Other ACSA Websites

Study Architecture ProPEL

Posts

University of Nebraska-Lincoln

/in /by

The College of Architecture announces the hiring of three faculty members: Nathan Bicak, Assistant Professor of Interior Design; Cathy De Almeida, Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture; and Daniel Piatkowski, Assistant Professor of Community and Regional Planning.

Before coming to UNL, Bicak served as an assistant professor with the Department of Design at Radford University in Virginia, where he received grant funding to implement an interdisciplinary, tiny house design/build class and established maker spaces across campus. Working collaboratively with the Radford University Environmental Center and an interdisciplinary group of faculty and students, Bicak contributed design, prototype development, digital fabrication and sensor automation to a research project focused on the construction of a food waste bioreactor.

He has presented his work at national conferences including NeoCon, the Environmental Design Research Association and the Interior Design Educators Council. Bicak has spoken on a wide variety of topics, notables include the utilization of drones to enhance construction education and monitoring, residential criteria for individuals with autism spectrum disorder and the efficacy of making and prototyping for the enhancement of spatial understanding in interior design education.

Bicak plans to continue his research studying the social, ecological and economic impacts of small-scale living solutions, particularly through the interdisciplinary design/build delivery method. Possible future projects include an exploration and needs analysis for small-scale, housing in the rural environment.

Furthermore, Bicak gained valuable practical experience as an architectural designer with Narrative Design Studio in Lincoln as well as with Dwellings Co, an affordable housing start-up based in Blacksburg, Virginia.

Bicak will be teaching courses in education design, material application, building codes, construction methodologies and construction documentation.

Before joining the College of Architecture, De Almeida was a landscape architecture lecturer with Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. She taught undergraduate and graduate design studios that focused on waste reuse processes in brownfield transformation. The concept focused on the creation of multi-layered, hybrid landscapes that were economically generative, ecologically rich, cultural destinations.

She was also an associate at Whitham Planning and Design in Ithaca, where she worked as a landscape architect and planner on numerous urban infill projects, including the transformation of a deindustrialized, superfund site into a mixed-use district known as the Chain Works District.

De Almeida’s research and design interests focus on material and energy reuse in diversified site programming to promote resilience, adaptation and flexibility in design. She is particularly interested in designing landscapes that allow waste streams from one system to become fuel for other systems. Her landscape lifecycles design-research synthesizes lifecycle approaches with concepts of industrial ecology and urban metabolism. These interests promote the restructuring of local and regional infrastructural systems to reclaim vulnerable sites and territories associated with perceived undesirable conditions, and explore the relationships between environmental justice, waste and brownfields. She is ultimately interested in how humans interact with ecological systems and resources and how design can improve these relationships by establishing symbiotic, hybrid bio-cultural systems. In addition to waste, De Almeida is also interested in intangible and ephemeral forces such as heat, wind and humidity – as media of design.

De Almeida has lectured about her work at Cornell University, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, SUNY ESF and the DredgeFest: Great Lakes Symposium, and will present a forthcoming paper at the Landscape Architecture as Necessity Conference in September hosted by the University of Southern California.

De Almeida will be teaching materiality, design making and alternative landscape-based design strategies for brownfield redevelopment.

Piatkowski comes from Savannah State University where he was assistant professor of urban studies and planning. Prior to that position he was an NSF-IGERT trainee earning his PhD with the Civil Engineering department at the University of Colorado, Denver.

Piatkowski’s research focuses on how land use and transportation planning can foster equitable and sustainable communities. Piatkowski is particularly interested in the ways in which planning for walking and bicycling as viable modes of transportation can transform communities. Recent work includes: the interaction between “carrots and sticks” in travel behavior decisions, social media tools and equitable community engagement and the phenomenon of “scofflaw bicycling” – why bicyclists break the rules of the road. His research has been featured on National Public Radio, the Washington Post, the Atlantic, and CityLab’s “Future of Transportation” series.

Piatkowski has been published numerous times in peer review journals including The Journal of Travel Behaviour and Society, Transport Policy, Journal of Urban Planning and Development, Journal of Transport and Health, Urban Design International, and the Journal of Transportation of the Institute of Transportation Engineers. He has presented his work nationally at the Congress for the New Urbanism, the Transportation Research Board and the International Association of Travel Behavior Researchers. Future scheduled presentations include the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning’s Annual Conference in Portland, Oregon, where he will present his research on “scofflaw bicycling” and serve as a session panelist for historic preservation and livability.

At UNL, Piatkowski will teach land use and transportation, urban design and research methods.

“We are fortunate to have these three talented individuals join our College, to continue their academic careers and exciting research paths, and to contribute to the rich curriculum and content we provide our students,” commented Katherine Ankerson, College of Architecture Dean.

University of Texas at Austin

/in /by

UT Austin School of Architecture Hosts The Secret Life of Buildings Symposium, October 19 -22
Symposium Explores Speculative Realism, Object Oriented Ontology, and other theories                        

AUSTIN, TX— August 9, 2016—The School of Architecture at The University of Texas at Austin will host The Secret Life of Buildings, October 19-22, 2016. Organized by the Center for American Architecture and Design, the four-day symposium investigates Speculative Realism, Object Oriented Ontology (OOO), and similar emerging theories that imagine that buildings and the things in and around them not only promote human life, but have lives of their own, separate from our experience of them. Held on the UT campus, the event marks the first time the leaders of this exciting new realm of critical thought will gather to consider the topic of architecture.
 
What happens within a building when we are not there? How does a building relate to the objects within it? How does it relate to other buildings around it? If buildings are actors, what networks are they acting in? What do they keep to themselves, apart from all contact? These are just a few of the questions that the symposium seeks to address. Attendees will also investigate what implications, if any, these theories have for architects and designers of the built environment.  
 
On his website, Ian Bogost, philosopher, author, game designer, and one of the panelists at the symposium, defines OOO as the branch of philosophy that..
 
…puts things at the center…In contemporary thought, things are usually taken either as the aggregation of ever smaller bits (scientific naturalism) or as constructions of human behavior and society (social relativism). OOO steers a path between the two, drawing attention to things at all scales (from atoms to alpacas, bits to blinis), and pondering their nature and relations with one another as much with ourselves.
 
Speakers include philosopher Graham Harman of the American University in Cairo and Sci-Arc and founder of Object Oriented Ontology; architect and theorist Albena Yaneva of the University of Manchester; architect and theorist Jorge Otero-Pailos of Columbia University; and UT Austin architect and theorist Michael Benedikt. Other prominent thinkers and practitioners participating include Levi Bryant, Timothy Morton, Craig Dykers, Winka Dubbeldam, Ian Bogost, Leslie Van Duzer, Matthew B. Crawford, and UT faculty co-organizer Kory Bieg.
 
The symposium will be accompanied by an exhibition, Objects. Comprised of the top fifteen entries of an international design competition, the presentation will feature works that examine the ideas of Object Oriented Ontology and Speculative Realism through the design of singular, tangible things: “objects.” These will be installed in and around UT’s Goldsmith Hall at the School of Architecture.
 
Inquiries about the symposium may be directed to Leora Visotzky at the University of Texas at Austin, at leora@austin.utexas.edu. All events are free and open to the public until full. The Objects exhibition is on view October 17 – 31, 2016.

University of Texas at Austin

/in /by

Drawings, images, and models from Kory Bieg and Clay Odom’s Lumifoil, the winning work of the FIU College of Architecture + The Arts Emerging Architects Competition, will be exhibited at the FIU College of Architecture + The Arts, Miami Beach Urban Studios from June to September of 2016. The project is designed as an intervention into the rooftop event space of Bernard Tschumi’s “Red Generator” building at the FIU College of Architecture + The Arts. It was engineered by ARUP and is currently scheduled for installation in December 2016.

Kevin Alter’s professional practice, alterstudio architecture, has been recognized recently with awards and in several publications. The studio received two AIA Austin: 2016 Design Awards, one for their South 3rd Street Residence, and the other for their Cuernavaca residence.

This summer, after fifteen years of dedicated service to The University of Texas at Austin, Dean Fritz Steiner will be leaving the School of Architecture to serve as dean of PennDesign at the University of Pennsylvania, his alma mater. Elizabeth Danze, UTSOA professor and Associate Dean of Graduate Programs, will serve as interim dean for the school effective July 1.

Gabriel Díaz Montemayor gave a lecture entitled, “Service Studios: Public Space and Academia,” at the VII International Congress on Architecture and Design organized by the Marista University of Merida in the state of Yucatan, Mexico. Montemayor also presented a paper, “Hybrid Ecological and Sustainable Mobility Networks for Northern Mexico,” at the 46th Urban Affairs Association Conference held in San Diego. 

Allan Shearer, Co-Director of the Center for Sustainable Development, authored “Abduction to Argument: A Framework of Design Thinking,” for the current issue of Landscape Journal._ 

Professor Wilfried Wang guest-edited two consecutive issues of the Japanese architectural journal A+U, on the work of Sigurd Lewerentz. Wang also co-curated, with Adjunct Associate Professor Barbara Hoidn, the upcoming exhibition,DEMO:POLIS–The Right to Public Space, at the Akademie der Künste, Berlin.

 

University of Nebraska-Lincoln

/in /by

Ankerson named dean of UNL College of Architecture 

Katherine Ankerson, professor and head of the Department of Interior Architecture and Product Design at Kansas State University, has accepted appointment as dean of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln College of Architecture. The appointment, pending approval by the University of Nebraska Board of Regents, was announced May 23.

“Katherine Ankerson is a proven administrator, educator and scholar with a track record in elevating programs and encouraging excellence,” Chancellor Ronnie Green said. “She also has a strong vision that understands the need for interdisciplinary collaboration to prepare the next generation of building and landscape architects, interior designers, and community and regional planners. This combination positions her as a transformational leader for our college of architecture.”

Ankerson, who was a professor and associate dean in the UNL architecture college from 1996 to 2011 before her tenure at Kansas State, will assume the dean’s post July 1. “I am honored to be named the dean of the College of Architecture at UNL,” Ankerson said. “I look forward to returning to this great university and leading the College of Architecture into its next era. I am committed to the transformative power of planning and design in our lives and communities and join with our faculty, staff, students and alumni to continue building the college into national prominence.” The College of Architecture’s programs in architecture, interior design, landscape architecture and community and regional planning have a tradition of excellence in education, research and service. Its fall 2015 enrollment was 493 students.

“This is an exciting time at the college. Faculty and students are involved daily with work that inspires, with a focus on how architecture and design must confront real challenges in today’s world,” said Marjorie Kostelnik, interim senior vice chancellor for academic affairs, who led the search committee for the position. “We are confident that the college will break important new ground under Katherine’s leadership.”

Ankerson is a tenured full professor and has concluded her fifth year as head of Kansas State’s interior architecture and product design department. A strong proponent of design education, Ankerson said she believes in the potency of interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary engagement, the value of design and making, and embracing new technologies in addition to strengthening traditional design tools.

Ankerson’s philosophy is that design education must prepare global design citizens who take leadership to foster synergy, embrace successful collaboration and recognize interconnectedness, with an awareness of the responsibility of individual and collective actions in personal, social and environmental arenas.

She is an award-winning author, and as lead of the 20th Anniversary Nuckolls Lighting Grant, she worked with nine other educators in architecture, engineering and interior design representing four major universities to initiate and produce the award-winning web-based resource Lighting Across the [Design] Curriculum. Ankerson just completed a three-year term of elected presidential leadership with the North American organization Interior Design Educators Council. She is a CIDA site visitor and the education member of the Nuckolls Lighting Fund board of directors. 

Ankerson also held academic positions at Radford University and Washington State University after spending many years as a practicing architect and designer. She received her bachelor of science in architecture and bachelor of architecture from Washington State. She also earned a master’s degree in architecture from Washington State. 

By Steve Smith

 

University of Texas at Austin

/in /by


UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE STUDENT TEAM WINS HUD 2016 INNOVATION IN AFFORDABLE HOUSING COMPETITION

AUSTIN, TX—April 25, 2016— A team of graduate students from the University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture has won the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) third annual Innovation in Affordable Housing Student Design and Planning Competition. The team was one of the four finalist teams to develop a plan to redevelop a public housing project, Monteria Village, in Santa Barbara, California. 

Students Sarah Simpson, Brett Clark, Megan Recher, Brianna Garner Frey, and Tatum Lau presented their final project on April 19 at HUD headquarters in Washington, DC, and took home the win, beating teams from the University of Kansas, Harvard University, and the University of Maryland at College Park.

“It’s amazing to watch our next generation create a plan for the future of affordable housing in a way that helps low-income families become self-sufficient,” said Katherine O’Regan, HUD’s Assistant Secretary for Policy Development and Research. “As we celebrate the third year of this competition, our hope is to continue this creative and forward thinking when it comes to affordable housing.”

HUD and the Santa Barbara Housing Authority challenged the teams to consider the complex challenges associated with rehabbing the current structure or demolishing it and creating new construction. Participants had to consider design, community development, and financing elements in order to provide an all-encompassing plan and solution that would allow the housing authority to meet its goal of offering safe and sustainable affordable housing. Students also needed to understand the needs of the intended residents, the zoning restrictions, and leveraging opportunities.

The UT School of Architecture team will receive a $20,000 award for their first-place win. The competition jurors praised the team members for their sophisticated site plan that connects homes and social space. The team also received very high marks for their water conservation plans and their plans to include an education center which will provide school and job training to address the needs of the community.

The UTSOA team was advised by professors Elizabeth Mueller, Jake Wegmann, Dean Almy, and Simon Atkinson.  

University of Nebraska-Lincoln

/in /by

Students Explore the Future of the Congra Campus

ConAgra, formerly headquartered in Omaha, Neb. moved its headquarters to Chicago. Now the city of Omaha and ConAgra are considering redevelopment.  Instructors Emily Anderson and Geoff Deold‘s 411 studio reimagines Omaha’s ConAgra campus and Heartland of America Park as housing, mixed use, and a new anchor tenant. Students were charged with adapting existing urban building typologies to imagine new models of urbanism, adapting form to be responsive to use, context, and public or open space.  

The Omaha World Herald picked up the story earlier this week. http://www.omaha.com/money/what-s-next-on-riverfront-uncertain-future-for-conagra-s/article_cd1a3904-7293-5494-a557-3462bfc6fc33.html  

 

University of Texas at Austin

/in /by

This summer, after fifteen years of dedicated service to The University of Texas at Austin, Dean Fritz Steiner will be leaving the School of Architecture to serve as dean of PennDesign at the University of Pennsylvania, his alma mater. Elizabeth Danze, UTSOA professor and Associate Dean of Graduate Programs, will serve as interim dean for the school effective July 1. 

Assistant Professors Kory Bieg and Clay Odom won the FIU Emerging Architect’s Initiative to design a rooftop canopy for the Bernard Tschumi designed FIU School of Architecture building.__ Kory Bieg also won the Field Constructs Design Competition for his project Hybroot, which was installed in the Circle Acres Nature Preserve in Austin last fall.__

Matt Fajkus, Assistant Professor and principal architect of Matt Fajkus Architecture, has been invited to speak at the Façade Tectonic: Forum San Antonio on April 7th. _

Assistant Professor Petra Liedl served as editor of the recently-published, bilingual (English and German) book, EnergyXChange: Munich and Austin As Regional Centers for Sustainable Innovation, and organized a symposium of the same name as part of her Donald Harrington Faculty Fellowship in 2012- 2013.__

Gabriel Díaz Montemayor gave a lecture entitled, “Service Studios: Public Space and Academia,” at the VII International Congress on Architecture and Design organized by the Marista University of Merida in the state of Yucatan, Mexico. Montemayor also presented a paper, “Hybrid Ecological and Sustainable Mobility Networks for Northern Mexico,” at the 46th Urban Affairs Association Conference held in San Diego 

_Steven Moore, Co-Director of the Graduate Program in Sustainable Design, recently delivered the keynote address at the Annual Doctor of Design, DDes Symposium at the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

Allan Shearer, Co-Director of the Center for Sustainable Development, authored “Abduction to Argument: A Framework of Design Thinking,” for the current issue of Landscape Journal.__

Professor Wilfried Wang guest-edited two consecutive issues of the Japanese architectural journal A+U, on the work of Sigurd Lewerentz. Wang also co-curated, with Adjunct Associate Professor Barbara Hoidn, the upcoming exhibition,DEMO:POLIS–The Right to Public Space, at the Akademie der Künste, Berlin.

University of Texas at Austin

/in /by

On November 6, Professor Juan Miró, FAIA, accepted the 2015 Edward Romieniec Award for Outstanding Educational Contributions from the Texas Society of Architects. This award was presented to him during the First General Session at the 76th Annual TSA Convention and Design Expo in DallasThe TSA award is the second educational award Professor Miró has been honored with this year; he received the University of Texas System Regents’ Outstanding Teaching Award this spring.Additionally, Miró Rivera Architects’ (MRA) Chinmaya project graced the cover of Texas Architect‘s September/October 2015 Design Awards issue. The Hindu temple and educational building are the first phase of the mission’s new campus in North Austin.

Austin-born advertising and graphic design firm, GSD&M, stopped by the Field Constructs Design Competition (FCDC), which featured emerging designers, architects, landscape architects and artists from all over Austin and beyond. This artistic collaboration inspires cutting-edge innovation through installations that intertwine with the natural and cultural aspects of Austin.FCDC co-founders Catherine Gavin and Associate Professor Igor Siddiqui, as well as Assistant Professor Kory Bieg, who designed a featured piece in the competition, spoke to GSD&M about the innovative and collaborative spirit of Austin. 

Associate Professor Danilo Udovi_ki-Selb‘s recent and upcoming scholarly activities include:

  • Edited O’ Neil Ford Monograph 6: Narkomfin: Moisej J. Ginzburg, Ignatij Milinis, jointed published (fall 2015) by the School of Architecture, Center for American Architecture and Design, __usev State Museum of Architecture, and the O’Neil Ford Chair in Architecture.
  • Authored the lead chapter, “L’Exposition de 1937 n’aura pas lieu: The Invention of the Paris International Expo and the Soviet and German Pavilions,” In Architecture of Great Expositions 1937–1959, London: Ashgate, 2015. Editors Vladimir Paperny, Alexander Otenberg, and Rika Devos.
  • Chapter in edited Festrieft book in memoriam of Russian / Soviet architecture historian S.O. Khan-Magomedov, Moscow 2015.
  • As official critic/correspondent of the Giornale dell’Architettura, Torino, published report in its special issue, “Architecture Beyond the Image,” an article on architect David Adjaye‘s Sugar Hill affordable housing development in Manhattan, and a retrospective about Post-Modernism on the occasion of Michael Grave‘s passing.
  • Presented a paper at this year’s annual conference of the Society of Architectural Historians in Chicago, April 2015, “Reinventing the ‘City of Light’ at the 1937 Paris World Fair.”
  • Published an essay, “Reinventing Paris: The Competitions for the 1937 Paris International Exposition,” in the Journal of Architectural Historians
  • Presented a paper, “Kaganovich’s Grupirovka: The Lenin Library Competition and the Invention of the VOPRA,” at the annual conference of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies.
  • With Alla Vronskaya will lead a panel on “Reassessing the Historiography of Socialist Architecture”, annual conference of the Society of Architectural Historians, Pasadena, 2016.
  • Invited presentation at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on “Filippo Brunelleschi: Between European Renascence and Florentine Renaissance.”

University of Nebraska-Lincoln

/in /by

Sustainability Energizes Professor Research and Instruction

Gasoline prices have finally started to fall giving many Americans a well-deserved break for their pocket books, but another great way to drive down those energy dollars is within the home or business by reducing energy spending.

Residential and commercial use accounts for 41% of the energy consumed in the United States, according to the National Academy of Sciences.

Building energy-efficient homes and structures has been the driving passion of Associate Professor Tim Hemsath’s career. He has researched, presented, published and taught on this subject, to the point he can probably lecture about this topic in his sleep.  

“I’ve always been interested in sustainability. You could say I was raised with those values,” Hemsath commented. “When I was a kid, we would walk to church along the highway and my dad would have the family pick up trash. So before there was an Adopt a Highway program there was the Hemsath program.”

Hemsath explains his desire to make a sustainable impact only intensified in college when he decided to go into architecture. 

“I wondered where I could have a measurable impact and how it would affect design. How can we better design our buildings with a greater understanding of its impact, and how can we alter that impact so it creates a positive difference?”

Energy is measurable, so Hemsath knew he could set clear objectives and goals for his designs and his research.  

“You can use computer modeling to understand the operational energy consumption of a building and then in theory, design buildings that are more efficient.”

There is no one silver bullet to achieve an energy-efficient building. Hemsath tells his architecture students an efficient building depends on various factors such as climate, its size, the building design, how it is used, etc. 

“There are too many factors involved to say this one thing can save you x amount in energy because every place in the world is different, every building is different.  What I like to say is you have to understand all your factors before you can make any conclusions.”

Hemsath’s résumé regarding energy-related projects is quite extensive. His research started in 2006 with the College of Engineering on a project developing energy-efficient housing prototypes. He later served as the principal investigator on a Nebraska Research Initiative to increase research capacity surrounding zero-net energy at the University of Nebraska.

Hemsath explains he has seen an upward trend in designing sustainable buildings at the national level. 

“I see the use and demand growing,” Hemsath observed. “When I started researching and teaching about sustainability in 2006, only homes were achieving high-efficiency results. Now you see large facilities, campuses and communities also meeting these standards.  The capabilities and the technology are all there. It really comes down to market demand and the desire from everybody’s standpoint to make it happen. It’s a matter of the right dominos falling in the right places.”

Many factors are driving this trend including regional and national legislation with energy codes, building standards and emissions restrictions. Furthermore, 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act stimulus funds were tied to local energy code adoptions for its recipients. Also some municipalities such as Minneapolis and Chicago have implemented benchmark ordinances requiring energy consumption reports from commercial buildings.  At this point, Hemsath says these reports aren’t used to reduce consumption but if history repeats itself, he can see these established reporting mechanisms eventually being used to for energy conservation similar to the origins of the 1970 Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Air Act.

But even with all these government entities pushing the market to be more efficient, Hemsath believes design professionals have to be at the forefront of that effort.

“We are the ones who design the buildings. We are the doers, the innovators.”

When designing new buildings, to achieve a zero-net energy building, there are three action steps Hemsath recommends:

  • Use energy efficiently. Design for solar, daylight, climate and design the appropriate envelope. Build the most energy-efficient building possible.
  • Minimize energy use. Incorporate energy-efficient systems and install technology such as occupancy sensors.
  • Apply renewable energy. Produce energy through such mediums as photovoltaic, thermal and wind.

However the greatest need for energy conservation efforts are actually in established buildings. It is estimated that ¾ of our current buildings will be renovated by 2050. Hemsath says that is an untapped market for innovation. For those looking to improve the efficiency of their home there are key elements he suggests.

  • Have someone evaluate the home for energy efficiency. Many energy companies offer this service.
  • Insulate the attic and walls and make the home airtight by sealing window trim and baseboards.
  • Make sure the home has a well-designed duct system with a balanced supply and return air flow. Make sure the ducts are sealed so there are no leaks.

Hemsath says if the home owner can only afford to do one thing, he says the number one thing they should do in Lincoln’s climate is improve the home’s insulation or airtightness.

With all his teaching and research experience, Hemsath is often regarded as an expert in his field. He has spoken internationally and nationally on issues of energy-efficient design and using building energy modeling. He has several local engagements this semester including a talk entitled “Zero-net Energy Homes” at the March Nebraskan’s for Solar meeting and then another presentation at the Nebraska ASHRAE Chapter on “Building Energy Modeling in Design,” date to be determined.

Furthermore, Hemsath has several published works on this subject including two recently in Science Direct entitled “Building Design with Energy Performance as Primary Agent” and “Sensitivity Analysis Evaluating Basic Building Geometry’s Effect on Energy Use.” Hemsath will have a book coming out in early 2017 published by Routledge entitled “Energy Modeling in Architectural Design.”

With the outlook of energy consumption projected to increase, Hemsath’s work couldn’t be more important or timely.

University of Nebraska-Lincoln

/in /by

Professor Earns Emerging Voices Award

There are certain professional accolades that are more coveted than others. The Emerging Voices award from the Architectural League New York annually recognizes rising stars in architecture and design and is highly sought after.  This year’s 2016 Emerging Voices award was given to eight firms including Min | Day and its principals E.B. Min and UNL Architecture Program Director and Professor Jeffery. L. Day.

Min | Day now joins the peerage of others who have earn this prestigious award that has been in existence for over 30 years, firms such as ArandaLasch, David Benjamin / The Living, Neri Oxman, SO – IL, Dlandstudio, el dorado, WORKac, Olson Kundig Architects, Office dA, SHoP Architects, Asymptote Architecture, Michael Maltzan Architecture, Marlon Blackwell Architect, Vincent James Associates, WEISS/MANFREDI, Allied Works, Stan Allen Architect, Morphosis, Steven Holl Architects to name a few. 

This award not only recognizes the architectural work of Day and Min through their practice Min | Day but also College of Architecture FACT (Fabrication And Construction Team) students and designs from their furniture company, mdMOD.

Since the Emerging Voices was awarded through a nomination process, that made the honor even more important to Day.

“Only eight offices were recognized for this award and the fact that it’s a nominated award makes it even more satisfying,” Day explained. “This is a big milestone for us, and it’s an award that is only achieved once in a career. It’s a wonderful accomplishment for our firm.”

Min | Day was established in 2003. The partnership emerged from a friendship that began in graduate school at UC Berkeley. After graduation they started collaborating on projects and competitions. Over the years, their partnership evolved, and it was eventually formalized in 2003 when Day relocated to Omaha. Simultaneously, Day started the FACT student design-build program at UNL which is an allied student practice. FACT frequently collaborates with the firm, giving students real-life experiences with creative clients.

Min | Day currently as two locations, one in San Francisco, California, the other in Omaha, Nebraska. Between the two places, they have a full-time staff of 6 people not including the average 15 FACT students working on collaborations.

“A big part of who we are is the fact we have two sites,” commented Day. “It is not common for a firm of our size to have that, but we turned it into an advantage. We founded Min | Day with the belief that establishing offices in these two cities would yield a perspective that transcends the limitations of regional specificity. Our office combines design-research, academic engagement, commissioned work, furniture design, and student design-build projects to create highly refined yet often imprecise and flexible designs that reflect our unusual structure.”

This environment has fostered a design approach that was given Min | Day its unique and emerging voice.

“We promote an approach to flexibility not as the absence of form but as the presence of unique and carefully considered infrastructure, affording individuals the power to manipulate their own environment while simultaneously instilling a distinct personality derived from our design process,” Day said.

He explains they want their work to participate in a culture and help create a culture, not represent a culture in a mode of a disconnected artist or critic.

“If anything is constant, it’s that our designs are always evolving. Every project is different and unique.”

Over the years, Min and Day’s working relationship has transitioned, meliorated and eventually turned into a synergy that’s hard to replicate.

“I think we are a good design partnership, and we have a similar design sensibility but enough difference that the work is dynamic and constantly evolving,” Day commented. “We challenge each other. We are not always in full agreement, and I think that is what takes our work to a higher level.”

When not working at the firm, Day divides his time with the University of Nebraska and Min lectures part-time at the California College of the Arts.

The Emerging Voices award is not only a great accolade for their firm but also for the universities they work with.

“It shows that the practicing faculty are engaged in their field at a high level and are receiving national and international recognition for their work,” Day commented. “It translates into school pride and more students seeking to be a part of a college that affords them the opportunities and recognition that the College of Architecture and FACT provide.”

We use cookies and other tracking technologies for performance, analytics, marketing, and more customized site experiences. By continuing to browse this site you are agreeing to our terms. Learn more about these in our Privacy Policy. ACSA reserves the right to delete content and suspend user accounts that it determines to be inappropriate.

OKLearn more