Architecture News
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 Virtual Architecture; 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.
Shepard straddles two fields
New faculty member helped to develop dual-degree program
Mark Shepard, assistant professor of architecture and media study, came to UB for the unique opportunity to help launch a dual-degree program, and to explore and combine his interests in two very different, yet very complementary fields of study.
Shepard says no other architecture school in the U.S. has such a program, allowing students to combine master's degrees in architecture and fine arts -- building expertise in both architecture and digital media.
"Digital media and information systems are rapidly permeating the built environment," he explains. "Moving beyond immersive, screen-based interactive environments, digital media today incorporates hybrid spaces that integrate both the virtual and actual dimensions of everyday life." Read More
RERC on Universal Design Receives $5 Million Grant
The Center for Inclusive Design and Environmental Access (IDEA Center) in the University at Buffalo School of Architecture and Planning has received a $5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education's National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research (NIDRR) to fund a second five-year cycle of its Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center on Universal Design and the Built Environment (RERC-UD).
