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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. 

University of Southern California

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Gail Peter Borden, Discipline Head of Architecture and Director of Graduate Architecture Programs was awarded a 2014 ACSA Faculty Research and Design Award honorable mention for his project “fur-lined”. His installation Light Frames will be included in the University Art Museum at California State University Long Beach museum exhibition on Materials & Application entitled Build Something Beautiful opening January 25th and running through mid-April. His fourth book: Process: Material and Representation in Architecture [Routledge] will be on shelves in March along with his introductory framing essay to Material ConneXtion’s Material Innovation: Innovations in Architecture [Thames and Hudson]. This summer Professor Borden will offer his travel study program that tours the southwestern United States, looking at Land Art, Architecture and Landscape. 

Associate Professor Charles Lagreco in collaboration with Senior Lecturer Gary Paige are offering a new experimental seminar Research + Design + Build this spring term to initiate a new curricular program for support of this type of effort. The effort will seek to build on the great traditions of community activism and former design build efforts at the USC School of Architecture and involve the professional community in the actives. the USC Architectural Guild has already provided a seed grant to assist in the effort.

Michael Hricak, FAIA, has been selected to represent California in the AIA College of Fellows.

Christopher Warren, adjunct assistant professor of architecture, and his office WORD finished in second place in a national competition for K+BB with their Shoreheights Residence project.  Also, their project for French fashion label A.P.C. will begin construction this month.  The store, located on Melrose, will finish construction in early April, 2014.

Karen Kensek and Douglas Noble received an ACSA Creative Achievement award for their work supporting licensure.

Trudi Sandmeier, graduate Director of the USC Heritage Conservation program, was recently appointed to serve as the 1st Vice Chair and Membership Chair of the National Council for Preservation Education, a coalition of educational institutions promoting academic excellence in historic preservation and its allied disciplines

Victor Jones, assistant professor of architecture has published (IN)FORMAL L.A. – The Space of Politics. Released by eVolo Press, the book traces another course to uncover Los Angeles’ primal sources of creation – land and speculation. Within the endless sprawl there resides flurries of uncodified spatial configurations that no high-definition map or satellite image can accurately capture nor present. Composed of essays, photos, projects and interviews, (IN)formal LA explores a range of unique spatial practices and pedagogies through the lens of politics in Los Angeles providing a spatial awareness culturally rooted, socially responsive and vitally connected to the city — embracing the quirky, celebrating the wide and embellishing the close range to expose the complex social organizations within this contemporary urban network.

Adjunct Associate Professor, Warren Techentin, received a California AIA award for the Montrose Residence. Additionally, this winter his firm WTARCH will install La Cage aux Folles at the Materials & Applications gallery. The project received grants from both the Andy Warhol Foundation and the Pasadena Art Alliance.

Tigran Ayrapetyan, Adjunct Assistant Professor established relationship within the years between the undergraduate Building Science program at the USC School of Architecture and Simpson Strong-Tie, who kindly offered to include USC into their scholarship program. For the 1st time, USC will be eligible to participate in the Simpson Strong-Tie Structural Engineering / Architecture Student Scholarship Program, for the 2013-2014 academic year.  

Qingyun Ma, AIA, was named one of the “30 Most Admired Educators for 2014” by DeignIntelligence.  

Lisa Little‘s pavilion Three Horned Beast (designed by Layer, Lisa Little and Emily White) is moving to a new exterior home in Plummer Park, West Hollywood. The pavilion is thirty feet tall and was commissioned by The New Children’s Museum in San Diego. The pavilion is made of over four hundred unique laser cut and folded aluminum elements finished with seven powder coat colors.

Hraztan Zeitlian, AIA, LEED BD+C, NCARB, Visiting Critic at the school this semester is the 2013-2014 Chair of the American Institute of Architects California Council (AIACC) Design Awards Committee. He is also the 2013 Vice President of the California Architects Board. He was originally appointed to the Board in 2011 by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

University of Southern California

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Carlo Aiello received a 2013 GOOD DESIGN Award from the Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design for his furniture design. 

DSH // architecture, the firm of Eric Haas, Adjunct Associate Professor, has completed block-long signage and graphics for the Para Los Niños preschool and family services facilities in downtown Los Angeles, and is beginning work on their third project for the organization.

Jennifer Siegal will be speaking during Palm Springs Modernism weekend as part of the Unbuilt Palm Springs lecture panel. Her original art work entitled Double Negative, homage to Michael Heizer, was recently presented as a gift to the the Palm Springs Art Museum and will be on view in a special exhibition entitled Into the Future. 

Professor Victor Regnier made presentations in 2013 to the University of Iowa Medical School, the Beckman Research Institute at the University of Illinois, and the Boomer Project at the University of Kansas–College of Architecture. He kicked off the Health Facilities Graduate Program–spring studio at Clemson University in January with two lectures that focused on the “Apartment for Life” building type and innovations in senior housing from northern Europe. He will present his research about boomer preferences at the 46th Annual Health Facilities Forum in Grand Rapids, Michigan in March.  An article reviewing the history and future trajectory of the apartments for life building concept will appear in the ASA (American Society for Aging) journal in the spring.  Copies of the recently produced 50 page, 605b studio book on the USC Apartments for Life–Emeriti Project can be downloaded free of charge (request the pdf from regnier@usc.edu).  A Q+A on the studio can also be downloaded at http://asaging.org/blog/life-way-we-want-it-conversation-gero-architect-victor-regnier-faia

Patrick Tighe presented a lecture of his work in Rome, Italy as part of the Millennium lecture series. The lecture entitled “in the gray”  was presented at the Casa dell’Architettura of the Ordine degli Architetti di Roma. Past participants in the prestigious Millennium lecture series, included, Richard Meier, Enric Miralles, Dominique Perrault, Peter Eisenman, Steven Holl, Raimund Abraham, Eric Owen Moss, Mario Botta, Santiago Calatrava and Frank Gehry amongst others. Link: http://www.casadellarchitettura.it/mostre/millennium-patrick-tighe-recent-works/

Part-time/Adjunct Faculty Lauren Dandridge Gaines will be featured in the upcoming February edition of LD+A magazine for the Illuminating Engineering Society. The article will feature her award winning lighting design work for the newly completed Old Town Newhall Library.

Professor James Steele spoke at a Colloquium at Unesco Headquarters in Paris on December 18, 2012 and the Proceedings have just been released as World Heritage Papers 36 Earthen Architecture in Today’s World, World Heritage Paper Series 18/12/2013.  He was just named as architect for the World Heritage Animal Genetic Repository ( WHAGR) the “Ark” project to set up a genome bank of endangered species.  Steele recently completed 5 chapters the cover the entire gamut of Islamic architecture to be included in Architecture: The Whole Story to be published by Thames and Hudson, for release in summer of 2014.

Professor Steele has just been commissioned by Thames and Hudson to contribute three chapters, on Morocco, Tunisia and Egypt to: Vernacular Buildings: A New World Survey.  He just established a new publishing house with his son Casey called Gulf Pacific (because it focuses on those regions of the world). Our first book, on the leading Jordanian architect Jafar Tukan, is ready to go to press and will be released in May.  Working with Professor Gail Borden, he established an Undergraduate Program in São Paulo, Brazil to be based at Fundacao Armando Alvares Penteado to run this summer, and set up a Graduate Studio at Universidade de São Paulo, for this current semester as well working on an Ecoport project for the disadvantaged Oliveira Freire neighborhood so they can have access to the river, and community facilities we will design there. A delegation from USP will visit USC to present the parameters in early February, and our Studio will visit USP over Spring break this March. Steele is coming off a Sabbatical spent mostly in Japan working on a new book entitled: Contemporary Architecture in Japan: The Next Generation for Taylor-Francis/ Routledge.

Gary Paige lectured in Japan at Kyoto Seika University this past November on the firm’s recent work and the Team USC Solar Decathlon fluxHome™.

Douglas Noble and Karen Kensek hosted the FACADE TECTONICS 14 conference at USC in January.  More than 70 speakers made 50 presentations over three days.  This was the 14th FACADE TECTONICS conference, and it attracted 437 registered attendees.

Nefeli Chatzimina, Lecturer of Architecture at the University of Southern California, is a PhD Candidate at the University of Athens and in parallel organizes and teaches International Architectural Workshops in Europe. Founder of X|Atelier Architecture (http://www.xatelier.com/) she currently completed the design and high-end construction of a Flagship store Offices for Orizon Insurance company in Athens, Greece.

Neil Leach has been appointed Professor of Digital Design at the European Graduate School in Switzerland. He has also published 2 books, Digital Workshop in China (Tongji UP, 2013) and Design Intelligence: Advanced Computational Research (CABP, 2013), curated 2 exhibitions, Interactive Shanghai in Shanghai and the 2013 DADA Student Exhibition in Beijing, and organised 2 conferences, Interactive Shanghai in Shanghai with Philip Beesley as keynote speaker, and 3-D Printing in Concrete in Dessau with Behrokh Khoshnevis and Enrico Dini as keynote speakers. 

Academy Award-winning Producer Mitchell Block and award-winning author, Huffington Post journalist/filmmaker Michael Rose have joined the team of FACE OF A NATION:  “What Happened at the World’s Fair?” with architect, filmmaker and Lecturer Mina M. Chow, AIA, NCARB as director/producer.  Emmy Award-winning composer Joseph VItarelli of Academy Award-nominated “My Architect” (2003) and multi-Emmy Award-winning HBO mini-series “John Adams” is composing an original score.  A search for national and personal identity, hope and vision for our future—in which a first generation Chinese-American architect asks why we no longer care about World’s Fairs?  FACE OF A NATION is in the final stages of post-production. 

Vinayak Bharne was recently interviewed by World Architecture News on his recent award-winning work and three books The EmergingAsian City: Concomitant Urbanities & Urbanisms, Rediscovering the Hindu Temple: The Sacred Architecture and Urbanism of India, and the soon-to-be-released Zen Spaces and Neon Places: Reflections on Japanese Architecture and Urbanism.

“Structure and Design” by Professor G. Goetz Schierle got positive reviews at http://www.jacquiecliff.com/wp-content/gallery-old/download-Structure-and-Design/p1692702303/

Diane Ghirardo’s essay on contemporary architecture in Italy and environmental degradation appeared in the book, Geografie, Storie, Paesaggi per un’Italia da cambiare, edited by Chiara Visentin; another essay on Aldo Rossi appeared in the Electa Encyclopedia of Time (2013). 

Dr. David Gerber, Assistant professor at USC’s School of Architecture is Co-Chairing this years’ Simulation in Architecture and Urban Design conference SimAUD 2014. He is also the Co-chair of this years’ annual A2014 CADIA conference  “Design Agency” to be hosted at USC’s School of Architecture. in 2013 Dr. Gerber has been awarded a second NSF grant to support research at the intersections of design, computation, engineering, and social science. Dr. Gerber has been elected to the editorial board of the International Journal of Architectural Computing and as an advisory Board Member to Robots in Architecture.

Joon-Ho Choi, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Building Science at USC spoke on the topics of indoor environmental impacts on human health and physiological principles  at the Korean Scientists and Engineers Association in America Technical Symposium held in Silicon valley, CA on December 13-14, 2013.

Dr. Travis Longcore (Lecturer in landscape architecture and Associate Professor (Research) of Spatial Sciences) received a $280,000 grant from the Baldwin Hills Conservancy and Baldwin Hills Regional Conservation Authority to undertake mapping and surveys of wildlife and habitats in the Baldwin Hills planning area and to develop an online mapping interface to share these data with the public.  The Baldwin Hills study area includes state and county parks and has one of the most diverse and park-poor service areas of any urban regional park; it also provides habitat for many native species and is the site of extensive environmental education programs serving these communities.

Assistant Professor Alvin Huang has recently received a number of distinctions.  This spring at the 2014 ACSA  Annual Meeting in Miami, Florida, Professor Huang will be presented with the 2014 ACSA New Faculty Teaching Award as well as a 2014 ACSA Faculty Design Award (Honorable Mention) for his Chelsea Workspace Project.  His firm, Synthesis Design + Architecture has also been honored with the 2013 Autodesk Small Business Innovation Award.  Professor Huang’s “Pure Tension Pavilion”, a portable solar-powered tensile membrane charging station for the Volvo V60 electric car was named one of Time Magazine‘s 20 Most Important Inventions of 2013.   

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