On April 26, Pecan Street Project announced that it has acquired a site and will soon begin construction of a smart grid interoperability research facility. Researchers from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) will lead the programming and technical specification development for the facility, which will be located in Austin’s Mueller community. Supported by a large demonstration grant from the U.S. Department of Energy, the Pecan Street Project is a “smart grid” initiative led by a team of researchers from The University of Texas at Austin, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and the Environmental Defense Fund to develop and test an integrated clean energy smart grid in Austin. Construction is scheduled to begin in September 2011 and active operations to commence in March 2012. Pecan Street Project has contracted with Austin-based custom homebuilder The Muskin Company to construct the Home Research Lab. The University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture Assistant Professors Ulrich Dangel, Matt Fajkus, and Tamie Glass have developed a schematic design for the architecture and interiors of the project in collaboration with Department of Architectural and Environmental Engineering Assistant Professor Atila Novoselac. Austin-based Michael Hsu Office of Architecture will serve as the architect of record. Over the next five years, this Pecan Street Project team will deploy and test a smart grid infrastructure in 1,000 residences and 75 businesses in the new Mueller mixed-use urban village in central Austin.

Dean Fritz Steiner contributed a chapter, “Plan with Nature: The Legacy of Ian McHarg,” to the new book, http://www.lincolninst.edu/pubs/1893_Regional-Planning-in-America: Practice and Prospect, edited by Ethan Seltzer and Armando Carbonell, published by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.

Assistant Professor Igor Siddiqui’s work is featured in the exhibit “Elemental” at the Ogden Museum in New Orleans. The exhibit, organized by AIA New Orleans as a part of the AIA National Convention, focuses on digital fabrication and includes works by Greg Lynn, http://www.iwamotoscott.com/, IwamotoScott, Elena Manferdini, Florencia Pita, and others.

Siddiqui’s essay, “Surface Fatigue,” is published in the upcoming book, Soft Shells: Porous and Deployable Architectural Screens, by Sophia Vyzoviti (Amsterdam: BIS Publishers).