Fourth year interior design student Maggie McCoy was awarded the 2018 Angelo Donghia Foundation Senior Student Scholarship Award. McCoy is one of only 12 candidates to receive this national prestigious award.

Annually, the Angelo Donghia Foundation invites two students from each interior design program with Council for Interior Design Accreditation (CIDA) to submit scholarship applications. This year, the foundation received 69 student projects for consideration.

In the last 15 years, the College of Architecture’s Interior Design Program has had nine recipients of this highly competitive national award, 10 total. The merit-based scholarship, which has a value of up to $30,000, is determined by a jury comprised of interior design professionals, interior design educators and interior design editors.

“When our students receive the very competitive Donghia Scholarship award, it is a testament to their rigorous pursuit of design excellence in space and place making for people,” said Lindsey Bahe, associate professor and director of the interior design program. “Having students at UNL receive this honor consistently over the last 15 years, serves as an indicator of our program’s successful teaching and learning mission. When our students are selected, they are amongst peers from other nationally recognized programs which adds credence to our belief that we deliver one of the best interior design education experiences in the country.”

“I am extremely grateful, humbled and honored to be one of the 12 recipients receiving the award this year, and am truly blessed that all my hard work is being recognized,” said Maggie McCoy. “This award is a huge stress relief for me. This award will go a long ways towards supporting me financially while studying abroad.”

McCoy’s winning submission was titled “Nebraska Art Therapy Collective” a project from the IDES351 design studio taught by Lecturer Erin Miller and mentored by Bahe.

The project proposes the creation of a built environment designed to retain the creative class in rural American communities by providing a place for healing, learning and self-discovery through expressive arts therapy. The concept aims to not only foster people of the creative class, but also to provide ample job opportunities that are otherwise unavailable in the rural market.

McCoy is from Omaha, Nebraska, and is entering her senior year in the Interior Design Program at UNL’s College of Architecture.

The Angelo Donghia Foundation, created under the will of the Angelo Donghia, is a private, nonprofit organization that supports two distinct fields: The advancement of education in the field of interior design and initiatives researching AIDS.

Since its launch, including the amounts to be distributed to the scholarship winners, the foundation has awarded in excess of $15,000,000 to the above causes.

 DEYONG NAMED ARCHITECTURE PROGRAM DIRECTOR AT UNL

Sarah Deyong, associate professor at Texas A&M University, has accepted the appointment of Architecture Program director with the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s College of Architecture. Deyong will assume her position with the college July 1st.

 “This is an exciting time for the Architecture Program and the College of Architecture. I am confident that Sarah will be a tremendous asset to the program with her thoughtful leadership and her extensive undergraduate and graduate teaching experience and demonstrated ability to integrate architectural theory and pedagogy seamlessly with contemporary practice,” commented College of Architecture Dean Katherine Ankerson. “Sarah is an accomplished researcher and has been published widely in the academic world. I have no doubt she will be a pivotal mentor for junior faculty and students alike, providing new, academic publishing connections and an inspiring influence for scholarly and creative pursuits.”  

“I am thrilled to join the College of Architecture at UNL. It is an honor and a privilege to serve as the Director of the Architecture Program,” said Deyong. “The program has long been recognized for its strong design ethos, inclusivity and close ties to professional practice. Within the larger university setting of an internationally recognized, research institution, it is poised to becoming a major voice among leading schools of architecture worldwide. Together with fellow faculty, students, staff and alumni, I look forward to building upon the program’s inherent strengths in architectural making and thinking, while advancing the college’s mission: its resilient belief in the transformative power of planning and design, and its commitment to interdisciplinary and community engagement.”

As associate professor at Texas A&M University, Deyong taught in the areas of history, theory and criticism (HTC) and design studio. She believes that areas of specialization, such as HTC, must effectively enhance the vital center of the curriculum: studio and integrated design.

“Today, we find ourselves in a dynamic situation, with new technologies and digital tools, for example. The utility of history and theory is that it brings the longer, canonical perspective of how we define ourselves into play. We learn from both failures and successes. Since architecture is inherently collaborative, we best prepare our students for the interdisciplinary nature of contemporary practice when we define ourselves as a discipline with design at its core.”

 For Dr. Deyong, the output of a studio may be a proposition for a building, but in academia, it should aspire to be an argument or intellectual provocation. “We are, after all, in the business of teaching students not only the necessary skills and toolsets, but also, how to think critically, communicate ideas and create new knowledge.” 

Deyong is known internationally for her research focused on the post-WWII period to the present, underscoring the symbiotic relationship between HTC and design practice. With grants from the Graham Foundation and the Glasscock Center of the Humanities at Texas A&M, she has published her research in leading venues, including the Journal of Architectural Education (JAE), the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians (JSAH), Praxis, the Journal of Visual Culture, and the Journal of Architecture. In 2015, her JAE essay, “Re-Thinking the Legacy of the Sixties: Pliny Fisk’s Political Ecology,” garnered the ACSA/JAE Best Scholarship of Design Award. Additionally, Deyong serves on the editorial boards of two national flagship journals: the JAE and JSAH.

Her work can also be found in numerous book chapters and her co-authored book “The Changing of the Avant-Garde: Visionary Architectural Drawings from the Howard Gilman Collection”. 

Deyong received her Ph.D. at Princeton University and her MA and B.Arch at the University of Toronto.

In addition to the Architecture Program, the college is comprised of other design and planning programs including interior design, landscape architecture and community and regional planning with a tradition of excellence in education, research and service to the community. Its fall 2017 enrollment was 521 students. 

Architecture Students Designing and Building Innovative Facilities in Nebraska and Beyond

Integrated into the pedagogy of the College of Architecture’s advanced coursework is the opportunity to participate in design-build projects that engage master of architecture students in the entire build process from conception to construction. Assistant Professor of Architecture Jason Griffiths has recently managed and instructed several design-builds including one in Oregon and is currently engaged in the construction of two more design-builds in Nebraska.

The two design-build projects in progress are the South Sioux City, Nebraska, Community Orchard multi-purpose, storage/meeting facility and the Baxa Cabin at the Cedar Point Biological Station near Ogallala, Nebraska.  Prior to those projects, architecture students completed an Oregon classroom cabin in 2016.

For design-build projects, typically the instructor collaborates with a non-profit partner to construct a community-based, socially responsible building. The college picks an educational partner who because of their non-profit status is unlikely to afford the expertise of a professional firm but would mutually benefit from engaging in the educational endeavor, as would the local community it serves.

As part of a land-grant university system, service-learning projects are engrained in the college’s culture and are embodied by their mission to provide students with socially significant, public service and community outreach learning opportunities.

“It is important we partner with Nebraska organizations so the community sees and benefits from the outcomes. It allows us to play a direct part in the state and in the community we live in,” commented Griffiths. “It’s a mutually beneficial partnership.”

In the end, the design-build nonprofit partners receive a unique, locally-designed project and at the same time, they are investing in tomorrow’s workforce.

“Working with these students is great, seeing them work through all the different concepts and learning how to work together to get the best design is always a great process,” commented Gene Maffit South Sioux City parks director and design-build orchard facility project collaborator. “The city absolutely would do another project with UNL’s architecture program. It was a great experience.”

Another South Sioux City orchard facility project collaborator, Forest Products Program Leader Adam Smith from the Nebraska Forest Service said he was very impressed with the student efforts and the expertise of the faculty. “Working with (faculty members) Jason Griffiths and Jeff Day has been great,” commented Smith. “They are very innovative and engaged with their students and projects. If we had the opportunity to continue efforts with architecture, we would jump at it. In fact Jason and I received a grant to continue CLT work until 2020, so we are already planning future activities, and we hope to keep this partnership strong even after the grant is complete.”

Griffiths explains design-build has a pedagogy of its own and is an invaluable component of the program’s curriculum.

“The beauty of this type of educational endeavor is the students learn by doing,” Griffiths commented. “By designing and building the structures from beginning to end, students learn how windows open and close, how doors slide open or how to support a staircase and so forth,” commented Griffiths.

He adds, another student benefit of design-build projects is a greater understanding of materials used in the building process.

“Does a certain material create a sense of warmth, does its texture add or detract from the design or does the material resonate sound? These are all considerations in the material selection process,” commented Griffiths.

However at the end of the project, the students are not just judged on their ability to produce a piece of architecture but also its aesthetics. The instructors take special care to impress upon students the value and quality of a space, how light passes through the building or how light affects the mood of a space.

“Assignments like these give students more confidence with real-life customers and projects. We have to serve the client and serve the people who will use the building,” Griffiths explains.

Design-builds can have a transformative impact on a student’s education, reinforcing and solidifying the knowledge they learn in the classroom.

“As an architecture student, I have had a lot of experience with creativity, theory and application in the realm of computer modeling and scale models,” commented Aubrey Wassung. “Design-Build with Jason has taken my theoretical designs into a reality where those skills meet real-world applications. As a student working on the South Sioux City orchard facility from start to finish, I have developed skills such as a better understanding of design verses construction; learning hands on techniques of building; and the collaboration process between structural engineering, fabricators, suppliers, client relations, budgeting and even international customs. Design-build has broadened my sense of what it really takes to construct a building and the amount of effort, time and processes involved.”

All three of Griffiths’ design-build projects utilize Cross–Laminated Timber (CLT) a medium he specializes in.  The CLT wood is a large-scale, prefabricated, solid engineered wood panel. A CLT panel consists of several layers of kiln-dried lumber boards stacked in alternating directions, bonded with structural adhesives and pressed to form a solid, straight, rectangular panel similar to plywood but larger and can be ordered to builder specifications, so the entire build project can be delivered on site precut and ready to assemble.

Griffiths’ first CLT design-build project with UNL was the “Emerge” cabin in Oregon. The micro dwelling was built in the summer of 2016 by 13 students from his design-build three-week course. Created in partnership with the Bauman Family Tree Farm and general contractor Justin Austen Design, the educational cabin serves as a gathering place for small elementary school tour groups wanting to learn about sustainable forestry. The 80 sq. ft. dwelling has been featured by ArchDaily and has received a regional Woodworks Wood Design Award.

Griffiths’ two in-progress, design-build projects in Nebraska have been intensive collaborative endeavors from the start involving both public and private sector partners.

South Sioux City administrators and Nebraska Forest Service staff first approached Griffiths about a possible student design research project involving a community orchard storage facility in 2016. With the college agreeing to the project, concept designs and partner collaborations started in the fall.  Over the course of two semesters, the college and its project partners met numerous times on location and also on campus for client consultations, design concept critiques, budget development and negotiations with contractors and suppliers. They eventually chose Randy Voss Construction as the project general contractor to assist in the construction.

One of the unique project design attributes is its use of ash for the building’s cladding. Emerald ash borer beetles have plagued the city in recent years as they have across the country leaving the city with thousands of dying and dead trees to either recycle or dispose. The city had hoped to recycle the trees that were lost by utilizing the ash timber in the construction process. Surprisingly trees killed by emerald ash borer are still useful because the insect does not damage the interior portion of the wood when it kills the tree. In fact, ash wood has many redeeming qualities and often makes a good oak substitute.

Once complete, the 256 sq. ft. facility with accessible restrooms will serve as meeting space and a tool storage area for the organic community garden/orchard. 

The Cedar Point Biological Station cabin originated as a fall 2016 studio research project working with the station’s associate director Jon Garbisch. The Cedar Point Biological Station serves as a field research facility and experiential classroom for Nebraska’s School of Biological Sciences. Since they were in need of another residence cabin for summer students, Garbisch and Griffiths thought this would be an ideal studio design project. After much collaboration and consultation with Garbisch, Griffiths and the design studio students created some design concepts for the residence cabin. However, the project had no real prospects for being built until they found University of Nebraska Medical Center alumnus and donor Dr. Mark Daniel Baxa who agreed to sponsor the build. Shortly thereafter, UNL facilities signed on RBP Construction as the project’s general contractor and the dream of this 420 sq.ft. building quickly took off.

“It was extremely important for the team to have Mark play a part in the site’s planning and design,” explained Griffiths. “We wanted him to see the concepts and part of the construction before he passed on. So the clock was ticking and it gave our project a sense of real urgency. As I understand it, Mark attended the Cedar Point Biological Station and his work there enabled him to get accepted into medical school, and it changed his life. Mark held many fond memories of the Cedar Point Biological Station, and that’s why this donation was so important to him.”

Now the Nebraska design-builds are in their final stages of construction. Griffiths has a team of students enrolled in independent study this semester working on finishing touches such as the windows, stairs, shutters and building exteriors and general preparation for the facility’s grand opening scheduled tentatively for late spring.

The CLT project sponsors included Dr. Mark Daniel Baxa, Bauman Family Tree Farm, D.R. Johnson Wood Innovations, Structurlam, Smartlam, the Edwin Cramer Memorial Fund-University of Nebraska Foundation and the Dana Family Fund- University of Nebraska Foundation.

CLT project collaborators include Nebraska Forest Products Program Leader Adam Smith, Forest Products Marketing Coordinator Heather Nobert, South Sioux City Administrator Lance Hedquist, South Sioux City Parks Director Gene Maffit and Cedar Point Biological Station Associate Director Jon Garbisch.    

Students involved in the design-build projects are David Alcala, Alfredo Vera, Virginia Gormley, Ruslan White, Eric Engler, Danielle Durham, Devin McLean, Scott Kenny, Justin DeFields, Darian Scott, Kristen Schulte, Joseph Croghan, Hannah Christy, Kevin Baitey, Sean Coffey, Jacob Doyle, Alexander Eastman, Mackenzie Gibbens, Phung Hong, Allen Phengmarath, Ryan Plager, Rachel Plamann, Salem Topalovic, Evan Wermers, Adrian Silva, Rousol Aribi, Mitchell Znamenacek , Hasan Shurrab, Jose Cano, Jacob Trail, Ezra Young, Abdullah Alghamdi, Dayna Bartels, Andrew Hicks, Mallory Lane, Julio Munoz, Paige Nelsen, Bingcheng Wang and Aubrey Wassung.

Photo courtesy of Hasan Shurrab