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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 Nebraska-Lincoln

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University of Nebraska’s Professor Rumiko Handa recently had a letter to the editor published in the current (Fall 2016) issue of Architecture Boston, a quarterly publication of the Boston Society of Architects (both print and online), and can be found at
https://www.architects.org/architec…/…/temporary-summer-2016.

Handa was invited by the Deputy Editor of the magazine to contribute based on her recent book, Allure of the Incomplete, Imperfect, and Impermanent. 

Auburn University - July

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July 2016

Three Auburn alumni were among the 149 elevated to the American Institute of Architects prestigious 2016 College of Fellows: Larry S. Cash (Chapter: AIA Alaska, Firm: RIM Architects); Paula Burns McEvoy (Chapter: AIA Atlanta, Firm: Perkins+Will); and C. Al York (Chapter: AIA Austin, Firm: McKinney York Architects). “We are extremely proud of Paula, Larry, and Al,” says David Hinson, Head of the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture. “Elevation to the AIA College of Fellows is a fitting recognition of their positive impact on the profession and the benefits of their work to society. Their careers are a credit to Auburn, and our students and faculty are inspired by their example.”  For more, read here.

Josiah Brown, a fifth-year architecture student from Ashland City, Tennessee, is the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture’s first recipient of the Aydelott Travel Award. The Aydelott Travel Award was established by Alfred Lewis Aydelott, FAIA (1916–2008) and his wife, Hope Galloway Aydelott (1920-2010), to encourage architecture students to “become proficient in the art of architectural analysis.” The $2.4 million endowment established by this well-known Memphis architect and his wife creates a $20,000 travel award for architecture students at four universities: Auburn University, Mississippi State University, the University of Arkansas-Fayetteville, and the University of Tennessee.  Read more here

The School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture was well represented among the award winners at the “This is Research: Student Symposium 2016,” held on April 13 at the Student Center. Out of the more than 400 undergraduate and graduate students who competed from Auburn and AUM, APLA students, Abigail Katsoulis and Madeline Gonzales, fifth-year architecture students, took home two first place awards and one second place in the Research and Creative Scholarship in Design, Arts and Humanities category. Ryan Bowen, a dual Environmental Design/Master of Landscape Architecture student, won first place for his poster presentation in the undergraduate category, and Livia Lima, a first–year MLA student, won second place in the graduate Creative Scholarship category for her oral presentation. To read more about the research, read here.

The Design Museum Foundation has developed a major, nationally-traveling exhibition on the importance of play and how designers translate play objectives into innovative, extraordinary, outdoor play environments. The exhibit, called “Extraordinary Playscapes,” includes Rural Studio’s Lions Park Playscape as one of the selected contributors. Currently open in Boston, the exhibit will be in Portland, OR next.  Read more here.

StudioAPLA:  the Summer Issue, the newsletter for the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture’s, is available now.

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. 

Kennesaw State University

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Kennesaw State University, College of Architecture and Construction Management is please to announce the following new faculty as part of to the architecture department:

Assistant Professor Giovanni Loreto, PhD has been appointed to a tenure-track position. Dr. Loreto holds a Ph.D. in civil engineering and also a Master in architectural engineering from the University of Napoli “Federico II”, Italy. Before joining KSU in the Fall 2016, he gained extensive academic experience during his postdoctoral appointments at the University of Miami and, more recently, Georgia Institute of Technology. Dr. Loreto’s research activity focuses on the advancement of high strength/high performance concrete materials and steel composite (SC) structures. He has conducted research across different disciplines with particular focus on novel construction materials and structural performance evaluation. His research interests include the study of crumbling structural systems and focuses on the need for rehabilitation/retrofit of existing reinforced concrete structure/infrastructure while envisioning next-generation systems.

At KSU, Dr. Loreto’s teaching efforts will focus on the integration of structural concepts within the architectural design process as well as advising thesis students. He is currently teaching courses on structural analysis, design of concrete/masonry/steel structures, and architecture studio design. Furthermore, his hopes are to enhance the architectural learning experience of structures with an overarching goal of bridging the gap between theory and practice.

Assistant Professor Arash Soleimani, PhD has also been appointed to a tenure-track position. Dr. Soleimani holds a Ph.D. in Planning, Design & the Built Environment from Clemson University, a M.Arch. from University of Nottingham, United Kingdom, and B.A. in Architectural Engineering, Isfahan University of Art, Iran. Before joining KSU in the Fall 2016, he gained teaching experience at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Furthermore, he holds a multidisciplinary Ph.D. and Certificate in Digital Ecologies from Clemson University’s School of Architecture in collaboration and partnership with the faculty and researchers in Education, Electrical & Computing Engineering, Materials Science & Engineering and Human Factors Psychology. The objective of Dr. Soleimani’s research is to focus on the design, prototyping and evaluation of “Intelligent Environmental Technologies”; in other words, computation embedded in the built environment along with the development of digital interactions whilst exploring new architectural paradigms.

At KSU, Dr. Soleimani’s teaching efforts will focus on the integration of environmental technology within the architectural design process as well as advising thesis students. He is currently teaching Environmental Technology I: Systems, Materials & Methods and second year architecture studio. His architecture concentrates on intelligent forms while inventing new possibilities for content and everyday use; it is a concept of futurism through a persistent investigation of the symbiotic potentials in nature and technology.

Auburn University

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August – September 2016

Three CADC students are among the 105 Auburn student-athletes named to the 2016 Spring SEC Academic Honor Roll. Lucas Grady, a senior in architecture, is a Men’s Track & Field athlete (Hurdles/Mid-distance); Veronica Elder is a junior in industrial design and a Women’s Track & Field athlete (Distance/Cross Country); and Marshay Ryan is a junior in architecture and Women’s Track and Field athlete (jumps). The 2016 Spring SEC Academic Honor Roll is based on grades from the 2015 Summer, 2015 Fall, and 2016 Spring terms. For more, click here.

Two CADC student-athletes are also on the First-Year SEC Academic Honor Roll list. Among the 84 Auburn student-athletes are Andrew Autrey (pre-Building Science) and Raymond Lester (Architecture). Each student-athlete must 1) have a cumulative GPA of 3.00 or above at the nominating institution; 2) be on scholarship or a letter winner; 3) have completed 24 semester hours of non-remedial credit at the nominating institution; and 4) have been a member of the varsity team for the sport’s entire NCAA Championship segment. For more, click here. 

Any student-athlete who participates in a Southeastern Conference championship sport or a student-athlete who participates in a sport listed on his/her institution’s NCAA Sports Sponsorship Form is eligible for nomination to the Academic Honor Roll.

Rachel Hamrick, a senior in the Environmental Design program from Eufaula, Alabama, was one of four recipients of the Outstanding ePortfolio Award for 2016. Hamrick received the honor during the third annual ePortfolio Awards Luncheon hosted by Provost Timothy Boosinger on May 3. She was nominated by Magdalena Garmaz, Environmental Design Program Chair and Ann & Batey Gresham Professor of Architecture.  For more, read here.

Professor Ben Farrow has been named the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and International Programs for the College of Architecture, Design and Construction as of August 1. Farrow is a tenured Associate Professor and William Hunt Professor in the McWhorter School of Building Science and has been the chair of the undergraduate program in Building Science. He worked in industry for 15 years before he joined the Building Science faculty in 2006. In his new position, Farrow will be responsible for all matters broadly related to undergraduate academic programs in the college. He will work closely with college leadership and the faculty to assist with curricular processes, provide oversight of program assessment, oversee undergraduate study abroad programs and manage student recruitment, advising and placement. For more, read here.

Evan Forrest ‘09, Terran Wilson ‘09, Danny Wicke ‘07, & John Marusich ‘07 are Auburn Architecture alumni working in Chicago selected to participate in AIA Chicago’s Bridge mentorship program which pairs AIA Fellows with young aspiring architects looking to connect with the past while looking towards the future. The program and participants were featured in a full article in AIA Chicago’s Chicago Architect Magazine’s July/August issue titled “The Future of Architecture.” You can read the issue here.

Andrew Freear will be taking some well-deserved time off this year and has left Rural Studio in the capable hands of Xavier Vendrell as Acting Director and Fifth-year Professor. Vendrell has been Third-year visiting professor at Rural Studio for the past two years. He will focus the Studio on a combination of community, garden-to-table, and small home projects. A native of Barcelona, where he has been practicing architecture since 1983, Vendrell and his office won the competition for the Poblenou Park in the Olympic Village in Barcelona in 1988. Vendrell founded Xavier Vendrell Studio Chicago/Barcelona in 1999, a collaborative practice of architecture, landscape, and design.  For more RS fall teaching news, please click here.

Cakeitecture Bakery owner Carie Tindill, Auburn BArch ’05 and MIDC ‘06, and her assistant Kelly Oslick, competed on an August episode of Cake Wars.  For more, click here. 

University of Nebraska-Lincoln

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2016/2017 Hyde Lecture Series opens another exciting chapter for the design and planning disciplines as speakers take a fresh, in-depth look at the latest developments in their respective fields.

The College’s Hyde Lecture Series is a long-standing, endowed public program. Each year the College hosts compelling speakers in the fields of architecture, interior design, landscape architecture and planning that enrich the ongoing dialog around agendas which are paramount to the design disciplines and our graduates.

Learn More- http://architecture.unl.edu/deg…/2016-17-hyde-lecture-series

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