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University of Southern California

The USC School of Architecture faculty Alvin Huang, Jose Sanchez, and David Gerber hosted and chaired this years’ ACADIA annual conference entitled Design Agency. The event was the most widely attended in history with 545 participants including, students, professionals, and academics from every continent. The conference peer review accepted 74 papers and 50 projects from a very competitive pool. The event had keynote and awardee lectures including Zaha Hadid, Casey Reas (UCLA), Will Wright (of SimCity fame), Neil Gershenfeld (MIT) Nancy Cheng (UofO), Jenny Sabin (Cornell), and Marc Fornes. During the week of events 10 workshops were supported by NBBJ, SOM, Zaha Hadid Architects, Woods Baggot, Autodesk, Formlabs, Marc Fornes, Roland Snooks,and Robots in Architecture. The conference included an exhibition in part sponsored by Stratasys with an amazing collection of 3D prints on display including works from Alvin Huang, Jose Sanchez, and David Gerber. The event culminated with a day long Hackathon lead by Jose Sanchez.

University of Southern California

Aroussiak Gabrielian presented her research, Mediated Visions: The City Re-Imag(in)ed, at the Mediated City Conference which took place in Los Angeles in early October.  Her paper from the conference was selected for publication in the peer reviewed Journal of Architecture, Media, Politics and Society.  Student work from Aroussiak’s Spring semester landscape studio, Transient Topographies, was exhibited at the Writers Bootcamp Gallery at Bergamont Station in Santa Monica in mid-October.  Aroussiak also served as a facilitator at the 5D Worldbuilding Institute’s, Spaces of Fiction Conference, which took place at the USC School of Cinematic Arts, where she is currently an Annenberg Fellow and Ph.D candidate. 

Jennifer Siegal, Adjunct Associate Professor, gave a GoogleTechTalk and exhibited the AERO-Mobile (a moveable retail environment made of up-cycled parts discarded by the aerospace industry) at Google Los Angeles. Commissioned by the Kaneko museum in Omaha, NE as part of the Truck-A-Tecture exhibition, the project was exhibited at Theatrum Mundi “Designing for Free Speech” in NYC and “To Be Destroyed” at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Toronto.

Vittoria Di Palma has been invited to give a talk on the subject of her new book, Wasteland, A History (Yale: 2014) at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design, as part of the Cambridge Talks IX conference, “Inscriptions of Power: Spaces, Institutions, and Crisis,” which will be held from April 2-3, 2015.  http://cambridgetalks2015.wordpress.com/ 

Drawings and models by Lorcan O’Herlihy have been added to the Carnegie Museum of Art’s permanent collection.  They will be exhibited in early 2015 as part of Sketch to Structure.  This exhibit unfolds the architectural design process to show how buildings take shape. With sketches, plans, blueprints, renderings, and models from the Heinz Architectural Center collection, this exhibition reveals that architectural design, from initial concept to client presentation, isn’t straightforward. Beautiful hand-drawn sketches by Lorcan O’Herlihy show an architect quickly capturing ideas about shapes and color. Pencil drawings of the Los Angeles County Hall of Records by Richard Neutra show a master draftsman at work. And watercolors by Steven Holl of a client’s home render in beautiful detail, on a single sheet of paper, the planned building’s exterior, floor plan, and elevation.

Erik Mar has been designing the new 15,000 sf South Whittier Library since April; it’s targeting LEED Platinum and is now in Plan Check. He will start on the new 7,000 sf Los Nietos Library in November. Both are for the LA County Public Library, and are 2 out of the 3 all new libraries funded by Supervisor Knabe’s $45 million project: Operation Libraries. http://knabe.com/issues/operation-libraries/#.VE0heoeBndk 

On October 9, Ted Bosley moderated a workshop entitled “Authenticity in the Age of Sustainability” at the annual international historic house museum conference (DEMHIST), held this year in Compiegne, France. Attending were colleagues from the National Trust (UK), the European Association of Royal Residences (ARRE), and numerous historic sites around the world.

Neil Leach has recently published an issue of Architectural Design on Space Architecture, together with two papers for the 2014 Acadia conference. He is currently on leave from USC as a Visiting Professor at Harvard GSD.

University of Southern California

100 Years of Architecture at USC!  2014 marks the exciting milestone of educating the 100th class of students at USC Architecture. These 100 classes have produced more than 5,000 alumni who are advancing modernism, prefabrication, sustainability and urban design. The students in these 100 classes have been mentored by faculty members who are leaders in modern architectural design, construction and conservation excellence, and who have developed a multidisciplinary perspective on the design of projects in urban settings. USC Architecture is proud to have been the first accredited architecture school in Southern California, and the first in the west to teach a curriculum focusing on modernism, highlighted by a faculty supporting the Case Study House Program through teaching, research and practice. To commemorate the centennial, 2014 will be marked by several once-in-a-century events, including a lecture series, special scholarship announcements and the launch of a fundraising campaign. USC Architecture is known for real-time design, focused on the now. Our centennial is another opportunity to move from thinking to building, from students to leaders and from Los Angeles to the world. These concepts will guide us as we begin our next 100 years.

University of Southern California

New faculty teaching in the USC School of Architecture this semester include Marwan Al-Sayed, Sofia Borges, Tina Chee, Stephen Deters, Ian Dickenson, Steven Ehrlich, Maria Esnaola, Ryan Guitierrez, Karen Janosky, Erin Kasimow, David Maestres, Michael McGowan, Andrew Watkins, and Takashi Yanai.

The USC School of Architecture will host the fifth annual Affordable Housing Design Leadership Institute on September 16-18. Sponsored by Enterprise Community Partners, the Institute brings together a team of designers (including USC faculty member Lorcan O’Herlihy) and a team of non-profit developers who each present a project in the schematic design phase for feedback. This year’s theme is “Sustainable, Connected Communities, ” addressing best practices in community design and how L.A. can become a national model for transit-oriented development. Brought to USC by Lawrence Scarpa, FAIA and  John Mutlow, FAIA, the conference will include 3rd year undergraduate students who will be developing some of the projects further in studio. David Baker, FAIA, LEED AP and Andrea Cochran, FASLA are the keynote speakers; their lecture on Wednesday, September 16, at 6 pm in the Gin D. Wong Conference Center, Harris Hall, is open to the public.

Hraztan Zeitlian’s work as Director of Design at DLR for the LAUSD Edward R Roybal Learning Center High School was used as a setting for the VW GTI TV AD with Michael Ballack during FIFA World Cup, shown on ESPN2 TV Channel.

http://www.ispot.tv/ad/7Dvt/2014-volkswagen-golf-gti-greatest-hits-featuring-michael-ballack

Prof. Emeritus Roger Sherwood continues to add to his website on “Modern Housing Prototypes.”  The HousingPrototypes.org website now contains hundreds of buildings, and includes detailed descriptions, drawings, photos and much more.  Most building types can be readily researched in books and magazines. Because of the large worldwide production and very dynamic nature of housing construction, however, it is very difficult to track new developments in housing design. Books quickly obsolesce and few libraries have the resources to even subscribe to the range of periodicals necessary to track new developments. The advantage of web-based material is that it offers a dynamic database accessible by anyone with a computer. It can be periodically revised and thus allows the researcher to continually update their knowledge about a particular subject. HousingPrototypes.org was conceived to fill the need for a dynamic, interactive database about housing. It provides the research instrument to monitor research about historic and new developments in the field of international multi-family housing. The current phase of construction provides data on an international selection of both new and old housing projects of the past century or so. New case studies will be frequently and continually added.  HousingPrototypes.org is published free on the Internet as an information service.

University of Southern California

100 Years of Architecture at USC!  2014 marks the exciting milestone of educating the 100th class of students at USC Architecture. These 100 classes have produced more than 5,000 alumni who are advancing modernism, prefabrication, sustainability and urban design. The students in these 100 classes have been mentored by faculty members who are leaders in modern architectural design, construction and conservation excellence, and who have developed a multidisciplinary perspective on the design of projects in urban settings. USC Architecture is proud to have been the first accredited architecture school in Southern California, and the first in the west to teach a curriculum focusing on modernism, highlighted by a faculty supporting the Case Study House Program through teaching, research and practice. To commemorate the centennial, 2014 will be marked by several once-in-a-century events, including a lecture series, special scholarship announcements and the launch of a fundraising campaign. USC Architecture is known for real-time design, focused on the now. Our centennial is another opportunity to move from thinking to building, from students to leaders and from Los Angeles to the world. These concepts will guide us as we begin our next 100 years.

Hraztan Zeitlian’s work as Director of Design at DLR for the LAUSD Edward R Roybal Learning Center High School was used as a setting for the VW GTI TV AD with Michael Ballack during FIFA World Cup, shown on ESPN2 TV Channel.

http://www.ispot.tv/ad/7Dvt/2014-volkswagen-golf-gti-greatest-hits-featuring-michael-ballack

 

Prof. Emeritus Roger Sherwood continues to add to his website on “Modern Housing Prototypes.”  The HousingPrototypes.org website now contains hundreds of buildings, and includes detailed descriptions, drawings, photos and much more.  Most building types can be readily researched in books and magazines. Because of the large worldwide production and very dynamic nature of housing construction, however, it is very difficult to track new developments in housing design. Books quickly obsolesce and few libraries have the resources to even subscribe to the range of periodicals necessary to track new developments. The advantage of web-based material is that it offers a dynamic database accessible by anyone with a computer. It can be periodically revised and thus allows the researcher to continually update their knowledge about a particular subject. HousingPrototypes.org was conceived to fill the need for a dynamic, interactive database about housing. It provides the research instrument to monitor research about historic and new developments in the field of international multi-family housing. The current phase of construction provides data on an international selection of both new and old housing projects of the past century or so. New case studies will be frequently and continually added.  HousingPrototypes.org is published free on the Internet as an information service.

 

New faculty teaching in the USC School of Architecture this semester include Marwan Al-Sayed, Sofia Borges, Tina Chee, Stephen Deters, Ian Dickenson, Steven Ehrlich, Maria Esnaola, Ryan Guitierrez, Karen Janosky, Erin Kasimow, David Maestres, Michael McGowan, Andrew Watkins, and Takashi Yanai.

The USC School of Architecture will host the fifth annual Affordable Housing Design Leadership Institute on September 16-18. Sponsored by Enterprise Community Partners, the Institute brings together a team of designers (including USC faculty member Lorcan O’Herlihy) and a team of non-profit developers who each present a project in the schematic design phase for feedback. This year’s theme is “Sustainable, Connected Communities, ” addressing best practices in community design and how L.A. can become a national model for transit-oriented development. Brought to USC by Professor John Mutlow, the conference will include 3rdundergraduate students who will be developing some of the projects further in studio. David Baker, FAIA, LEED AP and Andrea Cochran, FASLA are the keynote speakers; their lecture on Wednesday, September 16, at 6 pm in the Gin D. Wong Conference Center, Harris Hall, is open to the public.

 

University of Southern California

Assistant Professor Rachel Berney and Visiting AC Martin Chair Oliver Schulze are guiding students through an investigation of the Mobile City of LA in our current studio course, ARCH 642 “The Mobile City – People, Transport, & Public Life.”  While we tend to link the city of Los Angeles with the automobile (think: Missing Person’s “Nobody Walks in LA”), the reality of transportation in LA is far more complex. The city pioneered large streetcar systems in the late 19th century and early 20th century. The last incarnation of those systems – the red line – was collapsed in favor of embracing freeway construction in the mid 20th century. Since the 1970s, however, public transportation networks and services have grown rapidly in LA. The city now has the largest bus system in the United States and there has been more transit building in the last decade in LA than in any other city in the United States. LA also hosts the most-traveled urban commute rail line in the country – the Blue Line – with 80,000 trips per weekday. The next iteration of Los Angeles is that of THE MOBILE CITY, one connected and networked via public transit options with higher density housing at nodes and with opportunities to reweave the urban fabric of the city to incorporate visible and legible natural systems and public space. It is a crucial time for reinvention and change in the city’s life. The challenge is great. The possibilities for design greater.

Laurel Consuelo Broughton was named one of the fifteen 2014 Racked.com Young Guns of Fashion for her collection, WELCOMECOMPANIONS an offshoot from her design studio WELCOMEPROJECTS. Her residential project Shed House is now under construction in Malibu, CA and slated for completion January 2015. In July she gave the talk Soft Abstraction as part of UCLA Jumpstart’s Series, Endlessly Worthwhile Dilemmas. Her project Retrospective City is on view at the A+D Museum in Los Angeles until August 31, 2014. Gallery Attachment, a collaborative project with Andrew Kovacs, was selected to participate in the Storefront For Art and Architecture’s exhibition program WorldWide StoreFront, forthcoming fall 2014. 

Patrick Tighe, FAIA (Professor Adjunct) USC School of Architecture received the IDEAS 2 Award for Excellence in Steel Frame Building Design from the American Institute of Steel Construction for an affordable housing project in West Hollywood. The Sierra Bonita Affordable Housing project for people living with disabilities also won an Award of Merit for Structural Engineering from the Structural Engineers Association of Southern California (SEOSC).

Chu+Gooding Architects (Annie Chu and Rick Gooding) has recently completed design and drawings for a 110,000 sf Collection Storage, Conservation and Research Facility for the new Autry Resource Center in Burbank. A 110,000 sf Collection Storage, Conservation and Research Facility which is scheduled to start construction in January.  Chu+Gooding Architects is also in the design phase for the 100-Room Tiverton House Renovation at UCLA. Rick Gooding’s Subterranea drawing exhibit in the Napa Gallery at Cal State University Channel Islands from November 13 to December 5 and will include about a dozen of the USC Student 3rd Year Models from this past Spring Semester.

Adjunct Associate Professor Eric Haas’s firm, DSH // architecture, was the recipient of Honorable Mentions for both the Para Los Niños Family Center and the Villa Tangente in the Re-Thinking the Future 2014 Awards. 

Assistant Professor Alison B. Hirsch received the James H. Zumberge Research and Innovation Fund Grant to develop her next book, Landscape as Thick Description. She conducted a new MLA research studio titled “The Geography of the LA Riots: Designing the Public Realm in the Insurgent Spaces of the City.”  

Lauren Matchison, NCARB, will serve as Interim Director of the Master of Landscape Architecture program for the remainder of 2014.

Professor G. Goetz Schierle is preparing a book on fabric structures.

Ed Woll is enjoying a re-organized practice focusing more completely than before on design of affordable housing.  The re-organized firm — TWG Architects Inc — is a troika/collective with three equal principals and is currently in production on two substantial projects: one in LA (Eagle Rock neighborhood — 46 units at 4 stories over parking) and one in the Bronx (120 units at 13 stories with no parking!).  Both projects are for special needs clients and incorporate extensive social service provisions; both feature site development that includes some urban farming. 

Sofia Borges, Lecturer, released two new books in August. Hide and Seek:The Architecture of Cabins and Hide-Outs and Building Better: Sustainable Architecture for Family Homes are now available on Amazon and bookstores worldwide.

 

University of Southern California

Assistante Professor Rachel Berney is preparing a new ONLINE fall course to be taught in the School of Architecture. ARCH 521 Health and the Designed Environment will address issues of health, equity, and sustainability vis-à-vis how designers shape the built environment.  Rachel Berney has been re-appointed to USC’s University Research Committee for the 2014-2015 school year where she is working with a team of faculty from across the university on topics such as improving research mentorship and research administration processes.    

Assistant Professor Doris Sung has received the 2014 R&D Award from Architect Magazine for her project “eXo”, which uses the dynamic movement of thermobimetals during construction to make lightweight structural surfaces.  Her work will be featured in the UK edition of Wired Magazine next month.

Geoffrey von Oeyen, Lecturer, recently installed an exhibition of his work, lectured, and participated in press interviews at the Architectural League of New York as a winner of the 2014 Architectural League Prize. For more information refer to http://archleague.org/2014/04/geoffrey-von-oeyen-design/

On July 10, Russell Fortmeyer presented a talk on his book, “Kinetic Architecture,” to New York’s Urban Green Council. New project work includes the replacement hospital for Loma Linda University Medical Center in Loma Linda, California, as well as a new consulate for the State Department’s Overseas Bureau of Operations in a confidential location.

Professor Diane Ghirardo gave a presentation on Lucrezia Borgia’s entrepreneurial activities in June, for the city of Ferrara. She also recently revised her courses on Women’s Spaces to meet University requirements for general education. 

Justin Brechtel has recently been hired as a Computational Designer and Research Architect in the Los Angeles office of Perkins+Will.

Lauren Matchison and Lee Schneider created and taught a new online graduate course entitled Visual Literacy in Media for Architecture and Design.  The master class developed students’ media making skills and showed them how to design, produce and distribute their videos over social media channels. The class also introduced students to key concepts in crowdfunding. 

Simon Chiu founded Tensile Evolution North America in Irvine, and Tensile Evolution GmbH in Vienna, Austria, with architectural membrane structure experts Dipl.-Ing. Dr. Robert Roithmayr and Dipl.-Ing. Horst Dürr.  The organization focuses on architectural membrane project consultation, research and development on product and software, higher education and practical training workshops.  The trailer of forthcoming documentary film “FREI OTTO: SPANNING THE FUTURE” will be featured as a part of the upcoming exhibition “Building with Textiles” at the TextielMuseum in Tilburg, Netherlands.  The exhibition opens on September 27, 2014 until January 25, 2015.  This documentary film is being produced in partnership with PBS Colorado Public Television.  The documentary featured interviews with Frei Otto himself, as well as Zaha Hadid, Patrik Schmacher of Zaha Hadid Architects, Professor Goetz Schierle and Associate Gail Peter Borden of USC School of Architecture, among others.  

University of Southern California

Dr. Joon-Ho Choi was recently selected for the ARCC New Investigator Award in 2014. His research, entitled “Human-Building Integration for Assessment of Indoor Environmental Quality for Human Health and Environmental Sustainability:  Pupil-Size Based Visual Environment Control in the Workplace” was submitted and reviewed as an emerging and innovative research topic. This experimental research provides unique knowledge concerning how an individual’s physiological signals can be translated to estimate his/her visual sensation and comfort level, as a function of pupil sizes, their fluctuations, and time frequencies. Therefore, the research outcome will be potentially applicable as a control and diagnostic tool for designing a workplace environment, where the occupants’ environmental health, work productivity, and energy performance are critical.

Professor Kyle Konis, Ph.D, AIA was invited by the Illuminating Engineering Society (IES) to speak at its annual conference, Nov. 2-4 in Pittsburgh on the topic of daylighting design impacts on health.

Jose Sanchez is coordination a session and presenting at Smart Geometry in Hong Kong. He is also presenting in the ‘Serious Games’ conference at USC cinema school.

Anders Carlson recently presented his concepts for an interactive seismic map at the national workshop, “New Audiences, New Products for the National Seismic Hazard Maps” sponsored by the Science Application for Risk Reduction Project. Researchers in 18 fields were gathered to discuss opportunities and he proposed a map or app that would allow users to see the strongest shaking a building has felt, what it is expected to feel, and an estimate of what level of shaking it was designed to resist.

Adjunct Associate Professor of Architecture, Yo-ichiro Hakomori, and landscape architecture professor Takako Tajima conducted a joint 2 week urban design workshop with USC graduate landscape students and graduate architecture students from Meiji University School of International Architecture and Urban Design in June of this year.  Participants examined a development project by Forest City Enterprises in downtown San Francisco at the epicenter of urban transformation south of Market Street.  During the visit to San Francisco, students received a tour of the site and presentation of the project by the developer, as well as visits to Gensler, SOM, and AECOM.  The design workshop was later conducted on the campus of USC with a final presentation to the developer of the work produced by the students via Skype.  “I was so impressed with the level of detail and creativity the students were able to produce in such a short period of time.” says the Project Manager from Forest City. 

This spring, Chris Warren taught a studio in Como, Italy for the USC MXP Study Abroad in Italy program.  Also, in June, the construction was completed on A.P.C. Melrose Place, a new 2,500sf flagship store for the French clothier.  He is in now in the process of completing new stores in Downtown LA and Silverlake for the retailer, as well as moving into construction on a new home in Venice.

Patrick Tighe Architecture was shortlisted for the 2014 World Architecture / Inside Award. The shortlisted projects and the winners to be lauded at the World Architecture Festival in Singapore in the Fall. Patrick Tighe Architecture also recently completed 2 stores for fashion designer Rick Owens, a flagship store in Milan and another shop in London.

Mic Patterson is on the scientific review committee for Glasscon Global, which just completed its inaugural three-day conference in Philadelphia in July, and where he presented a paper entitled: The Millennium IGU: “Regenerative Concept for a 1000-Year Insulated Glass Unit,” and chaired a session “energy performance of buildings influenced by glass.” Mic is also in the Advisory Group for the Council for Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, and will attend their world congress in Shanghai in September, where he will present another paper: “Curtainwall Lifecycles: Evaluating Durability and Embodied Energy.” 

Mario Cipresso AIA was recently a juror for the 2014 AIA Orange County Student Design Competition.

Rob Ley and his firm, Urbana, recently completed a 13,000 s.f. interactive facade for Eskenazi Hospital in Indianapolis, IN.  The project and design methodologies behind its inception and fabrication will be presented at this years’s ACADIA Conference, held at USC, October 23-25, 2014 

Professor G. Goetz Schierle is preparing a research grant and book on Fabric Structures

Gail Peter Borden won three grants [USC-URAP and two USC-URSPs] to support his work in material age and surface and was named one of 100 Notable Professors at Top Research Universities, [the only architect on the list] by onlinephd.org. He has been selected to participate in the prestigious Dallas based Architect vs. Artist Exhibition and will serve as a juror for the ongoing Marfa Housing competition.

Susanna Seierup has begun design on a new residential project in Santa Cruz, California. 

Eric Nulman recently presented his paper “Pedagogy at Full-Scale” at the 2014 ACSA International Conference in Seoul, Korea. The paper considers the value of full-scale prototyping in architectural education, and outlines an alternative model of pedagogy that utilizes prototyping exercises to cultivate material agency in studio projects. The presentation highlighted recent undergraduate coursework completed at USC, and how full-scale exercises were employed as an instructional tool towards achieving a desired learned outcome. 

Alexander Robinson recently negotiated and arranged for the signing of a joint research agreement between the USC School of Architecture and the Los Angeles branch of the Army Corps of Engineers, with the intention of strengthening and supporting a collaborative research program on the future revitalization of the Los Angeles River.  Also, following a successful studio review about the sourcing the water for the Los Angeles River with the attendance of nearly a dozen Los Angeles City officials Alexander was invited to become a stakeholder in the One Water LA planning effort and attend and comment on a landmark planning effort about the future integration of water in Los Angeles. 

Vinayak Bharne spoke on his recent book Zen Spaces and Neon Places: Reflections on Japanese Architecture and Urbanism at the USC Pacific Asia Museum on July 20. He is also one of the invited contributors to the forthcoming 50th Issue of the DOCOMOMO Journal. Bharne’s article titled “Rereading Our Recent Past: Notes on Chandigarh and New Gourna” examines the ongoing dilemmas surrounding the future of two contemporaneous iconic modern places, Le Corbusier’s largest urban project in India, and Hassan Fathy’s groundbreaking adobe village in Egypt.

Scott Uriu’s firm Baumgartner+Uriu has been feature at the Morphos “Sustainable Empires” exhibition at the Palazzo Albrizzi in Venice, Italy in collaboration with the International ArtExpo which opened June 6th, 2014.   

Douglas Noble and Karen Kensek coordinated a four-day architecture licensing workshop in Los Angeles in May.  Twenty-eight classes were taught to more than 800 attendees.  Kensek and Noble have been organizing licensing programs for just over seven years, with more than 325 class taught and over 12,500 participants.  There are 2000 members of the “Not Licensed Yet” group, known as NotLY.  Whenever a member becomes licensed, they are ceremoniously thrown out of the group.  NotLY received an ACSA award in March, and was the subject of a presentation at the AIA National Convention in Chicago in June.

Assistant Professor Alvin Huang has been featured as a “Next Progressive” by ARCHITECT Magazine in a 5-page profile & interview entitled “The Synthesis of Digital Craft” in the June 2014 issue of the magazine. Additionally, his firm Synthesis Design + Architecture has recently won a public art commission for the Silver Line Metro in Los Angeles.  He is currently co-chairing the 2014 ACADIA Conference with David Gerber and Jose Sanchez (October 23-26 in Los Angeles).

 

University of Southern California

Vittoria Di Palma’s new book, Wasteland, A History, has just been published by Yale University Press. 

Dr. David Gerber of the USC School of Architecture chaired SimAUD 2014 an international conference on topics of simulation in architecture and urban design. Dr. Gerber is co-chairing this years’ ACADIA 2014 Design Agency conference hosted at the Unviersity of Southern California School of Architecture. Dr. Gerber is the first multiple recipient of the IDEA studio research grant from Autodesk Inc. and also received a second National Science Foundation grant award to support undergraduate student involvement in research. 

The study “Evidence-based model of building facade features using data mining for assessment of building performance” by Ph.D. Candidate Andrea Martinez and Assistant Professor Joon-Ho Choi is being presented (by Professor Choi) at the Indoor Air 2014 – ISIAQ Conference in Hong Kong. 

Neil Leach recently contributed to the new PhD program in Digital Design at the European Graduate School in Switzerland as a Professor of Digital Design, and is currently on a 3 week lecture tour of India and China. His latest publication, an issue of Architectural Design, Space Architecture: The New Frontier for Design Research, will be published in the Fall, along with Swarm Intelligence: Architectures of Multi-Agent Systems, a volume that he has co-edited with Roland Snooks.

Professor James Steele is leading the first Foreign Studies Program which is based in Sao Paulo Brazil, with study trips to Ouro Preto, Belo Horizonte and Rio de Janerio. It also includes travel to Buenos Aires, Lima, Peru, Cuzco, Machu Picchu, Iberoamericana University in Mexico City (doing an urban planning project with Mexican students there) Merida and Yucatan, studying Mayan ruins.

Joon-Ho Choi, Assistant Professor of Building Science attend the International Society of Indoor Air Quality held in Hong Kong in July 2014, and presented two of his researches, “Evidence-based model of building façade features using data mining for assessment of building performance”, and “Visual environmental quality control using human physiological signal in an office workplace.” He was also selected as a recipient of the New Investigator Award in 2014-2015 by the Architectural Research Centers Consortium, based on his “Human-Building Integration” research.

Dr. Travis Longcore (Associate Professor (Research) of Spatial Sciences and Lecturer in Landscape Architecture) is overhauling and offering the undergraduate course Ecological Factors in Design for the first time in over a decade.  The course is required in the newly re-launched undergraduate minor in Landscape Architecture and is an elective in the undergraduate B.S. degree in GeoDesign, a new major that is a collaborative venture between the School of Architecture, Sol Price School of Public Policy, and Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences.

Karen M. Kensek collaborated with students to have four papers presented in San Francisco at ASES/ Solar 2014 in July and new alumni Alejandro Gamas and Elham Motevalian received travel scholarships to attend: 

  • Gamas, Alejandro, Kyle Konis, and Karen Kensek. “A Parametric Fenestration Design Approach for Optimizing Thermal and Daylighting Performance in Complex Urban Settings.”
  • Motevalian, Elham, Douglas Noble, Marc Schiler, and Karen Kensek. “Performance of Double Skin Façades: Effects on Daylight and Visual Comfort in Office Spaces.”
  • Tucker, Tyler, Karen Kensek, and Kyle Konis. “Performative Shading Design: Parametric Based Study of Shading System Configuration Effectiveness and Trends.”
  • Qian, Chenchuan (Trent), Karen Kensek, and Paul Ronney. “Thermal Mass and Time Lag: Calculating Heating and Cooling Energy from a Building Roof/wall.”

 

Kensek also had two papers chosen for presentation at 2014 ASHRAE/IBPSA-USA, Building Simulation Conference:

  • Sehrawat, Praveen and Karen Kensek. “Urban Energy Modeling: GIS as an Alternative to BIM.” 
  • Singh, Sukreet and Karen Kensek. “Early Design Analysis Using Optimization Techniques in Design/Practice.”  

University of Southern California

The Platform is a collaborative design/build project by Assistant Professor Victor Jones for the Watts House Project (WHP), a non-profit neighborhood redevelopment organization located in South Central Los Angeles.  The Platform is part of a grassroots effort to transform three dilapidated shotgun houses on 107th Street to establish a cultural destination accommodating administrative offices, a community-run coffee shop, gardens, exhibition spaces and a meeting hall.  Assistant Professor Victor Jones united members from the community, an artist, two grant agencies, and five students from USC’s School of Architecture to realize the project.  Students worked alongside local residents to envision the insertion of a multi-purpose surface that redefines the entire site.  One continuous wall sheathes the front elevations of two existing structures and encloses the open space between them to create two new public spaces: a pocket park along the sidewalk and an internalized courtyard space.  The collaborative team identified existing forms of fence enclosure in the surrounding neighborhood to imagine how a ubiquitous residential element could be adopted to serve institutional and commercial needs.  The subtle manipulation of property enclosure allows the Platform to fit comfortably within its residential setting while adapting to specific performative needs.