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Michael Hricak, FAIA, named to the Board of Directors for the National Architectural Accrediting Board (NAAB)

 

USC Faculty member Michael Hricak, FAIA, has been elected to the Board of Directors for the National Architectural Accrediting Board (NAAB). His three-year term spans October 2022 through October 2025.

Continuously involved in design education since 1982, Professor Hricak has taught courses in design, history and theory and has been honored numerous times for his teaching. Currently he is an Adjunct Associate Professor, lecturing in Professional Practice, a subject he has taught since 1998. His courses explores the effect on the design process of issues related to: environmental concerns; regulations, policies and codes; construction law; pre-design and the entitlement process; governing agencies; integrated project delivery; digital technologies; communication and information transfer; business and finance; practice; and ethics. He also serves as USC’s Architect Licensing Advisor, counseling students and recent graduates assisting them in navigating the Intern Development Program (IDP) and the exam process, setting them on a path to obtain a license to practice architecture. He served as Editor-in-Chief of the Architecture Students’ Handbook of Professional Practice, 14th Edition (Wiley & Sons, 2009), of which he also wrote several sections. He is currently a member of the Editorial Advisory Board for the 15th Edition of the Handbook.

NAAB is committed to providing excellence in architectural education through accreditation, at the heart of which lies quality assurance for students, programs, and the public at large.

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Ginger Nolan Wins the 2022 SAH | Places Prize on Race and the Built Environment from the Society of Architectural Historians

 

The Society of Architectural Historians is pleased to announce that Ginger Nolan has been selected as the recipient of the 2023 SAH | Places Prize on Race and the Built Environment. A collaboration between SAH and Places Journal, the award supports the production of a major work of public scholarship that considers the history of race and the built environment through a contemporary lens.

Nolan is an assistant professor at the School of Architecture at the University of Southern California. Her research examines relationships between architecture, media, infrastructures, and race in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. She has published two books with the University of Minnesota Press: Savage Mind to Savage Machine: Racial Science and Twentieth-Century Design (2021) and The Neocolonialism of the Global Village (2018). Her work has been recognized by the Graham Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, the Terra Foundation, and the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst.

Nolan’s project, “Responding to Racialized Risk: African American Insurance, Churches, and Co-Ops,” will examine the strategies that African Americans developed to contend with their exclusion from access to financial capital, affordable housing, and other infrastructures of household risk management. Her proposed article will draw on archives of African American insurance companies, banks, church-sponsored housing projects, and rural co-operatives, as well as articles and ads in African American magazines. The article will also address continuing barriers faced by non-EuroAmericans in accessing infrastructures of risk management, highlighting how those infrastructures are still integral to the global-northern conquest of space and capital.

Nolan will receive a $7,500 honorarium to fund archival research and travel, which will begin this year. Her research will culminate in a public lecture presented by SAH and the publication of an article in Places.

Established in 2021, the SAH | Places Prize was envisioned by Charles L. Davis II, associate professor of architectural history and criticism at the University at Buffalo, SUNY, and co-chair of the SAH Race + Architectural History Affiliate Group.

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Willow Bay Has Been Appointed to Serve as Interim Dean of the USC School of Architecture

 

A broadcast journalist, media pioneer and digital communication leader, Willow Bay is the dean of the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. The first female dean of USC Annenberg, Bay oversees more than 200 faculty and staff, and more than 2,500 undergraduate and graduate students across the fields of communication, journalism, public relations and public diplomacy.

As dean, Bay has led academic and research innovations while strengthening USC Annenberg’s connections with the communication fields. She launched a series of curricular improvements, including an expansion of the school’s experiential education and career development programs. Since her installation in 2017, Bay also has focused on advancing the school’s portfolio of innovative research that delivers insights, challenges assumptions and offers knowledge-based solutions to drive change. She has increased USC Annenberg’s partnerships with its industries of practice as well as bolstered the school’s academic and financial foundations through endowed support for faculty chairs, student success, diversity in journalism, and conversations amplifying mental health.

Bay has increased Annenberg’s public engagement around critical issues such as the role of communication technology in advancing equity and access, digital media literacy, gender equity in media and communication, and sports and social change. A skilled television interviewer, Bay has also led conversations with a number of global influencers, including former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and His Holiness the Dalai Lama. She has also attracted highly visible speakers to campus, including Jorge Ramos, Oprah Winfrey and Maverick Carter.

Prior to her role as dean, Bay spent three years as director of the USC Annenberg School of Journalism (2014–’17) and guided the 2014 launch of the state-of-the-art media center in Wallis Annenberg Hall, a newsroom, classroom and incubator of new ideas open to students across the university. During that time, she also introduced the school’s new Bachelor of Arts in Journalism degree program and welcomed the first cohort of the school’s nine-month Master of Science in Journalism program.

Bay’s academic and industry engagement is focused on the intersection of media, technology and business. Building on research from her first book, Talking to Your Kids in Tough Times: How to Answer Your Child’s Questions about the World We Live In (Warner Books, 2003), she is the co-author of a series of global research reports on the impact of mobile technologies on teens and parents titled “The New Normal.”

Bay came to USC Annenberg from her post as senior editor and senior strategic advisor of The Huffington Post, where she managed editorial content and growth initiatives for the pioneering online news site. Her prominent broadcast experience includes reporting and anchoring for ABC News’ Good Morning America/Sunday and serving as a correspondent for Good Morning America and World News Weekend. She was the first woman to co-anchor CNN’s flagship daily financial news program Moneyline. At NBC, she co-hosted NBA Inside Stuff, the NBA’s weekly magazine show, and served as a correspondent for the Today Show. In addition, she was a special correspondent for Bloomberg TV and host of Women to Watch, a primetime program that profiled the next generation of women leaders.

Originally from New York, Bay graduated cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania with a BA in literature and received her MBA from New York University’s Stern School of Business.

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Clifford Pearson, director of the USC American Academy in China (AAC) and lecturer at the USC School of Architecture, organized a forum on the collaboration between Asian developers and American architects in creating three of the largest building projects in downtown Los Angeles. The AAC-sponsored event entitled “Is LA Ready for Vertical Urbanism,” took place at USC on May 9 at 6:30 PM. Participants were: Robert Jernigan of Gensler and Wu Chao of Greenland USA talking about the Metropolis complex; Mark Nay of CallisonRTKL and Tin Hovsepian of China Oceanwide Holdings talking about Oceanwide Plaza; and Tammy Jow of AC Martin and Chris Park of Hanjin International talking about Wilshire Grand. Paul Tang of  Verse Design and the founding academic coordinator of the AAC moderated the panel discussion, along with Pearson. 

Adjunct Associate Professor and Office of Mobile Design (OMD) Founder, Jennifer Siegal, won a 2017 AIA/LA Residential Architecture Award for her private home ‘Vertical Venice Prefab’. The home was featured on the cover of Dwell’s 2017 Prefab Issue and will be available to view at the Dwell on Design home tours in June. She will be speaking on an expert panel on June 24th at the Dwell of Design event in Los Angeles. Siegal is the inaugural design interview for the launch of Hunker.com out this April. OMD’s work is featured in Mobitecture: Architecture on the Move (Phaidon Press) and the Swedish publication RUM’s Los Angeles Issue. Siegal was made representative for her 2003 GSD/Loeb Fellowship class.

Patrick Tighe, FAIA, Adjunct Professor has the following news this month,

Tighe was awarded the 2017 Star of Design Award during Westweek, given by the Pacific Design Center. Other awards include: three AIA LA Residential Design Awards, a Architizer Award, two Calibre Award nominations and one Los Angeles Architecture Award

R. Scott Mitchell and Sofia Borges’s MADWORKSHOP Homeless Studio won the Fast Company World Changing Ideas Award for their Homes for Hope prototype. Their work is also featured in this month’s Metropolis Magazine, Architect Magazine, and Business Insider. 

Lorcan O’Herlihy FAIA will be speaking at Architectural Record’s Innovation Conference West, The Future of Architecture and the Public Realm, at UCSF’s Mission Bay Conference Center San Francisco on Wednesday, June 7. He will discuss urban culture in Los Angeles and Detroit, emphasizing the need for social and civic connectivity in two complex and rapidly evolving regions. Lorcan was also featured in the April 2017 issue of Architectural Record, which focuses on the public realm. In the issue, Lorcan shares his thoughts on rebuilding Detroit and discusses ways of integrating the public realm and social housing through his MLK1101 project in South Los Angeles. Over the next several months Lorcan will be lecturing at University of Colorado Denver, Washington University in St. Louis, and will give the Convocation Lecture at University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

Alvin Huang, AIA was granted tenure and promoted to the rank of Associate Professor. He will be a keynote speaker at the 2017 AIA Wisconsin Conference on Architecture in Madison, WI on May 17-18, and has been invited to give a lecture and conduct a design workshop at the School of Architecture and Civil Engineering at Xiamen University in Xiamen, China from June 23-27. 

Eric Haas’s firm DSH // architecture was a finalist in Architizer’s 2017 A+Awards in the Architecture + 3D printing category for their research project Spiral Kitty, a wholly 3D-printed, reciprocally-structured cat shelter, donated to benefit the nonprofit Architects for Animals. The firm is in construction on two preschool and infant care centers in Hollywood, and beginning work on new facilities for Children’s Institute.

Associate Professor Ken Breisch has completed his manuscript for American Libraries: 1730-1950.  This is to be published by The Library of Congress and W. W. Norton in September 2017. In February and March he lectured on his new book The Los Angeles Central Library: Building an Architectural Icon, 1872-1933 at the Los Angeles Public Library and before the Society of Architectural Historians/Southern California Chapter, and participated in a podcast conversation on this same topic with Jim Cuno, President of the J. Paul Getty Trust, for his series Art + Ideas. In March, he gave a lecture on the Los Angeles Stock Exchange Building for the Annual Meeting of the Los Angeles Chapter of the Construction Specifications Institute and was invited by Pasadena Heritage to lecture on the significance of architecture of the recent past.

Mina Chow, AIA, NCARB is the architecture expert for a new National Geographic series called “Origins: The Journey of Humankind.”  Throughout the episode, she talks about the revolutionary aspects of building systems furthering the progress of civilization on “Building the Future.”  The episode aired on MON, April 17, 2017 and FRI, April 21, 2017 9:00pm ET/ 6:00pm PT on the National Geographic Channel.  In addition, the film she is directing/producing about the erosion of America’s international image “FACE OF A NATION:  What Happened to the World’s Fair?” just completed their original music.  The film featuring Frank O. Gehry, and Barton Myers will be ready for film festivals in the Fall 2017.

Assistant Professor of Practice, Lauren Matchison, served as the AIA mentor and faculty advisor to the winning student team in the 2017 AXP Design Competition (hosted by AIA San Fernando Valley). USC undergraduate students, Taylor Abbott and Tyler Gates, won the $1000 first place prize for their design of a Los Angeles-area park and community center.

Laurel Consuelo Broughton and her studio WELCOMEPROJECTS presented a new urban project, “The Fantasy Compact” as part of cityLAB UCLA AUD’s exhibition, “cityLAB, times 10,” which imagined speculative futures for Los Angeles along with five other Los Angeles offices and work from cityLAB’s archives at the A+D Museum in Los Angeles. The show runs from February 3- April 9, 2017. 

Construction was recently completed for Geoffrey von Oeyen‘s design for the Project and Idea Realization Lab (PIRL), a new design technology lab and classroom for a middle school in Pacific Palisades, California, that celebrates the design process as integral to education. Both indoors and out, the two teaching spaces in PIRL provide comprehensive learning opportunities that enable an exploratory approach toward multidisciplinary, design-based collaboration. The interior classroom, taking spatial and programmatic cues from Stanford’s Institute of Design, provides a technology platform for creative collaboration on projects ranging from robotics to filmmaking. The student-operated retractable canopy fabricated by a racing sailboat rigger is a didactic expression of architecture, engineering, and sailing design that creates a covered outdoor teaching and making space. www.geoffreyvonoeyen.com

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By Contact Reporter, Los Angeles Times

USC’s School of Architecture will have a new dean July 1. The department announced Monday that Milton S.F. Curry has been named to succeed Qingyun Ma, who served two five-year terms as dean and will remain on the faculty.

Curry arrives from the University of Michigan Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, where he is associate dean for academic affairs and strategic initiatives. He was chosen for the post at USC based upon his expertise “at the forefront of disciplinary areas on race, architecture and urbanism that engages cultural theory and humanities research,” the announcement said.

Curry founded the CriticalProductive Journal, which examined scholarship and creative pursuits in architecture, urbanism and cultural theory. He also co-founded Appendix Journal in the early 1990s, which helped to catalyze debate on architecture and race, among other subjects.

Curry earned a bachelor’s degree in architecture from Cornell University and a master’s in architecture with distinction from Harvard Graduate School of Design. His concentration was architecture theory.

He began his career in academics as an assistant professor at Arizona State University in 1992. He later was a visiting professor at Cornell, becoming an assistant professor there in 1995; he was promoted to tenured associate professor in 2002. He taught a graduate design studio at Harvard in 1999.

In 2010 he joined the University of Michigan as associate professor.

“We are honored and excited to welcome Professor Curry to the USC School of Architecture,” USC Provost Michael Quick said in the announcement. “Architecture has a profound impact on our culture. It is a profession and an art, local and global, and extremely creative. We know that Professor Curry will lead our students, faculty, research and practice to new heights.”

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Sarah Cowles led a seminar: “Sylviculture: metaphor, narrative and aesthetics in forest gardens” at the Harvard Forest in Petersham Massachusetts in October. Recent publications include “All that and more”  and “Propagating an idea” in recent issues of Landscape Architecture Magazine. “The Low-Flow”, a series of drawings on the Arroyo Seco Channel, was published in Art Papers magazine. 

Professor Marc Schiler was interviewed by the Los Angeles Times and by Curbed LA regarding the glare reflected from the new Wilshire Grand project, by A C Martin.  Schiler is an expert in solar convergence and glare, having solved the issues with the Walt Disney Concert Hall and having consulted on buildings such as the Ping An Financial Center in Shenzhen, China, the Lumina Foundation in Arles, France, the Lewis Science Library at Princeton University and many other buildings, which have, as a result, NOT been featured in articles about problems with glare.   Los Angeles Times, “The glass on the Wilshire Grand is creating too much glare, says one neighbor who wants the project halted,” by Hugo Martin, November 16, 2016,  http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-wilshire-grand-glass-20161116-story.html

Curbed Los Angeles, “Why the Wilshire Grand won’t shoot a ‘death ray’: It’s wrapped in a glass that generated a “death ray” on the Vegas Strip, by Jenna Chandler, November 17, 2016
http://la.curbed.com/2016/11/17/13631998/wilshire-grand-glass-death-ray-glare 

Rob Berry presented “The City is in the Details”, a lecture on his recent work, at East Los Angeles College as part of their Fall 2016 Architecture Department Lecture Series.

Kelly Shannon was a jury member of the International Landscape Design Competition for the Han River, Da Nanang City, Vietnam in November 2016. There were two second places (OMG, Belgium and CPG, Singapore) and two third (Deso, France and Nikken Sekkei, Japan) places awarded. 

Karen M. Kensek and Douglas Noble organized the Facade Tectonics 2016 World Congress in October with nearly 500 attendees from around the world. Noble also served as a reviewer at Cal Poly Pomona in October.

Associate Professor Chuck Lagreco organized a trip to 5th year studio to San Francisco to for his studio team in Fall 2016.

Mina Chow AIA Senior Lecture lectured on architecture and cultural diplomacy with Visiting Senior Scholar Conrad Turner, U.S. Public Diplomat in Residence at the USC Annenberg Master on Public Diplomacy program with presentation of her work-in-progress documentary “FACE OF A NATION:  What Happened at the World’s Fair?”

Jennifer Park received the campus-wide “Staff Recognition Award” from the University of Southern California in November 2016.  The University recognizes one staff member every month, and must select from among more than 13,000 staff members.

Brendan Shea led a workshop as part of Roundhouse at Taylor Yard, a project of USC Roski Curatorial Practices and the Public Sphere. The workshop, entitled “Surveying The Land”, explored architecture’s history, disappearance, and ruin at Taylor Yard through documentation of site in various media.

Alvin Huang and his firm Synthesis Design + Architecture were recently honored with a number of awards from the American Institute of Architects. At the annual AIA Los Angeles Design Awards, SDA received the 2016 AIA Los Angeles Presidential Honoree Emerging Practice Award, the highest honor the AIA|LA can bestow upon an emerging practice for consistent innovation in practice. SDA also received an AIA|LA Design Award Citation for the their Pure Tension Pavilion. At the AIA California Council Leadership Summit, Alvin Huang received the 2016 AIA California Council Young Architect Award which honors individuals who have shown exceptional leadership and made significant contributions to the profession in an early stage of their architectural career.

Hadrian Predock lectured about his work at Cal Poly Pomona on October 21st. He conducted a workshop and also delivered a lecture at the UNLV architecture school on October 8-10. He served as a juror on the 2016 Ohio AIA design awards. 

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Vinayak Bharne lectured on “Practicing Urban Design: From High Art to High Activism” at the South China Agricultural University’s College of Forestry and Landscape Architecture. He also spoke on “The Sacred Urbanism of Hindu India” at the Sacred Space Sacred Thread Global Conference at the University of Southern California. 

Dr. Travis Longcore (Landscape Architecture + Urbanism program) was a presenter on Ecologically Sensitive Lighting Design at the 2016 American Society of Landscape Architects meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana.  His paper “Biological and ecological effects of light pollution” was published in eLS: Citable Reviews in the Life Sciences.  Dr. Longcore also had a poster and a paper accepted to and presented at the 9th California Channel Islands Symposium, which reported on a habitat suitability model for an endangered plant and the quantitative prediction of vegetation patterns to inform restoration and landscape management. 

Construction was recently completed for Geoffrey von Oeyen‘s design for the Project and Idea Realization Lab (PIRL), a new design technology lab and classroom for a middle school in Pacific Palisades, California, that celebrates the design process as integral to education. Both indoors and out, the two teaching spaces in PIRL provide comprehensive learning opportunities that enable an exploratory approach toward multidisciplinary, design-based collaboration. The interior classroom, taking spatial and programmatic cues from Stanford’s Institute of Design, provides a technology platform for creative collaboration on projects ranging from robotics to filmmaking. The student-operated retractable canopy fabricated by a racing sailboat rigger is a didactic expression of architecture, engineering, and sailing design that creates a covered outdoor teaching and making space.

Hunter Knight lectured at Cal Poly Pomona. The talk was titled Out of Bounds and Out of Ideas, where he discussed recent work of his office Weather Projects.

Alexander Robinson shared a part of his upcoming manuscript on the Owens Lake at the “Realms and Realities” Colloquium organized by Bradley Cantrell and hosted at the Harvard Graduate School of Design in November. He was also interviewed as part of an Archinect podcast event on the Los Angeles River in October.

Eric Haas’s firm DSH recently completed their third and fourth projects for the non-profit Para Los Niños: an expansion of their Family Wellness Center – an adaptive reuse project providing counseling and therapy services – and a preschool for 100 children, both in the Skid Row neighborhood of downtown Los Angeles. They are beginning construction of an Early Head Start preschool and infant care center in Hollywood for the Youth Policy Institute. The Head Start facilities are part of a Promise Zone grant, an Obama Administration initiative to partner with local non-profits to provide an array of services in disadvantaged neighborhoods.

Trudi Sandmeier, director of the USC Heritage Conservation program, recently lectured at Cornell University to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Cornell Historic Preservation Planning program – her talk was entitled “Conservation Planning on the Edge: A “Left”ist Perspective.”

Detox USA, a project by Marcos Sánchez in collaboration with Mark Wasiuta and Florencia Alvarez, examines the recent expansion of addiction recovery spaces and therapy techniques in Southern California and internationally. Detox USA was shown at the 2016 Istanbul Design Biennale, co-curated by Beatriz Colomina and Mark Wigley.

Lorcan O’Herlihy’s project SL11024 is currently on view at the Design Museum in London until February 19, 2017 as part of the Beazley Designs of the Year exhibition. His firm Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects [LOHA] is the only American firm represented, where SL11024 is exhibited alongside work from OMA, BIG, and Herzog and de Meuron. In addition, LOHA has been selected by the City of Detroit to develop a comprehensive neighborhood, landscape, public realm, and green infrastructural strategy for the Grand River and Fenkell Corridors in Northwest Detroit. The project team is tasked with developing a holistic and comprehensive plan for strengthening the vibrancy and quality of life of this historic neighborhood.

Patrick Tighe, FAIA, Adjunct Professor hsa the following news this month: 2 AIA Awards from the Los Angeles Chapter, 3 Best of Year Awards from Interior Design Magazine, A Best of Design Award from The Architects Newspaper, and also Connexion, a commercial project in Burbank designed  for Lincoln Properties Inc was published in Interior Design Magazine. A new monograph of the work of Patrick Tighe entitled, Building Dichotomy, with an intro by Thiom Mayne was released, and is now available on Amazon.

Vittoria Di Palma’s book Wasteland, A History (Yale, 2014) is the recipient of the Herbert Baxter Adams prize.  The American Historical Association (AHA) awards the prize annually in recognition of an outstanding book published in English in the field of European history.

Professor Joon-Ho Choi received the Best Paper Award at the 9th International Conference on Indoor Air Quality, Ventilation & Energy Conservation in Buildings (IAQVEC). He presented one of his recent research, entitled “Comfort at Workstation: Comprehensive POE Research on Office Environment of Southern California” at the conference. The research identified and resolved technical issues of the current post-occupancy evaluation methodologies based on the use of 421 IEQ datasets collected from office environments within the university and commercial office buildings.  Professor Choi has been recently elected as a board member of the Architectural Research Centers Consortium (ARCC), and he will serve for ARCC from 2017 to 2019.

Prof Graeme Maxwell Morland at USC, School of Architecture, and Principal, GEM architects, has recently completed the schematic design studies for a 24 unit Research Scholars Housing and Communal Conference/Meeting Center for visiting global scholars at the HUNTINGTON Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, Calif.   The project, which is monastic in nature will be set within a dense grove of existing fruit trees and is designed to be totally energy self-sufficient.  It is anticipated that the project will now enter into the preliminary design development phase in 2017.     

Assistant Professor Kyle Konis’ submission to the 2016 National AIA Upjohn Research Initiative – “A Circadian Daylight Metric and Design Assist Tool for Improved Occupant Health and Well-Being” – was selected and awarded a $20,240 grant.

Laurel Consuelo Broughton and her studio WELCOMEPROJECTS were included in the multi-firm installation, The Kid Gets Out of the Picture at Materials and Applications in Los Angeles. The large, outdoor installation was curated by The LADG and supported by The Graham Foundation. In October, Laurel lectured with Andrew Kovacs as part of the Dean’s Lecture Series at Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. 

Zachary Tate Porter delivered the 2016 Design of Theory Lecture at SCI-Arc in November. The lecture, entitled “Cuts and Fills: Constructing a Discourse on Ground,” highlighted Porter’s multi-modal research on the role of ground within architectural theory and practice.

Ken Breisch has published a new book, The Los Angeles Central Library: Building an Architectural Icon, 1872-1933, (Los Angeles: The Getty Research Institute, 2016), and presented the lecture, “Bertram Goodhue and Irving J. Gill, The Panama California Exhibition and The Los Angeles Public Library,” in the Art, Design and Architecture Lecture Series at the University of California at Santa Barbara in November. He has been asked to lecture on his new book by the Southern California Chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians in January.

R. Scott Mitchell and Sofia Borges’s MADWORKSHOP Homeless Studio has partnered with Hope of the Valley Recuse Mission and the City of Los Angeles to develop a modular housing solution for immediate stabilization of the city’s homeless. Their efforts have been featured in WIRED Magazine, Azure Magazine, Archinect, and USC News.

Next November 5th, Maria Esnaola and her studio KnitKnot will be one of the guest speakers at the TEDX at University of Macedonia 2016. Under the title “Gravity of Thoughts”, and they will also organize a Workshop and installation that evaluates collaborative design techniques and construction. http://www.tedxuniversityofmacedonia.com/en/index.html#theme

Maria Esnaola and her studio KnitKnot architecture started the construction of a school project for Nicaragua in El Jicarito. EL JICARITO SCHOOL is an innovative low-cost school design that brings a community together through collaborative construction methods, using local materials, while creating a new educational space. Here are the highlights for the process:

  • May 24th: launched a fundraising campaign through Indiegogo.
  • May 28th: the project meets the 106% of the fundraising goals. 22,180 USD total funds raised.
  • April 12nd: published in Plataforma Arquitectura: http://www.plataformaarquitectura.cl/cl/785163/knitknot-architecturelanza-campana-de-fondos-para-construir-escuela-en-nicaragua
  • April 18th: “Tiny revolutions” in Architizer http://architizer.com/blog/crowdfund-a-nicaraguan-school-in-el-jicarito/
  • April 22nd: the project is published in Archdaily http://www.archdaily.com/785498/knitknot-architecture-seeks-funds-fornicaraguanschool
  • July 15th: Paul Keskey, editor of Architizer, praises Knit Knot in an interview for Housely, Massachusetts.

“If there’s one current trend in architecture you’re excited about what is it and why are you excited? Maria Esnaola is very excited about the growing potential for the web to help fund public interest design and humanitarian architecture projects, with more creative people harnessing crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter and Indiegogo. We recently covered Knitknot Architecture’s campaign to crowdfund a school in Nicaragua. They successfully achieved their goal in May; I’m delighted for them and the project has given me renewed faith in the potential for small creative firms to get innovative projects like this off the ground.” Read more at http://housely.com/paul-keskeys/

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Check out USC’s StudyArchitecture Profile Page here! 

University of Southern California

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Victor Regnier FAIA has been invited to reflect on the meaning and purpose of his research in the upcoming book “Environments in an Aging Society: Autobiographical Perspectives in Environmental Gerontology. The book includes the work of 17 researchers from seven countries who’s life work has created the basis for the discipline

Prof. G. Goetz Schierle has been invited as keynote speaker at the IEREK Conference in Cairo 2017 Cities through Architecture and Arts.

Patrick Tighe, FAIA, (Adjunct Professor) was awarded a 2015 AIACC Honor Award form the American Institute of Architects, California Council.

The proposal of Adjunct Associate Professor Michael Hricak, FAIA,  “Leadership and Creativity: What it takes to Lead Talented Individuals” has been accepted by the National AIA and he will be presenting at the 2007 AIA Convention in Orlando, FL. The material for this course was originally developed  for the summer professional EXED program at USC.

Hadrian Predock juried the LAGI – Land Art Generator Initiative in May, will be conducting a workshop and lecturing at UNLV school of architecture on October 8-10, and will be lecturing at Cal Poly Pomona on October 21st. He is beginning work on a multi-generational housing project in Muncie, Indiana. The catalog for Errors, Estrangement, Messes and Fictions – an exhibition curated by Hadrian for the USC School of Architecture – is now being widely disseminated. 

Maria Esnaola and her studio KnitKnot architecture started the construction of a school project for Nicaragua in El Jicarito. EL JICARITO SCHOOL is an innovative low-cost school design that brings a community together through collaborative construction.  On November 5th, Knit Knot will be one of the guest speakers at the TEDX at University of Macedonia 2016. Under the title “Gravity of Thoughts”, we will also organize a Workshop and installation that evaluates collaborative design techniques and construction.

Dr. Joon-Ho Choi received the USC Zumberge Research Innovation Fund based on one of his research topics, titled “Bio-Sensing Data-Driven Thermal Comfort Model.” His Human-Building Integration Research was invited to the International Energy Agency – Energy in Buildings and Communities Programs Annex 66 Expert Meeting, held in Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada. He presented “Impacts of Occupants on Building Performance: Extracting Information from Building Data” at the meeting. Dr. Choi has been invited to the 9th International Conference on Indoor Air Quality Ventilation & Energy Conservation” as a scientific committee, and he will make a presentation about two of his recent researches: Comprehensive Post-Occupancy Evaluation, and User-behavioral impacts on Building Energy Performance. He is also invited as an indoor environmental quality expert panel to the Workshop on the Value of Designing for the Occupant, held at the Catholic University of America in D.C., where user-centered environmental control and environmental/physiological benefits of sustainable design will be discussed.

Rob Berry with his firm Berry and Linné recently completed work on Todos Juntos, a new public space in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles. The project was the subject of a feature article in the April 26, 2016, West Edition of The Architect’s Newspaper. In May, Rob and his project collaborator Siobhán Burke of Lyric Design & Planning led a public tour of the project focused on the role of community outreach and creative culture in the design process. The tour was hosted by the design advocacy group Design East of La Brea (de LaB) as part of their Making LA series.

Jason Kerwin’s office, OKB Architecture, recently completed project for Newmark Grubb Knight Frank in downtown Los Angeles won a national award from Shaw Contract – Design Is Competition – and was featured in the latest NeoCon in Chicago. 

In April 2016 Sarah Cowles co-organized the international symposium” “THIS IS A TEST” at Knowlton School at The Ohio State University, on the role of testing and prototyping in landscape architecture. Her chapter “Bigger MPs (management practices) on the role of representation and landscape identity in watershed planning was recently published in Representing Landscapes: Hybrid by Nadia Amoroso (Routledge). In the fall of 2016 she will lead the seminar “Sylviculture: The Forest Garden in the 21st Century” at the Harvard Forest in Petersham, Massachusetts, and is returning Sweden in October to continue research on the Swedish Landscape Laboratory in Alnarp, Sweden with Roland Gustavsson.

Alvin Huang, AIA was invited to teach a visiting design workshop and give a lecture on his work as part of the inaugural Mosaic of Episodes event hosted by the Indian Institute of Architects in Bangalore, India from September 14-17, 2016. On October 29, Huang will be a keynote speaker at the Now Next Future Conference hosted by the AIA California Council in Los Angeles, CA. On October 30, Huang will present his paper entitled “From Bones to Bricks: Designing the 3D Printed Durotaxis Chair and La Burbuja Lamp” at the 2016 ACADIA Conference at the University of Michigan.

 

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DEAN SEARCH

From its founding in 1919 as the school of art and architecture, the USC School of Architecture has charted an educational strategy that joins scholarship and academic research with professional and artistic practice. The school’s storied history has been guided by a commitment to serving the community and public-at-large while ensuring diversity, inclusiveness, and interdisciplinarity.  In recent years, the school has increased its global engagement and international visibility, raised its graduate enrollments, and implemented new cross-school programs like the Bachelor of Science in GeoDesign. The appointment of the next dean must reinforce that history and build on the school’s many recent accomplishments, while moving us boldly into the future.

 

University of Southern California

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Victor Regnier FAIA, has been named as Associate Dean for Research in the School of Architecture.

Dr. Travis Longcore (Landscape Architecture + Urbanism program) was an invited speaker at the California Naturalist 2016 statewide meeting, talking about his research on the historical ecology of the Los Angeles region, including the Los Angeles River and the Ballona Wetlands.  He authored the chapter “GIST in Undergraduate Capstone Research Projects in Environmental Science” in the book STEM and GIS in Higher Education (Esri Press) and is co-author of the National Park Service Technical Report “Artificial night lighting and protected lands: Ecological effects and management approaches”and of the paper “Predicting spatial extent of invasive earthworms on an oceanic island” in the journal Diversity and Distributions. He is also co-investigator for a USC Zumberge interdisciplinary grant to investigate landscape conditions, genes, and growth traits of chickpeas to help develop better strains of crop plants for the future.

Mario Cipresso is designing a new medical education building for the University of Nevada, Las Vegas along with an associated masterplan on the Shadow Lane campus which lies to the west of the Downtown area in the Medical District.

Brendan Shea’s proposal for the cityLAB L.A., Times Ten competition was selected for further development. The project, How To Level A Foundation, will be featured in the first A+D museum show of 2017.

Kyle Konis, Ph.D, AIA  was recently invited to speak at the 2016 DIVA Day Symposium hosted by the University of Toronto on the topic of simulation-based metrics for circadian effective daylighting design.  Konis recently joined the editorial board of  TECHNOLOGY | ARCHITECTURE + DESIGN. TAD is a peer-_reviewed international journal dedicated to the advancement of scholarship in the field of building technology, with a particular focus on its translation, integration, and impact on architecture and design.

Esther Margulies, Assistant Director of the Master of Landscape Architecture and Urbanism at USC and Co-founder of the LA River Art Project, co-produced The Course of Empire 2016 by Tim Durfee  as part of the 10th annual Frog town Artwork in September.

Associate Dean Gail Peter Borden, FAIA has a solo exhibition entitled “Controlled Objects” opening at Galleri Urbane (www.galleriurbane.com) in Dallas, Texas on September 10th running through October. The show displays works emergent from their premise of making as the systematized engagement of a process with a material.  The resulting objects are functional adaptations, not quite fully products but also not quite fully art, remaining in a liminal state of definition. As spatial lures they engage pattern, perspective, material, and process to create effect.

Hraztan Zeitlian’s Hollywood Hills Residence was published on Architectural Record Online: http://tinyurl.com/h7s4a9w

Geoffrey von Oeyen served as a moderator for the USC American Academy of Architecture (AAC) 2016 Symposium on July 30, 2016, in Shenzhen, China, titled “Rural-Urban Re-Inventions: Bridging the Gap Between China’s Cities and Countryside.” Panelists included USC’s Gary Paige of gp/s in Los Angeles and Xu Tiantian, principal of the Beijing firm DnA. The event was organized by USC AAC director Clifford Pearson. Von Oeyen also led student site tours and design discussions about a pavilion he designed to be built in the agricultural landscape outside of Xi’an, China.

Lorcan O’Herlihy, FAIA, delivered the keynote speech at Perspective USA in New York, hosted by the Italian architecture magazine The Plan. In addition, LOHA was recently commissioned to design an arts and culture campus for Dabls’ African Bead Museum in Detroit. To support this project among other Detroit-based ventures, LOHA has opened a satellite office in the Chrysler House in Downtown Detroit. LOHA’s SL11024 has been nominated for the Beazley Designs of the Year from the Design Museum in London and will be featured in their upcoming exhibition. In addition, LOHA’s restoration and modernization of Julius Shulman’s former home and studio was honored with a Design Award from the AIA California Council chapter.

This summer, Assistant Professor Alison Hirsch was a Distinguished Panelist at the Landscape Architecture Foundation’s “The New Landscape Declaration: A Summit on Landscape Architecture and the Future” in Philadelphia. She was moderator of the discussion “How Participatory Design is Changing Los Angeles,” an event organized by the California Historical Society. She is co-chair of the upcoming conference, “Landscape Architecture as Necessity,” taking place at USC on September 22-24 (http://landscapeasnecessity.uscarch.com). 

Mina Chow is locking picture this month for her documentary “FACE OF A NATION:  What Happened at the World’s Fair?” She has raised over $300,000 for this story about American architects, engineers and designers showing the best of America.

Tigran Ayrapetyan was promoted to Adjunct Associate Professor at USC School of Architecture.

Jose Sanchez was awarded the “Best Gameplay” award in the Games for Change festival in New York, with the Block’hood project. He will also be doing a keynote lecture in London for PACT, alongside Patrik Schumacher and Mario Carpo.

Christine Lampert, Senior Associate Director of Architecture for Hong Kong based UDP International Ltd. Just finished the Master Plan of the National City Waterfront Project for the Port of San Diego.

Just released Architect Magazine Top 50 USA Firm Rankings.

USC Faculty member Lawrence Scarpa’s firm Brooks Scarpa was ranked the 9th overall Architecture firm in America.  They were ranked 4th overall in Design and 17th in Sustainability. More here: http://www.architectmagazine.com/architect-50/2016/

Assoc Professor Chuck Lagreco is taking his 5th year studio to San Francisco this Fall semester to visit their studio project site.

Assistant Professor Victor Jones will present the exhibition Infrastructural Etiquette in the SCI Arc Library from October 7, 2016 to December 4, 2016. The exhibition features drawings and artifacts alongside photographs by renowned architectural photographer Hélène Binet of the Basento Bridge (1966-76) by little known Italian structural engineer Sergio Musmeci and his partner, architect Zanaide Zanini.

Rob Ley Studio recently won a competition for 6,000 s.f. art facade for the Martin Luther King Hospital, in Willowbrook, CA. Construction begins January, 2017.

Gary Paige designed and co-curated the USC American Academy in China (AAC) exhibition, “Rural-Urban Re-Inventions” this summer. Comprised of work from 18 architectural schools and practitioners from China, USA, and EU, it was the inaugural exhibition for the newly established Shenzhen Public Art Center. Paige participated in the 2016 USC AAC symposium “Rural-Urban Re-Inventions,” presenting work from Project Lushan, a collaborative design research project between the USC School of Architecture, AVIC Legend, Ltd. and, gp/s.

Jennifer Siegal, Adjunct Associate Professor, is the new CDO for Wildernests based out of Venice, CA. Wildernests is building the world’s first self-sufficient, transportable, luxury living space. She will be lecturing Fall 2016 at The University of Minnesota; Hobart and William Smith Colleges (her alma mater); and at Dwell magazine’s PreFab Summit.

Two of Alexander Robinson’s projects and an accompanying short essay were recently featured in Sci Arc’s online magazine Off Ramp 11. Also the book, Innovations in Landscape Architecture, containing this chapter “An Interface for Instrumental Reconciliation” edited by Jonathon R. Anderson and Daniel H. Ortega and published by Routledge in now in print and available as an eBook. 


Laurel Consuelo Broughton was interviewed for Attention #3: Keywords Postmodernism, Princeton School of Architecture’s audio journal for Architecture. The catalog for Errors, Estrangement, Messes, and Fictions curated by Hadrian Predock at All Gallery/USC School of Architecture was released and includes the work of Laurel Consuelo Broughton/WELCOMEPROJECTS, First Office, and Andrew Kovacs.

Diane Ghirardo gave the keynote address entitled “Architecture and Education” at the annual EAAE meeting in Delft, Holland, on 1 September. Her most recent publications include “I gioielli sacri di Lucrezia Borgia,” in the Spanish journal, Revista Borja. Revista de l’Istitut Internacional d’Estudis Borgians. 

Lawrence Scarpa served as a juror for the 2016 Wood Council Awards and the Home Matters Design Competition. He also juried the first ever Latin America Solar Decathlon in Cali, Columbia.  He continues to serve on the selection committee for Enterprise Community Partner’s Rose Architectural Fellowship.  He recently gave lectures or presentation at the 2016 Dwell on Design Conference, UNLV, Virginia Tech, the 2016 PLEA Conference, 2016 AIA California Council Now Next Future Conference, the Hopscotch Design Festival in Raleigh, NC and Florida Atlantic University.  Mr. Scarpa also received the 2016 AIA California Council Lifetime Achievement Award. His article titled, “Science is not Enough” was published in the European Union’s Council on Energy journal Photovoltaics. His firm Brooks + Scarpa also opened an office in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida and is working on projects with the City of Miami Beach, City of Pembroke Pines and other private developers.

James Steele received acceptance of two papers in 2017, for an upcoming IASTE conference in Kuwait next December and a National Built Heritage Forum in Riyadh in April. Steele just completed the second, full semester Foreign Studies Program in Brazil which ran from mid- May to mid- August, and included Mexico City, Teotihuacan Mayan sites in the Yucatan, Cuzco and Inca sites /Machu Picchu Peru, São Paulo, Brasilia, Ouro Preto, Belo Horizonte and Rio de Janeiro ( plus the Olympics!) in Brazil. The students worked with Brazilian counterparts at Universidad São Paulo on a community serving (favela) project in the post industrial Mooca district of the city and also participated in a furniture Workshop, designing a chair at FabLab. Steele is now in the midst of a Fulbright grant for the Fall ’16 term at the University of Malaysia, researching traditional Minangkabau and Malay mosques and houses in the village setting, which will include a two week field trip to Bandung Indonesia. He just received word that his book, “Contemporary Japanese Architecture: Tracing the Next Generation” went into production at Routledge/Kegan Paul, scheduled for a Spring release.

Assistant Professor Alvin Huang, AIA and his firm, Synthesis Design + Architecture have been honored with the 2016 Presidential  Emerging Practice Award by the AIA Los Angeles. The award is the highest honor that the American Institute of Architects Los Angeles bestows on an emerging architecture firm for consistently producing innovative architecture. Earlier this summer Professor Huang gave presentations on his work at the AAVS Shanghai Urban Formations Symposium hosted by the Architectural Association in Shanghai, China and at the ACSA International Conference hosted by the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture in Santiago, Chile. 

Patrick Tighe Architecture named Top 50 architects (for design) by Architect Magazine. A new monograph of the work of Tighe entitled, Building Dichotomy, with an intro by Thom Mayne was recently released. Tighe’s “Spray on House” received an R + D Award, published in Architect Magazine. His project “L’Apertura, 7 windows for Venice,” an installation for the Venice Biennale, was published in Interior Design Magazine.

Karen Kensek and Douglas Noble received a CCAIA Presidential Citation in August 2016: “In recognition of your efforts as a team to create three outstanding programs that support and encourage AIA participation and membership: the NotLY licensing program, the Facade Tectonics Institute, and the annual USC BIM Symposia. For the NotLY program (an acronym for Not Licensed Yet) you have encouraged, inspired and cajoled nearly 100 architects and engineers to become active volunteers to prepare and present architecture licensing preparation classes.  Your efforts have resulted in nearly 500 free classes in Southern California, with more than 20,000 participants from 2008-2017.  The Facade Tectonics Institute has become a global resource for research and education related to the building enclosure, while the USC BIM program is the outgrowth of more than 20 years of leadership of the AIA Los Angeles Computer Committee.  The BIM and facades programs together have been the source of more than 30 conferences emphasizing bridging university research, professional practice, and the value of membership in the AIA.  These efforts have resulted in touching many hundreds of participants and many dozens of publications, advancing the arts and sciences of BIM and facades.”

Chu+Gooding Architects (Rick Gooding) recently completed the Interior Renovation of 4 floors Hoffman Hall for the USC Marshall School of Business which included 50 Faculty Offices, 60 PhD Offices and ADA upgrades to the 8-Story Concrete Tower originally designed by I.M. Pei in 1965. C+G also recently completed a 100,000 sf Museum Storage facility in Burbank and renovated 20,000 sf of galleries in Griffith Park for the Autry Museum of the American West. C+G is currently working on renovations to some of the concessions buildings at the Hollywood Bowl.

Ken Breisch has been promoted to the rank of Associate Professor. He has stepped down after serving two years as the President of the Society of Architectural Historians, and has been appointed Chair of the jury to select its 2017 Film and Video Award. He is also a member of the team that is receiving a California Preservation Foundation Design Award for the rehabilitation of the Santa Monica Shotgun House, which will serve as the Preservation Resource Center for the Santa Monica Conservancy.

The Tenth Annual USC BIM Conference hosted well over 400 people and sold out in less than two weeks.  Karen Kensek founded this program, and has led the growth of the USC BIM symposia to the point where the events no longer fit in the USC School of Architecture facilities. 

The Façade Tectonics World Congress will be held October 10-11, 2016 in Los Angeles.  Almost 100 speakers were selected by a blind, peer-review committee of 300 members.  Façade Tectonics is in its ninth year, having held more than 20 conferences and forum events.

USC doctoral candidates Ed Losch and Andrea Martinez completed their final Ph.D. requirements and were granted degrees in 2016. 

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