Architecture News
10.15.09 Faculty Receives Award for Book
Assistant Professor Despina Stratigakos has received the 2009 DAAD Book Prize for her book, A Women’s Berlin: Building the Modern City (2008). The biennial prize is bestowed by the German Studies Association, an international organization of scholars in all fields of German Studies, and recognizes the best book in German history, political science, and other social sciences.
10.02.09 Faculty Search Announcement
The Department of Architecture invites applicants for the tenure-track positions in the areas of Material Culture and Sustainable Urban and Natural Environments. Review of applications will begin on December 1, 2009.
03.31.09 2009 Charter Award
The Congress for the New Urbanism, one of the foremost international advocates for the revival of cities, recognized an ensemble of plans produced by the University at Buffalo’s Urban Design Project with the 2009 Charter Award. The honor went to Buffalo’s Comprehensive Plan documents, which include: The Queen City Hub: A Regional Action Plan for Downtown Buffalo, The Queen City Waterfront – Buffalo Waterfront Corridor Initiative: A Strategic Plan for Transportation Improvements, The Olmsted City – The Buffalo Olmsted Park System: Plan for the 21st Century, and The Queen City in the 21st Century: Buffalo’s Comprehensive Plan.
03.31.09 2009 Excellence in Historic Preservation Award
The Preservation League of New York State awarded The Olmsted City – The Buffalo Olmsted Park System: Plan for the 21st Century as an example of excellence in historic preservation. The Urban Design Project, a research center in the School of Architecture and Planning at the University at Buffalo, is proud to have led the development of this plan and continues to work toward its recognition and implementation.
01.02.09 2008 IEDC Excellence in Economic Development Awards
The International Economic Development Council’s Excellence in Economic Development Awards recognize the world’s best economic development marketing materials; programs and partnerships; and the year’s most influential leaders. This year, an Honorable Mention for Neighborhood Development was awarded to the Urban Design Project publication The Queen City Hub: A Regional Action Plan for Downtown Buffalo, at the IEDC national conference in Atlanta. The Queen City Hub is the framework for a place-oriented program of development that has succeeded in generating huge amounts of investment downtown. It also won the 2005 American Planning Association Outstanding Planning Award.
01.02.09 2008 APA Professional Awards
The Western New York Section and the Upstate Chapter of the American Planning Association awarded an Urban Design Project publication Queen City Waterfront – Buffalo Waterfront Corridor Initiative: A Strategic Plan for Transportation Improvements the Planning Excellence for a Best Practice Award. The plan bridges the false dichotomy between the values represented in transportation infrastructure development and public goals for a cleaner environment, better waterfront access, economic development, stronger and better-connected waterfront neighborhoods, and a great international waterfront gateway. The publication has been nominated for the National APA Awards, to be announced in 2009.
01.02.09 2008 ASLA Annual Awards
Each year, the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) Professional Awards honor the best in landscape architecture from around the globe. This year, the New York Upstate Chapter of ASLA honored an Urban Design Project publication, The Olmsted City – The Buffalo Olmsted Park System: Plan for the 21st Century, edited by Robert Shibley and Lynda Schneekloth, with the Planning and Analysis Honor of Excellence Award. The publication is a restoration and management plan for the Buffalo Olmsted park and parkway system, sponsored by the Buffalo Olmsted Parks Conservancy.
01.02.09 New Book: Building Sustainable Neighborhoods: 2007 Rudy Bruner Award for Urban Excellence
Robert Shibley, Director of the Urban Design Project, reports a new book out, Building Sustainable Neighborhoods: 2007 Rudy Bruner Award for Urban Excellence, that he co-authored with Richard Wener, Jay Farbstein and Emily Axelrod, published by the Bruner Foundation, Boston: 2008. Rudy Bruner Award winners enliven our nation's cities and provide innovative models for addressing some of our country's most persistent urban ills.
12.11.08 ACSA Faculty Design Award Winner
Laura Garofalo, Assistant Professor in Architecture, received the 2008-09 ACSA Faculty Design Award for her “Threading Water” project. The award is given in recognition of exemplary built and unbuilt work that reflects upon practice and research, advancing the general understanding of the discipline of architecture.
11.25.08 Research Grant Received
A new research center devoted to improving public transportation for people with disabilities is being funded by a multi-million grant awarded jointly to the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University and the Center for Inclusive Design and Environmental Access (IDEA) at the University at Buffalo. The $4.7 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education's National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research will support the new Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center on Accessible Public Transportation. The center’s co-director and principal investigator is Aaron Steinfeld, a systems scientist at Carnegie Mellon’s Robotics Institute. The other co-director is Edward Steinfeld, a professor of architecture at UB's School of Architecture and Planning, who heads the IDEA Center. The goal of the five-year effort is to conduct research to help with the design and evaluation of accessible transportation equipment, information services and physical environments.
10.24.08 International Achievement Award Winner
Maqsood Ahmed was the winner of the Industrial Fabrics Association International 2008 International Achievement Awards and received an Outstanding Achievement for his Toronto Pearson International Airport, Covered Walkway entry. There were professionals from 16 countries that entered 408 projects in 28 categories.
08.25.08 Four Faculty Publish Books
Beyond Archigram: the Structure of Circulation by Hadas Steiner, associate professor of architecture, will be published by Routledge in August 2008. According to Routledge: "Beyond Archigram is the first study of the prehistory of digital representation to focus on the magazine Archigram,the magazine published in London irregularly between 1961 and 1970 and the name of the group that created it. Archigram is among the most significant phenomena to emerge in post-war architectural culture. The wired environments first advertised on its pages formulated an architectural vocabulary of metamorphosis and obsolescence that cross-pollinated industrial and digital technology at the same time as complex systems were becoming commercially available. Through archival, theoretical and visual analysis, Hadas Steiner explores the process through which this model was envisaged and disseminated within an international network of practitioners and shows how the assimilation of Archigram imagery set the course for the visual output of what are now commonplace tools in architectural practice. This book will provide a foundation for further inquiry into the integration of digital technology at every level of design."
Mark Shepard, assistant professor of architecture and media study, authored Situated Technologies Pamphlet 1: Urban Computing and its Discontents, along with Adam Greenfield. This is the first in a series of nine issues that will be published by the Architectural League of New York and co-edited by Shepard, Omar Kahn, Trebor Scholz. Urban Computing and its Discontents is a conversation between the authors providing an overview of the key issues, historical precedents, and contemporary approaches to designing situated technologies and inhabiting cities populated by them. According to Dwell magazine, Shepard and Greenfield address “all things urban and electronic. How will cities change, they ask, once ‘everyday objects and space are linked through networked computing?’ The ensuing discussion is not to be missed.”
A Women’s Berlin: Building the Modern City, by Despina Stratigakos, assistant professor of architecture, will be published this month by the University of Minnesota Press. According to the publisher:
"Around the beginning of the twentieth century, women began to claim Berlin as their own, expressing a vision of the German capital that embraced their feminine modernity, both culturally and architecturally. Women located their lives and made their presence felt in the streets and institutions of this dynamic metropolis. From residences to restaurants, schools to exhibition halls, a visible network of women’s spaces arose to accommodate changing patterns of life and work."
"A Women’s Berlin retraces this largely forgotten city, which came into being in the years between German unification in 1871 and the demise of the monarchy in 1918 and laid the foundation for a novel experience of urban modernity. Although the phenomenon of women taking control of urban space was widespread in this period, Despina Stratigakos shows how Berlin’s concentration of women’s building projects produced a more fully realized vision of an alternative metropolis. Female clients called on female design professionals to help them define and articulate their architectural needs. Many of the projects analyzed in A Women’s Berlin represent a collaborative effort uniting female patrons, architects, and designers to explore the nature of female aesthetics and spaces."
"At the same time that women were transforming the built environment, they were remaking Berlin in words and images. Female journalists, artists, political activists, and social reformers portrayed women as influential actors on the urban scene and encouraged female audiences to view their relationship to the city in a radically different light. Stratigakos reveals how women’s remapping of Berlin connected the imaginary to the physical, merged dreams and asphalt, and inextricably linked the creation of the modern woman with that of the modern city. "
ETFE – Technology and Design, by Annette LeCuyer, professor of architecture, was published by Birkhauser Verlag AG in 2008 (English and German editions). ETFE foil has recently become an important material for the cladding of technologically sophisticated and innovative buildings. Ethylene tetrafluoroethylene is very thin and lightweight thermoplastic and, when used in air-filled cushion assemblies, has enormous strength and a range of adaptive environmental attributes. ETFE cushion enclosures became known primarily through the Eden Project in the UK by Grimshaw Architects, the largest plant enclosure in the world, and the Allianz Arena in Germany by Herzog & de Meuron. Most recently, it has been used for the envelope of the spectacular National Aquatics Center for the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, where the cladding is inspired by the geometry of a continuous array of soap bubbles
his book provides an in-depth introduction to the characteristics of ETFE and its applications in building construction. In the context of the recent history of pneumatic buildings and featuring recently completed buildings around the world with ETFE cushion envelopes, the book explores in detail the specific characteristics of ETFE building skins in the areas of structural behavior, light transmission, insulation, acoustics, fire engineering and environmental modification.
08.25.08 Faculty Promotion
Omar Khan has been promoted to associate professor with tenure. Professor Khan co-directs the Center for Architecture and Situated Technology; his research and teaching focuses align with the Situated Technologies Graduate Research Group. He also co-founded an independent studio, Liminal Projects, with Laura Garófalo. Professor Khan completed his post-professional studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his professional studies at Cornell University.
08.20.08 Introversions Opens at the Center for the Arts
Introversions¸ a project by Professor Shadi Nazarian, a researcher in the Situated Technologies Graduate Research Group, opened in the Lightwell Gallery at the Center for the Arts. A sculptural installation that intersects art, architecture and emergent technology, Introversions creates an interactive spatial, tactile and ocular experience for viewers. The audience is lured toward a bright EL-light framed by an object hovering above the ground. The view of the lure is denied when the viewer gets too close, encouraging the viewer to become aware of the cognitive processes we undergo as we navigate through the environments in which we live. According to Timothy Murray, “Introversions delights its viewers not merely as an architectural object to be passively seen and desired from afar, but as an artistic event that actively elicits ocular surprise while soliciting interactive experience from within.”
07.28.08 New Faculty Appointed
The Department of Architecture is pleased to announce that Laura Garófalo will join us this fall as a tenure-track assistant professor. Garófalo’s work focuses on the conjunction of natural and architectural systems. She maintains an independent studio, Liminal Projects (co-founded with O. Khan). The aim of the studio is to explore the overlapping boundaries of literary, artistic and architectural production, and giving form to the "in-between." Works include building design, urban planning, furniture, gallery installations, and collaborations with filmmakers and artists. Garófalo received her M.Arch from Yale University and most recently worked as an assistant professor at North Carolina State University.
07.26.08 McHale Fellow Named
James Lowder, the 2008-09 McHale Fellow at UB’s School of Architecture and Planning, is a graduate of Princeton University. James has worked in practice with Daniel Libeskind, Eisenman Architects, Reiser + Umemoto and Coop Himmelblau. He has been succesful in a number of significant design proposals for projects in Europe and in Asia and has also taught both in North America and Australia.
07.25.08 Banham Fellow Named
Michael Kubo will be the 2008-09 Banham Fellow at UB’s School of Architecture and Planning. A graduate of Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, Michael has worked with the Office of Metropolitan Architecture/AMO in Rotterdam, taught at the GSD and Pratt Institute in New York, and has been actively involved with a wide range of architectural publications. The founder and editorial director of Actar Publishers Inc. in New York, he has authored and edited numerous books including The Function of Ornament with Farshid Moussavi. He also curated and designed the exhibition, “Learning from Cities,” which was shown at the 10th Annual International Architecture Biennale in Venice.
01.28.082008 Martell Visiting Critic
The Department of Architecture is pleased to announce the 2008 Martell Visiting Critic, Thom Mayne, Professor of Architecture at UCLA. He was a founder of the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) and has held teaching positions at Columbia University, Harvard University, Yale University, The Berlage Institute in the Netherlands, and the Bartlett School of Architecture in London. Currently, he holds a tenured faculty position at the UCLA School of Arts and Architecture. His distinguished honors include Pritzker Prize Laureate, Rome Prize Fellowship from the American Academy of Design in Rome, the Alumni of the Year Award from USC, Member-elect from the American Acadmy of Arts and Letters, and the 2000 AIA/LA Gold Medal in Architecture. With Morphosis, he has been the recipient of 25 Progressive Architecture awards, 54 AIA awards and numerous other design recognitions. He will give a public lecture on Monday, April 14, at 5:30 p.m. in 148 Diefendorf Hall.
2008 Clarkson Chair of Architecture
The Department of Architecture is delighted to host the 2008 Clarkson Chair in Architecture, Kenneth Frampton, Ware Professor of Architecture at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation at Columbia University. He will be in residence during the week of March 24, 2008. A public lecture will be given on Wednesday, March 26, at 5:30 p.m. in 301 Crosby Hall.
