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University of Texas at Austin

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The Latitude 3  conference was held at the UTSOA  March 31-April 1, 2011. The conference organized by Assistant Professor Fernando Lara, included  presentations by Daniel Bonilla, Maurico Rocha, Charles Renfro, Pat Hanson, Patricia Patkau, M auricio Pezo, Sofia Von Ellrichshausen, Monica Bertolino, Carla Juacaba and Carlos Jimnez.
Elizabeth A. Danze, associate professor, School of Architecture; Christopher A. Long, professor, School of Architecture; were named to the University of Texas at Austin Academy of Distinguished Teachers.
The School of Architecture’s Undergraduate Program Prospectus received a CASE (Council for Advancement and Support of Education) Gold Award in the category of brochures/flyers/booklets.

Under the guidance of Associate Dean for Undergraduate Programs Nichole Wiedemann, and with input from Assistant Dean for Undergraduate Programs Jeanne Crawford and Associate Academic Advisor Garrett Loontjer, the Prospectus was designed by former students Natalia Zieman [B.Arch. ’10], Everett Hollander [B.Arch. ’10], and Danny Saenz [B.Arch. ’09].

On March 9, together with landscape architect and Aga Khan Award winner George Stockton, Hoidn will present a talk addressing the theme “Reclaiming The Land: The Designer as Eco-Regenerator.” The speaker series explores a range of architectural and design practices that are transforming our understanding of “sustainability” within the built environment.

Cornell University

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Jim Williamson, a visiting associate professor of architecture, has coedited and contributed to an anthology of essays about the influence of religion on Western modern and contemporary architecture. The book, The Religious Imagination in Modern and Contemporary Architecture: A Reader, published in February by Routledge, examines the relationship between religion and architecture from the late 19th century to the present. Williamson and his coeditor, Renata Hejduk, view the book as a challenge to the perceived secularity of modern and contemporary architecture. 

Williamson, a faculty member at Cornell since 2001, is also coeditor and contributor of the forthcoming book The Architecture of Disbelief. He recently published an essay in the online journal Places titled “What Passes for Beauty: A Death in Texas,” which describes his assignment to design a gravesite while a young intern at an architectural firm in Midland, Texas.

Mark Cruvellier, associate professor of architecture, recently published the second edition of his textbook, The Structural Basis of Architecture (Routledge). Cowritten with Arne P. Eggen and Bjørn N. Sandaker, the book is concerned with how to “see” structural forms as an integral part of architecture, and with exploring the link between mechanical forms and conceptual ideas inherent to the art of building. The authors analyze structural principles behind works by Alvar Aalto, Le Corbusier, Charles and Ray Eames, Frank Lloyd Wright, Rem Koolhaas/OMA, Sir Norman Foster, SANAA, Zaha Hadid, Snøhetta, and Santiago Calatrava, among others. This new edition is completely updated and rewritten, covers an expanded range of topics, and includes many worked-out examples inspired by built projects.

Two newly appointed tenure-track professors of architecture are joining Cornell University’s Department of Architecture this fall. Caroline O’Donnell will be an assistant professor of design, the first under the Richard Meier Professorship of Architecture endowment, and Jenny E. Sabin will be an assistant professor of design and emerging technologies.

O’Donnell, has been a visiting faculty member in the Department of Architecture since 2008 and is editor-in-chief of the Cornell Journal of Architecture. She is the principal of CODA, an experimental design and research studio operating at a range of scales from the urban to the architectural. From 2006 to 2008, O’Donnell was project leader at Eisenman Architects in New York City, where she directed the design teams for several projects, including Hamburg Library and Pompei Santuario Railway Station. She received her bachelor of architecture from the Manchester School of Architecture, England and her master of architecture from Princeton University.

O’Donnell has already taken important strides in establishing herself as an eminent architect, educator, and scholar – achieving recognition in the 2010 Europan 10 Competition, teaching at both Cooper Union and Princeton before coming to Cornell, and writing for numerous architectural publications.

Established in 2010, the Richard Meier Professorship of Architecture endowment is named in honor of alumnus Richard Meier (B.Arch. ’57), whose commitment to design excellence is a hallmark of Cornell’s architecture program.

As an educator and principal of Jenny Sabin Studio, Sabin’s research, teaching, and design practice focuses on the intersections of architecture, computation, and biology. She is a collaborator on an NSF-funded project employing design computation to develop materials for integration into environmentally responsive building skins. She was a co-recipient of an Upjohn research grant administered by the AIA and was recently awarded a Pew Fellowship in Design and Architecture. Her work has been published in A+U, American Journal of Pathology, Science, the New York Times, and Wired Magazine. She has coauthored Meander, Variegating Architecture with Ferda Kolatan. She holds a B.F.A. and B.A. from the University of Washington and an M.Arch. from the University of Pennsylvania.

“Her work primarily lies at the intersections of architecture and art and of architecture and science. Her visualization of cell structures provides innovative groundwork in developing models for bio-mimetic design strategies and ‘informed’ form. Similarly her research into digital looms and textiles provides insights and opportunities for courses integrating design tooling and material technologies with advanced fabrication,” says search committee chair Associate Professor Andrea Simitch.

Sabin and O’Donnell will be primarily based in Ithaca and teaching studios starting in fall 2011.

Edgar Tafel, a noted architect, former visiting instructor, and, before his death in January, the last surviving member of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin Fellowship, has made a $3.8 million gift through his estate to Cornell University and the College of Architecture, Art and Planning (AAP). The gift establishes the Edgar A. Tafel Professorship in Architecture and the Edgar A. Tafel Lecture Series.

Tafel’s gift comes at an ideal time for the college, as the architecture department launches its newly accredited graduate program and expands its intellectual territory with the addition of new faculty. Funding for professorships and visiting critics is one of the highest philanthropic priorities of the college, and through new hires made possible by gifts like Tafel’s, the college will continue its leadership in architectural and design education.

As a member of the Taliesin Fellowship, Tafel served as project architect for many of Wright’s most famous buildings, including Fallingwater in Pennsylvania, the Johnson Wax headquarters in Racine, Wisconsin, and Herbert F. Johnson’s residence, Wingspread. He also authored two books on Wright.  

Tafel had his own architectural practice in New York City from 1945 to 1986, where he designed 80 homes, 35 religious buildings, and three college campuses. He served on his local community planning board and was president of the Washington Square Association, a fellow of the American Institute of Architects, and an associate of the National Academy of Design.  

“Edgar’s gift is a profound expression of trust in our commitment to offer the very best education for future generations of AAP students,” says Dean Kent Kleinman. “We are deeply grateful for his support and thoughtful planning.”

Texas A&M University

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Dr. Phill Tabb is a co-chair for the up-coming Architecture Culture and Spirituality (ACS) Symposium being held at Serenbe Community locate southwest of Atlanta, Georgia this June 29th-July 1st, 2011.  He is co-charing this with Dr. Julio Bermudez of Catholic University.  They will have 30 presentations and discussions throughout the symposium that are organized around two general themes of grounded versus higher principled expressions of sacred architecture.  

Dr. Phill Tabb is a co-editor with Professor Nader Ardalan of Harvard University for an entire issue 2A Magazine dedicated to last year’s ACS symposium held at St. Johns Abbey in Collegeville, Minnesota.  The issue is scheduled to come out sometime in May 2011.  It features 20 of the presentations on various aspects of the sacred in architecture.  Articles cover issues around three general themes of theory, precedence and practice relative to the spiritual in design.

Healthcare Design magazine’s editorial board and staff and the publishing staff at the Center for Health Design, Texas A&M University, whose members advance the idea that design can be used to improve patient outcomes in health care environments, have compiled a list of the 25 most influential people in healthcare design in 2010. The 2010 list recognizes four faculty members at Texas A&M University:

Kirk Hamilton, professor of architecture, No. 3;

George J. Mann, professor of architecture, holder of the Skaggs-Sprague Endowed Chair in Health Facilities Design, No. 13;

Mardelle Shepley, professor of architecture, holder of the William H. Peña Endowed Professorship in Information Management, director of Texas A&M’s Center for Health Systems and Design, No. 18;

Roger S. Ulrich, professor of architecture, holder of the Julie and Craig Beale ’71 Endowed Professorship in Health Facilities Design, No. 10 .

University of Texas at Austin

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Professor David Heymann recently returned from the southern France, where he was in residence with the The Brown Foundation Fellows Program at the Dora Maar Residence. Directed by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and based in Ménerbes, France, the program provides residencies for mid-career professionals in the arts and humanities to concentrate on their fields of expertise. While at the Dora Maar House, he worked on a manuscript of essays.

Heymann is a practicing architect and a Distinguished Teaching Professor in the School of Architecture at The University of Texas at Austin. The focus of Heymann’s writing, research, and practice is the complex relationships of buildings and landscapes, particularly sustainable constructions and natural landscapes. His built work has been variously published and recognized with design honors, including selection for Emerging Voices by the Architecture League of New York.

Professor Heymann’s article, “The Eastward-Moving House,” was just published at Places: Design Observer. The subject of the essay is the relationship of house form to values held regarding land, landscape, the landscape of the family, nature and cosmology. The form of the essay is a fiction, generated in response and as an addition to another fiction: J.B. Jackson’s “The Westward-Moving House.” Written in 1953, Jackson’s great essay (long out of print) is also posted in Places.

From Heymann’s introduction: “If the centerline of Jackson’s “The Westward-Moving House” is the availability of unconsumed land to be transformed by value systems into landscapes, the conceit of this later essay is that such land no longer exists, and a cycle of re-consumption in landscape making has begun.”

Wilfried Wang, O’Neil Ford Centennial Professor in Architecture, co-curated the exhibition and co-edited the catalogue on “Alvaro Siza: From Line to Space” at the Siza Pavilion, Hombroich, Germany. Professor Wang also contributed to the Capus Ultzama 2011, Pamplona, Spain, June 23-25, 2011, on the subject of abstraction and modernization. The conference was organized by the Fundación Arquitectura y Sociedad, Madrid/Pamplona. Other speakers included Gerardo Caballero, Eduardo Pasquera, Marcelo Villafañe, Tadej Glazar, Anne Lacaton, and Camilo Rebelo.

Professor Juan Miró contributed an article titled “Let’s Guide Austin’s Growth to Preserve Landscape, Offer Compact Alternative” to the June 15, 2011, edition of the Austin American-Statesman. In the article, Miró compares two models of city development-the Landscape City and the Compact City-and suggests: “As Austin continues to grow, it is not about choosing one model over the other; we must embrace the virtues of both models and mesh them successfully.”

Assistant Professor Igor Siddiqui is featured in Archinect in their  “Working out of the Box” series.
Archinect highlights Siddiqui’s current work and explores his professional path. In part, Siddiqui explains, “I am increasingly interested in ways of defining space through means other than the introduction of new architectural volumes, focusing instead on imaginative re-tailoring of existing structures, performance-driven surface manipulations, exploiting relationships between objects and occupants, and taking advantage of ephemeral aspects of spatial experiences such as light, sound and smell.”

University of Arizona

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Associate Professor Martin Despang´s newest case study of his prototype for “eco- and archi-friendly” educational design, a postfossil kindergarten for Germany´s oldest University of Göttingen, has been published in Archetcetera: http://archetcetera.blogspot.com/. Author Phyllis Richardson has peer reviewed Martin´s work in her XS series books and her article about cutting edge wood architecture in the Financial Times. The Göttingen kindergarten is a hybrid of landscape and architecture using thermal mass through exposed prefabricated concrete.

Assistant Professor, Susannah Dickinson presented a paper titled ‘Architecture and Biological Systems’ during the ACSA Teachers Seminar; Performative Practices: Architecture and Engineering in the Twenty-First Century, in New York, NY. She has also been selected to attend the NEH Summer Institute, “Beyond the Land Ethic: Sustainability and the Humanities.”

R. Brooks Jeffery has been promoted to Full Professor with a joint appointment in the Schools of Architecture plus Landscape Architecture and Planning.  Jeffery remains the Director of the Drachman Institute, the College’s outreach unit as well as Coordinator of the interdisciplinary Heritage Conservation Certificate program.

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