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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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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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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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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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The School of Architecture is developing a travel and a public space-public life survey workshop with Oliver Schulze of Gehl Architects for Summer 2012 in Copenhagen, Denmark, and northern Germany, and a fall studio in Los Angeles connected with the workshop.

In early May, Mario Cipresso AIA will be a juror for “Re-Thinking Shanghai 2012: An International Design Competition for a Sustainable Intervention on the Suzhou Creek”.  The announcement of the winners and awards ceremony will take place in Shanghai on May 10, 2012.

Professor Schierle’s book Structure and Design is required reading at six major schools, including Carnegie Mellon University.

Stovall Villa is a 32 unit affordable housing project designed by John Mutlow for low income seniors and completed in July 2011, which has just been selected as a winner in the  ‘Design Housing, Multi-family’ category of the 42nd annual Los Angeles Architectural Awards. The project is designed to reinforce the contextual scale and material conditions of adjacent buildings, to expand and more clearly define an existing courtyard, and to provide a series of social spaces that encourage social interaction by either physically or visually interconnecting the spaces. Sustainability/low energy strategies include building over an existing Parking lot, optimal East/West solar orientation, incorporating metal shading screen on the south elevation with a more dense Trex screen on the West elevation and a connection for the future installation of solar Photovoltaic panels. A very short time schedule was established by the two major funding agencies, HUD and LA City which required the Design, Construction Documents and Building Permit to be completed in one year. 

Dana Bauer, in collaboration with Elysian Landscapes, has been commissioned to design the landscape and public urban spaces for a new mixed use development in Hollywood.  Other current projects include an Elementary School Master Plan, also in Hollywood, and a collection of ‘urban product’ prototypes scheduled to begin production this summer.

John Dutton will give an invited public lecture entitled: “Intersections of Architecture and Urbanism: Fin de Siecle City-Building by Wagner, Berlage, and Saarinen” at the School of Architecture of Notre Dame in April. 

Eui-Sung Yi, Adjunct Associate Professor, is Director of Docomomo Korea and the Director of the Bidding Committee to host the next International Conference in Asia. He is excited to address emerging issues of physical versus heritage conservation and the changing definition of modernism in Asia.

Eric Haas, AIA, Adjunct Assistant Professor, curated “Top Fuel: Funnels,” USC’s design-build workshop, in which Achim Menges of Stuttgart University led students investigating performative pneumatic architecture. “Self Preservation,” an article on Haas’ restoration of R.M. Schindler’s Bubeshko Apartments, was published in Dwell (Feb. 2012).

Gail Peter Borden, Director of the Master of Architecture Programs, was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure. He recently curated and participated in “Material Matters,” a six month installation at the Pacific Design Center and MOCA’s “Design Loves Art program” that had five architects each create five iterative pieces based upon a material logic. Participants included: Gail Peter Borden, Predock/Frane, Jason Payne, Victor Jones and Andrew Atwood. The exhibit is up through the end of summer. In April Borden was named one of Building Design and Construction’s 40 under 40. His third book – Principia: Architectural Principles of Material Form, co-authored with Brian Andrews and published by Pearson is due out in the fall.

Kristine Mun and David Gerber received a USC FIUT Award to implement research on interactive architecture to undergraduate students.   Mun and Gerber will commence a collaborative design project with USC’s School of Cinema and School of Engineering to develop an IA prototype this summer.

Professor Ghirardo has published an article on Lucrezia Borgia’s religion and her entrepreneurial activities in Quaderni Estensi in February 2012, and a chapter entitled “Vicende e calamità delle cose create” in a book on the reclamation of the lands in the Po Valley, edited by Prof. Chiara Visentin.

Chelsea Workspace, a recently completed CNC-milled home-office fit-out in London designed by Alvin Huang, AIA (Assistant Professor at USC School of Architecture, Principal of Synthesis Design + Architecture), will be featured in the July/August issue of Dwell Magazine.

Victor Jones had an exhibit entitled “Material Matters: Flat Shapes Justice” at the Pacific design Center for Westweek, March 20-22, 2012.  Jones has an article titled “The Medium of Big: The Culture Now Project Midsize America” in a book by Thom Mayne and Karen Lohman due out in April. 

Chuck Lagreco reports that “The Riverside Group,” the developer of a new destination resort community in the Jinhai lake area outside of Beijing, announced that his team was one of finalists of six architectural firms to proceed into design development phase on luxury residential projects for the new community.  

Esther Margulies, part time Lecturer has joined AECOM’s Los Angeles office as a principal in the Planning Design and Economics business line.  With fellow principal Vaughan Davies and the Urban Design and Landscape Architecture groups they are leading projects in southern California and China in a highly integrated process bringing together design, planning, economics and environmental practices.  AECOM’s landscape architects are currently working on multiple projects that will significantly change Los Angeles’ mobility including the downtown Regional Connector rail stations and improvements to the Central Terminal area at LAX that will dramatically change the image of LAX. Ms. Margulies is also a member of the recently formed  ULI Women’s Initiative and is working with Gail Goldberg and other ULI members to expand the leadership role of women in the Urban Land Institute. 

Visiting Assistant Professor Ying-Yu Hung is Managing Principal of SWA Los Angeles, and co-founder of the Infrastructure Research Initiative (I.R.I.S.).  Hung is an active lecturer and recently presented at the GSD Harvard for a two day symposium on the topic of landscape infrastructure.  SWA Los Angeles is currently one of the shortlisted teams for the Union Station Master Plan with Metro.  Other projects that she is working on include Emaar Square Landscape Plan in Egypt and the Historic San Jacinto Plaza in El Paso, Texas.

Prof. Graeme M. Morland.  Architect / USC, has recently been appointed to the Los Angeles, Metropolitan Transportatiom Authority, Committee on 21st century planning,  as part of the forthcoming “RAIL-VOLUTION” 2012 conference to be hosted in LA, dedicated to the challenge of “building liveable communities with transit”.    This appointment is concurrent with his School of Architecture, topic studio design studies proposing station site development opportunities for 13 of 42 new station sites currently proposed in LA . These studies are at the request of the LA, Mayor’s office of transportation and are financially supported by the Architectural Guild of the USC School of Architecture.   Following the previous success and joint USC/ MTA publication of a similar study to review the future station site options for the Prairie/Crenshaw corridor, conducted by G. Morland in 1997, It is now anticipated that this renewed interest will be on-going and the results published accordingly. The driving force for these design investigations is predicated on providing incentives to enhance private investment  and economic development at station sites in a dynamic embrace with MTA stations locations, creating exciting new community “places/centres” in hitherto mundane locations. 

Equalbooks has published Volume 12 in the Design Peak series; a comprehensive monograph on B+U’s oeuvre and features a complete overview of the innovative architecture of design duo Herwig Baumgartner and USC Lecturer Scott Uriu over the past 10 years.  Previous monographs within the DesignPeak series include architects such as Morphosis, Delugan Meissl, and Fuksas, among others. The monograph on B+U includes an introduction by architecture critic Stephen Phillips and articles about the firm.  B+U’s work ranges from conceptual projects utilizing sound as a generator for geometry and space, urban utopias imagining what our cities will look like in the future, up to build work and projects that are currently in development. Among the designs featured here, are the Firestone Boulevard office building in Downey, California; the Taipei Performing Arts Center in Taiwan; the Tall Emblem Structure for Dubai, UAE; Villas for the Royal family in Al Ain, UAE; the Frank/Kim residence and the Cohen residence in Pasadena, California; Sound cloud and Sound City_ urban intervention projects based on sound study’s, Los Angeles, California ; Sunset Junction_ a permanent installation in Silver Lake, California; Performing Arts Center in Iserlohn, Germany; NTCArt Museum for contemporary Art in New Taipei City, Taiwan; the Ott Winery in Feuersbrunn, Austria; and City Futura_ a utopian urban proposal for the city of Milan, Italy that was featured at the 12th Venice Biennale in 2010.

University of Southern California

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Mark Gangi, AIA, LEED AP, NCARB is speaking at the AIACC Academy of Emerging Professionals annual conference titled ‘the state of (re)imagining our future’ on September 22. http://aiacc.org/2012/08/15/top-ten-reasons-to-attend-progression-conference/ . Mark serves on the AIA National Center for Civic Leadership Committee.

Ken Breisch was elected First Vice President of the Society of Architectural Historians in April.  His article “Hollywood” was published in American Tourism: Constructing a National Tradition (Columbia College Chicago Press), and in June he delivered the paper, “Adobe or Concrete?” at the annual conference of the Vernacular Architecture Forum.

Jennifer Siegal will serve as a juror for the Solar Decathlon Europe 2012 in Madrid, Spain. Additionally, she served as a juror for the 2012 AIA Pasadena & Foothill design awards.

David Lawrence Gray Architects  have purchased a 100 year old building near the corner of 4th and Broadway in downtown Los Angeles. They are in the process of restoring and adding a 6th floor to be occupied by architects, engineers and post production facilities.

Post-graduate architecture faculty Christophe Cornubert was invited to participate in the opening event of the 13th International Architecture Biennale in Venice,  joining Winy Maas (MVRDV), Clement Blanchet (OMA), Bjarke Ingels (BIG), and Ole Scheeren in discussion about the future of cities and new models of architecture practice.

Professor John Mutlow recently won two awards for his projects.  He received the Los Angeles Business Council “42nd Annual Los Angeles Architectural Awards” for STOVALL VILLA, a four story, 32 unit affordable senior housing project with senior amenities and a subterranean garage, just south of Exposition Park and USC. The project is designed around a central social courtyard. Financed by HUD (the federal government) and LAHD (the City of Los Angeles). Construction completed 2011.  Multow also received the West Side Urban Forum “Westside Prize 2012: for THE COURTYARD AT LA BREA, a four story, 32 unit mixed use and mixed occupancy affordable housing project in West Hollywood, for emancipated youths, AIDS and senior residents. The project is designed to edge the sidewalk and contextually connect to the exuberance of several Art Deco buildings along La Brea, with a major architectural celebration at the entrance. 

Eric Nulman presented a paper at the ACSA International Conference in Barcelona, Spain titled “An Alternative Model For Undergraduate Thesis Instruction: Using Collaborative Full-Scale Design Exercises To Supplement Individual Research Projects”

Douglas Noble and Karen Kensek have hosted more than a dozen architectural licensing study hall sessions in the past year.  These free study hall sessions have been attended by hundredson interns from the Los Angeles region.

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