University of Nebraska-Lincoln

The College of Architecture announces the hiring of three faculty members: Nathan Bicak, Assistant Professor of Interior Design; Cathy De Almeida, Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture; and Daniel Piatkowski, Assistant Professor of Community and Regional Planning.

Before coming to UNL, Bicak served as an assistant professor with the Department of Design at Radford University in Virginia, where he received grant funding to implement an interdisciplinary, tiny house design/build class and established maker spaces across campus. Working collaboratively with the Radford University Environmental Center and an interdisciplinary group of faculty and students, Bicak contributed design, prototype development, digital fabrication and sensor automation to a research project focused on the construction of a food waste bioreactor.

He has presented his work at national conferences including NeoCon, the Environmental Design Research Association and the Interior Design Educators Council. Bicak has spoken on a wide variety of topics, notables include the utilization of drones to enhance construction education and monitoring, residential criteria for individuals with autism spectrum disorder and the efficacy of making and prototyping for the enhancement of spatial understanding in interior design education.

Bicak plans to continue his research studying the social, ecological and economic impacts of small-scale living solutions, particularly through the interdisciplinary design/build delivery method. Possible future projects include an exploration and needs analysis for small-scale, housing in the rural environment.

Furthermore, Bicak gained valuable practical experience as an architectural designer with Narrative Design Studio in Lincoln as well as with Dwellings Co, an affordable housing start-up based in Blacksburg, Virginia.

Bicak will be teaching courses in education design, material application, building codes, construction methodologies and construction documentation.

Before joining the College of Architecture, De Almeida was a landscape architecture lecturer with Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. She taught undergraduate and graduate design studios that focused on waste reuse processes in brownfield transformation. The concept focused on the creation of multi-layered, hybrid landscapes that were economically generative, ecologically rich, cultural destinations.

She was also an associate at Whitham Planning and Design in Ithaca, where she worked as a landscape architect and planner on numerous urban infill projects, including the transformation of a deindustrialized, superfund site into a mixed-use district known as the Chain Works District.

De Almeida’s research and design interests focus on material and energy reuse in diversified site programming to promote resilience, adaptation and flexibility in design. She is particularly interested in designing landscapes that allow waste streams from one system to become fuel for other systems. Her landscape lifecycles design-research synthesizes lifecycle approaches with concepts of industrial ecology and urban metabolism. These interests promote the restructuring of local and regional infrastructural systems to reclaim vulnerable sites and territories associated with perceived undesirable conditions, and explore the relationships between environmental justice, waste and brownfields. She is ultimately interested in how humans interact with ecological systems and resources and how design can improve these relationships by establishing symbiotic, hybrid bio-cultural systems. In addition to waste, De Almeida is also interested in intangible and ephemeral forces such as heat, wind and humidity – as media of design.

De Almeida has lectured about her work at Cornell University, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, SUNY ESF and the DredgeFest: Great Lakes Symposium, and will present a forthcoming paper at the Landscape Architecture as Necessity Conference in September hosted by the University of Southern California.

De Almeida will be teaching materiality, design making and alternative landscape-based design strategies for brownfield redevelopment.

Piatkowski comes from Savannah State University where he was assistant professor of urban studies and planning. Prior to that position he was an NSF-IGERT trainee earning his PhD with the Civil Engineering department at the University of Colorado, Denver.

Piatkowski’s research focuses on how land use and transportation planning can foster equitable and sustainable communities. Piatkowski is particularly interested in the ways in which planning for walking and bicycling as viable modes of transportation can transform communities. Recent work includes: the interaction between “carrots and sticks” in travel behavior decisions, social media tools and equitable community engagement and the phenomenon of “scofflaw bicycling” – why bicyclists break the rules of the road. His research has been featured on National Public Radio, the Washington Post, the Atlantic, and CityLab’s “Future of Transportation” series.

Piatkowski has been published numerous times in peer review journals including The Journal of Travel Behaviour and Society, Transport Policy, Journal of Urban Planning and Development, Journal of Transport and Health, Urban Design International, and the Journal of Transportation of the Institute of Transportation Engineers. He has presented his work nationally at the Congress for the New Urbanism, the Transportation Research Board and the International Association of Travel Behavior Researchers. Future scheduled presentations include the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning’s Annual Conference in Portland, Oregon, where he will present his research on “scofflaw bicycling” and serve as a session panelist for historic preservation and livability.

At UNL, Piatkowski will teach land use and transportation, urban design and research methods.

“We are fortunate to have these three talented individuals join our College, to continue their academic careers and exciting research paths, and to contribute to the rich curriculum and content we provide our students,” commented Katherine Ankerson, College of Architecture Dean.

University of Texas at Austin

UT Austin School of Architecture Hosts The Secret Life of Buildings Symposium, October 19 -22
Symposium Explores Speculative Realism, Object Oriented Ontology, and other theories                        

AUSTIN, TX— August 9, 2016—The School of Architecture at The University of Texas at Austin will host The Secret Life of Buildings, October 19-22, 2016. Organized by the Center for American Architecture and Design, the four-day symposium investigates Speculative Realism, Object Oriented Ontology (OOO), and similar emerging theories that imagine that buildings and the things in and around them not only promote human life, but have lives of their own, separate from our experience of them. Held on the UT campus, the event marks the first time the leaders of this exciting new realm of critical thought will gather to consider the topic of architecture.
 
What happens within a building when we are not there? How does a building relate to the objects within it? How does it relate to other buildings around it? If buildings are actors, what networks are they acting in? What do they keep to themselves, apart from all contact? These are just a few of the questions that the symposium seeks to address. Attendees will also investigate what implications, if any, these theories have for architects and designers of the built environment.  
 
On his website, Ian Bogost, philosopher, author, game designer, and one of the panelists at the symposium, defines OOO as the branch of philosophy that..
 
…puts things at the center…In contemporary thought, things are usually taken either as the aggregation of ever smaller bits (scientific naturalism) or as constructions of human behavior and society (social relativism). OOO steers a path between the two, drawing attention to things at all scales (from atoms to alpacas, bits to blinis), and pondering their nature and relations with one another as much with ourselves.
 
Speakers include philosopher Graham Harman of the American University in Cairo and Sci-Arc and founder of Object Oriented Ontology; architect and theorist Albena Yaneva of the University of Manchester; architect and theorist Jorge Otero-Pailos of Columbia University; and UT Austin architect and theorist Michael Benedikt. Other prominent thinkers and practitioners participating include Levi Bryant, Timothy Morton, Craig Dykers, Winka Dubbeldam, Ian Bogost, Leslie Van Duzer, Matthew B. Crawford, and UT faculty co-organizer Kory Bieg.
 
The symposium will be accompanied by an exhibition, Objects. Comprised of the top fifteen entries of an international design competition, the presentation will feature works that examine the ideas of Object Oriented Ontology and Speculative Realism through the design of singular, tangible things: “objects.” These will be installed in and around UT’s Goldsmith Hall at the School of Architecture.
 
Inquiries about the symposium may be directed to Leora Visotzky at the University of Texas at Austin, at leora@austin.utexas.edu. All events are free and open to the public until full. The Objects exhibition is on view October 17 – 31, 2016.

Timber in the City: Students Awarded Prizes for Innovative Designs Using Wood as a Green Material for Urban Construction

TIMBER IN THE CITY

Students Awarded Prizes for Innovative Designs Using Wood as a Green Material for Urban Construction

NEW YORK, August 8, 2016 —Today, the winning entrants were announced of a student design competition exploring wood as an innovative building material. Timber in the City: Urban Habitats Competition, organized by the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA), the Binational Softwood Lumber Council (BSLC) and Parsons The New School for Design, attracted more than 850 architectural students who designed proposals for a mid-rise, mixed-use complex with affordable housing units, a NYC outpost of the The Andy Warhol Museum and a new and expanded home for the historic Essex Street Market. The winning entrants, with prizes totaling $40,000, were chosen by a panel of leading architects and professors based on the design’s ability to integrate wood as the primary structural material while meeting the needs of the local community.  

The competition focused on a site on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, with a diverse population of public housing residents, market, the new Lowline and a number of new residential and commercial developments. Students were asked to design places for inhabitation, repose, recreation, and local small scale commercial exchange, as well as the creation of social and cultural exchanges, all while embracing new possibilities of wood. Entrants were challenged to propose construction systems in scenarios that draw optimally on the performance characteristics of not one but a variety of wood technologies. 

“Today, timber is being used in new, innovative ways to help address the economic and environmental challenges of the build environment,” said Cees de Jager, executive director of BSLC. “This competition brought to life the way the design community is recognizing the benefits of wood – from reduced economic and environmental impact to enhanced aesthetic value and structural performance – to design buildings and communities of the future.”

The projects will be on view at the 2016 Greenbuild Conference in Los Angeles (October), the 2017 ACSA Annual Meeting in Detroit (March) and the American Institute of Architects 2017 Convention in Orlando (April).  Awards, totaling $40,000, were presented to teams of students and faculty for their unique celebrations of wood products.

  • First Place: “Stack Exchange” – the University of Washington’s winning submission attracted the jurors with its outstanding inventive formal strategy and expressive use of timber. The scale of the market and gallery spaces read as great urban rooms with the residential spaces floating above.
    • Students: Buddy Burkhalter, Mingjun Yin, and Connor Irick, University of Washington
    • Faculty Sponsors: Richard Mohler and Elizabeth Golden, University of Washington
    • Second Place: “Hybrid Domains” – the University of Oregon stands out for its elegant hybridity of systems. There is a nice nod to the old 19th century steel and iron loft buildings but reincarnated in timber.
      • Students: Greg Stacy, Benjamin Wright, Alex Kendle, and Michael Meer, University of Oregon
      • Faculty Sponsor: Judith Sheine and Mark Donofrio, University of Oregon, and Mikhail Gershfeld, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona
      • Third Place: “Grid + Grain” – the University of Washington has a very exciting and convincing urban strategy. The diagram for this project in plan and section is extremely elegant and works well. It is a project that you could see being built today in New York City.
        • Students: Everardo Lopez, Lauren McWhorter, and Jesce Walz, University of Washington
        • Faculty Sponsors: Richard Mohler and Elizabeth Golden, University of Washington

Additionally, two student teams were selected as honorable mention winners:

  • Honorable Mention Project: Within a Timber Glade
    Students: Ross Silverman, Kelly Hayes, James Ko, and Caitlin Powell, Philadelphia University
    Faculty Sponsors: Lisa Phillips, Li Hao, and Edgar Stach, Philadelphia University
  • Honorable Mention Project: The Delancey Cut
    Students: Zachary Jorgensen, Elizabeth Kelley, and Charles Landefeld, University of Washington
    Faculty Sponsors: Richard Mohler and Elizabeth Golden, University of Washington

The winning projects were chosen by a panel of distinguished jury members in the architecture community, including the following:

  • Jennifer Cover, WoodWorks
  • Dana Getman, SHoP Architects
  • Susan Jones, atelierjones
  • Alan Organschi , Gray Organschi Architect
  • Jeff Spiritos, Spiritos Properties

The competition ran from July 2015 through May 25, 2016 and included over 850 participants. The design jury met in July to select the winning projects and honorable mentions. For full details on the competition and the winning submissions visit www.timberinthecity.com.

Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture
Founded in 1912 to advance the quality of architectural education, the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) represents all accredited programs and their faculty across the United States and Canada, as well as nonaccredited and international affiliate members around the world. ACSA, unique in its representative role for schools of architecture, provides a forum for ideas on the leading edge of architectural thought. Issues that will affect the architectural profession in the future are being examined today in ACSA member schools. The association maintains a variety of activities that influence, communicate, and record important issues. Such endeavors include scholarly meetings, workshops, publications, awards and competition programs, support for architectural research, policy development, and liaison with allied organizations. For more information, please visit www.acsa-arch.org.     

Binational Softwood Lumber Council
The Binational Softwood Lumber Council (BSLC), a nonprofit organization, was established in 2006 by the Canadian and U.S. governments. The BSLC champions the use of softwood lumber products as part of the shift to a more environmentally responsible and economically viable building sector. Sustainably harvested wood products from North America create jobs in rural communities, reduce costs and can help reduce the overall environmental footprint of a home or building. For more information, visit www.softwoodlumber.org. 

Parsons The New School for Design 
Parsons The New School for Design is a global leader in design education, with programs that span the disciplines of design and the fine arts. Parsons prepares students to creatively and critically address the complex conditions of contemporary global society. Its curriculum is geared toward synthesizing rigorous craft with cutting-edge theory and research methods, and encourages collaborative and individual approaches that cut across a wide array of disciplines. The School of Constructed Environments at Parsons is the only integrated school of interior design, lighting design, product design and architecture in the country. For more information, please visit www.newschool.edu/parsons/sce.

 

MEDIA CONTACTS

Eric Ellis
Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture
(202) 785-2324
eellis@acsa-arch.org

Deborah Kirschner
Parsons the New School for Design
(347) 763-0861
kirschnd@newschool.edu

Christian Huot
reThink Wood
(604) 685-7507
christian.huot@rethinkwood.com

 

# # #

 

The Future of Architectural Education

by Bruce Lindsey, ACSA President

As you read this, I will be representing ACSA at the NCARB Licensing Advisors Summit in Chicago. There will be 258 advisers in attendance. Saturday, along with representatives of the AIA, NCARB, NAAB, and AIAS. I will participate on a panel that will address the future of architectural education. I will have five minutes. Not to spoil the surprise but here it is:

The future of architectural education is dynamic. The diversity of our schools, programs, degrees, and approaches is a strength. The lack of diversity in our student bodies, faculty, and profession is not. Technology is always the answer but the question is uncertain. Design is a hot topic. It is not just a process but also an expertise that involves experienced judgment. That’s why we practice. There is an ethical dimension to practice that is important because designs are predictions that affect things both directions in time. And finally, we need to figure out why the world does not know we think it needs us.

I think that might be only three minutes. Suggestions welcome.

 

STRATEGIC PLANNING, ADAPTIVE STRATEGY

This past year as president-elect I had the pleasure of chairing the planning committee charged with developing a new strategic plan with a 3-5 year view, the former plan having been written about 10 years ago. We engaged Nancy Alexander of Lumenance Consulting to help develop the plan and to think about the future of ACSA and its mission. Several weeks ago, at our summer meeting, the board voted to formally adopt the plan that is presented here.


Download the PDF

Google “strategic planning” and you get 10 steps, tool boxes, templates, and, my favorite, “The Strategic Plan is Dead, Long Live Strategy” from the Stanford Innovation Review. I remain an inspired skeptic, but the process over the last year has been an amazing experience. If you want to get to know new colleagues fast, work on a strategic plan together.

A concept from the Stanford article has made me less of a skeptic. With an adaptive strategy we hope to allow the plan to be at once precise and flexible as we move into a future that we know will be uncertain. Amanda Gann of the ACSA staff is working on an interactive dashboard that will help us track our progress. I love technology. 

A pivotal moment in the process of developing the plan occurred when Nancy Alexander helped us consider the value of beginning to see the organization moving from a position of serving to one of leading. This powerful idea will take more than five minutes and will require a truly collaborative effort between ACSA and our member schools and colleagues. I am excited to solicit your feedback and your help as we approach a new year and the implementation of the new plan.

I would like to thank Mike Monti and the amazing ACSA staff, and Marilys Nepomechie as she moves from president to past president. Her leadership this last year has helped ACSA increase its international presence and has helped lead the board toward a new organizational structure that will begin this fall among other accomplishments. I very much look forward to the coming year’s work alongside Marilys, the two presidents-elect, Francisco J. Rodriguez-Suarez and Branko Kolarevic, and the entire board. 

In the cab on the way to the airport from the summer board meeting my Ethiopian cab driver asked me what I did. When I responded, “I am a professor,” he said, “You don’t need to be famous to be unforgettable. Being a teacher is good enough.” This response reminded me of a favorite warning from Kierkegaard that a professor is a teacher without paradox. I am very proud to be serving as president of an organization that supports teachers and their schools knowing that while education is usually blamed, it remains our best hope.

Sincerely,

Bruce Lindsey

 

University of Texas at Austin

Drawings, images, and models from Kory Bieg and Clay Odom’s Lumifoil, the winning work of the FIU College of Architecture + The Arts Emerging Architects Competition, will be exhibited at the FIU College of Architecture + The Arts, Miami Beach Urban Studios from June to September of 2016. The project is designed as an intervention into the rooftop event space of Bernard Tschumi’s “Red Generator” building at the FIU College of Architecture + The Arts. It was engineered by ARUP and is currently scheduled for installation in December 2016.

Kevin Alter’s professional practice, alterstudio architecture, has been recognized recently with awards and in several publications. The studio received two AIA Austin: 2016 Design Awards, one for their South 3rd Street Residence, and the other for their Cuernavaca residence.

This summer, after fifteen years of dedicated service to The University of Texas at Austin, Dean Fritz Steiner will be leaving the School of Architecture to serve as dean of PennDesign at the University of Pennsylvania, his alma mater. Elizabeth Danze, UTSOA professor and Associate Dean of Graduate Programs, will serve as interim dean for the school effective July 1.

Gabriel Díaz Montemayor gave a lecture entitled, “Service Studios: Public Space and Academia,” at the VII International Congress on Architecture and Design organized by the Marista University of Merida in the state of Yucatan, Mexico. Montemayor also presented a paper, “Hybrid Ecological and Sustainable Mobility Networks for Northern Mexico,” at the 46th Urban Affairs Association Conference held in San Diego. 

Allan Shearer, Co-Director of the Center for Sustainable Development, authored “Abduction to Argument: A Framework of Design Thinking,” for the current issue of Landscape Journal._ 

Professor Wilfried Wang guest-edited two consecutive issues of the Japanese architectural journal A+U, on the work of Sigurd Lewerentz. Wang also co-curated, with Adjunct Associate Professor Barbara Hoidn, the upcoming exhibition,DEMO:POLIS–The Right to Public Space, at the Akademie der Künste, Berlin.

 

University of Southern California

The 2016 Facade Tectonics World Congress
October 10-11, 2016
University of Southern California School of Architecture
Los Angeles, California, USA

http://tinyurl.com/zk658k6

A global conference about the design, engineering, manufacturing, construction and management of building enclosures. Blind peer-reviewed papers and presentations by more than 75 speakers including many faculty members from architecture programs around the country:  covering structural glass, intelligent facades, new materials and methods, daylighting, energy, sustainability, resilience, retrofit, double-skins, heritage facades, and more.   Target audience includes professors, architects, engineers, facade designers, manufacturers, contractors, suppliers, owners, etc. The Facade Tectonics Institute is a member-based, volunteer organization founded in 2007 at the University of Southern California and dedicated to the advancement and dissemination of knowledge in the field of building envelopes.  

How to Manage Your Online Scholarly Identity

Barbara Opar and Lucy Campbell, column editors

Column by Anne E. Rauh, Science & Engineering Librarian, Syracuse University Libraries

What is the first thing you do when you receive an announcement about a speaker or a new colleague joining your institution? Do you want to find out more? I know I do. What happens when you search for yourself online? Do you discover old webpages listing outdated works and previous employers, or a true reflection of you and your work? Today a number of mostly free tools are available to collect and present accurate up-to-date information about scholarly identity.

When librarians and faculty ask me what they can do to curate their online profiles, the first tool I recommend is LinkedIn. With more than 400 million members in 200 countries worldwide, Linkedin allows you to create connections that represent your real-world professional relationships while expanding your network. Although largely a business-oriented social networking tool, Linkedin can serve academics too. Whether interacting with architecture firms, seeking to place students in internships, following alumni as they progress through their careers, or looking to find out more about publishers and material vendors, LinkedIn can help. An established network can help you find employment opportunities, recruit candidates, identify collaborators, highlight achievements, and notify colleagues and peers of job changes and other achievements. However, while LinkedIn does highlight academic work, scholarly identity is not the main focus. For that the internet offers some more specialized tools.

My top recommendation for a tool to profile scholarly work is Google Scholar Citations. This feature of Google Scholar requires very little effort and after initial set up, automatically populates a scholar’s profile with their citations. After logging in using your Google account information and verifying the publications Google Scholar has located are in fact yours, you can add affiliation information and keywords about research interests to enrich your profile. If publications are not automatically populated they can be added manually. Profiles update automatically or can be moderated as new works are published. In addition to a list of publications, Google Scholar Citations shows metrics such as h-index and total number of citations. These profile pages are easily found when searching in Google Scholar.

Scholarly communication practices are changing with websites integrating scholarly publishing and social networking. This does promote interaction and sharing of scholarly materials. Referrals from social media aid in discovery. Two widely used academic social networking tools are Academia.edu and ResearchGate. Academia.edu boasts more than 39 million members and ResearchGate claims over 10 million. Academia.edu users come from all disciplines while the majority of ResearchGate users are from the health and life sciences. Despite its name, Academia.edu is not an institution of higher learning or a consortium of academic institutions but rather a domain name registered before restrictions were placed on the use of ‘edu’. ResearchGate is the largest academic social networking site and does require a referral or institutional affiliation which can be verified. Both tools encourage authors to upload papers and share within their network. Users can also request that authors upload and share papers not currently available. When papers are uploaded, they are attributed and a profile is created showcasing all the authors’ works.

Both tools have received a fair amount of criticism from user communities. Users of ResearchGate complain about the number of system-generated notification emails. Whenever a paper is uploaded, an automatic email is sent to co-authors inviting them to use the tool. ResearchGate has also  been criticized for how it calculates journal impact as well as its auto-generation of author profiles  Both tools are frequently confused for open access repositories and do not fulfill institutional or funding agency requirements to share work. Both sites also encourage authors to disregard copyright agreements, something that publishers are not ignoring. If you are interested in what you as an author can do to retain copyright, see AASL’s October 2015 column post by Amy Dygert.

Your institution may also have solutions to help manage online scholarly identity. At Syracuse University, we have SelectedWorks and Experts@Syracuse. SelectedWorks is a feature of SURFACE, our institutional repository, hosted by Digital Commons. This feature allows authors to profile their work in an organizational format that works for them. It links to content hosted in the institutional repository and allows for uploading and linking of additional content. Experts@Syracuse is driven by Elsevier’s Pure. It connects to Scopus author profiles, and local information such as appointments and grant information is added by the institution. Ask your library or research office if there are similar offerings at your institution.

If you are curious what any of these look like in action, I maintain the following sites:

 

 

From Cross-Americas | Santiago, Chile

Outgoing President’s Message from Marilys Nepomechie

At the close of an exceptional International Conference in Santiago, on a year that indelibly links Chile to architectural accolades and biennales, it is a special privilege to reflect not only on ACSA’s biennial international meeting, but also on the past year.  

Our presence in Santiago was a first for ACSA. The occasion also marked our first return to South America in nearly two decades, and only the second time in the history of the organization that the international conference was held south of the Equator.  Nearly two years in the making, Cross-Americas: Probing Dis-Global Networks benefitted from tremendous generosity on the part of many. We were honored to work with exceptional partners in our host school, the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile [PUC], and with extraordinary colleagues among our team of academic program co-chairs:  Macarena Cortés and Umberto Bonomo, Pontificia Universidad Católica, Chile; Alfredo Andia, Florida International University, USA; Dana Cupkova, Carnegie Mellon University, USA; and Vera Parlac, University of Calgary, Canada.  Together, they prepared an outstanding agenda of peer-reviewed papers, projects, keynote presentations, discussions, tours and events.

In yet another first for ACSA, and in an effort to build bridges, not only among academic faculty but also among architecture program leaders and professional practitioners, we inaugurated an Administrators’ / Leadership Track within the academic conference.  For their joint efforts in its organization, we are indebted to Roger Schluntz, Dean Emeritus, University of New Mexico, USA and Emilio de la Cerda, Architecture Program Director, Pontificia Universidad Católica, Chile.  Product of ACSA’s yearlong multi-collateral International Task Force, the leadership track invited lively exchange. From across national borders and program profiles, participants shared best practices and unique approaches to our parallel academic and professional endeavors. 

Panels in the international leadership track incorporated valuable contributions from academic administrators in North and South America, as well as from experts and leaders of our collateral organizations in the United States. We are delighted that Thomas Vonier, FAIA, President–Elect of the American Institute of Architects and Secretary General of the International Union of Architects; Kristine Harding, AIA, President of the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards; Tamara Redburn, AIA, Director of the National Architectural Accrediting Board and Sharon Matthews, AIA, architectural education and accreditation consultant, all joined our discussions.

Over the course of four days, Cross-Americas drew an international assemblage of architectural scholars, designers, educators and practitioners into rich conversations around themes of our valued commonalities –and of the increasing importance of our articulated differences.  PUC, our host school, nurtures particularly robust ties between its academic programs and the design professions.  Members of its faculty lead some of the most highly regarded creative practices working anywhere in the world today; several joined us for Cross-Americas: Faculty member Alejandro Aravena, 2016 Pritzker Laureate and curator of the Venice Architecture Biennale, focused the opening keynote on the nature and value of architectural education, and on the role of our discipline in advancing social equity. Subsequent keynote speakers, also affiliated with the PUC, showcased the work of significant Chilean design practices, including Pezo von Ellrichhausen, Mirene Elton, Teresa Moller [Landscape Architecture] and Cazú Zegers.

Captured in the titles of its conferences, the past year has been one for high aspirations [Uncharted Territories], sometimes buttressed by invented words: [New Knowledges, Dis-global Networks].  The titles reflect a year of launching new initiatives from a platform of organizational strengths.  Working in multiple modes, ACSA has focused both internally and externally, expanding possibilities for our members in ways that place the organization at the center of opportunity and intelligence in architectural education and practice.  

Leveraging and expanding its powerful capacities, ACSA, in its role as facilitator, has engaged in the development of an increasingly robust infrastructure for networked academic and institutional research –one structured to support the work of faculty scholars and leaders at our member schools. In that context, it has worked to strengthen connections to practice, to the profession, to our collateral partners, and to architecture programs worldwide. 

In its role as convener, ACSA has expanded the scope and purview of its international conference to include sessions focused on program and professional leadership.  It has expanded the content of our annual and fall meetings by partnering with the profession and collateral organizations on research areas of mutual interest, including housing, resilience, and health.  We are pleased that the multi-collateral Education Coordinating Council, outgrowth of the Path Forward Task Force, has begun its joint work.  

Finally, in its role as disseminator of faculty scholarship and creative production, ACSA has expanded venues for peer-reviewed publication by supporting the development of TAD, a new ACSA journal focused on research in the building sciences; and by creating a traveling exhibition of peer-reviewed faculty work.

Our new strategic plan, the first revision of a key governance document in over a decade, was introduced in Seattle, and is now complete.  The 2016-17 Board of Directors will commence its inaugural implementation this summer.  Similarly, the first and second parts of our new board governance structure have been adopted.  The year ahead will be the first with newly constituted executive and program committee structures.

This marks the final edition of my post-conference letters to our membership. It is a special pleasure to welcome Bruce Lindsey to the presidency of ACSA this month, and to begin exciting new initiatives under his leadership. I am deeply grateful to the exceptional colleagues whose work, through our Board of Directors, has advanced the endeavors of the past year.  Each has made the product of our collective efforts more robust and more compelling. I close by expressing my gratitude to Executive Director Michael Monti and to the professional staff at ACSA. Without their support, creativity, and ingenuity ACSA’s work would be impossible.  It has been an enormous privilege and honor to serve as President of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture.  I thank you.

 
— Marilys Nepomechie

CATTt: An Anti-Method for Architectural Research

Barbara Opar and Lucy Campbell, column editors

Column by Cathryn Copper, Woodbury University, School of Architecture, San Diego, CA

In the early 1990’s, when the Internet became easily accessible, Gregory L. Ulmer, Professor of English at the University of Florida, Gainesville, set forth new methods for conducting research and academic writing in an age of electronic hypermedia in his book Heuretics: The Logic of Invention.

His method, or anti-method, is an artistic experiment. Ulmer states that all the art (and architecture) that has been created is only a small portion of what could have been.[1] Thus, Ulmer’s method demands the researcher stretch their imagination. If the researcher can let go of structure, then the mental experience will lead to invention. Professors of architecture have embraced Ulmer’s method to help students develop research topics, primarily at the thesis level.[2] 

The method—known as CATTt—requires the researcher to create multi-level arguments. This is achieved through five progressions.

C         =          Contrast (opposition, inversion, differentiation)

A         =          Analogy (figuration, displacement)

T         =          Theory (repetition, literalization)

T         =          Target (application, purpose)

t           =          tale (secondary elaboration, representability)

Ulmer refers to CATTt as an anti-method, however the anti-method indirectly reflects some of the information literacy methods librarians are repeatedly challenged to communicate to architecture students.

Contrast is at the core of a good research argument. The intention is to investigate alternative viewpoints. Marc J. Neveu, in his lecture Theses for a Thesis, elaborates that contrast is a reaction to something and your position must constantly be in flux.[3] When the researcher plays devil’s advocate, their mentality shifts. At a fundamental level, librarians instruct students to evaluate various perspectives to draw attention to potential bias and accurately represent the research topic. Ulmer challenges the researcher to do the same, but with a more momentous reason, because when the mentality shift happens new ideas come to fruition. Consequently, it can be argued that this is what librarians have been encouraging through information literacy.

Analogy requires the researcher to borrow thoughts from other disciplines.[4] Ulmer states that analogy is where method becomes invention.[5] Libraries encourage this through multidisciplinary databases and curated collections. However, librarians can become stronger advocates of analogy by teaching by example. We sit at the center of an intertangled web of university departments that provides ideal opportunities to collaborate across disciplines. Ulmer suggests researchers look outside their disciplines to nurture progressive thinking. For example, architecture librarians could do this by borrowing the idea of design thinking from our architecture colleagues to solve problems and generate new initiates.[6]

Theory is the obligation to fundamental research that librarians crave. Ulmer’s formula recognizes that it takes theory to make theory and that an academic researcher is part of a scholarly conversation. To join the world of academic research one must reference back to clearly established notions.[7] Accordingly, this is one of the six newly adopted frames in the Association of College & Research Libraries’ (ACRL) Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education.[8]

Target is the audience for the research. This is an information literacy concept librarians communicate frequently to help students identify the purpose of the potential resource and the appropriate output format.

Finally, is tale or the cat’s tail/tale.[9] This is the representation of the research, and according to Neveu the aspect architecture students struggle with most.[10] At this point, the research project leaves the library and relocates to the studio where students make an effort to translate their ideas into drawings.

Ultimately, Ulmer’s pedagogy lets go of the nonsensical structure that one should have a thesis first before beginning to research.[11] Instead, CATTt demands the student conduct research in order to develop a topic. Librarians preach concepts like reviewing a list of references and developing a search vocabulary for this exact reason (and then some). One obvious semi-flaw in Ulmer’s method is that he implies that the researcher is not necessarily looking for accurate information.[12] He argues it is more important for the researcher to learn to make interdisciplinary connections—something librarians teach through tools like concept mapping, in addition to finding accurate information.

Seemingly, librarians have unintentionally embraced Ulmer’s concepts through aspects of information literacy instruction. I would argue that this connection should be more intentional. The discipline of librarianship is so rooted in structure that opportunities to nurture creativity are often missed. Creativity does not just happen in the studio. Architecture librarians have the obligation to inspire students and faculty through information. Why not take it one step further and incorporate the CATTt method into information literacy instruction? Working with architecture faculty to gain insight into the mindset of their students, architecture librarians could employ the CATTt method to help students think about research in a whole new way. Architecture faculty would then be able to better link library instruction to student learning outcomes and the finished design project. After all, if we let go of structure, and look at a topic critically through a new lens, according to Ulmer it will lead to something influential.

 


[1] Gregory L. Ulmer, Heuretics: The Logic of Invention (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994), 3.

[2] Marc J. Neveu, “Theses for a Thesis” (lecture, Hammons School of Architecture, Drury University, Springfield, MO, November 1, 2008).

[3] Marc J. Neveu, “Theses for a Thesis” (lecture, Hammons School of Architecture, Drury University, Springfield, MO, November 1, 2008).

[4] Marc J. Neveu, “Theses for a Thesis” (lecture, Hammons School of Architecture, Drury University, Springfield, MO, November 1, 2008).

[5] Gregory L. Ulmer, Heuretics: The Logic of Invention (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994), 8.

[6] IDEO, “Design Thinking for Libraries,” Global Libraries. December 31, 2014, http://designthinkingforlibraries.com/.

[7] Marc J. Neveu, “Theses for a Thesis” (lecture, Hammons School of Architecture, Drury University, Springfield, MO, November 1, 2008).

[8] ACRL, “Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education,” January 11, 2016, http://www.ala.org/acrl/standards/ilframework.

[9] Gregory L. Ulmer, Heuretics: The Logic of Invention (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994), 9.

[10] Marc J. Neveu, “Theses for a Thesis” (lecture, Hammons School of Architecture, Drury University, Springfield, MO, November 1, 2008).

[11] Jacob T. Riley, “The CATTt Method: In Defense of Heuretic Pedagogy,” http://jtriley-dragline.blogspot.com/p/introduction-to-catttheuretics.html.

[12] Jacob T. Riley, “The CATTt Method: In Defense of Heuretic Pedagogy,” http://jtriley-dragline.blogspot.com/p/introduction-to-catttheuretics.html.

Bruce Lindsey of the School of Architecture & Urban Design at Washington University in St. Louis Starts Term as ACSA President

Washington, D.C.—July 1, 2016 —The Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) is pleased to announce that Bruce Lindsey, E. Desmond Lee Professor for Community Collaboration and Dean of the College and Graduate School of Architecture & Urban Design at Washington University in St. Louis, has begun his term as ACSA President for the 2016-2017 academic year. He assumes the role a year after his election to the board as Vice President/President-Elect.
 
As an artist, architect, and educator, Lindsey has made significant contributions to beginning design, sustainable design, and community design education. He joined the faculty of the School of Architecture at Carnegie Mellon in 1988 where he taught across the curriculum of architecture and art for 14 years. He then served as co-director of the Rural Studio from 2002-06, and the Paul Rudolph Professor from 2005-06. There he helped develop the five degree programs and two outreach programs around an idea of collective practice that was characterized by social and environmental activism advanced through an emphasis on interdisciplinary work and joint degrees.
 
A practicing architect, Lindsey worked with Davis + Gannon Architects to design the Pittsburgh Glass Center, which earned a gold rating under LEED guidelines. The project also received a Design Honor Award from the American Institute of Architects (AIA) and was chosen as one of 2005’s top 10 green buildings by the AIA’s Committee on the Environment. His other honors include a 1993 Young Architects Award from Progressive Architecture, a 2002 AIA Design Merit Award for his extensive renovation, with EDGE Architecture, of the Society for Contemporary Craft in Pittsburgh, and the 2015 ACSA Distinguished Professor Award.
 
In his first year on the ACSA board, as President-Elect, Lindsey has been instrumental in facilitating the reimagining of ACSA’s Strategic Plan. For the first time in a decade, ACSA has rewritten its strategic plan to help the organization be better able to address pressing issues affecting schools, faculty, and students. Lindsey will chair his first board meeting as ACSA President later this month in Washington, DC.
 
About the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture
ACSA is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, membership association founded in 1912 to advance the quality of architectural education. The school membership in ACSA has grown from 10 charter members to over 250 schools in several membership categories. These include full membership for all accredited programs in the United States and government-sanctioned schools in Canada, candidate membership for schools seeking accreditation, and affiliate membership for schools for two-year and international programs. Through these schools, over 5,000 architecture faculty members are represented. In addition, over 500 supporting members composed of architecture firms, product associations and individuals add to the breadth of interest and support of ACSA goals.