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Kansas State University

Seaton/Regnier Hall

The newly renovated and expanded Seaton and Regnier Halls have been operational since August 2017. The late 19th century and early 20th century existing structures have been transformed into an innovative 21st century learning and teaching environment, designed by the architecture firms Ennead Architects, BNIM, el dorado, and landscape architecture firm Confluence. The project included the renovation of 80,000 square feet of Seaton Hall and the addition of 114,000 square feet of new construction. The building has consolidated our fabrication capabilities into one 20,000 square-foot shop, adjacent to the new home for our college’s library. A 300-seat auditorium has also been added to building for guest lectures and events. The studios feature cutting-edge technology with integrated design labs and collaborative spaces, while the energy efficient design reduces maintenance and operating costs.

Kansas State University

Esteemed Professor Peter Magyar has stepped down as Department Head at Kansas State University’s College of Architecture, Planning & Design after four years of service. He will dedicate his efforts towards his life-long passions of teaching and design research as a member of the architecture faculty. Magyar has been elected as a full member of the Royal Institute of British Architects. He has also published the book THINKINK, by Kendall Hunt Publishers. Magyar also was appointed as advisor in the graduate program of the Dessau Institute of Architecture, at the Bauhaus, Germany. At the 11th International Conference on Knowledge, Culture and Change in Organizations, in Madrid, Spain, Magyar presented a workshop “SPACEPRINTS — An Ontological and Pragmatic Investigation of the Shape of Infinity — Towards a New Paradigm in the Management of Spatial Perception.” Magyar also gave the opening presentation at Borderline Architecture in the Hungarian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. He published two editorials in the e-architect international newsletter, and in April this year he received the first Pro Architectura Hungarica medal from the Association of Hungarian Architects.

Associate Professor Mathew Knox will be serving as Interim Head of the APDesign Department of Architecture while a department head search is underway. 

Assistant Professor Michael McGlynn presented a paper entitled “Blurring Boundaries: Integrated Design, Architectural Technology, and the Beginning Design Student” at the 27th National Conference on the Beginning Design Student held at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, April 1-2, 2011. The paper was also published in the conference proceedings. McGlynn also conducted a teaching workshop at the Society of Building Science Educators Retreat held at Los Poblanos Inn in Albuquerque, New Mexico, June 16-17, 2011. The intent of the workshop, “The Horse Before the Cart: Creating Significant Learning Experiences to Deliver Course Content,” was for participants to actively engage in the creation of a variety of significant learning experiences related to teaching architectural technology. The primary outcome of this workshop was the collaborative development of significant learning experiences in support of teaching architectural technology in an integrated manner.

Professor David Seamon published the article, “Gaston Bachelard’s Topoanalysis in the 21st Century: The Lived Reciprocity between Houses and Inhabitants as Portrayed by American Writer Louis Bromfield,” in  Phenomenology 2010, a volume of current phenomenological research edited by philosopher Lester Embree. Seamon presented a paper and co-organized two symposia for the annual meeting of the Environmental Design Research Association, held in Chicago, May 24-28. The first symposium focused on “Phenomenologies of Schools, Cities, and Historic Environments;” Seamon presented the paper, “Jane Jacobs as Phenomenologist: The Lasting Significance of her Understanding of the Urban Lifeworld Fifty Years after Death and Life of Great American Cities.” The second symposium looked at the built work of Kubala Washatko Architects, a Milwaukee design firm that draws on architect Christopher Alexander’s “pattern language” approach to programming and designing. Principal Tom Kubala presented the firm’s 2008 building addition designed for Frank Lloyd Wright’s 1951 First Unitarian Church in Madison, Wisconsin.

Assistant Professor Nathan Howe wrote and presented a paper. “Algorithmic Modeling: Teaching Architecture in Digital Age” at the ACADIA Regional 2011: Parametricism: (SPC) in Lincoln, Nebraska. He also provided a “grasshopper” workshop at the conference for those beginners into the fascinating world of algorithmic modeling. Howe is also finishing an article to be published in the OZ journal titled, “Augmenting Architecture through Algorithmic Modeling.” This summer he will be traveling to Sydney, Australia, to be a part of the opening of the Love:Lace exhibit in the Powerhouse Museum in which Howe’s piece SpiderLACE will be showcased.

This year’s issue of Oz (vol. 33), a student-edited journal, is titled “augment” and examines how the tools designers use affect the objects they make. Oz is working with Monica Ponce de Leon of Office dA, Alan Dunlop, Patrick Schumacher of Zaha Hadid Architects, and Frank Barkow of Barkow Leibinger Architects. This volume of the journal will feature 10 articles and two interviews, with representation from architects, landscape architects, and interior architects from Kansas City to San Francisco, Berlin, Stockholm and Scotland. 

Kansas State University

 

David Seamon, Professor of Architecture, published the article, “A Jumping, Joyous Urban Jumble”: Jane Jacobs’s Death and Life of Great American Cities as a Phenomenology of Urban Place,” in the peer-reviewed, open-source Journal of Space Syntax, vol. 3 (fall), pp. 139-49 (available at: http://joss.bartlett.ucl.ac.uk/journal/index.php/joss/issue/view/5/showToc ). Seamon attended and presented a blind peer-reviewed paper at the annual meeting of the International Society for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture, held at Pepperdine University in Malibu, California, August 8 -11.

Associate Professor of Architecture Mick Charney conducted the workshop “Looking for Mr. Wright, and Finding Him on Facebook” at the Institute of Education, University of London, London, UK at the 19th International Conference on Learning, August 14-16.  Additionally, Charney presented the paper “Hint Fiction and Vivid Grammar: Quick Ways to Jump-start Writing Objectives” at the 13th National Lilly Conference on College and University Teaching and Learning in Traverse City, Michigan, September 20-23; he also served as a judge for the Laurie Ryan Memorial Award, a $400 prize presented to the author of the best poster at the Lilly Conference.

A team of K-State students advised by Assistant Professor Michael Gibson collaborated with the Kansas Children’s Discovery Center in Topeka, KS to design and construct a new outdoor pavilion to enhance the Discovery Center’s outdoor learning initiative. The pavilion (photo above), dubbed the “Outdoor Learning Classroom,” was supported in tandem by the Discovery Center and by Westar Energy, who provided reclaimed utility poles to serve as the primary structure. Students ultimately provided over 800 hours of volunteer work over four weeks designing and constructing the project. The project opened in late August and the process and final installation is exhibited in a blog found at http://teeculus.wordpress.com/

Professor of Architecture Peter Magyar and his ARCH 806 Master of Architecture students went on a week-long field trip to Budapest, Hungary, for an architectural site visit during September 2012, which is a first step in the planned cooperation between K-State and the Technical University of Budapest. The maiden trip project, which will be designed simultaneously by selected students of both Universities, hopefully will be followed by cooperation between other colleges, resulting in possible student and faculty exchanges, and mutual research projects.

Professor of Architecture Susanne Siepl-Coates and her ARCH 806 Master of Architecture students went on a week-long field trip to Zurich, Switzerland to visit the 2012–2013 Distinguished Regnier Visiting Professor Beat Kaempfen in September. Visiting many of Kaempfen’s exemplary buildings, students learned about Swiss standards with regard to ecological, sustainable and energy-efficient design.

Professor of Architecture Jim Jones and Professor of Architecture Dragoslav Simic took their ARCH 304 and ARCH 806 Master of Architecture students on a week-long field trip to Honduras for an architectural site visit for the design of a Trauma Center for the Island of Roatan.

University of Tennessee-Knoxville

University of Tennessee
College of Architecture and Design
Open House

November 11, 2011

The University of Tennessee College of Architecture and Design is hosting its first college-wide Open House, Friday, November 11, in tandem with university-wide Open House, Saturday, November 12 (http://admissions.utk.edu/undergraduate/). Home to diverse and internationally recognized practitioners, scholars, and teachers, the college offers a wide array of programs: first-professional undergraduate degrees in architecture and interior design, first-professional graduate degrees in architecture and landscape architecture, and post-professional programs in architecture and landscape architecture (http://www.arch.utk.edu/Academic_Programs/academicprograms.shtml). The all-day event begins on the university’s Knoxville campus and includes presentations by faculty and students, tours of our award winning facility and multi-disciplinary design-build projects such as The New Norris House (http://www.thenewnorrishouse.com/) and the Living Light Solar Decathlon House (http://livinglightutk.com/), the historic Norris Dam, and the university gardens. The day will conclude with a talk by local historian and author Jack Neely, and a reception at the university’s Downtown Gallery of art. The event is free of charge but spaces are limited. Please contact Ms. Vanessa Arthur (varthur@utk.edu). For more information consult: http://www.arch.utk.edu/.

Kansas State University

Architecture Professor David Seamon attended the 30th annual International Human Research Science Conference, held in Oxford, England, July 27-30, 2011. He organized a symposium, “Lived Relationalities among Place, Space, and Environmental Embodiment.” The three symposium presenters were health sociologist Dr. Andrew Moore, a research associate with the Arthritis Research UK Primary Care Centre at Keele University in Staffordshire, England; Dr. Sam Griffiths, a Lecturer in urban morphology and theory at University College London’s Bartlett School of Architecture; and Seamon, whose presentation was entitled, “‘Seeing’ Merleau-Ponty’s Perception: Possibilities in the Urban Photographs of New York City Photographer Saul Leiter. Seamon also presented “Homeworld, Alienworld, and Being at Home in Alan Ball’s HBO Television Series, Six Feet Under,” a blind-reviewed paper presented at the 7th annual Religion, Literature, and the Arts conference held at the University of Iowa, Iowa City, August 27. The conference theme was “Uncanny Homecomings: Narrative, Structures, Existential Questions, Theological Visions.”

Professor Donald Watts joined more than one hundred former Peace Corps Volunteers who had served in Afghanistan as part of the 50th Anniversary of the founding of the Peace Corps in Washington D.C.  He represented our college at a special reception for former Peace Corps Afghanistan volunteers hosted by His Excellency, Ambassador Eklil Hakimi at the Afghan Embassy in Washington. Watts served as the architectural coordinator of the Kansas State University / Kabul University Partnership Program occurring between 2007 and 2010.

Assistant Professors Nathan Howe and Sam Zeller with the help of fourth-year students Ethan Rhoades, Hana Havlova, Matthew Whetstone and Scott Davis entered  and won the international design competition The 2011 Friends of Seger Park Playground Sprayground in Philadelphia, PA. This competition was to look at the site of their existing water feature and envision a design that would be contemporary, interactive and provide an icon for their park. The team has now been commissioned to produce a promotional model and construction documents while Seger Park continues to raise funds for the project’s implementation.

Greg Sheldon, James Pfeiffer, and Rick Schladweiler from the Kansas City-based firm BNIM are co-teaching a fourth-year design studio this fall. The trio is quite enthusiastic about diving into teaching design. Sheldon, associate principal at the firm, and 2006 Architect of the Year for the AIA Kansas City chapter, taught building construction techniques to beginning students at the KC campus of the University of Missouri, but has never taught studio. The trio intends to fold verifiable design techniques into the studio’s semester-long project.

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