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University of Southern California

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Assistant Professor Kenneth Breisch  is currently at work on a history of the Los Angeles Public Library, the centerpiece of which will be a chapter on Bertam Grosvenor Goodhue’s Central Building, which opened in 1926. “In part and in detail the building recalls numerous ancient styles,” observed Goodhue’s associate architect, Carleton Monroe Winslow, “for no building, particularly a Library, can disregard the accumulation of architectural experience of the past.”  As conceived by the architect, working in collaboration with the poet and philosopher Hartley Burr Alexander and sculptor Lee Lawrie, this “accumulation of architectural experience” can be perceived in manifold and ambiguous ways.  Goodhue’s “modified” Spanish Colonial forms, for example, suggest a plethora of ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern traditions.  Articulated with classical pilasters and pylons that metamorphose into busts of ancient artists and philosophers, Goodhue’s library sits like a great ziggurat in a lush garden.  The central tower, its crowning pyramid sheathed in colorful mosaic tiles, recalls at once Iberian, Byzantine and Egyptian sources, as well as the form of a modern American skyscraper. Alexander’s inscriptions, as well as Lawrie’s sculptural figures, likewise, borrow from Greece and Rome, the ancient Near East, Egypt, China and India, to create a veritable cathedral of knowledge, intended to be experienced as a literary and philosophical journey through history.

Professor Breisch is the former Director and founder of the School’s Graduate Program in Historic Preservation, which, under his leadership, has been the recipient of California Preservation Foundation President’s and a Los Angeles Conservancy Preservation awards. He has taught at SCI-Arc, The University of Delaware and The University of Texas at Austin. Professor Breisch has published numerous articles, book reviews and book chapters on American architectural history, especially in the areas of library design and vernacular building. His book, Henry Hobson Richardson and the Small Public Library in America: A Study in Typology, was published by MIT in 1997.
 
He is the co-editor of Constructing Image, Identity and Place: Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture, IX (Nashville: University of Tennessee Press: 2003) and Building Place: Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture X, which will be published in 2005. He is currently completing a book on the history of library design for the Library of Congress, and is working on a book on the history of the Los Angeles Public Library system. His research has been funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Rockefeller Foundation and the University of Michigan.
 
Professor Breisch has been a member of the board of directors of The Vernacular Architecture Forum and the Society of Architectural Historians, and currently serves as President of the latter group. He has been a member of the Santa Monica Planning Commission and is now on the Library Board in that city.

University of Southern California

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Selected for its embrace of technology and sustainability, the TR+2 StudioHouse in Pacific Palisades, designed by Adjunct Professor Mark Cigolle and Professor Kim Coleman, was the site of one month of events marking the international launch of BMW’s i8 carbon fiber hybrid sports car.

Associate Professor Amy Murphy’s chapter “New Orleans, Nature, and the Apocalyptic Trope” has been included in the recently released Verso publication New Orleans Under Reconstruction: The Crisis of Planning, co-editors: Carol McMichael Reese, Michael Sorkin, and Anthony Fontenot, with a foreword by Mike Davis.  

Professor Diane Ghirardo, Ph.D. presented a paper, “Who is the Architect?” at the American Association of Italian Studies conference in Zurich in May 2014; in April, she lectured at the University of Enna in Sicily on “Women and Space in Early Modern Italy,” and on “Lucrezia Borgia entrepreneur,” at Casa Romei, in Ferrara. 

Vittoria Di Palma’s essay “Empire Gastronomy,” which explores connections between architecture, the outline drawing, and the invention of nouvelle cuisine, has just been published in AA Files 68. 

Patrick Tighe, FAIA, had the privilege of being a juror for the 2014 New York AIA Awards. Jurors included Giancarlo Mazzanti, Kunle Adeyemi, Reed Kroloff, Sheila Kennedy, Sharon Johnston, Robert Campbell, Alberto Campo Baeza, Regine Leibinger and Joeb Moore. An exhibition of the award winning work is currently on view at The Center for Architecture, New York. Patrick Tighe Architecture was awarded a 2014 AIA, HUD Secretary’s Housing Award. The award is granted by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development along with the National Chapter of the American Institute of Architects. The project will be recognized at the 2014 National AIA Convention In Chicago (June) where Tighe will participate in a panel discussion and present the work. Tighe also served as a juror for the 2014 2 x 8 competition. The 2 x 8 honors and exhibits the best work of California’s Architecture schools. 

Scott Uriu’s work has been added to the permanent collection of the FRAC Center in Orleans France for his firms model, drawings, and animation of the project “Animated Apertures”.   Uriu will be featured in the July 2014 issue of Interior Design Magazine for his “Aperture” installation at the SciArc gallery (Baumgartner+Uriu).  

1567 will be Co-Chairing ACADIA 2014 together with Alvin Huang and David Gerber, to be hosted in October 2014 in USC School of Architecture. Keynote speakers include Zaha Hadid, Will Wright and Casey Reas among others. The event will bring together the design community interested in the intersection between design and technology showcasing the fore-front of techniques and paradigms that constitute our practice.  Jose has also been selected as a cluster champion for Smart Geometry Conference 2014 to be held in Hong Kong.  Together with Satoru Sugihara and Sergio Irigoyen, the ‘BLOCK’ cluster will focus in developing a game app, for urban speculation and analysis of the different agencies that determine the urban density of Hong Kong.

Neil Leach has been appointed Professor at the European Graduate School, and is teaching on their new PhD program in Digital Design. He is publishing three new edited volumes this year, including an issue of Architectural Design on ‘Space Architecture: The New Frontier of Design Research’. 

Adjunct Associate Professor Jennifer Siegal’s newest mobile project will be featured in the Truck-A-Tecture exhibition at the Kaneko Museum opening on June 27 in Omaha, NE. In August it will travel and be on display at Google, Venice (Silicon) Beach, CA.

Adjunct Associate Professor Yo-ichiro Hakomori will be leading the Global Initiative Study Abroad program to Asia in the Fall Semester, 2014.  Along with landscape professor Takako Tajima, the two will lead a group of students to Japan and China.  While in Japan, the program will engage in a joint urban design workshop with students from Meiji University School of International Architecture and Urban Design, and the University of Dortmunt, Germany.  In China the group will work with students from the Beijing University of Civil Engineering and Architecture to research preservation and repurposing the traditional Hutong.  The semester will culminate with an landscape urban design studio at the Hong Kong University in Shanghai.

Eric Nulman recently completed a fellowship at The MacDowell Colony. While in residence, Eric worked on the project Mono Environments; Mono Environments was design research on the use of ephemeral ornament (colored-light shadows) to generate a singular spatial aesthetic. Eighteen light patterned environments were created using physical models with custom cut theatrical gels to filter sunlight onto interior walls and floors; these temporary environments were documented in situ with photographs and represented through drawings. 

Rob Ley, Lecturer, recently completed an interactive curtain wall facade as part of the New Wishard Hospital in Indianapolis, IN.  The project stretches 12,000 s.f. and changes color through lenticular articulation in response to the building users’ direction of travel and speed. 

Dr. Travis Longcore (Lecturer in Landscape Architecture and Associate Professor (Research) of Spatial Sciences) was an invited speaker at the USC Center for Sustainable Cities Spring Symposium “Envisioning Drought-Resilient Cities.”  He spoke on “Interstitial Greening for a Drought-Reslient City.”  Longcore was also a quoted expert in the Los Angeles Times on issues associated with alley cleanups.   

Dr. David Jason Gerber is co-chairing this years’ ACADIA 2014 Annual conference titled Design Agency held at the University of Southern California School of Architecture. Dr. Gerber chaired and edited the 5th annual conference on Simulation in Architecture and Urban Design. 

Professor James Steele, Ph.D. has been selected to be a member of the  jury for the International Design Competition for the Noble Quran Oasis, held from May -1 to 15th in Madinah, Saudi Arabia.

Lecturer Mina M. Chow, AIA, NCARB and USC School of Cinematic Arts Adjunct Associate Professor Mitchell Block have won a prestigious documentary grant from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts  for their film FACE OF A NATION:  “What Happened at the World’s Fair?”  An inquiry into national identity and the importance of the vision through the architecture of World’s Fairs, the film introduces the debate about the importance of vision created by architects as part of the immigrant American dream. 

Dr. Joon-Ho Choi, Assistant Professor of Building Science at USC was recently invited to the National Math and Science Competition as a special lecturer. He talked about “How and why to be an engineer/ scientist” for K-12 students. Dr.  Choi will open a new course, titled “Sustainable Design for Healthy Indoor Environments” in the fall semester of 2014 based on his robust research experience with the Workplace 20.20 project supported by the General Services Administration. He will present two of his research papers at the 13th International Society of Indoor Air Quality: “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”. The conference will be held in Hong Kong in July 7 to 12, 2014. 

Lawrence Scarpa and his partner Angela Brooks of Brooks + Scarpa were named the recipients of the 2014 Smithsonian Cooper Hewitt Award in Architecture. 

Assistant Professor Rachel Berney has been awarded entry into the USC Advancing Scholarship in the Humanities and Social Sciences Grant Writing Mentorship Program. During the 2014-2015 school year, she will develop funding proposals for her new Los Angeles-based research project MOBILE CITIES, under the mentorship of Dr. Ann Forsyth of Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design. 

Assistant Professor Alexander Robinson recently delivered a keynote lecture at a symposium on “Parametrics” at Washington State University. He also presented his recent work in a lecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and presented peer reviewed work at CELA in Baltimore and SIMAUD in Tampa, Florida (by proxy). 

Victor J. Jones, Assistant Professor of Architecture has been newly appointed to the Board of Directors of the Los Angeles Forum for Architecture and Urban Design.

Lecturer Vinayak Bharne’s latest book Zen Spaces & Neon Places: Reflections on Japanese Architecture and Urbanism was released on May 1. The book brings together two decades of Bharne’s scholarship on Japan since his first trip in 1993 as the Asia-Pacific Development Commission Traveling Scholar from India.

Lecturer Nefeli Chatzimina – Founder of X|Atelier Architects – completed construction of a Flagship store for a prestigious Insurance Company in Athens, Greece. Nefeli during the Summer 2014 will be organizing International Architectural Design Workshops in Europe [Athens and Innsbruck]. Selected students from USC will participate in this design academic research with the title ‘Functionless’ using the latest computational design techniques and digital fabrication technologies. X|Atelier workshops are based on Nefeli’s current PhD Research as a selected candidate from the University of Athens in Greece. 

University of Southern California

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USC professors have won a highly prestigious NASA research award to develop new robotic construction technologies for building structures on the Moon and Mars. Professors Behrokh Khoshnevis (Industrial Engineering), Anders Carlson (Architecture), Neil Leach (Architecture) and Madhu Thangavelu (Astronautics) have been awarded a Phase 2 NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts [NIAC] research award for a project entitled, ‘ISRU Based Robotic Construction Technologies for Lunar and Martian Infrastructure’. The project is based on the concept of ‘In Situ Resource Utilization’ [ISRU], and seeks to use resources readily available on the Moon and Mars as construction materials for novel robotic construction technologies in order to build infrastructure components such as roads, landing pads, blast walls and storage spaces. The project builds upon the success of an earlier NIAC Phase 1 award won by the team for a project entitled, ‘Contour Crafting Simulation Plan for Lunar Settlement Infrastructure’.

Assistant Professor Anders Carlson is Co-PI on the project. He is examining the environmental variables affecting infrastructure design including extreme thermal cycling, radiation, micrometeorite impacts, vacuum, and moon or Mars gravity. Integrated design is being investigated to understand the importance of each environmental constraint and its comparison to design on earth. His focus is on assessing the viability of different structural forms influenced by the Lunar and Martian environments, construction methods and sequencing, and heat transfer. The research will rely on informed parametric design to conduct optimal form-finding based on environmentally imposed constraints and various competing objectives including material processing, transport and quantity.

The recent promise of Landscape Architecture is predicated on capturing an expanded territory of the urban matrix. Landscape Urbanism positions the profession to engage with the entire “horizontal body” of the city, suggesting that landscape architects are poised to succeed in this complex negotiation.

However, while the profession has enjoyed a growing role in planning, it often finds itself sidelined in determining the morphology of urban infrastructure – the instrumental built form that patterns the vast majority of the urban condition.

The work of the Landscape Morphologies Lab, directed by USC landscape architecture professor Alexander Robinson, seeks to build tools and methodologies for advancing the craft and agency of design practices in instrumental territories, where performance issues overshadow most design agendas.

One such project, in collaboration with Andrew Atwood, includes the development of a landscape prototyping machine to improve the design of dust mitigation landscapes at the Owens Lake in Lone Pine, California. The prototyping machine hybridizes engineering metrics, physical modeling, robotic technology, digital projection, and 3D scanning to create a multi-sensory design platform for addressing the complex issues present on the lake. The machine creates a common ground where designers, engineers, and the public can dynamically engage in the multiple agendas inherent to the lake.

University of Southern California

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AA Visiting School Los Angeles  This summer the USC School of Architecture and Architectural Association will be hosting the 1st ever AA Visiting School Los Angeles, co-directed by Alvin Huang (USC), Kevin Patrick McClellan (UTSA) & coordinated by Danielle Rago.  http://losangeles.aaschool.ac.uk/ 

Registration is open to students and professionals alike, who are interested in participating in a 10 day design charette focused on exploring the legacy of experimental housing in LA through the lens of contemporary design methodologies.  Expect to explore computational design strategies, implement digital fabrication processes, work with a global network of like-minded designers, researchers, and educators, and experience the iconic legacy of LA’s mid-century modernist homes.

Confirmed design instructors include:

  • Marc Fornes, TheVeryMany, Harvard GSD
  • Jenny Wu, Oyler Wu Collaborative, Sci-Arc
  • Adam Marcus, Variable Projects, CCA
  • David Freeland, FreelandBuck, Sci-Arc
  • Kevin Patrick McClellan, TexFab, UTSA
  • Alvin Huang, Synthesis Design + Architecture, USC 

Confirmed guest lectures include:

  • Neil Denari, NMDA, UCLA
  • Heather Roberge, Murmur, UCLA
  • Tom Wiscombe, Principal, Tom Wiscombe Design, Sci-Arc

Event Details:

  • June 16-27, 2014 at the USC School of Architecture
  • the Visiting School program is a global initiative by the Architectural Association to explore methods of design thinking developed at the AA in various global locations
  • an intensive 10 day design charrette bringing 50-60 students/professionals from around the world to LA to explore the applications of parametric modelling and digital fabrication to investigate a contemporary take on the Case Study movement.
  • event coincides with LA Design Festival and Dwell on Design 
  • We will host a public exhbition and panel discussion at Dwell on Design
  • we will host tours and visits to various iconic LA residential projects including the Goldstein Villa, Case Study 22, Eames House, and Neutra VDL.

University of Southern California

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Michele Saee has been named IAA Professor for the International Academy of Architecture.  Academic Council at its XXXVIII session (12 April 2014). The “Michele Saee Monograph” is near completion and will be published in English and Chinese by China Architectural Press. This is the second monograph of Michele Saee’s work that reflects his work in the last eighteen years. The first book was published by Rizzoli. Prof. Saee has two new projects in construction in Los Angeles; one Tahiti Marina Apartments and Docks (a 149 unit apartment building in the Marina del Rey) and a house in Bel Air.

Adjunct Associate faculty member Warren Techentin recently opened an exhibition at the Materials & Applications gallery in Los Angeles, entitled La Cage aux Folles. This experimental bent steel tube structure explores the craft of pipe bending and joins form, computational procedures, and fabrication processes into a complex structure that assumes can challenges the notion of occupation and enclosure.

Leonard Marvin is currently Senior Design Manager in USC Capital Construction responsible for the “USC Village” project which is the largest USC project designed and constructed on either the University Park Campus or the Health Science Campus.

Assistant Professor Kyle Konis’ paper entitled:” Predicting visual comfort in side-lit open-plan core zones: Results of a field study pairing high dynamic range images with subjective responses,” was recently published in the journal Energy and Buildings. (Volume 77, July 2014, Pages 67–79).

Adjunct Professor Lorcan O’Herlihy’s firm, LOHA, is currently designing three mixed-use developments in the heart of Downtown LA’s Arts District and two university housing projects. On a smaller but just as important scale, LOHA has been rethinking urban infrastructure and has billboard structures and bus shelters going up throughout the LA region. Further afield, LOHA was recently selected as one of five shortlisted architects in an international competition to design a port terminal in Taiwan.

Professors Douglas Noble and Karen Kensek are coordinating a four-day architecture licensing lecture series in Los Angeles, May 29 – June 1, 2014.  More than 25 individual classes, and all are free and open to everyone. RSVP is required on the website (search for “NotLY USC”)

Assistant Professor Rachel Berney has developed a new online course for the Fall 2014 term. Created to run jointly with USC’s Public Health Program in the Keck School of Medicine, the course, ARCH 521 Health and the Design Environment, will explore the relationship between human health and well-being and designed environments through the lenses of landscape, place, and architecture.

Assistant Professor Alison Hirsch’s book, City Choreographer: Lawrence Halprin in Urban Renewal America was released in early April (University of Minnesota Press). Her essay “Visualizing Ceaseless Change” came out in the new book, Design in the Terrain of Water (edited by Anuradha Mathur and Dilip da Cunha). She recently received the James H. Zumberge Research Grant for the development of her next book. 

Ken Breisch will be giving a lecture to the Santa Monica Conservancy on the Los Angeles architect, John Byers, on June 1, 2014.

Assistant Professor Alvin Huang will be presenting the paper “Pure Tension: Intuition, Engineering, & Fabrication” at the The 19th International Conference of the Association for Computer-Aided Architectural Design Research in Asia in Kyoto, Japan.  He has also been invited to speak as part of the “New Materials, New World” panel at Dwell on Design organized by Dwell Magazine in Los Angeles and at “Perspective 2014” the annual design meeting organized by The Plan Magazine in Venice, Italy. His firm Synthesis Design + Architecture was recently announced the winner of an invited competition to design a public art installation for the Slauson Metro Station in South Central Los Angeles.  He is currently co-directing the upcoming AA Visiting School Los Angeles (June 16-27) and co-chairing the 2014 ACADIA Conference (October 23-26).

Geoffrey von Oeyen, Lecturer, was awarded the 2014 Architectural League Prize by the Architectural League of New York. The League Prize is one of North America_s most prestigious awards for young architects. This year’s theme for the portfolio competition, Overlay, asks how the idea of overlay (iterative, conceptual, and notational) drives discourse, tension between iterations, design solutions, and the parameters by which work is reviewed. Open to designers ten years or less out of school, the competition draws entrants from around North America. Winners will lecture in June and display their work in an exhibition on view through the summer. Their ideas and work will also be featured in original interviews and video on the League_s website. One of six winners, von Oeyen will lecture about his work on June 24, 2014 with two other firms, followed by an opening reception for the group exhibition.

Lecture:

Tuesday, June 24, 2014, 7:00 p.m.
Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Auditorium
Sheila C. Johnson Design Center
Parsons The New School for Design
66 Fifth Avenue

Exhibition:  June 24—August 1, 2014

The exhibition will be open daily 12:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. and late Thursday evenings until 8:00 p.m. The exhibition will also be open on the evenings of the lectures.

 

University of Southern California

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NotLY was invented at USC by Professor Karen M. Kensek and professor Douglas Noble just over seven years ago

NotLY means “Not Licensed Yet.”

— USC has the largest and most aggressive architecture licensing program in the country.  It is called “NotLY.”
 
— Just last Saturday, more than 250 people were here at USC all day taking NotLY classes covering three of the exams.  The classes were free.  We do these classes very often.

— Next month, USC will host 25 NotLY classes in four full days.  All are free.  More than 500 people are signed up already.  They each signed up for about 5 or 6 classes.  Several classes are already full (we should not say “sold-out” since they are free). See attached schedule.

— NotLY organized study groups that will meet this week in Riverside, Santa Monica, the City of Orange, Sherman Oaks, and downtown.  Typical study groups meet five consecutive weeks for one day a week. They average about 12 people in each.

— 325 lecture classes in 7 years, not counting study groups.

— over 13000 individual registrations for the lecture classes.  This number will climb way up after the May 2014 sessions (we are expecting about 4000 registrations for those four days).

— the licensing rate in California is up substantially since we started.  420 people were licensed in California the year NotLY started.  595 were licensed last year.  These numbers are still too small, but licensing is up 40% since we started.  40% is a lot.  We are pushing for even higher numbers.

— almost 100 different instructors have taught just this year.  They are all volunteers.

— all-volunteer programs, and never a fee of any kind.

— NotLY won a National ACSA award in 2014 for extraordinary achievement.

— NotLY was invited to present at AIA Chicago as a model program for national expansion. We are going.

— NotLY offers lectures, study groups, email support, social media, peer-support and more.

— NotLY has just under 1700 members (no fees, ever).

— Multiple NotLY classes at USC every month.  Everyone is welcome (you do not have to be USC alumnus).

University of Southern California

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Assistant Professor Alvin Huang and his firm Synthesis Design + Architecture’s recently completed Pure Tension Pavilion have been awarded a 2014 AIA National Small Project Award as well as being honored for the 2014 Architects Journal Small Projects Review (shortlist), 2014 Architizer A+ Award for Architecture & Mobility (Finalist), and 2014 Architizer A+ Award for Pavilions (Special Mention). He has been invited to speak about his recent work at the upcoming Progressive Architecture Symposium in Mexico City (April 7-8), Salone di Mobile in Milan (April 9), ACSA Conference in Miami (April 10-12), CAADRIA conference in Kyoto (May 14-17) and Dwell on Design in Los Angeles (June 21-22).  He is currently co-directing the upcoming AA Visiting School Los Angeles (June 16-27) and co-chairing the 2014 ACADIA Conference (October 23-26).

Associate Professor Amy Murphy is designing an upcoming exhibition for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art entitled “Haunted Screens German Cinema in the 1920’s” with Michael Maltzan Architecture. The exhibit will open in early fall. 

Geoffrey von Oeyen, Lecturer, was elected to the Board of Directors of the Los Angeles Forum for Architecture and Urban Design. The LA Forum for Architecture and Urban Design provides a framework for design professionals and members of the general public to explore, evaluate, and impact the development of architecture in Los Angeles. To learn more about the work of the LA Forum, please visit: laforum.org 

Assistant Professor Kyle Konis, Ph.D, AIA was recently invited by faculty of the University Ute (Universidad Tecnologica Equinoccial), Ecuador to conduct a week-long sustainability workshop and design-build project in Quito.

Karen M. Kensek, LEED AP BD+C, Assoc. AIA has completed a new book:  Technical Design Series: Building Information Modeling is an overview of BIM in the profession at an introductory, but comprehensive level. This book addresses many key roles that BIM is playing in shaping professional offices and project delivery processes. The book is divided into two parts: Fundamentals (BIM overview, stakeholders and BIM’s many roles, data exchange and interoperability, BIM implementation, and beyond basic BIM) and Application (four case studies).

Karen M. Kensek, LEED AP BD+C, Assoc. AIA

Karen M. Kensek and Doug Noble also collaborated on a new book:

Building Information Modeling: BIM in Current and Future Practice is an edited compilation of provocative essays providing a forum for these leadership voices in the marketplace of ideas about building information modeling in architecture. They provide clarity and direction for thinking about the current practice and the future directions of BIM, instigating commentary by foremost thinkers about both research about BIM and speculation into the future of BIM. The 26 chapters are grouped together thematically in six sections that present both complementary and sometimes incompatible positions: Design Thinking and BIM, BIM Analytics, Comprehensive BIM, Reasoning with BIM, Professional BIM, and BIM Speculations.  In addition, full color digital material (pdf, PowerPoint, animations) is available for professors to augment the use of this book in their classes: case studies by architecture firms, engineering firm, contractors, two faculty bonus papers, and sample teaching material.

Assistant Professor Alison Hirsch published an article, co-authored with Lecturer Aroussiak Gabrielian, in International Journal of Interior Architecture and Spatial Design (Jan 2014) on a project developed through their design practice foreground design agency. She will present two papers at the annual CELA conference at the end of this month. She is leading a research seminar called “Contested Territories: Geopolitics, Media & Design in Southern California” for Harvard GSD graduate students in Architecture and Landscape Architecture studying in Los Angeles for the semester. Her book, City Choreographer, will be released next month through University of Minnesota Press, as will the book she co-edited with James Corner, The Landscape Imagination (Princeton Architectural Press). 

Lawrence Scarpa, FAIA and his firm Brooks + Scarpa have won the $29 Mil Design/Build Competition for the Angle Lake Light Rail Transit Station in Seattle, WA.  The Project will begin construction in late 2014.  He also recently won three AIA Los Angeles Design Awards, six AIA California Council Design Awards, a Presidential Award from the City of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs, and a National AIA Housing Award. 

Assistant Professor Kenneth Breisch will take over as President of the Society of Architectural Historians (SAH) on April 9.

Chu+Gooding Architects has recently completed the new Wellness Center at the Historic General Hospital in Boyle Heights. A 45,000 SF Center for Health Care related non-profit organizations. Rick Gooding’s Subterranea drawing exhibit in the Chang Gallery at Kansas State University from March 3-21

Lecturer and filmmaker Mina M. Chow is directing/producing “100 Years of Architecture” short film in celebration of the USC School of Architecture’s centennial anniversary.

Aroussiak Gabrielian, Lecturer, will be presenting a paper on her design-research at the annual CELA conference in Baltimore at the end of this month.  A recent project (‘Recipe Landscape’) by her research practice, foreground design agency, was featured in the latest volume of Studies in the History of Gardens and Designed Landscapes, as well as in the 15th edition of 306090 books, (Non-) Essential Knowledge for (New) Architecture.  A peer-reviewed essay Aroussiak co-wrote with her partner at foreground (Assistant Professor Alison Hirsch), came out in last month’s issue of International Journal of Interior Architecture and Spatial Design themed ‘Corporeal Complexities.’

The book Structure and Design by Professor G. Goetz Schierle has received very positive reviews.

Lecturer Nefeli Chatzimina will be organizing International Architectural Design Workshops in Europe [Athens and Innsbruck] during Summer 2014. Selected students from USC will participate in this design academic research with the title ‘Functionless’ using the latest computational design techniques and digital fabrication technologies. X|Atelier workshops are based on Nefeli’s current PhD Research as a selected candidate from the University of Athens in Greece.

University of Southern California

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Assistant Professor Rachel Berney has been appointed to USC’s University Research Committee for the 2013-2014 school year where she is working with a team of faculty from across the university on topics such as improving research mentorship and external collaboration. 

Andy Ku, Lecturer, was recently invited as a jury member to evaluate and judge the Art Center Faculty Enrichment Grant applications. These grants were made possible by a Samsung Corporation endowment. 

Lecturer Geoffrey von Oeyen‘s symposium proposal for the 2014-15 USC Visions and Voices Arts and Humanities Initiative, titled “Sailing Architecture,” has advanced to the University level. Featuring internationally acclaimed designers and fabricators, the symposium explores how contemporary yacht racing is creating new opportunities for multidisciplinary collaboration and innovation.

University of Southern California

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Neil Leach has published Digital Workshop in China (Tongji UP, 2013), curated an exhibition on interactive architecture and organised a conference, ‘Interactive Shanghai’, with Philip Beesley as keynote speaker. He also organised a conference, ‘3-D Printing in Concrete’, with Behrokh Khoshnevis and Enrico Dini as keynote speakers.

Assistant Professor Alvin Huang‘s “Pure Tension Pavilion”, a portable solar-powered tensioned membrane charging station, has won the Volvo “Switch to Pure Volvo” Design Competition. The project opens in September 2013. Additionally, his “[C]Space Pavilion”, constructed in 2008, has won a 2013 AIA|CC Design Award for Small Projects.   

Lawrence Scarpa, FAIA and his firm Brooks + Scarpa received six 2013 design awards from the AIA California Council. Their recently completed American Tropical Museum on historic Olvera Street received the City of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Presidential Award as well as several other local and national historic preservation awards.  Mr. Scarpa has also been named the 2014 Barber McMurry Visiting Professor at the University of Tennessee.

Travis Longcore, Associate Professor (Research) of Spatial Sciences and instructor in the Landscape Architecture program, will be speaking at the Illuminating Engineering Society’s national Street and Area Lighting Conference in Phoenix in September. His invited presentation is “Beyond Turtles and Towers: Outdoor Lighting, Wildlife, and the Environment.” 

Peter Simmonds presented two papers at the Sustainable Energy Technologies conference held at Hong Kong Polytechnic University on August 27th and 28th titled “Designing an intelligent building skin to improve occupant comfort “  and “Designing an energy efficient and comfortable building.” Peter also presented a paper at the ASHRAE annual meeting in Denver titled “Designing radiant floors back to basics.”  Together with Pavel Getov, Peter will be giving a workshop on high performance façade design at the forthcoming AIA Design Conference in Monterrey in September.

Professor Victor Regnier has just completed a 60-page monograph entitled USC Apartments for Life: Emeriti Center + Civic Engagement Center that chronicles the work of his Spring 605a students in designing a mixed-use, 60-unit elderly housing project for a 2.5 acre site on the USC campus–free pdf available on request (regnier@usc.edu). 

Assistant Professor Anders Carlson will present structural behavior tools for architectural education that he co-developed with Master of Building Science students he advised at national and international conferences this academic year. He will present “Informing Design through Parametric Integrated Structural Simulation: Iterative Structural Feedback for Design Decision Support of Complex Trusses,” by Michael Makris, David Gerber, Anders Carlson and Doug Noble at the Association for Education and research in Computer Aided Architectural Design in Europe (eCAADe) 2013 conference on computation and performance and “A Low Cost Shake Table and Models for Seismic Education” accepted for the 10th US National Conference on Earthquake Engineering. 

Victor Jones, assistant professor of architecture has been published in Shaping the City: Studies in History, Theory and Urban Design,  edited by Rodolphe El-Khoury and Edward Robbins.  His essay entitled, ‘New Orleans – Ecological Urbanism,’ contemplates new forms of infrastructure for building sustainable communities.

Tom Kundig, visiting professor and 2013-2014 Jon Jerde Chair, is a principal/owner of Olson Kundig Architects. Kundig is the subject of two monographs, Tom Kundig Houses and Tom Kundig Houses 2, both published by Princeton Architectural Press. In 2011, Wallpaper* listed Kundig as one of 150 people who have most influenced, inspired and improved the way we live, work and travel over the last 15 years. He has been recognized with the National Design Award in Architecture from the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, an Academy Award from the National Academy of Arts and Letters, and 50 AIA awards including 14 National AIA Awards.

Lecturer Rick Gooding is a principal of the award winning firm Chu+Gooding Architects, focusing on projects for arts-related and higher education clients, including MoCA, Hammer Museum, J.Paul Getty Center, Los Angeles Philharmonic Association, Southern California Public Radio, Autry National Center and La Plaza de Culturas y Artes. Rick received a M.S.Bldg Design from Columbia University in 1985 and B.Arch from SCI_Arc in 1984 along with the AIA Student Gold Medal. He trained for 14 years as Project Architect or Associate with Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects in New York City, Morphosis, Franklin D. Israel, Richard Meier Partners & Johnson Fain Partners in Los Angeles before forming Chu+Gooding Architects with wife Annie Chu in 1998. Rick had a solo exhibit in 2012 at Woodbury University’s Wedge Gallery for his Subterranea series of pencil and graphite drawings and will have a second solo show at Kansas State University’s Chang Gallery in March.

Assistant Professor Karen Kensek hosted the sixth annual BIM symposium, BIM Futures, at USC in July.  Two days of talks featured other professors from around the country and innovative professionals speaking on building information modeling.

Sophia Gruzdys (Lecturer) appeared recently on HGTV: Living Abroad a program about Barcelona. The program featured an interview and a walk-through of her recently constructed house in Begur, Spain.  Additionally, she has written two articles, “Moscow Nights:  Moscow’s International Business Center” and “A New Performance: Amsterdam’s Master Plan for the Eastern Docklands”, published in Outstanding Magazine, which targets different regions in Europe.

Assistant Professor Rachel Berney has just completed an edited volume of forty peer-reviewed papers from the 2011 Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture Conference in Los Angeles, CA, titled “Urban Nature”. Her introductory essay, “Challenging City Design Through Urban Nature,” examines ways in which urban nature can inform city design through moves such as “wedging”, “piggybacking”, and “educating” to help us better connect urban nature with city living. Key terms and actions for ecologically focused city design emerge from marrying this desire for legible and beautiful everyday landscapes to the realities of urban development and redevelopment. As well, select work from her Fall 2012 design studio, ARCH 642 “The Mobile City Studio: People, Transport, and Public Life”, co-taught by Oliver Schulze of Schulze+Grassov, Copenhagen, Denmark, is currently on display at Los Angeles City Hall as part of the Landscape Architecture Design Research exhibition presented by the University of Southern California’s School of Architecture and the Master of Landscape Architecture Program.

Alexander Robinson, recently promoted to assistant professor in the USC Landscape Architecture Program, exhibited his research on the Los Angeles River in the Los Angeles City Hall. The work is focused on honing the methodologies of integrating landscape architecture design with hydraulic performance. The research, conducted with a group of graduate landscape architecture students, utilized a large physical hydraulic model and advanced analysis techniques to carefully integrate multiple performance into the design process. The reception, hosted my LA city councilman O’ Farrell was attended by members of the LA City Council, Bureau of Engineering, and other notable and influential members of the city government.

Associate Professor, Discipline Head of Architecture and Director of Graduate Architecture Programs Gail Peter Borden was appointed to the Board of Directors of both the LA Forum and the AIA LA. His fourth book Process: Material and Representation in Architecture is at press with Routledge and will be on shelves in January 2014.

Lecturer Scott Uriu‘s firm Baumgartner+Uriu (B+U), will be shown at the 9th ArchiLab Exhibition at the FRAC Center in Orleans France in the exhibit “Naturalizing Architecture”.   The project exhibited is the housing tower “Animated Apertures” and includes a large scale physical model, drawings, and an animation.   The exhibit opens September 4th and is on show until 2nd of February 2014.    “Animated Architecture” has also been featured in the magazine Green Buildings in the article “House with Cilia” in July of 2013.  In Los Angeles, Uriu’s work can be seen in the current exhibit at the Architecture + Design museum Never Built exhibit in Los Angeles, for the Firestone Office Building; the exhibit includes a physical model, drawings, and an animation of the project.    Other recent publications include B1-  “Cruise ship terminal- the transportation hub design” 4 page article in B1 magazine featuring B+U’s competition entry for the Cruise ship terminal in Keelung, Taiwan, A New Sculpturalism: Contemporary Architecture in Southern California Exhibition Catalogue, B+U is featured in this exhibition catalog titled- A New Sculpturalism: Contemporary Architecture in Southern California. B1 magazine- Issue 67, “Breaking the Rules- B+U condo tower,” Breaking the Rules- is an 4 page article featuring B+U’s award winning Condo Tower for Lima, Peru., De Architect, “Housing Tower,”  B+U’s award winning design for a housing tower in Lima Peru is featured in this Article by the Dutch Magazine DeArchitect and an article by Marieke de Vries., Concept magazine, “B+U – Condo Tower,” Peru B+U’s award winning housing tower in Peru is featured in this 8 page article., and the book DesignPeakPack Residence space, B+U’s Frank and Kim residence Design is featured in this 3 volume Book set by Equalbooks.

Alison Hirsch joined the USC faculty as Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture. Her book, City Choreographer: Lawrence Halprin and Public Performance in Urban Renewal America (University of Minnesota, March 2014) received a Graham Foundation grant. Princeton Architectural Press will be publishing her co-edited book, The Landscape Imagination (Spring 2014). 

Trudi Sandmeier recently helped to establish the new Docomomo-US/Southern California Chapter, an organization dedicated to the documentation and conservation of buildings, sites and neighborhoods of the modern movement.

Aroussiak Gabrielian joined the Landscape Architecture faculty at USC. This summer, she traveled to Germany to presented her research, “Mediated Visions,” at the Thinking the Contemporary Landscape conference, organized by ETH Zurich.  A recent project by her research practice, foreground design agency, was featured in a special issue of the Journal of Architectural Education, “Architecture and Utopia.”

David Lawrence Gray architects have been honored with a Trends top 50 American homes award for their beach house design in Malibu California.  The house is situated on a 30’ x 150 ‘lot on the ocean.  It consists of two floors of poured in place concrete with caissons drilled into bedrock.

Lecturer Vinayak Bharne was recently an panelist at the Los Angeles Region Planning History Group colloquium “The Use and Abuse of the Urban Block.” His article “Designing the Urban Block: Best Practices in Los Angeles” was also translated and re-published in the latest issue of the China Architectural Heritage journal. 

University of Southern California

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 Jose Sanchez, assistant professor of architecture has just joined USC coming from The Bartlett, UCL in London where he formerly taught. He will be exhibiting the ‘Bloom’ project, designed and developed for the 2012 London Olympics the 5th of September at the new Frac building for the Archilab opening in Orleans, France. Later in the year he will be presenting his paper ‘Gamescapes’ in Acadia 2013 in Waterloo, where he develops a framework for using game mechanics as a design heuristics. Additionally, he will be presenting his paper ‘Hacklikes’ in the TxA conference in Texas taking place the 7-9 of November of 2013. His paper connects ideas of gaming, design and object oriented ontology. Jose, director of the Plethora-Project (www.plethora-project.com), is currently working with the support of Soomeen Hahm on the translation the over 120 videos of online teaching, his current public repository, into Chinese language, attempting to open the field of computational architectural design via online teaching to China

DSH // architecture, the firm of Adjunct Associate Professor Eric Haas, was named a finalist in the 2013 Spark > Spaces Design Competition for the Para Los Niños Family Center in downtown Los Angeles. The firm also recently completed the renovation of Welton Becket’s 1955 New York Life building to house a 500-student charter middle & high school. 

Lawrence Scarpa, FAIA and his firm Brooks + Scarpa received six 2013 American Institute of Architects California Council (AIACC) Design Awards. He also chaired the 2013 Monterey Design Conference held  at the Asilomar Conference Grounds in Pacific Grove, CA. His building, Metalsa Center for Manufacturing Innovation was published in The Plan, Architect Magazine, Architectural Review and several other books and journals.

Principals of Ehrlich Architect Steven Ehrlich, FAIA and Takashi Yanai, AIA were speakers at the 10th annual Reinvention Symposium produced by Residential Architect Magazine. The symposium, held in San Francisco October 9-11th, was focused on Resilience and how architects can lead the way as change agents for near- and long-term shifts in the environment, demographics, economics, technology, and much more.

Victor Regnier FAIA, Professor of Architecture and Gerontology is continuing his exploration of the hybrid housing/service model “Apartments for Life” (A4LIFE); that uses universal design principles, adaptable physical adjustments and technology to maintain older frail people in normal purpose-built independent housing. He has just completed a 56 page monograph that chronicles the work of his Spring graduate studio–a 60 unit project on the northwest corner of the USC campus.  The project integrates an emeriti center, USC civic engagement, 14 classrooms, an auditorium, café and coffee house in a moderate-density mixed-use setting.  Copies of the publication entitled USC Apartment for Life are available from Blurb, Inc. for $80. http://www.blurb.com/search/site_search?search=USC+Apartment+for+Life&filter=bookstore&commit=Search(ISBN#978-0-578-12743-9) OR you can request a FREE PDF by emailing him directly at regnier@usc.edu. 

Professor Regnier has made presentations in the last year to the University of Iowa Medical School, the Beckman Institute at the University of Illinois, and carried out discussion sessions at the Hammar Museum and Westside Urban Forum (LA) on this topic.  He will continue to present A4LIFE ideas at a symposium at the University of Kansas in November, a Healthcare Forum in Michigan in the Spring and a soon to be scheduled seminar at Clemson University in their healthcare Architecture program.  An article reviewing the history and future trajectory of this concept will appear in the ASA (American Society for Aging) journal in the Spring.  A Q+A on the studio can be downloaded at  http://asaging.org/blog/life-way-we-want-it-conversation-gero-architect-victor-regnier-faia

Jennifer Siegal, Adjunct Associate Professor and Principal of Office of Mobile Design, was recently featured by international Swedish filmmaker, Jesper Wachtmeister, in his documentary film Microtopia — an examination of modern alternative dwellings and mobile lifestyles. The film profiles Siegal’s first prototype for prefab dwelling: “Joshua Tree PreFab”, a fully functional mobile dwelling that also embodies responsible, sustainable, and aesthetically beautiful design. The film has received international attention and acclaim, drawing attention to current trends in dwellings and use of space, as well as looking to the future for the  impact and influence design will have on lifestyles and resources. Siegal will be lecturing this Fall at RTKL’s Corporate Officer’s Meeting and at Texas Tech College of Architecture El Paso, in partnership with the El Paso Museum of Art and the Museums and Cultural Affairs Department.

Professor Schierle added iconic structures to his web site http://www.usc.edu/structures  (click the tent icon) OR the direct link: http://www-classes.usc.edu/architecture/structures/Projects/Iconic%20Projects.htm.

Todd Gish, PhD, Adjunct Assistant Professor, is part of the local committee working to bring the national conference of the Society for American City and Regional Planning History to Los Angeles in 2015.

Ken Breisch is the General Chair for the Annual Meeting of the Society of Architectural Historians to held in Austin, Texas, in April 2014, and recently served as the Moderator for a Panel Discussion Celebrating the 20th Anniversary of the re-opening of the Los Angeles Public Library Central Building. 

Emily Gabel-Luddy, FASLA, lecturer, elected Mayor of Burbank for FY13-14, addressed the State of the L.A. River Watershed Symposium along with Mayor Eric Garcetti held October 10 in Downtown Los Angeles. Several landscape Architects attend the conference including Esther Margulies of AECOM also a lecturer. In September Mayor Gabel-Luddy lead a Burbank Delegation to Incheon, Korea for a Sustainable Cities Conference. 

Joon-Ho Choi, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Building Science at USC was invited by the Philips Research Center, located in Briarcliff Manor, New York in August to talk about one of his recent research work, entitled “Human-Building Interaction: Potential Use of Human Bio-Signals for Building Environmental System Controls”, and part of the work will be presented at the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air-Conditioning Engineers – Indoor Air Quality (ASHRAE-IAQ) Conference held in Vancouver, Canada on October 15 through 18, titled “Human-Environment Interaction: Potential Use of Pupil Size for Visual Environmental Controls.”

Peter Simmonds and Pavel Getov presented a workshop titled “EPIDERMIS/HYPOTHALAMUS: BUILDING ENVELOPE AS A FACTOR CONTROLLING OCCUPANT THERMAL COMFORT” at the AIA Monterey Design Conference. There were more than 150 attendees.

Lecturer Scott Uriu‘s work will be exhibited in two upcoming Architecture and Design events in Santa Fe; Design Santa Fe – DesignLAB Next Nest at the SITE Gallery sponsored by Metropolis Magazine, and the Life Support: Art<->Design Sustenance exhibition to be held at the David Richard Gallery, both opening November 1st. Uriu’s Lima Project has been featured in the September issue of Green Buildings Magazine, Mark magazine #40, and the August issue of Urbanista.   Uriu’s Firestone Project  has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Architecture Record, and The Architects Newspaper regarding its inclusion in the Neverbuilt exhibition.  Uriu’s Keelung Project has been featured in the July B1 Magazine, and Future magazine #39/40, and his firm (Baumgartner+Uriu) has been featured in the Hindu Newspaper June 15th.   In April 2014 Baumgartner+Uriu will be exhibited in the SciArc Main Gallery in Los Angeles.  In October, Baumgartner+Uriu has been chosen by the Santa Cruz Metro Transit Authority as the Architect for the Watsonville Transit Center.

Kyle Konis, Ph.D, AIA, assistant professor of architecture at the University of Southern California, was invited by the City of Los Angeles Department of Urban Planning and the Office of Science and Technology at the Embassy of Austria to speak at a conference entitled “The Urbanization Challenge –Smart City Solutions from Austria and California,” at LA City Hall on October 11. He will speak on the topics of high performance buildings and resource efficient development.

Travis Longcore, Associate Professor (Research) of Spatial Sciences and Lecturer in Landscape Architecture was guest editor of a special issue on human-caused mortality of birds in Canada, published in the journal Avian Conservation and Ecology.  His guest editorial noted the need to adopt best management practices to reduce mortality such as bird-safe building design to reduce collisions with windows.

Assistant Professor Alvin Huang has been awarded a 2013 AIA|LA NextLA Design Award for the Pure Tension pavilion, a portable tensile membrane solar-powered charging station for the new Volvo V60 plug-in hybrid, which launches on October 10, 2013 in Rome, Italy.  He will be giving a lecture of his recent work on October 7, at the Aura Magna Faculty of Engineering at the University of Bologna, Italy.  Additionally, professor Huang has been appointed Program Director for the newly launched Architectural Association Globabl Visiting School Los Angeles, taking place in Summer 2014.

Laurel Consuelo Broughton and her studio WELCOMEPROJECTS’ installation, Black Holes opened at the Santa Monica Museum of Art as part of their Wall Works Series and runs through January 12, 2014. A play on words, in Black Holes over five hundred kindergarden through twelfth grade students interpret ideas about abstract space through drawing inside of blank Tetra Pak milk cartons. Installed all together, the group produces a part to whole simultaneity. On November 1,2013 Laurel will lecture on her work at Cal Poly Pomona as part of their Fall lecture series. 

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