Adjunct Associate Professor, Gerdo Aquino, is President of SWA, and Principal at the Los Angeles studio.   Aquino was recently recognized as a Fellow with the American Society of Landscape Architects and was recently awarded the Southern California Chapter ASLA Merit Award for the Anning River project in Panzhihua, China and an ASLA National Honor Award for the book Landscape Infrastructure: Case Studies by SWA which he co-authored.   He is currently working on one of the largest mixed used projects in Cairo, Egypt, and the Samsung Headquarters in San Jose, California.

Diane Ghirardo‘s new book, Italy. Modern Architectures in Context, has just been published by Reaktion Press in London and Chicago.

With the addition of a high resolution laser and camera scanner Alexander Robinson continues to expand and develop the technological capabilities of his Landscape Morphologies Lab. This technology will allow for the real time analysis and projection of forms generated with the lab’s robotic modeling of landscapes with sand and other mediums. 

Peter Simmonds was in Shenzhen, China with Thom Mayne of Morphosis presenting the Morphosis design for the Hanking Tower Competition which they won, beating some serious competition for this 360m high tower. Simmonds also presented at the faculty Pecca Kucha offering an Engineering perspective of Architecture. He also gave a seminar on designing comfortable spaces at the Southern California ASHRAE technical seminar in Downey.

Ed Woll (Tomko Woll Group Architects Inc) has attended openings for three recently-completed residential developments in the past two months:  Young Burlington apartments near Koreaown, Joveness Houses in East LA and Jill’s Place (permanent supportive housing for formerly homeless women in downtown LA.)  These projects were done in collaboration with USCArch alumna Ena Dubnoff.  In the works are renovation of an existing pool and parking garage for a condominium complex in West LA’s “Million Dollar Mile” and a new housing development for seniors and homeless veterans in Eagle Rock.

Adjunct Professor Veronica G. Galen successfully passed the Lighting Certificate exam and was the lighting designer for various projects that received awards from the AIA/California Council. She has also accepted a position as Secretary of the Illuminating Engineering Society, Los Angeles Chapter (IESLA). 

Lecturer Ying-Yu Hung is Managing Principal of SWA Los Angeles, and co-founder of the Infrastructure Research Initiative (I.R.I.S.).  Hung was recently awarded an ASLA National Honor Award and a Southern California Chapter ASLA Honor Award for the book Landscape Infrastructure: Case Studies by SWA which she co-authored.  She also received a Southern California Chapter ASLA Award of Excellence for Gubei Pedestrian Promenade.  This project is coincidently featured in the December 2012 issue of Landscape Architecture Magazine.  She recently won the Pudong Waterfront competition in Shanghai, China, a development of mixed use, open space and  a sculpture park along the Huangpu River.   Hung is currently working on international and local projects which include the Fuyang Urban River Design, a mixed use development project along a riverfront in Fuyang, China and the recently awarded Highland Park Streetscape in Los Angeles, California.    

David Lawrence Gray architects has completed design work for a 92 unit adaptive reuse building at 1111 sunset blvd in downtown Los Angeles.  The 50 year old building was designed by William Pereira. The architects have added two stories to the existing top floor. Construction began on December 1 2012.

Adjunct Professor of Architecture Lorcan O’Herlihy has received several accolades in 2012, including a Cooper-Hewitt National Design Award nomination, 5 AIA awards, and Interior Design’s Best of Year Award. Lorcan’s design work will be on view Spring 2013 at the MOCA exhibition, A New Sculpturalism, as well as A+D Museum’s Never Built: Los Angeles.

Erik Mar recently completed the 7200 sf East Rancho Dominguez Library, in Compton, CA. It is the first LEED Platinum rated building owned and operated by the County of Los Angeles. 

John V. Mutlow, FAIA, Professor of Architecture, was honored  by the AIA California Council with a ‘Presidential Citation’ for his service to the profession as Chairman of the AIA Los Angeles Chapter’s Fellows Committee. Professor Mutlow has also won the 2012 Professional Builder magazine Platinum Award for Stovall Villa. He received the Los Angeles Architectural Award for “Housing, Multi-Family” from the Los Angeles Business council for Stovall Villa, a 32 unit affordable senior housing complex in Los Angeles.  Professor Mutlow, in partnership with Tighe Architecture, Inc., received a 2012 Westside Prize from the Westside Urban Forum for The Courtyard at La Brea, a mixed-use affordable housing community for seniors, emancipated youths, and persons with special needs in West Hollywood, CA. Professor Mutlow’s firm, John V. Mutlow Architects, Inc., focuses on affordable housing for the elderly, families and persons with special needs. 

Warren Techentin was recently awarded two AIA, NEXT/LA awards for his work.

Adjunct Assistant Professor Mario Cipresso AIA has been named one of the “Top 20 Under 40” for 2013 by Engineering News Record California.  The award celebrates the excellence of young design and construction professionals who have made significant contributions to the profession at an early stage in their careers.  A feature will be published in the February issue of ENR California.

Lecturer Brian Tichenor has written the introduction for, and contributed to ‘California Casa’ (Rizzoli 2012). His work is featured in the January 2013 edition of Architectural Digest, and in ‘Kelly Wearstler: Rhapsody’ (Rizzoli 2012). His firm, Tichenor and Thorp Architects, is currently bringing to completion a six acre Creative Technology Campus in Culver City, integrating three buildings, interiors, and Landscape Architecture.

“Professors Kyle Konis, Karen Kensek, Joon-ho Choi and Anders Carlson, recently received an award of $15,000 from NCARB to implement their proposal “Performance as a Design Driver: Creating a Framework to Integrate Practitioner Knowledge in the Design Studio.”

Emily Gabel-Luddy, FASLA, instructor for ARCH 536, was elected Vice Mayor of the City of Burbank for 2012-13. This year she presented at the California State Trails Conference, addressing the development and implementation of urban trails, tracing their history in Los Angeles’ neighborhoods.

Professor Schierle’s book Structure and Design is posted on more than 30 websites.  Examples:

http://www.abebooks.co.uk/book-search/author/g-g-schierle/

http://www.bookrenter.com/g-g-schierle/textbooks-by

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http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/structure-and-design-g-g-schierle/1015116000

http://www.curee.org/publications/book-1934269379.html

http://www.infibeam.com/Books/search?author=G%20G%20Schierle

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s?_encoding=UTF8&search-alias=books-uk&field-author=G.%20G.%20Schierle

http://www.thenile.com.au/books/GG-Schierle/Structure-and-Design/9781934269374/

http://www.bizrate.com/architecture-books/978868081.html

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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