The School is pleased to announce the appointment of the following faculty members: Clinical Professors Sam Jacob (FAT) and Andrew Zago (Zago Architecture), Assistant Professors Kelly Bair and Lluis Ortega, and Clinical Assistant Professors Paul Andersen, Julia Capomaggi, Grant Gibson, and Andrew Moddrell.  Branden Hookway will be joining the faculty as an Assistant Professor in Fall 2012.  This cohort of appointments adds significantly to the international design reputation of the faculty, as well as expands the School’s continuing commitment to the areas of advanced technology and contemporary theory and criticism.


Clinical Assistant Professor Paul Andersen’s design practice, !ndie Architecture, contributed the project “Invisible Garage” to the 306090 book Making a Case (February 2012). In collaboration with David Salomon, Andersen wrote The Architecture of Patterns (Norton, 2010), which examines a new generation of patterns in contemporary architecture. Andersen also co-curated Energy Effects: Art and Artifacts from the Landscape of Glorious Excess, which was exhibited throughout the MCA Denver during the 2010 Biennial of the Americas.

Assistant Professor Kelly Bair’s most recent work, “Rustication Never Sleeps,” was exhibited at the WUHo Gallery in Los Angeles in March 2011 as part of the show Mock-ups, which featured seven full-scale prototype proposals by emerging designers. 

Adjunct Assistant Professor Sarah Blankenbaker exhibited drawings at the WUHo Gallery in Los Angeles as part of the show 2D3D: Drawings in the Post-Digital Age (April 2011). With Zago Architecture, Blankenbaker also participated in the Museum of Modern Art exhibition Foreclosed: Rehousing the American Dream, which opened in February 2012.

Clinical Assistant Professor Julia Capomaggi edited the book Spain Pavilion at Expo Shanghai 2010 by Miralles Tagliabue EMBT (Editorial Pencil, 2010). Her design practice, prefix-re, recently was awarded a honorable mention in a competition for urban equipment in Ycoor Crans-Montana, Switzerland and started the construction of Carcarana House in Argentina. She is currently writing her dissertation about furniture and interior space.

Assistant Professor Judith K. De Jong exhibited her project “How the Strip Mall Can Save Suburbia” in the exhibition 13.3% at the WUHo Gallery in Los Angeles (December 2010). She was named a Faculty Scholar for 2011–2012 at the Great Cities Institute, where she is investigating how changing relationships between city and suburb are manifested in spaces of commerce and domesticity. She and Assistant Professor Clare Lyster (with McLain Clutter) received the 2011–2012 ACSA/AIA Housing Design Education Award, Excellence in Housing Education Course or Activity for the submission Housing Urbanism: 5 Proposals for Chicago.

Associate Professor Sarah Dunn‘s design practice UrbanLab was named a finalist in the 2012 Young Architects Program competition hosted by MoMA PS1. UrbanLab was also part of a team led by landscape architecture firm !melk on the shortlist for the Navy Pier Pierscape redesign competition. 

Assistant Professor Alexander Eisenschmidt received a Graham Foundation Publication Grant for the book Chicago in the World in collaboration with Jonathan Mekinda. Eisenschmidt hosted the Informal Cities Symposium at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago (October 2010) and chaired the panel on the topic of the modern and contemporary metropolis at the ACSA West Central Fall Conference at UIC (October 2010). In addition, he lectured at the Center for Architecture in Philadelphia (April 2011) and the International Conference on Architecture and Fiction, an event associated with the 2010 Lisbon Triennial of Architecture (October 2010). 

Emerita Professor Roberta Feldman, along with Bryan Bell, Sergio Palleroni, and David Perkes, was awarded the 2011 Latrobe Prize from the AIA for research on Public Interest Practices in Architecture, and is on the Studio Gang team for the Museum of Modern Art’s exhibition Foreclosed: Rehousing the American Dream (February 2012). She was also awarded the 2011 ACSA Award for Service.

Adjunct Professor Paul Florian’s design firm Florian Architects won an AIA Chicago Honor Award and an AIA Illinois Honor Award in 2010 for the Hyde Park Bank Loan Processing Center in Chicago. In 2011, the firm won an AIA Small Projects Honor Award for the Goodsell Residence, which was also published in Chicago Architect (August 2011). 

Professor Michael Gelick was elected to an international committee by the Israeli Council for Higher Education Quality Assessment and Assurance System to review and make recommendations for the four schools of architecture in the State of Israel. His design firm, Gelick and Associates, won a Critical Dunes Residential Design Award from Preserve the Dunes Inc. for a residential complex in Wilderness Dunes, Michigan.

Adjunct Assistant Professor Iker Gil exhibited the project “Inside Marina City” at the Art Institute of Chicago (September 2011) and was invited to contribute to the exhibition “Urban China: Informal Cities” at the Museum of Contemporary art Chicago (October 2010). With the Chicago Architecture Club, his design practice, MAS Studio, organized the international design competition “Network Reset: Rethinking the Chicago Emerald Necklace.”

Associate Professor Sharon Haar co-edited a volume of the journal Nakhara: Dynamic City, published by Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, Thailand with colleagues in the US, Belgium, and Thailand, and spoke at the Learning Spaces colloquium at IE University in Segovia, Spain (September 2011). In 2011, Haar’s book The City as Campus: Urbanism and Higher Education in Chicago was published by the University of Minnesota Press.

Clinical Professor Sam Jacob co-edited the Architectural Design issue Radical Post-Modernism with Charles Jencks, Sean Griffiths, and Charles Holland (September 2011). In March 2012, Jacob will lead a panel entitled “No Do-Overs” as part of the exhibition Ceci n’est pas une reverie: The Architecture of Stanley Tigerman at the Graham Foundation. 

In March 2011, Clinical Assistant Professor Jimenez Lai opened a solo show, “White Elephant (Privately Soft),” at Land of Tomorrow in Louisville, KY, and received a grant from the Graham Foundation for the book Citizens of No Place (Princeton Architectural Press, 2012). In June 2011, Lai published “Primitives” in Log 22. Lai also co-organized and spoke at a TEDx event in Chicago (August 2011) and attended the Buenos Aires Biennale as a speaker and an exhibitor (October 2011).

Assistant Professor Sean Lally was named a winner of the 2011–2012 Rome Prize Competition by the American Academy in Rome. The award, granted for the project “Gradient Nolli,” includes an eleven-month research fellowship in Italy.

Assistant Professor Clare Lyster’s article “New Ecologies of Airline Flow” won the 2010–2011 JAE Best Design as Scholarship Article Award. Her essay “Infrastructural Cartography: Drawing the Space of Flows” will be included in the forthcoming publication Mobility (Ashgate, 2012). In Fall 2011, she was a Visiting Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture at Harvard University, where she co-taught a seminar titled “The Third Coast Project.” Her work was the subject of the exhibition SYSTEMscapes: Diagramming Distribution Flow at the Chicago Arts District June–September 2011.

In June 2011, Clinical Assistant Professor Andrew Moddrell’s firm PORT A+U received an honorable mention in the Van Alen Institute’s Life at the Speed of Rail competition for the proposal “I Love GLC (Great Lakes City).” In November 2010, PORT A+U was awarded the unanimous first prize in the FORMCities design competition sponsored by Mississippi State University and the Jackson Community Design Center for the project “Re-Cultivating the Forest City.”

Assistant Professor Lluis Ortega published essays on contemporary architecture in the journals Harvard Design Magazine and PLOT and in books featuring the work of Carles Muro (Editorial Lampreave) and Alfons Soldevila (UPC editions). His design practice, F451arquitectura, recently completed three projects in Barcelona and is currently developing an international ferry terminal in Menorca, two high school buildings in Barcelona, and a collaborative research with Modultec on prefabricated buildings for projects in Mali, Brazil, and Spain.

Assistant Professor Paul Preissner exhibited work, delivered a keynote lecture, and participated in the conference at the 13th Buenos Aires International Biennial of Architecture (October 2011).

A team led by Professor Xavier Vendrell‘s firm Xavier Vendrell Studio was named one of five finalists for the Navy Pier Pierscape competition. The proposal, which redesigns Navy Pier’s public spaces, is on display at the Chicago Architecture Foundation through May 2012. With Professor Doug Garofalo, Vendrell also collaborated on a plan for the Roscoe Village neighborhood of Chicago as part of “Design on the Edge: Chicago Architects Reimagine Neighborhoods,” an exhibition curated by Stanley Tigerman at the Chicago Architecture Foundation (September 2011).

Professor Dan Wheeler exhibited and lectured on the work of his firm Wheeler Kearns Architects at the BEB Gallery at the Rhode Island School of Design in April 2011. The firm was also a SEED Design Award winner for the Inspiration Kitchen in East Garfield Park in Chicago (March 2011). In May 2011, Wheeler participated in the panel discussion “How Chicago Are You?” at the Graham Foundation. 

Adjunct Assistant Professor Kirk Wooller authored and edited the book 20/20: Editorial Takes on Architectural Discourse (AA Publications, 2011), which brings together editors from twenty leading contemporary architectural magazines to discuss collectively the role editors play in shaping architectural discourse.

Clinical Professor Andrew Zago‘s firm Zago Architecture led one of five teams exhibiting work in Foreclosed: Rehousing the American Dream at the Museum of Modern Art (February 2012). The exhibition envisions new schemes for housing and transportation in American suburbs. 

The University and School of Architecture community mourns the loss of Professor Doug Garofalo, who died at his home Sunday, July 31, 2011. Doug began his teaching career at the UIC School of Architecture in 1987, moving through all faculty ranks from part-time adjunct to tenured full professor, and also served as Interim Director 2001–2003. In 2009, Doug was named a University Scholar, the first time in twenty-six years that a member of the School of Architecture was so honored. Representing the highest ideal of the academic-practitioner, Doug was a tireless mentor and source of inspiration for the students, junior faculty, and young architects that worked with him.

In memory of Doug and in recognition of his exceptional life and career, the School has established the Douglas A. Garofalo Fellowship, an endowed fund dedicated to bringing a young practitioner or recent graduate to teach and conduct independent design research within the School of Architecture. With the generous support of friends, family, colleagues, former students, and clients, the first Garofalo Fellow is expected to take residence at the School in Fall 2013. For more information on the Fellowship, please visit www.arch.uic.edu/garofalofellowship.php.