a lecture on his work as part of the inaugural Mosaic of Episodes event hosted by the Indian Institute of Architects in Bangalore, India from September 14-17, 2016. On October 29, Huang will be a keynote speaker at the Now Next Future Conference hosted by the AIA California Council in Los Angeles, CA. On October 30, Huang will present his paper entitled “From Bones to Bricks: Designing the 3D Printed Durotaxis Chair and La Burbuja Lamp” at the 2016 ACADIA Conference at the University of Michigan.

 

University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

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Professor David M. Chasco, FAIA was invited to lead a team of 4 Illinois School of Architecture graduate students – Meagan Radloff, Aarefa Kuresh Palgharwala, Kiel Fahnstrom and William Smarzewski – in the second Volterra, Italy 2016 International Design Workshop, sponsored by the University of Detroit-Mercy (UDM) School of Architecture and hosted by the Volterra- Detroit Foundation at the Volterra International Residential College. The Workshop was held from July 27 through August 6th, 2016.  Participating university teams included the University of Detroit-Mercy led by Professor Wladek Fuches (President, Volterra-Detroit Foundation), Warsaw Technological University (Poland) led by Dean/Professor Jan Slyke, Ph.D. and Professor Gorgio Castellano of the University of Pisa.

 Professor Chasco was invited to lead the 2016 Workshop and select an internationally accomplished Illinois School of Architecture alumnus as the Workshop Captain. Alumnus David Miller FAIA of the Miller Hull Partnership in Seattle was selected. David Miller provided overall design guidance as well as presenting two lectures: one on his lifetime of built design efforts including the expansion of the Pike Street Market in Seattle, and second lecture on his design philosophy and interpretation of the Gates of Volterra design approaches. Professor Fuchs presented the 3rd lecture on his findings of the design of the Volterra Roman Theatre.  Professor Chasco presented the 4th lecture on a retrospective design career in both practice and the academy.   The Workshop project titled “The Gates of Volterra” explored the contemporary re-interpretation of the role of the city gate in the historical urban context.

  Four university integrated teams of students designed urban and architectural responses respecting and integrating new contemporary uses at each gate: Porta all’Arco, Porta Fiorentina, Porta Selci, and Porta San Francesco. The students’ design efforts were exhibited and presented to various Volterra townspeople and stakeholders.  Professor Chasco has been invited by the University of Detroit-Mercy to participate in the Volterra 2017 Summer International Design Workshop as well as lead a graduate semester study abroad at the Volterra Center in the Fall of 2017.

  

Associate Professor Paul Kapp was recently appointed to the University of Notre Dame School of Architecture Graduate Program in Historic Preservation Board of Advisors.  

Associate Professor and Associate Director for the Collaborative for Cultural Heritage Management and Policy Paul Kapp’s essay, “Intangible Industrial Heritage,” was chosen as one of only eight essays for the US/ICOMOS Report, With a World of Heritage So Rich, a report commemorating the 50th anniversary of the National Historic Preservation Act. You can read his essay and the others on this website: http://www.usicomos.org/about/wwhsr/

 

Associate Professor Thérèse F. Tierney has been invited to present a Distinguished Faculty lecture by the Unit for Criticism & Interpretive Theory at UIUC. The lecture is titled, “Networked Urbanism: Geographies of Information” October 24th, 2016. 

 

 

ACSA Schools Join White House Educators Commitment on Resilient Design

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Michael J. Monti, Executive Director

ACSA, together with the American Institute of Architects, invited our member programs to join the White House Educators Commitment on Resilient Design. The commitment follows from a May 2016 conference on Resilient Building Codes, where leaders from the design and construction industries endorsed an Industry Statement on Resilience. The statement defines resilience as “the ability to prepare and plan for, absorb, recover from, and more successfully adapt to adverse events.” The U.S. federal government sees these issues as national security issues, and AIA and ACSA continue to work with staff in the White House to develop this agenda. 
Following is a list of schools endorsing the Commitment, with the text of the commitment below:

American University of Sharjah, College of Architecture & Design, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates,

Boston Architectural College, School of Architecture, Boston, MA

Carnegie Mellon University, School of Architecture, Pittsburgh, PA

Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University, School of Architecture, Tallahassee, FL

Florida International University, Department of Architecture, Miami, FL

Howard University, College of Engineering and Architecture, Department of Architecture, Washington, DC

Kennesaw State University, Department of Architecture, Marietta, GA

Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Department of Architecture, Boston, MA

NewSchool of Architecture and Design, , San Diego, CA

Pennsylvania State University, Department of Architecture, University Park, PA

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, School of Architecture, Troy, NY

Rice University, School of Architecture, Houston, TX

Texas A&M University, College of Architecture, College Station, TX

Tufts University, Department of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning, Medford, MA

Tulane University, School of Architecture, New Orleans, LA

University of Florida, College of Design, Construction and Planning, Gainesville, FL

University of Hawaii At Manoa, School of Architecture, Honolulu, HI

University of Idaho, Department of Architecture & Interior Design, Moscow, ID

University of Maryland, School of Architecture, Planning & Preservation, College Park, MD

University of New Mexico, School of Architecture & Planning, Albuquerque, NM

University of Oregon, Department of Architecture, Eugene, OR

University of Southern California, School of Architecture, Los Angeles, CA

University of the District of Columbia, College of Agriculture, Urban Sustainability & Environmental Sciences, Washington, DC

Virginia Tech, School of Architecture + Design, Blacksburg, VA

Washington University in St. Louis, Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts / Architecture Programs, St. Louis, MO

Woodbury University, School of Architecture, Burbank, CA

Educators Commitment on Resilient Design

We envision a future where our homes, schools, workplaces, and communities are resilient to extreme weather events and can adapt to the impacts of climate change. Making this future a reality will require a focus on resilient design across disciplines. Students who will lead the planning, design, engineering, development, construction, and retrofit of homes, buildings, and infrastructure must be prepared to build for resilience, both now and into the foreseeable future.  We commit to:

  • Inspiring and training the next generation of architecture, engineering, urban planning, and construction professionals to innovate and effectively address resilience to extreme weather events and climate change;
  • Connecting students and professionals with best-available science on the growing risks posed by extreme weather events and climate change;
  • Fostering interdisciplinary settings for students to develop the employable skills and professional networks needed to support resilient design; and
  • Pursuing life-long learning opportunities to continually advance our understanding of how to design and build for a resilient future.

Going Global: Using an Institutional Repository to Give Local Documents a New Life

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Barbara Opar and Lucy Campbell, column editors

Column by Leslie Mathews, Head, Art + Architecture Library, Virginia Tech

Assessing the Art + Architecture Library collections this summer, I came across some unique items from Virginia Tech’s Community Design Assistance Center (CDAC), a research and outreach center within the College of Architecture and Urban Studies. The Center, located in downtown Blacksburg, provides underserved communities in southwest Virginia with low-cost planning and design assistance while providing students with an opportunity to get paid to work on conceptual plans for real projects. The Center produces spiral bound print publications of conceptual designs created for their clients. Because of their ungainly spiral bindings and potentially low usage I initially considered these items candidates for remote storage. However, after looking into circulation statistics, I found many had significant circulation. Looking more closely at the reports, I found this was a unique collection, relevant to students and locals interested in design for green spaces and urban renewal. I wanted to showcase these unique, local, and highly visual items while simultaneously promoting the valuable work of the Center. I immediately thought of digitizing these items, or making the already digital versions available online, since the Center has been continuously producing reports since 1988.

I reached out to Director of CDAC Elizabeth Gilboy to ask if she had digital copies and if she would like them to be made available online. She was happy to respond yes to both questions and I have now begun the work of adding the documents to our digital institutional repository, VTechWorks, which is crawled by Google and public to the world. At VT Libraries, our dedicated staff works directly with clients to facilitate the loading of data into VTechWorks. This process allowed me to hand off the CDAC account to our Repository Collections Specialist, Melissa Lohrey, who is working with CDAC to extract the necessary data, load it into VTechWorks, and add the appropriate metadata. This allows VT librarians to promote the service as a streamlined process that is advantageous to scholars and others affiliated with VT who want their information not only to be available, but also highly searchable and findable. The documents will also be discoverable as PDFs, Word Documents and a variety of other formats through our iteration of Shared Shelf within the Artstor database.

Now the reports are publicly available online, CDAC can further outreach efforts to potential clients and grant making authorities while inspiring others to do similar work or perhaps provide the impetus other groups need to make a case for urban renewal. Based on statistics tracking views and downloads at the city level, I have been surprised by the level of international interest. Several reports have been viewed in Canada, France, Germany, Australia, and Iran as well as cities from across the United States.

To see the CDAC page on VTechWorks, go to http://vtechworks.lib.vt.edu/handle/10919/71429. Note that usage statistics are publicly viewable from the last link on the lower right hand column.

Call for Nominations: 2017 ACSA Board of Directors

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2017 Board of Directors
Deadline: October 19, 2016

The ACSA Nominations Committee invites nominations for two national officers and two regional directors on the 2017 Board of Directors. The open offices are Second Vice President and Secretary/Treasurer. The two open regional directorships are Mid-Atlantic Region Director and Northeast Region Director. Eligible nominees for all Board positions shall be full-time and/or tenured or tenure-track faculty members of full member schools. Nominees for the position of Regional Director must be on the faculty of a full member school in the represented region.

 

NATIONAL OFFICERS:
Second Vice President
The Second Vice President serves a four-year term beginning July 1, 2017. The elected person serves for one year respectively as Second Vice President, First Vice President/President-Elect, President, and Past President. As President, the elected individual presides at meetings of the Association and 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, Association 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 Association and the Board of Directors for dissemination to the constituent associations.

Secretary/Treasurer
The Secretary/Treasurer serves for a three-year term beginning July 1, 2017, keeps minutes of all Board of Directors meetings, and distributes copies of the minutes to all members of the Board. The Secretary/Treasurer maintains the Bylaws and Rules of the Board of the Association as well as all other documents required by corporate law, incorporating revisions and additions as required by action of the Association and Board of Directors. The Secretary/Treasurer oversees the financial accounts and the records of the Association and serves as Parliamentarian for the Association in connection with its Annual Meeting. 

The 2017 Nominations Committee is chaired by Marilys Nepomechie. Additional members include Carlos Reimers, Corey Griffin & Stephen Luoni, University of Arkansas. The Committee will review nominations for the national officers and develop a slate of two candidates for each position.


REGIONAL DIRECTORS:
Mid-Atlantic Region Director & Northeast Region Director
The term of office for a Regional Director is three years beginning July 1, 2017. Regional Directors serve the ACSA in at least three ways: As members of the Board of Directors, on a variety of national committees, and as executive officers of their regional constituent associations. In this latter role, the Regional Director sets the agenda and chairs meetings of his or her regional council. He or she maintains a file of regional records, correspondence, and minutes of regional meetings. He or she provides assistance to regional schools and organizations applying for institutional membership. The Director prepares annual reports of regional activities for publication in the Association’s annual report and provides updates to the constituency on both regional and national matters of note. He or she administers the nomination and election of the subsequent Regional Director and performs such other duties as may be assigned by the Board. Regional Directors are required to attend three Board meetings a year: a fall meeting which typically occurs in conjunction with the Administrator’s Conference, a spring meeting which typically occurs in conjunction with the ACSA Annual Meeting, and a summer meeting. 

Each region will have a Regional Nominations Committee made up of regional constituents that will review applications received, and develop a slate of not less than two nor more than three candidates.

Board Election ballots will be sent to all full member schools and appropriate regions by mid-January, 2017. The results of this election will be announced online and at the ACSA Annual Meeting in Detroit, MI in 2017. Candidates will be notified of the results in mid-February. 

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 19, 2016.

Nominations should be sent to:

     Email (preferred): eellis@acsa-arch.org
Eric Ellis, ACSA Director of Operations and Programs
ACSA, Board Nominations
1735 New York Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20006 

 

University of Nebraska-Lincoln

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Olshavsky Writes Forward for Pérez-Gómez

How do you react when someone like Alberto Pérez-Gómez, one of the world’s leading architects and thinkers asks you to write a forward for a collection of essay’s he’s written over the last 30 years. 

Without question, you say yes! “It’s an honor to be able to write a forward for someone who has contributed so much to the field through their work and as an educator,” commented Dr. Peter Olshavsky. “I was even more excited by the idea that it was for a two-volume set that gathers together three decades of scholarship that has been personally meaningful to my work and my approach to architectural education at UNL.” 

The publisher describes the collection as a piece that deliberately blurs the edges of history and theory; the first volume focuses on architectural theories and practices both historical and recent, and the second on more general aspects of architectural philosophy.

Olshavsky entitled his forward, “The Untimely Thinking of Alberto Pérez-Gómez,” for the collection, Timely Meditations: Selected Essays on Architecture (2016).  Olshavsky’s forward argues for the “untimely” nature of Pérez-Gómez’s thinking while introducing this eminent historian’s remarkable collection of essays, which revises and builds upon his work.

Pérez-Gómez and Olshavsky have known each other for a long time. In fact Pérez-Gómez was Olshavsky’s doctoral supervisor at McGill University, and they continued to stay in contact.  Recently, Pérez-Gómez read one of Olshavsky’s essays in the 2015 book Architecture’s Appeal where Olshavsky described Pérez-Gómez’s work, so he reached out to Olshavsky and asked him to submit a text for his new essay collection. For more information visit:
https://www.createspace.com/6241830

 

University of Southern California

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DEAN SEARCH

From its founding in 1919 as the school of art and architecture, the USC School of Architecture has charted an educational strategy that joins scholarship and academic research with professional and artistic practice. The school’s storied history has been guided by a commitment to serving the community and public-at-large while ensuring diversity, inclusiveness, and interdisciplinarity.  In recent years, the school has increased its global engagement and international visibility, raised its graduate enrollments, and implemented new cross-school programs like the Bachelor of Science in GeoDesign. The appointment of the next dean must reinforce that history and build on the school’s many recent accomplishments, while moving us boldly into the future.

 

University of Southern California

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Victor Regnier FAIA, has been named as Associate Dean for Research in the School of Architecture.

Dr. Travis Longcore (Landscape Architecture + Urbanism program) was an invited speaker at the California Naturalist 2016 statewide meeting, talking about his research on the historical ecology of the Los Angeles region, including the Los Angeles River and the Ballona Wetlands.  He authored the chapter “GIST in Undergraduate Capstone Research Projects in Environmental Science” in the book STEM and GIS in Higher Education (Esri Press) and is co-author of the National Park Service Technical Report “Artificial night lighting and protected lands: Ecological effects and management approaches”and of the paper “Predicting spatial extent of invasive earthworms on an oceanic island” in the journal Diversity and Distributions. He is also co-investigator for a USC Zumberge interdisciplinary grant to investigate landscape conditions, genes, and growth traits of chickpeas to help develop better strains of crop plants for the future.

Mario Cipresso is designing a new medical education building for the University of Nevada, Las Vegas along with an associated masterplan on the Shadow Lane campus which lies to the west of the Downtown area in the Medical District.

Brendan Shea’s proposal for the cityLAB L.A., Times Ten competition was selected for further development. The project, How To Level A Foundation, will be featured in the first A+D museum show of 2017.

Kyle Konis, Ph.D, AIA  was recently invited to speak at the 2016 DIVA Day Symposium hosted by the University of Toronto on the topic of simulation-based metrics for circadian effective daylighting design.  Konis recently joined the editorial board of  TECHNOLOGY | ARCHITECTURE + DESIGN. TAD is a peer-_reviewed international journal dedicated to the advancement of scholarship in the field of building technology, with a particular focus on its translation, integration, and impact on architecture and design.

Esther Margulies, Assistant Director of the Master of Landscape Architecture and Urbanism at USC and Co-founder of the LA River Art Project, co-produced The Course of Empire 2016 by Tim Durfee  as part of the 10th annual Frog town Artwork in September.

Associate Dean Gail Peter Borden, FAIA has a solo exhibition entitled “Controlled Objects” opening at Galleri Urbane (www.galleriurbane.com) in Dallas, Texas on September 10th running through October. The show displays works emergent from their premise of making as the systematized engagement of a process with a material.  The resulting objects are functional adaptations, not quite fully products but also not quite fully art, remaining in a liminal state of definition. As spatial lures they engage pattern, perspective, material, and process to create effect.

Hraztan Zeitlian’s Hollywood Hills Residence was published on Architectural Record Online: http://tinyurl.com/h7s4a9w

Geoffrey von Oeyen served as a moderator for the USC American Academy of Architecture (AAC) 2016 Symposium on July 30, 2016, in Shenzhen, China, titled “Rural-Urban Re-Inventions: Bridging the Gap Between China’s Cities and Countryside.” Panelists included USC’s Gary Paige of gp/s in Los Angeles and Xu Tiantian, principal of the Beijing firm DnA. The event was organized by USC AAC director Clifford Pearson. Von Oeyen also led student site tours and design discussions about a pavilion he designed to be built in the agricultural landscape outside of Xi’an, China.

Lorcan O’Herlihy, FAIA, delivered the keynote speech at Perspective USA in New York, hosted by the Italian architecture magazine The Plan. In addition, LOHA was recently commissioned to design an arts and culture campus for Dabls’ African Bead Museum in Detroit. To support this project among other Detroit-based ventures, LOHA has opened a satellite office in the Chrysler House in Downtown Detroit. LOHA’s SL11024 has been nominated for the Beazley Designs of the Year from the Design Museum in London and will be featured in their upcoming exhibition. In addition, LOHA’s restoration and modernization of Julius Shulman’s former home and studio was honored with a Design Award from the AIA California Council chapter.

This summer, Assistant Professor Alison Hirsch was a Distinguished Panelist at the Landscape Architecture Foundation’s “The New Landscape Declaration: A Summit on Landscape Architecture and the Future” in Philadelphia. She was moderator of the discussion “How Participatory Design is Changing Los Angeles,” an event organized by the California Historical Society. She is co-chair of the upcoming conference, “Landscape Architecture as Necessity,” taking place at USC on September 22-24 (http://landscapeasnecessity.uscarch.com). 

Mina Chow is locking picture this month for her documentary “FACE OF A NATION:  What Happened at the World’s Fair?” She has raised over $300,000 for this story about American architects, engineers and designers showing the best of America.

Tigran Ayrapetyan was promoted to Adjunct Associate Professor at USC School of Architecture.

Jose Sanchez was awarded the “Best Gameplay” award in the Games for Change festival in New York, with the Block’hood project. He will also be doing a keynote lecture in London for PACT, alongside Patrik Schumacher and Mario Carpo.

Christine Lampert, Senior Associate Director of Architecture for Hong Kong based UDP International Ltd. Just finished the Master Plan of the National City Waterfront Project for the Port of San Diego.

Just released Architect Magazine Top 50 USA Firm Rankings.

USC Faculty member Lawrence Scarpa’s firm Brooks Scarpa was ranked the 9th overall Architecture firm in America.  They were ranked 4th overall in Design and 17th in Sustainability. More here: http://www.architectmagazine.com/architect-50/2016/

Assoc Professor Chuck Lagreco is taking his 5th year studio to San Francisco this Fall semester to visit their studio project site.

Assistant Professor Victor Jones will present the exhibition Infrastructural Etiquette in the SCI Arc Library from October 7, 2016 to December 4, 2016. The exhibition features drawings and artifacts alongside photographs by renowned architectural photographer Hélène Binet of the Basento Bridge (1966-76) by little known Italian structural engineer Sergio Musmeci and his partner, architect Zanaide Zanini.

Rob Ley Studio recently won a competition for 6,000 s.f. art facade for the Martin Luther King Hospital, in Willowbrook, CA. Construction begins January, 2017.

Gary Paige designed and co-curated the USC American Academy in China (AAC) exhibition, “Rural-Urban Re-Inventions” this summer. Comprised of work from 18 architectural schools and practitioners from China, USA, and EU, it was the inaugural exhibition for the newly established Shenzhen Public Art Center. Paige participated in the 2016 USC AAC symposium “Rural-Urban Re-Inventions,” presenting work from Project Lushan, a collaborative design research project between the USC School of Architecture, AVIC Legend, Ltd. and, gp/s.

Jennifer Siegal, Adjunct Associate Professor, is the new CDO for Wildernests based out of Venice, CA. Wildernests is building the world’s first self-sufficient, transportable, luxury living space. She will be lecturing Fall 2016 at The University of Minnesota; Hobart and William Smith Colleges (her alma mater); and at Dwell magazine’s PreFab Summit.

Two of Alexander Robinson’s projects and an accompanying short essay were recently featured in Sci Arc’s online magazine Off Ramp 11. Also the book, Innovations in Landscape Architecture, containing this chapter “An Interface for Instrumental Reconciliation” edited by Jonathon R. Anderson and Daniel H. Ortega and published by Routledge in now in print and available as an eBook. 


Laurel Consuelo Broughton was interviewed for Attention #3: Keywords Postmodernism, Princeton School of Architecture’s audio journal for Architecture. The catalog for Errors, Estrangement, Messes, and Fictions curated by Hadrian Predock at All Gallery/USC School of Architecture was released and includes the work of Laurel Consuelo Broughton/WELCOMEPROJECTS, First Office, and Andrew Kovacs.

Diane Ghirardo gave the keynote address entitled “Architecture and Education” at the annual EAAE meeting in Delft, Holland, on 1 September. Her most recent publications include “I gioielli sacri di Lucrezia Borgia,” in the Spanish journal, Revista Borja. Revista de l’Istitut Internacional d’Estudis Borgians. 

Lawrence Scarpa served as a juror for the 2016 Wood Council Awards and the Home Matters Design Competition. He also juried the first ever Latin America Solar Decathlon in Cali, Columbia.  He continues to serve on the selection committee for Enterprise Community Partner’s Rose Architectural Fellowship.  He recently gave lectures or presentation at the 2016 Dwell on Design Conference, UNLV, Virginia Tech, the 2016 PLEA Conference, 2016 AIA California Council Now Next Future Conference, the Hopscotch Design Festival in Raleigh, NC and Florida Atlantic University.  Mr. Scarpa also received the 2016 AIA California Council Lifetime Achievement Award. His article titled, “Science is not Enough” was published in the European Union’s Council on Energy journal Photovoltaics. His firm Brooks + Scarpa also opened an office in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida and is working on projects with the City of Miami Beach, City of Pembroke Pines and other private developers.

James Steele received acceptance of two papers in 2017, for an upcoming IASTE conference in Kuwait next December and a National Built Heritage Forum in Riyadh in April. Steele just completed the second, full semester Foreign Studies Program in Brazil which ran from mid- May to mid- August, and included Mexico City, Teotihuacan Mayan sites in the Yucatan, Cuzco and Inca sites /Machu Picchu Peru, São Paulo, Brasilia, Ouro Preto, Belo Horizonte and Rio de Janeiro ( plus the Olympics!) in Brazil. The students worked with Brazilian counterparts at Universidad São Paulo on a community serving (favela) project in the post industrial Mooca district of the city and also participated in a furniture Workshop, designing a chair at FabLab. Steele is now in the midst of a Fulbright grant for the Fall ’16 term at the University of Malaysia, researching traditional Minangkabau and Malay mosques and houses in the village setting, which will include a two week field trip to Bandung Indonesia. He just received word that his book, “Contemporary Japanese Architecture: Tracing the Next Generation” went into production at Routledge/Kegan Paul, scheduled for a Spring release.

Assistant Professor Alvin Huang, AIA and his firm, Synthesis Design + Architecture have been honored with the 2016 Presidential  Emerging Practice Award by the AIA Los Angeles. The award is the highest honor that the American Institute of Architects Los Angeles bestows on an emerging architecture firm for consistently producing innovative architecture. Earlier this summer Professor Huang gave presentations on his work at the AAVS Shanghai Urban Formations Symposium hosted by the Architectural Association in Shanghai, China and at the ACSA International Conference hosted by the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture in Santiago, Chile. 

Patrick Tighe Architecture named Top 50 architects (for design) by Architect Magazine. A new monograph of the work of Tighe entitled, Building Dichotomy, with an intro by Thom Mayne was recently released. Tighe’s “Spray on House” received an R + D Award, published in Architect Magazine. His project “L’Apertura, 7 windows for Venice,” an installation for the Venice Biennale, was published in Interior Design Magazine.

Karen Kensek and Douglas Noble received a CCAIA Presidential Citation in August 2016: “In recognition of your efforts as a team to create three outstanding programs that support and encourage AIA participation and membership: the NotLY licensing program, the Facade Tectonics Institute, and the annual USC BIM Symposia. For the NotLY program (an acronym for Not Licensed Yet) you have encouraged, inspired and cajoled nearly 100 architects and engineers to become active volunteers to prepare and present architecture licensing preparation classes.  Your efforts have resulted in nearly 500 free classes in Southern California, with more than 20,000 participants from 2008-2017.  The Facade Tectonics Institute has become a global resource for research and education related to the building enclosure, while the USC BIM program is the outgrowth of more than 20 years of leadership of the AIA Los Angeles Computer Committee.  The BIM and facades programs together have been the source of more than 30 conferences emphasizing bridging university research, professional practice, and the value of membership in the AIA.  These efforts have resulted in touching many hundreds of participants and many dozens of publications, advancing the arts and sciences of BIM and facades.”

Chu+Gooding Architects (Rick Gooding) recently completed the Interior Renovation of 4 floors Hoffman Hall for the USC Marshall School of Business which included 50 Faculty Offices, 60 PhD Offices and ADA upgrades to the 8-Story Concrete Tower originally designed by I.M. Pei in 1965. C+G also recently completed a 100,000 sf Museum Storage facility in Burbank and renovated 20,000 sf of galleries in Griffith Park for the Autry Museum of the American West. C+G is currently working on renovations to some of the concessions buildings at the Hollywood Bowl.

Ken Breisch has been promoted to the rank of Associate Professor. He has stepped down after serving two years as the President of the Society of Architectural Historians, and has been appointed Chair of the jury to select its 2017 Film and Video Award. He is also a member of the team that is receiving a California Preservation Foundation Design Award for the rehabilitation of the Santa Monica Shotgun House, which will serve as the Preservation Resource Center for the Santa Monica Conservancy.

The Tenth Annual USC BIM Conference hosted well over 400 people and sold out in less than two weeks.  Karen Kensek founded this program, and has led the growth of the USC BIM symposia to the point where the events no longer fit in the USC School of Architecture facilities. 

The Façade Tectonics World Congress will be held October 10-11, 2016 in Los Angeles.  Almost 100 speakers were selected by a blind, peer-review committee of 300 members.  Façade Tectonics is in its ninth year, having held more than 20 conferences and forum events.

USC doctoral candidates Ed Losch and Andrea Martinez completed their final Ph.D. requirements and were granted degrees in 2016. 

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