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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 Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

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Randy Deutsch, Clinical Associate Professor has written a third book, Convergences: The Redesign of Design (to be published by Architectural Design, early 2017, London.)

Invited to write a chapter featuring the work processes of KieranTimberlake, Kruek+Sexton, SOM, LMN, and POPULOUS in Richard Garber’s Workflows: Expanding Architecture’s Territory in the Design and Delivery of Buildings (to be published by Architectural Design, early 2017, London.)

He was invited to speak on BIM in a Time of Simultaneity, Superintegration and Convergence at the University of Southern California (USC) BIM Symposium.

He was also invited to speak at the following: 

  • Big Data and the Built Environment workshop at Ryerson University, Toronto, Canada.

  • Northwestern University’s School of Engineering on data-driven construction.

  • He presented 21st Century Skillsets: Assuring Architects and Emerging Professionals Stay Ahead at the 2016 AIA Convention in Philadelphia, PA.

  • Participated in the Design Futures Council Forum on Design Education in Philadelphia, PA.

  • Associate Director of Graduate Studies Spring 2016/Spring 2017.

  • Selected to lead the Chicago Studio Fall 2016, Chicago, Illinois.

  • Invited to serve as special advisor to NIBS buildingSMART Alliance.

  • Invited to serve as SME in BIM for the 100-year old BRE Research Group, London, England.

  • Led Harvard GSD executive education program for the fourth year.

Associate Professor Erik Hemingway‘s flat pack research and design work on a two Mies van der Rohe space upgrade projects in Chicago, were recently published in Blur: d3:dialog, International Journal of Architecture + Design available through Amazon. 

Erik is engaged on another flat pack research and design work project in another Mies van der Rohe space upgrade in Chicago. This is related to and furthers the work he did for the 2009 Hong Kong/ Shenzhen Biennial due to be built and completed later this year. 

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.

 

 

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. 

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. 

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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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

Committee Summit

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by Bruce Lindsey, ACSA President

Three years ago, ACSA embarked on governance restructuring that led to changes to the board and committees. We now have two presidents-elect, Francisco Javier Rodriguez and Branko Kolarevic, which gives the board greater institutional memory and development time. Rashida Ng is also our first combined secretary/treasurer, following best practices in non-profit organization.

As I write to you from the ACSA office, we are excited to launch the first Committee Summit, inaugurating three new committees with the goals of engaging more member faculty around their interests and expertise, focusing initiatives on issues that matter to our schools, and allowing the organization to be more nimble in addressing the goals and objectives of the new strategic plan. 

Thanks to David Hinson and to the members of the task force, who made these recommendations, and thanks to the members and chairs of the committees, who were nominated through a robust interest from our member faculty. The Research and Scholarship Committee is chaired by Shannon Criss, the Education Committee is chaired by Lynne Dearborn, and the Leadership Committee is chaired by Rebecca O’Neal Dagg.

The committees will be immediately working on specific issues such as diversity & community college partnerships, a white paper on tenure and promotion, and a service to support graduate applications. But they will also be discussing a broad range of issues setting the context for the next several years of work. We look forward to sharing our work with you and encourage you to participate in this important new phase for ACSA.

Revealing the Hidden Beauty of Artists' Books Through Events and a Virtual Catalog

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Barbara Opar and Lucy Campbell, column editors

Column by David Eifler and Molly Rose, University of California, Berkeley

Academic Arts and Architecture libraries have long collected artists’ books for their intellectual and artifactual value. Yet, many of these  works remain concealed in special collection vaults with  their beauty undiscoverable behind arcane bibliographic records.  Traditional exhibits put them on display, but only reveal at best a few facets of their meaning, visual and tactile elements.

UC Berkeley’s Environmental Design Library began collecting artists’ books in earnest 15 years ago under the direction of then head librarian Elizabeth Byrne.  Using endowment funds provided by faculty and other visionary donors, our librarians have selected 5-15 works each year to enhance  our collection on the built environment: architecture, landscape architecture and urban planning.  Now numbering nearly 250 works, the Environmental Design Library’s artist book collection is visually stunning and represents the work of a diverse array of artists from within and outside the United States.  Given that many artists books are created to entice viewers to touch, turn pages and interact with the pieces, we have tried a number of ways to make these more accessible to our faculty and student patrons.  Stored in our rare book vault for reasons of security and preservation, patrons can request individual titles from our reference desk Monday – Friday from 1-5.  However, requesting these materials requires that patrons  are able to identify the work based on the bibliographic information provided in our catalog, which often does not do justice to the visual aspects and content of each piece.

Therefore, to better publicize their existence, two exhibitions were organized: one in 2011 and another in 2014.  The Environmental Design Library’s  beautiful glass exhibit cases provided a perfect venue to view the works and pages we’d selected to display, but we frequently heard visitors talk about how they wished they could interact with the artists books in their entirety.


One of four display panels of artists’ books in our exhibit Design Book Art 2 in the winter of 2014.

 

Alex Selenitsch notes, “Typically, an artist’s book is a work that becomes evident as you hold it, open it up, go back and forth and then close it up again.  Often there is a controlled narrative built into the physicality of the book, so that size, weight, texture, stiffness and binding are foregrounded.  Nearly always a tangible experience of the book is necessary to absorb it totally.”  (Selenitsch, Alex, and National Gallery of Australia. Australian Artists Books. National Gallery of Australia, 2008.)

Our desire to provide that tangible experience led us and two university staff colleagues (Lauri Twitchell is a book artist working in the Landscape Architecture Department and Jennifer Osgood an artists’ book aficionado working in another campus library), to hold our first “Hands On: An Evening with Artists’ Books” event in August, 2015.  From 4-6 PM on a Friday we displayed 17 artists’ books on tables for guests to physically explore.  To foster a relaxed, convivial atmosphere we provided refreshments and encouraged students, faculty, community members, and library staff to come to the event as a way to start  their weekends.  The event was a success, mixing 35 artists’ book devotees and as well as interested faculty, students and library colleagues and administrators.

Visitors enjoying the tactile experience of our first Hands On artists’ book event, August 2015.

Two months later we held “Hands On-2” and publicized our artists’ book collection on our website with a LibGuide that included images of the works we would have at the event.  Incorporating static images of the artist’s books into an online guide made them more identifiable and memorable for library staff and patrons and we decided to expand the LibGuide to include images of the works being shown in our three subsequent events. We quickly realized we could unveil our entire artists’ book collection by providing images of each work in an “all artists books” tab and distribute it to faculty and interested patrons. In this way, we’ve created a comprehensive visual guide to our artists’ book collection supplemented by periodic in-house events that encourage  patrons to experience the works the way they were intended — first hand.

Current LibGuide of all artists’ books in UC Berkeley’s Environmental Design Library

We’ll continue to hold Friday afternoon “hands on” events twice a semester and will update our LibGuide as we’re able to expand our artists’ book collection.  Our hope is that faculty will find ways to incorporate artists’ books into their courses on design and structure, and that university and community patrons will increasingly request to handle the books at our reference desk based on what they’ve seen online.  These artistic works are too beautiful to hide behind glass cases or bland bibliographic records and we keep looking for new ways to share them.

* * * *

David Eifler is the Environmental Design Librarian and Molly Rose the Environmental Design Library Circulation Supervisor at the University of California, Berkeley.

 

Call for Nominations: NAAB Board of Directors

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2017 ACSA Appointee to the NAAB Board of Directors
Deadline: October 19, 2016

The ACSA Nominations Committee invites nominations for one appointee to the NAAB Board of Directors. The National Architectural Accrediting Board (NAAB) is comprised of thirteen members: three appointed by ACSA, three appointed by AIA, three appointed by NCARB, two appointed by AIAS, and two public members. Currently, Judith Kinnard, Tulane University; Jori Erdman, Louisiana State University; and David Hinson, Auburn University, are the ACSA appointees to the NAAB Board. With the expiration of Judith Kinnard’s term in October 2017, the ACSA Board of Directors is considering candidates for her successor.

The appointment is for a three-year term (Oct. 2017 – Oct. 2020) and calls for a person willing and able to make a commitment to NAAB. While previous experience as an ACSA board member or administrator is helpful, it is not essential for nomination. Some experience on NAAB visiting teams wil be considered necessary; otherwise the nominee might be unfamiliar with the highly complex series of deliberations involved in this position. Faculty and administrators are invited to nominate faculty from an ACSA full member school with some or all the following qualifications:

  1. Tenured faculty status at an ACSA full member school;
  2. Significant experience with and knowledge of the accreditation process;
  3. Significant acquaintance with and knowledge of ACSA, its history, policy programs, and administrative structure;
  4. Significant acquaintance with the range of school and program types across North America.
  5. Willingness to represent the constituency of ACSA on accreditation-related issues.
  6. Ability to work with the NAAB and ACSA boards to build consensus on accreditation-related issues.

For consideration, please submit a concise letter of nomination, a one-page CV indicating the nominee’s experience under the above headings, and a letter from the nominee indicating willingness to serve. Materials are due by 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 

Influence the Future Architect Registration Examination Passing Threshold

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NCARB is seeking licensed architectural faculty to serve on the ARE Cut Score Task Force, which has been charged with establishing the passing threshold of each new division of ARE 5.0 launching November 1, 2016.

As a member of the Cut Score Task Force, you will work with other faculty and practicing architects on focused efforts to review candidate item data and influence the cut score. Task Force members will be offered the opportunity to participate in a series of 2-day or 3-day workshops that will take place between December and February. You will be able to participate in workshops based on your schedule and availability. All work will be completed at the workshop.

Scheduling of these workshops will be dependent upon a certain number of administrations for each division and NCARB is unable to provide specific details as to when the workshops will take place at this time. As they reach the desired number of administrations, they will establish dates for the review and reach out to you to determine your availability.

To volunteer to be part of this NCARB initiative, simply submit your interest HERE by Friday, September 23. If you have further questions about this activity, please contact Ryan Misner (rmisner@ncarb.org).

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