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University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Social Justice Advocate and Urban Designer Destiny Thomas to Deliver Causier Lecture at UW-Milwaukee
MILWAUKEE – Destiny Thomas, a noted anthropologist, entrepreneur and social justice advocate, will deliver the 2021 Charles Causier Memorial Lecture at the School of Architecture and Urban Planning at UW-Milwaukee.
Thomas’ talk, titled “Un-planning Cities: reparative design and atonement in the built environment,” will be take place online on Friday, March 5, at 2 p.m. Please register for the Department of Urban Planning’s annual keynote lecture at this UWM webpage.
Thomas, founder and CEO of the Thrivance Group, is recognized as a national thought leader in designing more equitable cities. Her perspectives help challenge the status quo of professional practices and envision a more equitable and just future.
Thomas’ ideas are particularly relevant for Milwaukee, often ranked as one of the nation’s most segregated urban areas, and in light of protests over racial and social inequality during the last year in southeastern Wisconsin and around rest of the country.
An anthropologist planner from Oakland, California, Thomas has a combined 15 years of experience in nonprofit management and project management in government agencies, including the California Department of Transportation and the City of Los Angeles. Thomas has led advancements in racial equity initiatives in California for more than a decade. She focuses on urban planning, policy writing and organizational development in communities most affected by racial inequities.
“Thomas challenges urban planners and other urbanists to examine their own role in creating racial injustice, particularly in the built environment,” said Robert Schneider, an associate professor of urban planning at UWM. The department recruited Thomas specifically for her emphasis on equity issues associated with planning.
Land-use and infrastructure patterns in southeastern Wisconsin play a role in erecting barriers and denying equal opportunities for residents, particularly those living in the central city, Schneider said. Actions by policymakers, residents, stakeholders and urban planners can contribute to segregated neighborhoods, limited opportunities to access jobs and health care via public transit and streets that prioritize high-speed traffic over local resident interaction and foot traffic for businesses.
Thomas’ interests include: harm-reductive planning, implementing the dignity-infused community engagement methodology, anti-displacement studies, healing environmental and infrastructural trauma, and bolstering agency and voice in marginalized communities within municipal planning processes. She launched the Thrivance Group in 2020 to address these issues. As a culturally rooted, trauma-informed enterprise, Thrivance works to build capacity for those values within municipal agencies, direct service providers and advocacy organizations.
“Milwaukee is an important place to begin the work of improving urban spaces for all, especially the groups Dr. Thomas identifies as marginalized,” Schneider said. “We welcome her to help open our minds to policies and practices that better advance equity and justice in the built environment.”
Thomas was featured on ABC’s “Good Morning America” in July 2020 for her work. Thomas and the Thrivance Group also host the Unurbanist Assembly, a 23-hour, digital event in which more than 8,000 people last year participated in a virtual teach-in that focused on anti-racist frameworks in urban planning, public health and social services sectors. The next Unurbanist Assembly is scheduled to take place in June.
Schneider is available for interviews ahead of the Causier lecture by contacting him at rjschnei@uwm.edu. Thomas also is available for interviews and can be contacted through Schneider.
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Call for Proposals: #ALT-MKE
A conference at the Center for 21st Century Studies, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
April 30-May 2, 2020
The Center for 21st Century Studies and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee will host this year’s annual conference, “#ALT-MKE” on April 30-May 2, 2020. Confirmed plenary speakers for the conference are: Dasha Kelly Hamilton (Wisconsin’s Poet Laureate), Brian Larkin (Barnard College/Columbia University), Monique Liston (Ubuntu Research), Rick Lowe(University of Houston), AbdouMaliq Simone (University of Sheffield) and Fatima El-Tayeb (University of California, San Diego).
Please refer to a description of the conference theme and the call for proposals below.
Conference Description
In July 2020, the City of Milwaukee will host the Democratic National Convention where leaders will gather to nominate a presidential candidate and to ratify a platform with national and global agendas. The DNC chose Milwaukee because it sees Wisconsin as emblematic of the key Midwestern and post-industrial states that the Democrats must win to retake the presidency. In turn, Milwaukee sought to host the Democratic Convention as an opportunity to remake its image as a thriving, multicultural city.
During the DNC, predictable narratives will be trotted out about Milwaukee: of segregation, crime, poverty, and blight, alongside those championing a resurgent economy and new forms of capitalist urban development. The DNC marks a supposedly transformational moment from which new solutions will emerge. But the narratives of blight and rebirth–articulated not only by political leaders but often by academics as well–often reify what they are intended to counteract. The spectacle of the DNC and of its capitalist solutions mask a panoply of more ordinary efforts underway all around us, as movements, activists, and everyday people demand new ways of seeing, organizing, and acting in the world to address the overwhelming crises of the day. Indeed, Milwaukee is like many cities in the US: a babel of ecological, social, and political perspectives, a metropolis at a crossroads of critical thinking, and a place of promise and failure.
UWM’s Center for 21st Century Studies explores these multiple perspectives in its spring 2020 conference, “#ALT-MKE: Finding New Answers in the 21st Century City.” At this critical juncture, we must rethink our political imaginations and critical engagements. Can Milwaukee, and other urban areas like it, offer novel answers to the intractable problems that confront us? If the city is an answer, what questions must we ask?
#ALT-MKE will highlight how the temporality and space of the ordinary city offers new epistemologies and practices that are engaged in the global struggle to combat racialized disinvestment, a fractured body politic, ecological crisis, and urban abandonment. The spectacles offered by the DNC–whether political, mediated, or financial in nature–lead only to institutional inaction and failure, wherein lie opportunities for ongoing forms of resistance to find new and stronger footings.
From the Situationists and Russian Constructivists, to suffragists, tactical urbanists, the Movement for Black Lives, and the Occupy movement, people have always imagined and sought new ways of life to challenge oppressive structures and violent erasure. Under the increasingly dire pressures of climate crisis, racial capitalism, ongoing settler displacement, destructive national politics, and crushing inequality, the time has come to reclaim our future by reframing these issues through the refocused lens of the 21st century city.
At the core of this investigation is our focus on reframing cities as political and ideological acts that hold within them normative values of aesthetics, power/resistance, public life, and citizenship. By inviting explorations of critical, decolonial, anti-racist politics, this conference hopes to bring together new forms of analysis, methods of urban historiography, organizing, and engaged forms of scholarship.
The conference seeks to highlight the undercommons and the counternarratives fomented in the ordinary life of spaces and places. We will ask how contested knowledges and stories of a city may be experienced across different and intersecting power relations that organize bodies and space. We hope that accounts of everyday practices, local knowledges, and organizing will help illuminate how urban residents resist, adapt and reformat conventional structures of power, governance, and order. We do not expect to find a single solution, but to foster a variety of grounded strategies and projects that we aim to highlight, bring together, and learn from.
Call for Proposals
We seek proposals for 15-20 minute presentations which could address any of the following topics:
Racial capitalism
Climate, ecology, water justice, and cities
Urban culture/urbanities
Water and land issues, particularly as they pertain to indigenous rights
Historiography of the city, historiography of urban political, social, or activist movements
Artistic practices and urban space
New ways to read and interpret cities—epistemologies of the urban
The dynamics of race, class, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality in urban spaces
Narratives of cities, urban crime, and/or segregation (in literature, film, or other media)
Indigenous knowledges and practices
Local foodways and agricultural practices
Urban design and sustainability (including transportation)
Settler colonialism and decolonizing cities
Cities and biopolitics/biopower
The urban in relation to the suburban/exurban
Please send your abstract (up to 250 words) and a brief (1-page) CV in one PDF document by Monday, January 13, 2020 to Richard Grusin, Director, Center for 21st Century Studies, at c21@uwm.edu.
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee School of Architecture & Urban Planning (SARUP) welcomes 3 new faculty to the Department of Architecture: Jasmine Benyamin, Kyle Reynolds and Filip Tejchman. Benyamin and Reynolds join as Assistant Professors while Tejchman was awarded the inaugural Fellowship in the area of Innovation in Design.
Assistant Professor Benyamin’s interdisciplinary research focuses on architectural manifestations in contemporary art practice and popular culture. Benyamin’s doctoral dissertation addresses ongoing debates regarding the origins of the Modern Movement, by examining one moment in the much-contested relationship between architecture and photography. Her study aims to carve out a critical space of inquiry within which architectural and photographic practices collide with increased velocity at the turn of the twentieth century, thus expanding the framework from which re-evaluations of modernism are now.
Benyamin has presented her research at several national conferences including the Society of Architectural Historians and ACSA. A recipient of numerous awards including an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Grant, a Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) collection research grant, as well DAAD and Fulbright fellowships for her research in Germany, she is also the editor and translator of several books on architecture, including recently published monographs on Bernard Tschumi and Jean Tschumi. An essay on the work of artist Lara Almarcegui is forthcoming.
Benyamin’s paper entitled “Leftovers: Residual and Risk in “Our Digital Present,” which was presented last Spring as part of the ACSA 100 National Conference was recently published in its proceedings. Her essay “Architecture Future Perfect: Lara Almarcegui and the Ghost of Content,” is forthcoming in Nora Wendl and Isabelle Wallace eds., Contemporary Art About Architecture: A Strange Utility. (Ashgate). In addition, a paper entitled “Towards a New Objectivity: Hermann Muthesius, Photography and the English House in Word and Image” will be presented in the upcoming Society of Architectural Historians annual conference to be held in Buffalo, New York in Spring 2013.
Assistant Professor Kyle Reynolds (BSAS 2003) is a co-founder of is-office, a design firm located in Chicago, IL. Reynolds was previously the Willard A. Oberdick Fellow at the University of Michigan Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, and an Adjunct Assistant professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Architecture. He received a Master of Architecture from Princeton University and a Bachelor of Science in Architecture with a Certificate of Urban Planning, Summa Cum Laude, from the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee. Reynolds was awarded the Skidmore, Owings and Merrill (SOM) Foundation Traveling Fellowship in 2003. He investigated how cultural variables and limitations on available space provoke architectural innovation in the increasingly static fabric of Japanese cities. His work has been published in On Farming: Bracket 1, The SANAA Studios 2006-2008: Learning From Japan: Single Story Urbanism, Pidgin Magazine, Interior Design Magazine, Calibrations, and Licensed Architect. Reynolds work has been exhibited at The University of Michigan, The Art Institute of Chicago, The Chicago History Museum, Princeton University, Daley Plaza in Chicago, Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design, and the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee.
Visiting Professor Filip Tejchman is the 2012-2013 SARUP research fellow in the area of ‘Innovation in Design’. He is also the Principal of Untitled Office, a multi-disciplinary design firm based in Brooklyn, NY. His design research and teaching will involve the relationship between energy and capital viewed through building mechanical systems. His work interweaves contemporary history/theory concerns with technical and tectonic exploration in an effort to reconceive and instrumentalize waste as a spatial project. He has taught undergraduate and graduate design studios at MIT and Pratt, where he was awarded a Development Grant for his contributions to the Language/Making program, a trans-disciplinary initiative between Architecture and the Humanities. Tejchman has also lectured on his research at RISD. His professional experience includes design and project management at Joel Sanders Architects, where he was involved in the design of several award-winning and internationally recognized projects, and at Diller Scofidio + Renfro, as a member of the Lincoln Center and Juilliard re-development design teams.
Also an active writer, Tejchman has served as a project editor for the Praxis Journal of Writing and Building and MUSEO. He has contributed essays to several monographs and exhibition catalogs. Most recently, his writing appeared in the Last Newspaper exhibition at the New Museum, NY and the Storefront for Art+Architecture. Tejchman graduated with a MSAAD from Columbia University and a B.Arch, from Cal Poly San Luis Opisbo. Tejchman’s guest lecture at SARUP will take place in the spring 2013.
One-year fellowships are awarded annually in the areas of design instruction and architectural research. The fellowships are geared toward focusing and expanding design research, energizing the architectural curriculum with current discourse, as well as confirming an academic career path for candidates in the formative stage of their professional lives. Innovative and emerging designers, practitioners, and scholars are encouraged to conduct design research and to participate in the SARUP community through the teaching of studios and seminars.
SARUP has appointed a new associate dean, beginning in Summer 2012. Associate Professor Mo Zell has been named as Associate Dean of Recruitment, Retention and Reputation. Zell teaches undergraduate and graduate design studios and a specialized seminar titled ‘Constructed Site’. She is co-founding principal of bauenstudio, a design and research firm located in Milwaukee, WI. Zell received degrees from Yale University and the University of Virginia. She is the author of The Architectural Drawing Course published by Barron’s in the US and by Thames and Hudson in the UK. She has been awarded numerous grants that have been instrumental in her current research into the redevelopment of big box retail parking lots. Zell is a registered architect in Massachusetts. As Associate Dean, Zell will coordinate the new public relations material for the school; manage recruiting efforts for new students and faculty; and strengthen efforts to expand enrollments.
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
City, Nature, People
Summer 2013 Field School in Buildings, Landscapes and Cultures
Website: www.blcfieldschool.blogspot.com
Buildings-Landscapes-Cultures, School of Architecture and Urban Planning;
Department of History, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Department of Art History, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Class Dates: June 10 – July 13, 2013
Preparatory Workshop (attendance required), June 3, 2013, 10:00 AM – 4:00 PM, Room 191, School of Architecture and Urban Planning, UWM
Course Numbers: The Field School will satisfy an elective requirement for the ecological and preservation concentrations. You may choose 6 credit hours from the following course numbers.
ARCH 534: Field Study–3 cr.; ARCH 561: Measured Drawing for Architects. –3 cr.; ARCH 562: Preservation Technology Laboratory. –3 cr.; Arch 390: Independent studies for undergraduate students. –3 cr. We will be accepting a maximum of 20 students.
This course provides students an immersion experience in the field recording of the built environment and cultural landscapes and an opportunity to learn how to write history literally “from the ground up.” This year, we will focus on the ethics of ecological stewardship and historic preservation practiced in the Historic Water Tower Neighborhood (HWTN) of Milwaukee. The neighborhood’s history dates back to the days when the City expanded northwards along the lake. The area has many historic and designated buildings, a number of residential historic districts, an extensive park system, bluffs of Lake Michigan and one business historical district. The National Register of Historic Places has created five separate districts within HWTN’s boundaries and named several notable buildings separately.
The five-week course calendar covers a broad array of academic skills. Workshops during Week 1 will focus on photography, measured drawings, documentation and technical drawings; no prior experience is necessary. Week 2 will include workshops on oral history interviewing and digital ethnography. Week 3 is centered on mapping and archival research. Week 4 and 5 will be devoted to producing final reports and documentaries. Students will learn how to “read” buildings within their urban material, social, ecological and cultural contexts, create reports on historic buildings and cultural landscapes and produce multimedia documentaries. Nationally recognized faculty directing portions of this school include Jeffrey E. Klee, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, Anna Andrzejewski, Associate Professor of Art History, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Michael H. Frisch, Professor and Senior Research Scholar, University at Buffalo, Jasmine Alinder, Associate Professor of History, University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, Michael Gordon, Associate Professor Emeritus of History, University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, and Matthew Jarosz, Associate Adjunct Professor of Architecture and Historic Preservation, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
Documentary equipment and supplies will be provided, but students must be able to fund their own meals and modest lodging accommodations. For more information please contact Prof. Arijit Sen at senA@uwm.edu.
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This field school is sponsored by Historic Water Tower Neighborhood, School of Architecture and Urban Planning, Department of History, School of Letters and Sciences, UWM.
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
On June 18, 2011 Professor Harry Van Oudenallen slipped peacefully away at home, after a short battle with cancer, surrounded by his family. Harry was an extraordinary teacher, friend, and colleague. He joined the faculty at the School of Architecture and Urban Planning at UWM in 1979, and from the very start excelled as a teacher. There are hundreds of students who have been profoundly influenced and mentored by Harry. Among the awards he won in his career, perhaps the ones he was most proud of were, the UWM Undergraduate Teaching Award and the ACSA Distinguished Professor Award. He was, this year, elected by his peers at the ACSA to serve as the Vice Chancellor of this distinguished group of scholars and teachers. Harry was a contagiously likable person and will be remembered for his enormous smile, and rich laughter.
Associate Professor Jim Wasley is now Chair of Architecture, taking over from Professor Emeritus Kevin Forseth, who retired in May.
SARUP welcomes Karl Wallick to the architecture faculty. Wallick’s research utilizes the tectonic fragment as a constructive, organizational, and narrative device to investigate topics related to building technics, detailing, and drawing. Publications include essays for The International Journal of Art and Design Education, a chapter in The Green Braid edited by Kim Tanzer, numerous conference proceedings, and most recently the fall 2011 publication of his new book: Inquiry, a 270 page monograph on the work of KieranTimbelake. In practice with Drawing Dept and now MW architecture, Wallick’s design work has received awards from the AIA and CORA.
SARUP’s AIAS chapter has been awarded the 2011 AIAS Special Accomplishment Honor Award, for their organization of SUPERjury. Under the guidance of Associate Prof. Mo Zell, AIAS coordinated a two-day school wide, public studio review process, which served as the backdrop for discussions among invited guests about curriculum, pedagogy, representation, and design process.
Alumnus and Adjunct Professor Nicolas Cascarano, principal at Arquitectura, Inc., won the national competition sponsored by United States Fallen Heroes Foundation, to design a “living memorial” that will honor servicemen and women of all branches of the United States military who have given their lives in Desert Shield, Desert Storm, Operation Iraqi Freedom, and Operation Enduring Freedom.
Adjunct Prof. Christine Scott Thomson and Assistant Prof. Gregory Thomson (Institute for Ecological Design) were invited to join a team that participated in the “Kaiser Permanente Small Hospital, Big Idea Competition”. The project proposal, which was developed under the leadership of TBL Architects (http://www.tbl.is/), with John Cooper Architecture (http://johncooperarchitecture.com/ ), and HCP, was among the top nine finalists selected.
Professor Manu P. Sobti’s research proposal, “Escaping Flatland: (Re)Writing the Histories, Geographies and Borderland Ecologies of Water”, written in collaboration with Timothy J. Ehlinger (Biology) and Ryan B. Holifield (Geography) has been awarded funding under C21’s TRANSDISCIPLINARY CHALLENGES FOR 21ST CENTURY STUDIES RFP 2011. The $280,000 funding shall support research for two years that examines borderland ecologies at the global scale, including detailed studies of the Mississippi Basin, the Danube Delta, the Oxus River (Amu Darya) and Aral Sea region, and the Ganges Delta. This is the first-ever venture that allows the humanities to converse with the sciences at UWM and make lasting change.
SARUP was well-represented at The 2011 Burnham Prize Competition: McCormick Place REDUX. The firm bauenstudio, co-founded by Associate Professor Mo Zell and Adjunct Professor Marc Roehrle, with the assistance of Keith Hayes (MArch 2012), and the team of Andrew Peters (CDS-MArch) and Jason Fisher (BSAS 2009, Krueck and Sexton), were both recognized with Honorable Mentions. The competition, co-sponsored by the Chicago, Architectural Club, the Chicago chapter of the AIA and Landmarks Illinois, examined the controversial origins and questionable future of the McCormick Place East Building, the 1971 modernist convention hall designed by Gene Summers of C.F. Murphy Associates and sited along the lakefront in Burnham Park, Chicago.
Linda Keane, School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Director of www.NEXT.cc, and Professor Mark Keane, President of www.NEXT.cc recently received a grant from the Wisconsin Arts Board to continue expansion of the K-12 design education website. This follows the international award given to www.NEXT.cc by the United International Architects for 2nd place in audio/visual category at the UIA conference in Tokyo, Japan 10/2011. NEXT was the sole American award winner among 37 countries. NEXT also developed the curriculum for the nation’s first design based Middle School, the LaCrosse Design Institute, LaCrosse Wisconsin. See the curriculum at www.NEXT.cc.
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Associate Professor Brian Schermer, Sherry Ahrentzen (University of Florida), and Carole Deprés (Université Laval) are pleased to announce the publication of their co-edited book: Building Bridges, Blurring Boundaries: The Milwaukee School in Environment-Behavior Studies. With 12 chapters authored by UWM graduates and other contributions, this book celebrates the nature, history and ongoing contributions of UW-Milwaukee’s PhD Program in Architecture. It also celebrates the program’s values —namely an understanding of architecture and built and natural settings as the locus of human endeavor and the conviction that research and design application can enhance the quality of people’s lives. View the book at Blurb: http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/3873453
Professor Mark Keane, President of www.NEXT.cc, and Prof. Linda Keane, SAIC, Director of www.NEXT.cc, are organizing a special session on K-12 design education at the upcoming ACSA National Conference in San Francisco. Please come to engage the panel of invited national organizations including the Vitruvius Program, Association of Architectural Organizations, Ace Mentor, San Francisco Builds, Kid MOB, and AIAS for discourse on STEM to STEAM, digital outreach to national high schools, marketing design fields to the next generation, project based learning, and design education as a means to integrate the traditional silos of K-12 education. Session TH 3/21 3:30. Contact keane@uwm.edu
Assistant professor Karl Wallick recently won an AIA Cincinnati merit award for his County Line Barn project. This April, Prof. Wallick will be coordinating the symposium, Evolutionary Infrastructure, with Marion Weiss and Michael Manfredi as part of the 2013 Urban Edge Award. The symposium will include a multidisciplinary panel of innovators in the fields of architecture, infrastructure, art, landscape, ecology, and urban design. The UWM School of Architecture and Urban Planning introduced the biennial Urban Edge Award in 2006 to recognize excellence in urban design and the ability of individuals to create major, positive change within the public realm.
Associate Professor Chris Cornelius received the Richard B. Ferrier Prize for Best Physical Submission in the 2012 KRob Architectural Delineation Competition. The Ken Roberts Memorial delineation competition is the oldest architectural drawing competition in the world. Cornelius also had a second submission selected as a finalist in the Physical Submission category. Both drawings will be a part of an exhibit of all of the 2012 winners sponsored by AIA Dallas.
Associate Professor Manu Sobti’s photo exhibit titled “Silk Road Travels 1” is a collation of select images from his extensive travels across the vast expanses of Central Asia and China. While his images capture the silence, solitude, resonance of these landscapes, Sobti also views architecture and its urban/rural settings as the rich background that plays out complex human choreographies and everyday stories. He examines the multiplicity of times and traditions within his deliberate framing of the background, foreground and middle ground in each rendition, connected to his special way of telling his stories. The exhibition runs from January 23 – March 3rd at the Studio Lounge in Milwaukee.
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Diebedo Francis Kere, founder of Kere Architecture (http://www.kere-architecture.com) based in Berlin, Germany has been chosen as the 2011 recipient of the Marcus Prize for Architecture.
The Marcus Prize is a $100,000 award funded by the Marcus Corporation Foundation and administered through the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee School of Architecture and Urban Planning to recognize emerging talent in architecture worldwide. The Marcus Prize provides a $50,000 award to the winner and a further $50,000 to the School to run the competition and bring Kere to Milwaukee to lead a design studio.
During the spring 2012 semester, Mr. Kere will make scheduled visits to the School. He will co-direct a graduate studio project on specific challenges in architecture that inspire enduring benefits to the physical environment, and will be invited to participate in public workshops and lectures.
Diebedo Francis Kere was born in Burkina Faso in 1965, the first-born son of the chief of the village of Gando. He was awarded a scholarship to complete his secondary education in Berlin and, upon completion, enrolled in the School of Architecture at the Technical University of Berlin. In 2004 he completed his degree.
In 1998, Kere founded the organization Bricks for the Gando Schools, through which he raised the funds to build a new primary school in his home village. Here, he adapted construction techniques to take advantage of passive ventilation strategies, local resources and technical skills. The results illustrate the power of architecture to change a community.
On May 19, 2011, a six-person jury convened in Milwaukee to select among the 30 international nominees drawn from 13 countries, all practicing architects who were nominated by one or more of a select international committee of nominators. The Jurors: Toshiko Mori, FAIA, the Robert P. Hubbard Professor in the Practice of Architecture at Harvard University Graduate School of Design and principal of Toshiko Mori Architect, (New York City); Carlos Jimenez, Principal of Carlos Jimenez Studio, Professor at Rice University and a jury member of the Pritzker Architectural Prize, (Houston); Sarah Herda, director of The Graham Foundation for the Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, (Chicago); Robert Greenstreet, Dean, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee School of Architecture and Urban Planning (Milwaukee), Steve Marcus, CEO, The Marcus Corporation Foundation (Milwaukee) and Chris Cornelius, Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee School of Architecture and Urban Planning (who will coteach the studio with Kere) reviewed the portfolios, CVs and work statements of each nominee before selecting Kere to receive the Marcus Prize.
According to juror Toshiko Mori, “Kere is…able to translate western architectural traditions into indigenous processes and values. His desire to make sophisticated and uncompromised buildings with so few resources is an empowering and optimistic lesson to share with students.”
The Marcus Prize has been awarded to MVRDV, Rotterdam (2005), Barkow + Leibinger Architects, Berlin (2007) and Alejandro Aravena, Elemental, Chile (2009). Work from the Marcus Prize studios has been published on countless websites and international journals, and in several books, including Skycar City (Aktar) and Architecture Now! 7 (Taschen). The student work has been displayed at the 2008 Venice Biennale and has won a design award. The Marcus Prize has been described as “the most lucrative prize for young designers in the world matched only by the Pritzker.”
The Marcus Corporation Foundation is the philanthropic arm of The Marcus Corporation, a lodging and entertainment company with headquarters in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The Marcus Prize is part of the Marcus family’s ongoing commitment to support the growth and development of the practice of architecture in Milwaukee.
Prof. Bill Huxhold is to be inducted into the Urban and Regional Information Systems Association (URISA)’s GIS Hall of Fame later this year. URISA established the Hall of Fame in 2005 “to recognize and honor the most esteemed leaders of the geospatial community. To be considered for the GIS Hall of Fame, an individual’s or an organization’s record of contribution to the advancement of the industry demonstrates creative thinking and actions, vision and innovation, inspiring leadership, perseverance, and community mindedness. In addition, nominees must serve as a role model for those who follow. URISA Hall of Fame Laureates are individuals or organizations whose pioneering work has moved the geospatial industry in a better, stronger direction.”
The Association of Architecture Organizations honored www.NEXT.cc at its Philadelphia conference October as the sole U.S Nominee and Award winner at the United International Architects Competition in Japan. Prof. Mark Keane, UWM, president, and Prof. Linda Keane, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, director of NEXT.cc welcome all ACSA members to engage in this free K-12 design education website <www. NEXT.cc>.
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Assistant Professor Karl Wallick’s article “Generative Processes: Thick Drawing” will be published in the February 2012 issue of The International Journal of Art & Design Education. Wallick’s recently published book on Kieran Timberlake Inquiry was selected as a notable book for 2011 on the website www.designersandbooks.com by Phil Patton, a writer for the New York Times.
Graduate students Curtis Ryan, Sara Maas, Kyle Blomquist, and Megan Gelazus were one of five winning teams of the Architecture at Zero competition for zero net energy (ZNE) building designs sponsored by PG&E and the San Francisco AIA. The work was part of Adjunct faculty Nick Cascarano’s Competitions Studio in collaboration with Associate Professor Mike Utzinger’s Fundamentals of Ecological Architecture.
Associate Professor James Wasley (UWM), along with Emily Kilroy and Associate Professor John Quale (UVA) have edited “Carbon Neutral Affordable Housing: A Guidebook for Providers, Designers and Students of Affordable Housing.” The work was sponsored by the AIA, Society of Building Science Educators and other sources.
The Rice Design Alliance’s Spotlight Award honored Associate Professor Grace La and Adjunct faculty James Dallman of the firm, LA DALLMAN. The international award, which recognizes exceptionally gifted architects in the early phase of their professional careers, carries a cash prize and invitation to lecture at The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. LA DALLMAN is the first United States practice to receive the prize, which was previously awarded to acclaimed architects Antón García-Abril of Spain and Sou Fujimoto of Japan.
LA DALLMAN was also invited to lecture about their work at several universities and institutions including the University of Pennsylvania, Syracuse University, Drury University, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, and The National Building Museum. Additional speaking and professional engagements include Grace La serving as a juror and panelist for the American Institute of Architects Minnesota Convention; and James Dallman serving as juror and panelist for 2011 Critical Mass, held at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte.
Design projects by LA DALLMAN are recently published in Small Scale (Princeton Architectural Press); and Architectural Highlights (Shanglin A&C).
Associate Professor Mo Zell and Adjunct faculty Marc Roehlre will present design research in collaboration with their firm bauenstudio at the ACSA National Conference in Boston. The projects to be presented in the poster session include ‘Chicago REDOX: Reduction/Oxidation’, in collaboration with graduate student Keith Hayes, and ‘Balmart: Reclaiming Public Space’.
Professor Mark Keane, UW-Milwaukee, and Prof. Linda Keane, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, will be offering K-12 design education teacher in-services in Madison, Milwaukee and Racine in the coming months. www.NEXT.cc is the award winning host curriculum greening K-12 education across the country. NEXT.cc will also be part of a panel at the National Art Educators Association in New York in March 2012. If interested in the possibility of a K-12 design education forum at the San Francisco ACSA conference in 2013, contact <lkeane@saic.edu>. In the meantime visit www.NEXT.cc
UWM School of Architecture & Urban Planning is pleased to announce the formation of a new Fellowship Program, offering one-year fellowships in the areas of design instruction and architectural research. The fellowships are geared toward focusing and expanding design research, energizing the architectural curriculum with current discourse, as well as confirming an academic career path for candidates in the formative stage of their professional lives. Innovative and emerging designers, architecture practitioners, and scholars are encouraged to conduct design research and to participate in the SARUP community through the teaching of studios and seminars. Further information about the new program, such as the submission requirements and deadline of March 13, 2012, can be found on the SARUP and UWM websites.
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
The UWM School of Architecture and Urban Planning has recently published James W. Shields, FAIA: Built Work with HGA Architects, Forward by Robert Greenstreet and Essay by Sebastian Schmaling, SARUP, 2012. The 90 page book documents ten built award-winning buildings by Associate Professor Jim Shields with plans, sections, photos and text. Shields also won an AIA Wisconsin Merit Design Award this year for the design of the Cambridge Commons Residence Hall, which has received LEED Gold certification. Shields was also invited this summer to present his planned renovations and additions to the Milwaukee Art Museum at Taliesen, the home and studio of Frank Lloyd Wright in Spring Green, Wisconsin. The presentation and subsequent discussion of the project was video taped, and will be available online as the first in a series of the “Taliesen Tapes”, sponsored by AIA Wisconsin.
LA DALLMAN, the architecture practice of Associate Professor Grace La and Adjunct Faculty James Dallman, was featured in Architect magazine (June 2012). The article included LA DALLMAN’s unique practice environment and design process with detailed images of drawings, models, and studio space. The National Endowment for the Arts has recognized the Harmony Project, designed by LA DALLMAN, with a $100,000 Our Town grant. The Harmony Project is a collaborative building of the Milwaukee Ballet, the UWM Peck School of the Arts, and the Medical College of Wisconsin. The work of Grace La and James Dallman’s UWM-KI studio, Learning Landscapes, is exhibited at Discovery World science and technology museum (August-December 2012). The exhibition, entitled “DRIFT Seating” includes design process, models, prototypes, drawings, and research. The studio is funded by the international furniture manufacture, KI. Videos of the project can be viewed at http://www4.uwm.edu/sarup/news/kistudio-videos.cfm. Grace La will deliver several guest lectures this fall including at North Carolina State University College of Art & Design (Sept 2012), and the Louisiana State University College of Art & Design (Nov 2012).
Professor Mark Keane, UWM, President of the non-profit design education website NEXT.cc, and Prof. Linda Keane, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Director of NEXT.cc, will be coordinating the K-12 Design Education Session at the March 2013 National ACSA conference in San Francisco. Streams of discussion will include project-based learning, environmental design in K-12, trans-disciplinary instruction, the state of architectural presence in high schools, and on-line options. For more information, please contact Prof. Keane <keane@uwm.edu> In the meantime, please visit the current 2.0 version of NEXT <www.NEXT.cc>
Professor Don Hanlon has been recognized by the University of Wisconsin System for Excellence in Teaching. The UW Regents award is given to two teachers from among all the instructors in the 13 universities and 13 colleges that comprise the UW System, in recognition of outstanding career achievement in teaching. This is just the most recent accomplishment for Professor Hanlon, who received the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Alumni Association Award for Teaching Excellence in 2001, which is given to just one instructor every year, and who continues, on a daily basis, to inspire, encourage and motivate students to aspire to greater heights.
Sustaining Cities: Urban Policies, Practices, and Perceptions, edited by Associate Professor Linda Krause is a collection of lively and intriguing essays examining cities in the aftermath of global development and recession. The volume includes chapters by noted architects, landscape architects, urban and regional planners, geographers, and film and literary critics. Included are essays by Associate Professor Mo Zell and former SARUP Professor Sherry Ahrentzen. The book will be available in December 2012 from Rutgers University Press.
Associate Professor Mo Zell and Assistant Professor Jasmine Benyamin have been invited to participate on a panel entitled “Educating Architects – The Next Generation,” as part of a two day reunion and celebration of Yale Women in Architecture to be held in New Haven, Nov 30–Dec 1.
“Empty Pavilion,” a project by Assistant Professor Kyle Reynolds and McLain Clutter with Ariel Poliner, Mike Sanderson and Nate Van Wylen, is a meditation on Detroit’s evacuated urban context and an experiment in the ability of architecture to make visible a latent public in the city. The project aspires to create an architecture that is physically and semantically empty, while solicitous of public interaction and imaginative projection. The creators of the “Empty Pavilion” have no specific use or meaning in mind – hoping instead that the project will invite unplanned occupancies and creative associations. This project was funded by a Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning Research Through Making grant.
Adjunct Professor Ash Lettow has an article forthcoming in Iowa Architect featuring a project in Cedar Falls Iowa by the firm Invision Architects. A series of Lettow’s drawings and mixed media works will be on view at the Studio Lounge Gallery in Milwaukee Wisconsin in January 2013.
Associate Professor Arijit Sen received a UWM Research Growth Initiative Award for 2012-2013, for his work on “Intertwined Geographies of Transcultural Contact: Cultural Landscapes of Muslim Immigrants in Milwaukee and Chicago.”
Dean Bob Greenstreet has been granted the Freedom of the City of London. The Freedom is believed to date back to the Thirteenth Century. In Bob’s words, “privileges accorded to recipients have included the right to walk around London with an unsheathed sword (it used to be a lot rougher in my old neighborhood than it is now), the right to be hung with a silk, rather than hemp, noose should the occasion demand it (notably treason or murder) and, my personal favorite, the right to herd sheep over London Bridge. These days, the Freedom is seen as largely symbolic and tends to be more of a charitable and educational nature.” Former awardees of the honorary freedom include Franklin D Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, Luciano Pavarotti, Bill Gates, Nelson Mandela, Pitt the Elder (and Younger) and J. K. Rowling. The summer of 2012 was a busy one for the Dean, who found himself running from twelve angry bulls in Pamplona, Spain. This year Dean Greenstreet also became an American citizen.
Founded in 1912 by 10 charter members, ACSA is an international association of architecture schools preparing future architects, designers, and change agents. Our membership includes all of the accredited professional degree programs in the United States and Canada, as well as international schools and 2- and 4-year programs. Together ACSA schools represent some 7,000 faculty educating more than 40,000 students.
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