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ARCHITECTURE ART PLANNING FALL 2019
Fall 2019 FEATURES
The Mui Ho Fine Arts Library 6 Informed Decision-Making and Design 12 BRIEFS
Art at AAP NYC 20 Preliminary Perceptions of a Planner 21 Alumni at Work on Education Projects in Developing Countries 43 SECTIONS
In Review 2 Voices Mimi Zeiger (B.Arch. ’94) 11 Donald Greenberg 18 Isaiah D. Murray (B.A./B.S. URS ’20) 52
Inside the Department Architecture 22 Art 28 Planning 34
Alumni Projects 42
Big Data: Informed DecisionMaking and Design
In the News 49
CORNELL AAP This magazine is published twice yearly by the College of Architecture, Art, and Planning at Cornell University, through the Office of the Dean. College of Architecture, Art, and Planning Cornell University 129 Sibley Dome, Ithaca, NY 14853-6701 (607) 254-6292 aapcommunications@cornell.edu aap.cornell.edu
EDITORS Rebecca Bowes Elise Gold EDITORIAL COORDINATOR Patti Witten CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Rebecca Bowes Jeffrey Chusid Edith Fikes Blaine Friedlander Neema Kudva Linda Shi Patti Witten Jay Wrolstad COPY EDITOR Laura Glenn DESIGN KUDOS Design Collaboratory™ PHOTO William Staffeld (unless noted) DISTRIBUTION COORDINATOR Sheri D’Elia © October 2019 Cornell University Printed by Villanti Printers, Inc, Milton, Vermont. Environmentally certified to the Forest Stewardship Council® Standard. Printed on FSC Certified Rolland Enviro Satin paper, which is manufactured using 100% post-consumer, recycled fiber. Printed using Toyo 0% VOC, soy-based inks.
COVER Olivia Calalo (M.S. AAD ’20), Underwater (2019), digital time-progressive drawing created and coded using the sketchbook software Processing. Created for the M.S. AAD summer studio Computational Design and Representation, taught by Visiting Critic Fleet Hower (see page 25). INSIDE COVER William Jihrel Smith (B.F.A. ’19), Personal Identification (2018), calcium carbonate, enamel, acrylic, and oil on canvas, 60" x 84", from the student exhibition PROCESSED #001, November 12–17, 2018.
The Campus March for Climate Emergency was held on September 20 to coincide with the Global Climate Strike. The march began at Rand Hall, where “Touchdown” read a declaration while the Climate Emergency Flag was raised on the roof. The students then proceeded to Ho Plaza to join the Cornell Climate Justice gathering before heading to the Ithaca Global Climate Strike downtown. The Campus March for Climate Emergency was commissioned as part of the Preston Thomas Memorial Lecture Series titled “EARTH: Projections 50 Years after Earth Art,” organized by Assistant Professor Tao DuFour. The Climate Emergency Flag visualizes the planet’s carbon budget in a series of three concentric circles—the thickness of each is proportional to CO2 emissions.
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FROM THE DEAN
Big data and the processes it drives—machine learning and artificial intelligence—are now familiar terms. Large, complex data sets are routinely captured, stored, and extracted to enable predictive analytics, detailed simulations, and urban informatics. The increased availability of data not only adds analytical depth to our work but also underscores how much we still have yet to do before we can claim to fully understand what computational intelligence will mean for our disciplines. Familiar with the impulse to capture and collect data, information designer and data humanist Giorgia Lupi reminds us to engage the process and intent of our work. “But what is the point of all these numbers?,” she asks in a talk she gave earlier this year on the human side of data. “People are not interested in data for the sheer sake of it because numbers are never the point. They are always the means to an end.” Design that is informed by human data should respond to human needs. Expansive data sets, when analyzed for the far-reaching consequences of our decisions, have material impact. With our creative and critical practices, we mine the data for patterns, insights, and opportunities—to not only better understand our contexts but to intervene and create a more equitable, habitable, and sustainable world. This issue of the magazine details our college’s commitment to both the means and the ends. Highlights include the important ongoing research, fieldwork, and projects that have come to fruition; news and introductions to new faculty hires in both architecture and planning; and an important step toward building academic programming in collaboration with Cornell Tech. Timely feature articles elaborate on the value of information in the form of both books and big data, and briefs offer views into the goings-on in the departments and in our alumni community. Also included in what follows are Associate Professor Maria Park’s perspective on digital versus material encounters with artwork, planning chair Jeff Chusid’s belief of the discipline’s role in making change—and an essay by Professor Don Greenberg on his trailblazing career in computation design, where he cites the “courage, curiosity, and creativity” of our students as key to imagining a future, if incremental and iterative, with the means we accept as the tools of the present. Warmly,
J. Meejin Yoon Gale and Ira Drukier Dean of Architecture, Art, and Planning
In Review NEWS
Architecture School Rankings for 2020 Put Cornell on Top
Cornell’s B.Arch. program tops DesignIntelligence’s annual ranking of U.S. architecture schools for the fifth year in a row. NEWS
Wendy White Named Cornell University Teiger Mentor in the Arts
Painter and sculptor Wendy White will visit the Department of Art three times this fall to give an artist talk and work with graduate and undergraduate students.
See more news at aap.cornell.edu/news
LECTURES
Simone Mangili: Remaking Turin: Striving for Sustainability and Resiliency in Uncertain Times Follow us on social media @cornellaap
SOCIAL MEDIA
EXHIBITIONS
Beverly Semmes: FRP: RPF
SOCIAL MEDIA
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NEWS
NEWS
Cruvellier, Beard, and Sabin Appointed Associate Deans of AAP
Warner Brings Public Health to Planning with Key USDA Grant
Mildred Warner and her team are the recipients of a $500,000 federal grant that will support public health research and multigenerational planning in rural areas.
The associate deans will oversee academic affairs and lead efforts to expand research and design initiatives.
NEWS
Environmental Systems Lab Group Travels to Rome Building Simulation Conference
Assistant professor of architecture Timur Dogan and three students from AAP’s Environmental Systems Lab presented their building simulation work in Rome.
SOCIAL MEDIA
NEWS
Monument Designed by AAP Visiting Faculty to Rise in Prospect Park
A monumental tribute to political icon Shirley Chisholm, designed by two AAP alumni and visiting faculty members, will soon rise in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park.
NEWS
Utica Revisiting Zoning Code Amid Sunset Avenue Fallout
CRP’s George Frantz is quoted in a story in the Utica Observer-Dispatch on a controversial apartment development project.
See more events at aap.cornell.edu/events
NEWS
Collaborative Partnership with Cornell Tech Crosses the Boundaries between Disciplines
M.S. MDC and B.Arch. students studying in New York City are collaborating with Cornell Tech students in a new interdisciplinary partnership.
LECTURES
Sandra Barclay and Leslie Lok: The Making of Practice
In the Field
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Abu Dhabi 1
Berlin 3
Oneida, New York 5
On an eight-day trip to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in February, students in the architecture option studio Matter Design Computation: Human-Centered Adaptive Architecture in the UAE formed plans for an integrated architectural proposal and program for a beach area within the Makers District, a mixed-use development in Reem Island in Abu Dhabi. Led by Associate Professor Jenny Sabin, the Arthur L. and Isabel B. Wiesenberger Professor in Architecture and associate dean for design initiatives, the group investigated how buildings might behave like organisms, using current and future applications of human-centered adaptive architecture responding and adapting to extreme climates. In the process, they worked with local developers and architects, including IMKAN/Soulful Places, Enriched Lives.
In February, associate professor and chair of the Department of Art Michael Ashkin led 12 M.F.A. students on the department’s annual international trip—this year, to Berlin, where the cohort toured galleries and studios. The group also visited the studio of Elisabeth Masé, the Gropius Bau Museum, and Daniel Seiple’s boatmaking workshop for refugees.
The 2019 Historic Preservation Planning program Work Weekend took place at the Oneida Community Mansion House located in Oneida, New York. The annual outing gives students the opportunity to do hands-on conservation at a historic site and provide positive and meaningful community impact. Projects at the mansion included repair of historic windows, clearing and stabilizing garden paths, documentation and deconstruction of decorative porch railings, prepping exterior wood columns and porches for painting, and faux bois paint conservation on the wainscoting and doorways of the main entry halls.
photo / Xiaotong Wang (M.S. AAD ’19)
Armenia 2
photo / Ciara Stack (M.F.A. ’20)
Grand Canyon 4 In February, students in the architecture option studio Found Thing collected geological fragments and objects having “personal and impulsive memory” as inspiration for a repository in the form of “a small house for a private pilgrimage into pure (and idealized) wilderness,” rather than a large museum. Taught by associate professors of the practice Sofía von Ellrichshausen and Mauricio Pezo and Visiting Critic Diego Pérez of Pezo von Ellrichshausen, the studio was an extension of the firm’s “naive intention” program, focused on contradictions between intentionality and chance, rationality and futility, and authorship and anonymity.
Post–Soviet Union industrial complexes in the Republic of Armenia are slowly being repurposed by area residents. Led by Assistant Professor Aleksandr Mergold, students in the architecture option studio photo / Xiaoxue Ma (M.Arch. ’19) Design Plan 5.0: Of Industry after the Fall investigated examples of this activity for seven days in February. The group was joined by Lori Khatchadourian, Department of Near Eastern Studies; and Zara Mamyan, head of the Department of Urban Planning at the National University of Architecture and Construction of Armenia (NUAC); as well as a group of architecture students from NUAC. photo / Ihwa Choi (B.Arch. ’20)
photo / Dorothy Qian (M.R.P/M.L.A ’22)
United Nations, New York City 6 Led by Visiting Lecturer Gerard Finin, a group of students in the Special Topics: Planning in the Pacific Islands and Southeast Asia workshop attended the International Conference on Sustainable Development (ICSD) that was part of the United Nations’ Climate Week in New York City in September. The ICSD provides a forum for academia, government, civil society, U.N. agencies, and the private sector to come together to share practical solutions to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. photo / Zachary Tyler Newton (M.Arch. ’10)
Other Destinations Split, Croatia; Boston, Massachusetts (see page 35); Buffalo, Canajoharie, and Queens, New York; Kingdom of Tonga (see page 35)
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Open Architecture: A Book on Migration, an exhibition by Associate Professor Esra Akcan, architecture, brought together original mapping, video, and photo installations that were produced along with the research for the publication of Akcan’s book on the topic, released last year.
The Mui Ho Fine Arts Library By investing in books in addition to 21st-century resources and technologies, AAP is staking out increasingly rare territory in defense of the physical artifact as a durable and irreplaceable academic and creative resource in the visual arts and design disciplines.
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“In contrast to the strict compartmentalization of traditional libraries, the collection is suspended within a 40-foot-tall atrium with four floors of completely open book stacks. With semitransparent floors made of steel grating and an absence of walls within the stacks, full sight lines are created from one end of the atrium to the other.” —David Ziskind, STV senior VP and principal-in-charge of the project photo / Lukas Schaller
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The Mui Ho Fine Arts Library
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Activating Inspiration This August, the new Mui Ho Fine Arts Library opened at AAP. According to Architecture Librarian and Coordinator of Collections Martha Walker, it is a space that “warms any librarian’s heart for the knowledge it brings, both visually and physically, to the Cornell community.” Alumnus Wolfgang Tschapeller (M.Arch. ’87) was commissioned for his “hanging library” design in 2014, and the project, which includes substantial structural rehabilitation and several updates to spaces within Rand Hall, is now complete and filled with books and patrons. The suspension of more than 100,000 volumes in the space is the central point of focus of the inventive Tschapeller’s design. But a building program that would provide space for the college community and all of Cornell to visit, browse, and work with the collection that is foundational to AAP’s disciplines was essential to his integration of a soaring 40-foot reading room and other workspaces that surround the stacks. “Housing one of the country’s most distinguished circulating fine arts book collections was the motivating force behind the project,” says former AAP dean Kent Kleinman, who initiated the project by forming a planning task force several years before the project broke ground. “The term ‘housing’ is shorthand for a number of necessary conditions. Controlled climate and humidity, security, browsability, room for collection growth, for example. Undergirding the housing function
is another essential quality—light. It was critical to provide a well-lit space for reading and Tschapeller’s design does that brilliantly well.” With the combination of three compressed levels of book stacks and open, daylit space, the library provides an “immediate and quite physical invitation to discover an extraordinary collection that appears as one big volume” to library visitors, according to Tschapeller. The books are visually accessible as a large, hanging mass of stacks that can be entered at multiple points by stair or elevator. Upon entry, transparency throughout permits a line of sight that extends from one end of the library to the other, and the intentional omission of walls extends visibility across the stacks. “I couldn’t have known how much the fine arts library had to offer until I saw all of the books together on the stacks and walked through them,” says second-year student Luke Slomba (B.S. URS ’22), who knew the library as a temporary space while Rand Hall was under construction during his first year at AAP. “Having a convenient place to go where I can either read quietly or study as a group is an exciting prospect.” A key interest for the project’s primary donor, alumna Mui Ho ’62 (B.Arch. ’66), is the value of the collection to the study of architecture, art, and planning—as well as the way in which the collection could be made accessible to the students, faculty, and the whole of Cornell’s community. “Maybe I am old fashioned, but I believe that the spontaneity that goes along with physically walking through the
Resource and Refuge
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By Gerald Beasley Carl A. Kroch University Librarian
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halls of information in the stacks is a good thing,” says Ho, reflecting on her time working in the fine arts library as a student. “Exposure to ideas and topics we may not expect can have an enormous and important impact on the work we do. This might also be true of information we find on the screen, but the important difference for me is that the material you hold in your hands or set beside another on the table gives you time to sit and think about it. It stays with you and doesn’t afterward seem to disappear.” The Mui Ho Fine Arts Library was dedicated in September with several alumni who contributed to the project and their guests; a representative from STV, the architectural firm of record, with a team led by Harris Feinn (B.Arch. ’69, M.Arch. ’71); and many others who were instrumental in phases of planning, design, construction, and reopening. “There are innumerable ways to create access to books and information,” said J. Meejin Yoon, Gale and Ira Drukier Dean of AAP, on the occasion of the library’s dedication. “The Mui Ho Fine Arts Library provides that access in a distinctly architectural way. How these books are housed—dramatically suspended in a daylit volume of space—is critically important. The entire space is organized in a way that not only displays the books, but facilitates browsing and creates a social setting around the books for scholarship, engagement, and learning that activates inspiration. This is not by accident but by design.” By Edith Fikes
1 The library’s ground floor includes the service desk and a light-filled reading room with a 70-foot countertop workspace and public lounge furniture. This level also includes a computing area with computers for public use and semiprivate study carrels on the north side of the stacks. 2 Mui Ho ’62 (B.Arch. ’66) (left) and Frances M. Shloss (B.Arch. ’45) at the dedication ceremony in September. 3 One of the largest academic art and architecture libraries in the Northeast, the ever-expanding collection grows by approximately 4,000 titles each year, with the full collection comprising more than 267,000 volumes.
I was an architectural librarian for most of my career before being appointed Carl A. Kroch University Librarian at Cornell University in August 2017. Working successively at the Royal Institute of British Architects (London), the Canadian Centre for Architecture (Montreal), and Columbia University’s Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library (New York City), I observed firsthand, and on many occasions, the special relationship between architecture and libraries. In my opinion, this can be traced to the legacy of Marcus Vitruvius Pollio, a Roman architect who wrote the first and arguably the most influential surviving treatise on architecture in the first century BCE. But whether architects work within the Western tradition or not, it seems to me that no other profession has quite such a close relationship with libraries and their physical contents—the books, periodicals, prints, drawings, and archives that collectively give meaning to the art of building. Wolfgang Tschapeller’s design for the Mui Ho Fine Arts Library brings that relationship into focus. It makes more than 100,000 volumes on architecture, the arts, and urban studies accessible and within easy reach of every AAP faculty member and student, as well as every other member of the Cornell community. The books and their shelving form a sculptural whole, a breathtaking tribute to the potential of the printed word and image to inspire learning, research, creativity, and innovation. Yet, new technologies will offer an equally important gateway to knowledge. Here, surely, the building’s designer has given us an intentional and playful contrast between two floating worlds: the physical world of books and journals and the weightless world of the internet. In this unique space, each derives added meaning from the other. Libraries are at their best when they serve as both resource and refuge. Yes, the expertise of library staff at the Mui Ho Fine Arts Library is sure to be one of the main reasons students and faculty visit the space. Combined with its outstanding collections, this expertise guarantees that students and faculty alike will find themselves rewarded with answers every time they visit the library, even if those answers lead to further questions. But I predict it will also serve as a haven, a home for those who seek a place for quiet reflection. Its unique architectural form guarantees, I think, that it will be a true landmark, a place where quiet contemplation can bring new energy to Cornell University’s academic enterprise.
The Mui Ho Fine Arts Library
Following an 18-month renovation of historic Rand Hall, the building has been entirely rehabilitated and includes a new rooftop deck outfitted as a terrace and exhibition space. The ground floor is a redesigned material practice center including wood, metal, and digital fabrication shops; a maker space; a research lab; and a smalltool repository. photo / Chris Cooper, courtesy of STV
Voices: Alumni
At America’s Top Architecture Schools, Female Leadership Is the New Normal By Mimi Zeiger (B.Arch. ’94) Reprinted from Architectural Digest April 30, 2019
On July 1, when Sarah Whiting steps into the job of leading the most prestigious architecture school in the country, she will be the eighth dean and the first woman to helm Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design. And while her appointment is a personal and professional achievement for Whiting, it also marks a sea change for an institution still grappling with the aftermath of architecture’s #metoo moment. Last year, faculty and student populations alike petitioned for reform. As Whiting swings through the doors of Gund Hall, she joins an elite club of female deans of Ivy League architecture schools: Amale Andraos at Columbia’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation; Meejin Yoon at Cornell’s College of Architecture, Art, and Planning; Deborah Berke at Yale School of Architecture; and Mónica Ponce de León at Princeton’s School of Architecture. Architect Marilyn Jordan Taylor stepped down as dean of University of Pennsylvania’s School of Design in 2016. Now that Columbia, Cornell, Princeton, and Yale boast women in positions of power historically reserved for men, a critical question hangs in the balance: Will female leadership at the upper echelons of the academy bring more equity to the field? The short answers are “I hope so” and “I don’t know.” Speculation puts the onus of transformation on a few key individuals, and that kind of burden is inherently gendered. Women are often asked to perform professional acts of emotional labor—a kind of under-acknowledged housework: planning, smoothing feathers, nurturing, and cleaning up messes— in this case, the mess of ongoing gender and racial inequities combined with sexual discrimination and misconduct. It’s not fair to assume that a glass-breaking deanship also means having to “mother” the whole of architecture. A 2014 study of male and female administrators by the Association of Collegiate Schools
of Architecture found that out of 238 deans, directors, heads, and chairs of architecture programs in the United States, only 24 percent were women. An oft-noted trope of female leadership is that it is more collective, less hierarchical in its decision-making. Taking this as a model, we can say that steering the field toward a more diverse, intersectional, and equitable future requires collective action—it’s a shared responsibility across gender. That said, deans Andraos, Berke, Ponce de León, Whiting, and Yoon are formidable architects, scholars, and educators whose long-term influences lie in pedagogical agendas and hiring practices. With the possible exception of Berke, they come from a generation that saw gender representation of architecture students rise to and remain at near parity, despite underrepresentation of female faculty. In prior and current positions, many of these deans have opened doors and provided platforms for women and underrepresented groups. In late April, Equity by Design (EQxD), a committee of the AIA in San Francisco, in partnership with ACSA, presented key findings of its 2018 Equity in Architecture Survey in a narrated slide presentation. In it, architect and EQxD research chair Annelise Pitts noted the drop-off of women architects among the higher ranks in architecture firms and attributed the low representation, in part, to a reported disinterest in that kind of achievement—which was contrary to their male colleagues. Women tended to spin off and form their own practices rather than pursue titles—partner, principal, or design lead—since they didn’t have role models or mentors as examples. “It’s difficult to be something you can’t see,” says Pitts. What applies to the profession applies to the academy. The best potential of this phenomenon of a suite of Ivy League female deans is not to singlehandedly undo decades of inequity (though I welcome the effort) but to act as an example of the new normal to come.
Informed DecisionMaking and Design Big Data Applications from the Classroom to the Smart City
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Applications
As ever-increasing amounts of data are available to the public, the ability to analyze and act on such data is a specialized skill that is becoming progressively important for designers and planners to master.
Quantifying Urban Quality of Life Concerns
Since the 2012 U.S. Big Data Research and Development Initiative was launched by the Obama administration, much of this “big data” is open-source and available to anyone with an interest in accessing all kinds of information. The term “big data” may apply to a broad range of topics but is generally accepted as referring to data with more than 50,000 observations, larger than a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet can effectively handle. Although so much data is accessible to the public, data analytics literacy is necessary to make sense of it, and make use of it, said Kieran Donaghy, regional science professor in CRP. Data analytics is the fastest-growing academic field at Cornell University: With a new Department of Statistics and Data Science in the School of Operations Research and Information Engineering (ORIE) in Ithaca, and a two-year Master of Science in Information Systems program at Cornell Tech, Cornell is preparing its students at all levels to stand at the forefront of understanding and implementing big data in a variety of fields—including within AAP. In concert with Cornell Tech, AAP is developing a New York City–based specialization in urban technology, set to begin in fall 2020; and the broader AAP community is using large swathes of data to contextualize research and discern underlying relationships that may aid in art or design—from data mapping and visualization to responding to climate change in northern European cities and improving the lives of renters at risk for displacement in New York City.
Emily Goldman (M.A. HPP ’07, Ph.D. CRP ’16) is the director of the Civic Innovation Fellowship, a program of BetaNYC, which seeks to empower communities to more actively participate in governance and decision-making using open data and civic technology. “The main way we work with big data is that we try to break it down for the people who can make real use of it. One of our first target audiences was community boards,” she said. Each community board—the smallest government agencies in New York City—is primarily composed of volunteers who help make decisions for their neighborhood and act as advisors to city agencies. Goldman and her team created multiple tools to help community boards use data to support their recommendations, one of which is BoardStat. BoardStat collects 311 service requests (311 provides access to nonemergency city services and information about city government programs) and breaks the data down by community board, highlighting trends, hot spots, problematic buildings, top ten complaint types, and more. Tenants Map, which scrapes and visualizes rent-stabilized data, enables the public to see the rent-stabilized building stock, and to visualize housing-related issues over that increasingly vulnerable stock. Mapping heat and hot water service requests over rentstabilized housing, she said, can give an indication of how many rent-stabilized tenants are vulnerable to displacement. Goldman said: “While community boards may hear from residents anecdotally what’s going on in neighborhoods, BoardStat helps them quantify those concerns. They can pull specific information to show the extent and history of a quality of life concern. They can elevate that issue to the council district and use the information to strengthen funding requests in their annual Statement of District Needs.”
Improving Workplace Processes
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Recent graduate Andrés Gutiérrez (B.Arch. ’15, M.S. ’19) used his degrees in architecture and computer graphics to start a company, Comake, focused on improving processes for the modern workplace. “Corporate data is doubling every 14 months, and roughly 80 percent of enterprise workflows are going to be cloud-based in 2020. Put those things together, and it’s easy to understand why we increasingly struggle with information overload and have difficulty accessing the right info at the right time,” Gutiérrez said. Gutiérrez and fellow Cornellian Adler Faulkner ’18 first received support for the idea that would eventually become Comake through Cornell’s eLab accelerator program. After a grant from the National Science Foundation, the pair was able to launch its cloud-based operating system, which consolidates web apps and accounts, as well as the work information within them, including files, messages, tasks, and contacts. The software automatically maps, interrelates, and contextualizes these components of work to create a collective knowledge graph. Comake automatically maps all this relevant information across apps to a given project or person.
Informed Decision-Making and Design
Recognizing that patterns and similarities across projects, people, and teams can lead to valuable insights, Comake gives workplaces the opportunity to analyze these data to understand how people are working, to more easily repurpose knowledge, and to optimize outcomes. “It’s not just about establishing and understanding relationships between pieces of information, but also about using those relationships to help increase value, creativity, and innovation,” Gutiérrez said.
Critically Examining Data in Context A recently published book by Ya n n i L ou k i ssa s (B.Arch. ’99), a former lecturer in the architecture program, explores the relationship between data and place—what Loukissas calls “locality.” All Data Are Local: Thinking Critically in a DataDriven Society emphasizes that data are made in specific conditions often for very specific audiences. Loukissas argues that it is a mistake to think that data can be universally understood without accounting for the contingencies of their creation and the inevitability of bias. “The overriding lesson of the book,” he said, “is to stop thinking about data as data sets. Set implies something complete and internally consistent, which can be transferred anywhere. Instead, we should start thinking about data settings, the places in which data are made, and the conditions in which they are used. We’re in this new era where the dark side of data is revealing itself.” In one example, Loukissas attempted to create a data visualization of records from the New York Public Library. While trying to organize all their records of books, images, and newspapers, Loukissas discovered that the process for cataloging dates varied enormously over the course of the collection’s history. In fact, he found more than 1,700 distinct date formats. “Maybe they only know the century, or it is in Roman numerals, or it includes the printer’s name. This was an early indicator of the heterogeneity of data—rather than a big pile of info, each data point retained cultural artifacts from different practices that we need to learn about and understand.”
Responding to Extreme Weather Events Making the transition from regional scientist to data scientist was a natural step for Scarlett Zuo (Ph.D. RS ’14), who first began collecting raw data on environment economics and learned to parse it using MATLAB. After graduation, she moved to Switzerland and joined CelsiusPro, a Swiss insurtech company that specializes in indexed insurance solutions to mitigate the effects of adverse weather, climate change, and natural catastrophes. Using a combination of data analytic tools, she orchestrated terabytes of weather data from various sources. “The business problem I was trying to solve has two parts. First, farmers, businesses, and other consumers need insurance to protect them from big weather events and natural disasters.
Second, insurance companies need to leverage weather data to set prices,” Zuo said. She helped create a set of products that consume weather data and determine if and how much payout is required, allowing for customized parameters, such as what constituted a day with abnormally high temperatures. Using a drought insurance product as an example, once the parameters of a “heat day” and number of total heat days indicating a drought are set, the product can determine the likelihood of a drought in the insured period, and provide a corresponding insurance payout. Zuo returned to the U.S.—and to Cornell—and is now the lead data engineer for Cornell Research Administration Information Services (RAIS). RAIS manages the IT systems that oversee research compliance and administrative systems at Cornell, such as workflow systems for proposal development, contract negotiation, and research protocol review. Working to consolidate multiple legacy systems into a streamlined single system, Zuo is helping to capture metrics data and integrate compliance and training to give faculty a better proposal development and project management experience.
Learning Ethically Planning Smart Cities With big data comes big responsibility. While urban planning classes are investigating ways to incorporate emerging methodologies into practice, Associate Professor Jennifer Minner also examines the potentially problematic side to data-driven planning, such as using GIS to predict or respond to abandonment. The algorithms these systems use are imperfect—incorporating graffiti, she said, is not a neutral way of detecting where there’s so-called blight, and can actually create the conditions for contemporary redlining. “There are a lot of ethical questions to the use of data,” she said. “I first started teaching a class called Cities, Place, Technology to support students thinking expansively and critically about tech,” helping them to think responsibly about the ethical application of data techniques such as machine learning in city planning. Minner’s area of research combines urban planning with historic preservation and tech. In her class Community Shaping Technologies, she focuses on how technology shapes communities and how communities can have agency in shaping and applying technology. “What I want new planners and preservationists to do is think about how open data is, how is it used in the public interest, and how we ensure that we’re helping with the equitable preservation and planning of communities.” Ryan Thomas, a third-year CRP Ph.D. candidate, also researches the role of technology in decision making and planning. He is a teaching assistant for Stephan Schmidt’s Advanced Topics in GIS class, where students begin to use large data sets and application programming interfaces (APIs). Many students, Thomas included, are interested in planning to advance sustainability. Because of this factor, the use of scientific data sets is becoming more of an everyday skill set as future planners will need to use environmental models to decide how to locate urban developments in areas that are safe from hazards like sea-level rise or wildfires.
Creating the “Good Office Score”
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By Ye Chan “Daniel” Park (B.Arch. ’20) In January of 2019, I worked as an environmental design intern at the New York City office of Kohn Pedersen Fox (KPF). Unlike a typical design internship, my task was to retrospectively assess KPF’s projects through the lenses of environmental impact and occupant comfort using parametric simulation and data analysis workflows. Under the supervision of Carlos Cerezo Davila—the environmental design director at KPF— I specifically analyzed the performance of office spaces at one of KPF’s most recent projects, 10 and 30 Hudson Yards. More and more firms are realizing that environmental considerations throughout the entire design process have a significant impact on not only the energy footprint of a project but its occupant satisfaction levels as well. Recent advancements in computing power combined with more accessible software and heightened interest in satisfying environmental guidelines have made terms such as “daylighting simulation” and “energy modeling” commonplace names in many offices.
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“There’s a growing call for incorporating big data into the curriculum,” Thomas said, adding that there are two responses: overwhelming excitement and major skepticism. “I think that both responses are valid and important. Planning and big data practitioners over the next several years will be grappling with the need to account for different levels of access to technology, computer literacy, issues of surveillance, and privacy, while embracing new technologies.”
Considering the Artificial Intelligence of Architecture Assistant Professor of the Practice Martin Miller, architecture, is exploring the ideas of big data and artificial intelligence (AI) in his third-semester graduate studio, exploring artificial physic-based simulations, finite element analysis, evolutionary solvers, and neural networks. The students are tasked with analyzing data from an entire city rather than a particular site, working as a collective to make sense of the vast amounts of information available on everything from food networks to police reports and transportation data. In spring 2019, they created a collection of 140 maps including Citi Bike minute-on-minute animations. In the fall, his studio shifted focus to San Francisco and began to overlap the data sets to see what sort of patterns emerge and use these patterns to determine need and circumstance for architectural intervention. “While many may think that the AI tools will take over and run design and decisions will be decided by algorithms, this is just not true,” Miller said. “I can delegate that decisionmaking power to a computer and give it my opinion on particular conditions and how to react when facing those millions of turning points.”
1 Tenants Map, a tool developed by BetaNYC, enables the public to visualize housingrelated issues. 2 Sidewalk cafés were among the city data mapped by Martin Miller’s graduate studio.
However, it is often difficult to achieve a good balance between different and often contradictory environmental and occupant-comfort agendas. For example, while the usage of interior blinds to block direct sunlight will reduce overheating and the risk of visual glare, it will also dramatically decrease the amount of natural daylight available in the interior and prevent views to the outside. With recent software, it is now possible to generate and quantitatively evaluate hundreds and even thousands of design variants to objectively assess which designs perform best across the most criteria. My project began with the understanding that, in most cases, it is simply not feasible to perfectly satisfy all environmental and occupant comfort goals at the same time. That being said, I devised a Grasshopper simulation workflow that ties together the parametric evaluation of daylighting performance, thermal comfort, and quality of views of a space, rather than treating them as separate simulations. In the end, I quantified the result into a “Good Office Score” that can be projected onto a floor plan to help the designer and potential clients understand the desirability of different locations throughout the floor plan. While the research still requires further studies and calibrations with a larger number of sample data, the proof-ofconcept workflow demonstrates that such simulations are not only critical for informing the design process with objective data but potentially beneficial in marketing a project as both “green” and “human-friendly.”
Informed Decision-Making and Design
Meeting Environmental Demands on the Building and Urban Scale Assistant Professor Timur Dogan directs the Environmental Systems Lab, where he creates software that combines physical data—such as how much sunlight a building receives and how warm the building is as a result—and behavioral data—how people interface with the building and when did it become hot enough that they opened a window—to simulate a building’s energy use. These research outcomes aim to empower architects and urban designers to develop more sustainable and livable design proposals. Dogan’s latest work in evidence-based design is creating software to model the attractiveness and comfort of outdoor spaces in cities, which may become increasingly relevant in a warming climate. Studies show that the use of outdoor space is correlated with outdoor comfort, so Dogan uses a new outdoor comfort metric called the Universal Thermal Climate Index while examining city block data from New York City.
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Studying data from Google Places, Dogan can model the walkability of a neighborhood and alter certain design parameters to add buildings, footpaths, parks, and cafés, or even reroute streets to simulate what space utilization could look like and determine how to meet the city’s demands. “If you plan with outdoor comfort in mind, biking and walking become much more feasible as a mode of transportation,” he said.
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Display Mapping Technology in Visual Art
Corporate data is doubling every 14 months, and roughly 80 percent of enterprise workflows are going to be cloud-based in 2020. Put those things together, and it’s easy to understand why we increasingly struggle with information overload and have difficulty accessing the right info at the right time. —ANDRÉS GUTIÉRREZ (B.ARCH. ’15, M.S. ’19)
Mapping projects that incorporate data is a specialty of transdisciplinary artist Jaret Vadera, assistant professor of the practice in the Department of Art. “I think a lot about how meaning is generated through process and how tech influences perception, and I’m very interested in the relationship between noise and signal. There is a fine line between abstraction and representation, and this applies to a number of different technologies,” Vadera said. Much of Vadera’s work deals with data, translation, power, and the ways in which algorithms and imaging systems shape and control perceptions. One recent installation, THIS THAT AND THE THIRD, integrated visual aesthetics of infographics and Rorschach tests, produced in black vinyl on a white wall. “For each one of those forms, I started with a sentence or phrase, often a mistranslation, an idea that’s harder to depict or represent in a finite way. I do a search using a search engine, find images that correspond with each one of those words, subtract color, and amalgamate them,” he said. The end result is a combination of organic and technological forms. Vadera then plots the image’s server origin on an invisible world map that ties into each one of the forms. In his classes, he said: “The idea of mapping often feels, or is perceived as, very static. But using mapping is a way of thinking about translation, understanding how translation works, and giving visual literacy to the students in a different way.”
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Research at the Intersection of Architecture and Science
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3 Using the Universal Thermal Climate Index, Timur Dogan modeled walkability in New York City.
4 Jaret Vadera’s THIS THAT AND THE THIRD integrated visual aesthetics of infographics and Rorschach tests, produced in black vinyl on a white wall.
5 A view of the inside of Ada. photo / Jake Knapp for Microsoft 6 Ada installed in building 99 on Microsoft’s Redmond, Washington, campus. photo / Jake Knapp for Microsoft
To learn more about the people and projects included in this story, visit aap.cornell.edu/big-data.
For nearly 15 years, Associate Professor Jenny Sabin’s research has focused on data-driven design, visualization, and simulation across disciplinary boundaries. She continues to investigate the intersection of architecture and science, both on and off campus. As the current designer-in-residence for Microsoft Research, she and her team at Jenny Sabin Studio worked on Ada, a year-long project with researchers to open the first built structure driven in real-time by artificial intelligence. “It draws from a massive database of live sentiment data,” Sabin said. “There’s a network of cameras sensing people’s reactions, which in turn reflect individual and collective sentiment throughout the building.” Sabin, who is the associate dean for design initiatives, says that discussing data—how we’re working with it, visualizing it—has been essential to her individual work and collaborations. “It’s a bridge for me and my teams in my lab at Cornell and at my practice to collaborate with material scientists, engineers, and biologists at an important meeting point. Big data is completely changing how science is done. Science is no longer solely about repeating discrete events to target particular results. Instead, we are sifting and searching for trends and behavior through data,” she said. “We’ve been successful in applying our design skills to the scientific process. It’s an amazing point of connection.” By Jennifer Wholey
Voices: Faculty
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Coincidence, Computer Graphics, and Connections By Donald Greenberg
Since 1966, Donald Greenberg, the Jacob Gould Schurman Professor of Computer Graphics, has been researching and teaching computer graphics, specializing in real-time realistic image generation, color science, and computer-aided architectural design for the Department of Architecture, computer graphics classes in the Department of Computer Science, and technology strategy in the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business. In a recent conversation, he related a remarkable series of coincidences involving I. M. Pei, simulations for the Apollo Lunar mission, and a 1974 cover story in Scientific American. But it’s the connections to and contributions from colleagues— and especially students—that Greenberg emphasizes. Crediting them for pioneering achievements in the nascent field of computer graphics and design is a hallmark of Greenberg’s remembrances of the early days.
Many years ago, when I was just beginning to dabble in computer graphics, I had several wonderful coincidences that changed my professional and academic life. At that time, I was inspired by the technology at General Electric’s (GE) simulation laboratory in Syracuse, which was being used to train the astronauts to dock the Lunar Landing Vehicle with the Apollo spacecraft. The first coincidence was that the GE lab was run by Rod Rougelot ’55, an electrical engineer whom I first met at a prefreshman orientation camp in September 1951. We ran that camp together in our senior year [1955], and remained friends. Rod allowed me to use the GE lab facilities beginning around 1967–68. The second coincidence involved [the late] I. M. Pei, whose New York architectural firm, Pei Cobb Freed & Partners, included John L. Sullivan III (B.Arch. ’62). Through Sullivan’s instigation, I met with Pei in the early 1970s at his New York office and showed him pictures of some of the projects we had done with the computer modeling and perspective view program. Pei kindly gave me his firm’s design drawings, and the plans and elevations for the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art. We used the drawings to accurately model the yet-to-be-built building. I still have the data on IBM punch cards. The third coincidence was that I was able to teach a fourth-year option design studio in the early 1970s and attract 12 undergraduates and one graduate student who were willing to risk taking a design class in a new area that was highly technical. They had never used a computer but had to represent the 3D geometry in a format that the Sigma 5 computer could understand. Because of the complexity, we had to modify GE’s algorithms. It was the courage, curiosity, and
creativity of these students for which I am forever indebted, and I feel very fortunate to be able to maintain friendships with them a half-century later. Then, in May 1974, Scientific American published an article that I wrote with the computer-generated model of the Johnson Museum on its cover. This undoubtedly influenced a decision by the National Science Foundation (NSF) to grant significant funding to establish the Program of Computer Graphics as an interdisciplinary center at Cornell, because I was able to show them a preprint of the cover. Since the subject of computer graphics was not accepted by either the departments of Architecture or Computer Science at that time, university president Dale Corson was really responsible for the decision to establish the program. I still consider Dale to be my “academic godfather.” In 1984, we were the first design school to teach CAD in architecture. The same algorithms derived for rendering computer graphics images are used for the curved surfaces of Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum in Bilboa, the simulation of the ivory-billed woodpecker’s flight, and aortic aneurysm repair at Cleveland Clinic. In a sense, we are “a technique in search of a problem,” leading to important interdisciplinary challenges in design and computation. The future is exciting, which is why I want to keep teaching our creative students. 1 From left: Marc Levoy ’78 (B.Arch. ’76), John Nicolls (B.Arch. ’73, M.P.S. ’01), Stephen Snyder (B.Arch. ’73), Greenberg, David Montanari (B.Arch. ’73), William Cunningham (B.Arch. ’73), Nicholas Weingarten ’77 (B.Arch. ’74), and Alfreda Radzicki (B.Arch. ’73) at a 50th anniversary celebration of the computer graphics program at Cornell held in San Francisco in April 2017. 2 The May 1974 cover of Scientific American showing the computer-generated model of the Johnson Museum.
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In February, Sarah Zhang (B.F.A. ’20) and fellow art students at AAP NYC visited the Skyscraper Museum in New York City. photo / Lauren Peters (B.F.A. ’21)
AAP NYC
Art at AAP NYC: Redefining, Viewing, and Making By Edith Fikes
“The most obvious gift the AAP NYC program offers to both students and faculty is the inexhaustible resource of New York City as location and context,” says AAP NYC visiting faculty Linda Norden, a curator and writer. “The program hinges on each faculty member’s ability to engage the city’s vast range of accessible art, its great number of working artists and curators, and the insistent presence of the city itself.” An opportunity for students to deepen their study of art in their second year at Cornell, the semester for undergraduate B.F.A. students at AAP NYC is immersive in both the everyday life and culture of New York City. In spring 2019, a small group of six students spent the semester in the city; in addition to working in the lower Manhattan studios, they visited shows at galleries and museums and talked with curators and working artists. “My time in the city redefined the 21st-century artist for me,” says So Yon (Ariel) Noh (B.F.A. ’21). “The artists we learned about and spoke to were also scholars, activists, dreamers, and realists. They did not shut themselves in their studios. They were connected with the world and stayed politically, socioeconomically, and culturally engaged. They had a clear cause and a voice, and visual art was the vehicle of communication they found to be most effective. Studying in Ithaca can distance you from where you started with art and leave you questioning what it is you want to say with your work. Physically being at the center of the art world took me back to that place while moving me forward with heightened awareness.” The Department of Art appoints four locally based faculty as instructors at AAP NYC so that each can use their personal knowledge to guide students in a way that Norden describes as complementary and kinetic. “The particular synergy we have and the ways our interests, strengths, and assignments complement each other has been a kind of kismet,” she says. “Rarely have I experienced a more felicitous divvying of tasks or mutual appreciation and respect among teaching colleagues. If it sounds like a bit of a lovefest, it is—and I think the students feel this, as well as the real substance and challenge of the New York City semester.” Norden teaches a professional practice class, which she “packs full” with material and field trips in order to galvanize and particularize discussions within the group and with various curators about the way art is presented and informs the
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viewer’s experience. Jane Benson, a Brooklyn-based artist, teaches critical practice, where students meet artists and discuss their life and work within social and political contexts. Masha Panteleyeva brings her perspective as an art and architectural historian to the many different angles and points of contact students find as they study and navigate New York City. And Beverly Semmes, a New York City–based artist, gives “koan-like” assignments in the studio, where students relate what they learn to the work they make. Students attending the spring 2019 semester in New York City included Ji Weon Chung (B.F.A. ’21), Noh, Abikha Pawa (B.F.A. ’21), Lauren Park (B.F.A. ’20), Lauren Peters (B.F.A. ’21), and Boman (Sarah) Zhang (B.F.A. ’20). “I worked in different media and built a stronger conceptual basis for my work in New York City,” adds Noh. “Coming back to Ithaca, I’m excited to apply these new ideas and realizations in the studio to produce more work worth sharing with the world.”
Cornell in Rome
Preliminary Perceptions of a Planner By Nathan Revor (B.S. URS ’20) Cornell in Rome blog entry March 25, 2019
Subways are funny, disorienting things. Riders might head down some steps in the pulsating heart of a city’s historic core and, after a crowded and shaky journey through near darkness, ascend identical steps into a new world. Such was our experience when a fellow urban planner and I popped out of the ground at Arco di Travertino station. We were there to complete one of our very first assignments for the Rome Neighborhood Studies workshop: navigate a neighborhood we’d only seen through Google Maps with nothing but a bare-bones itinerary, limited language proficiency, and fully charged iPhones. Without landmarks, an obvious grid, views back toward the city, or a professor to follow, we were planted at the peak of the stairs for a solid couple of minutes attempting to figure out where we were supposed to go and how we were going to get there. We were aliens, dressed differently than any of the pedestrian traffic and more than once completing an about-face right after slowing and apprehensively checking our screens. The beginning of the journey demonstrated to us yet again the dangers of only understanding urban space in plan. Our first objective was to enter a nearby park, a space our phones two-dimensionally illustrated to us as green, vast, and impossible to miss but which, in reality, was tucked behind an intricate neighborhood. Finding the hidden entrance among these houses had the effect of introducing us to the nonhistoric core of Rome. The periphery varies greatly in design and density, with this particular neighborhood constructed in a very informal manner, including self-built housing, collections of car parts, and a variety of potted plants. Cats and grocery bags roamed the dusty streets, and Virgin Mary statues sat in yards wrapped around houses with several types of facings and enough additions to render what might have once been the core of the home invisible. Most of Rome, peripheral or otherwise, is like this, stitched together from architectural palimpsests eclectically embellished by generations of users,
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some more egotistical than others, all messes of materiality and style constituting a physical identity that exists as a unique whole. Many neighborhoods adhere to the theme. This historic center just gets the most attention. Eventually, we did make it to the park, and it was astonishing. Much like exiting the subway into a jarring new landscape, we left the various relatively enclosed spaces from before for a vast natural scene. We could see all the way to the mountains in the far distance. While the neighborhoods preceding and succeeding our time in the park were characterized by the typical urban sensory experiences of siren sounds, graffiti patterns, concrete textures, and visually busy sightlines, this space was open and quiet. Our eyes were guided out to the distance by aqueducts that only terminated in hills and horizon. The rhythmic alternation from tight urban space to infinite parkland was optimal and almost necessary for the neighborhood, and its success as a space was evidenced by the many users, human and canine, traversing its gravel paths and moss-covered ruins. Our journey concluded with a short walk through some dense residential streets that culminated in a stop at Mercato Tuscolano III, a completely enclosed space memorable above all else for its movement—shoppers scavenging for the right goods and vendors grabbing the attention of potential clients, the whole scene washed in the noise of hundreds of conversations atop the punchy colors of fruit and advertisements. This movement was stimulating for the bystander and somewhat frustrating for the mover—but was altogether an exhilarating experience in a part of Rome most visitors would never know existed. The periphery is where we’ll be working this semester, studying two neighborhoods and their inhabitants while focusing especially on urban agriculture. Living a block from the Pantheon is definitely nice, but I’ll be looking forward to our Thursdays a few more kilometers outward. 1 From left: Sarah Zhang (B.F.A. ’20), Ji Weon Chung (B.F.A. ’21), Ariel Noh (B.F.A. ’21), and Visiting Critic Linda Norden at the Richard Artschwager exhibition at the Gagosian Gallery in Chelsea. photo / Lauren Peters (B.F.A. ’21)
2 From left: Ji Weon Chung (B.F.A. ’21), Lauren Park (B.F.A. ’20), Visiting Critic Beverly Semmes, Sarah Zhang (B.F.A. ’20), and Ariel Noh (B.F.A. ’21) work on ceramics during a collaborative studio session. photo / Lauren Peters (B.F.A. ’21) 3 A view of the Parco Regionale dell’Appia Antica. photo / Nathan Revor (B.S. URS ’20)
Inside the Department
Territories of Investigation
Inquiry into four interrelated Territories of Investigation (TIs)—Architecture and Representation (A+R), Architecture and Ecology (A+E), Architecture and Discourse (A+D), and Architecture and Urbanism (A+U)—is a unique and defining characteristic of the Department of Architecture’s post-professional degree program in advanced architectural design. These TIs offer opportunities across all programs for investigating
pertinent design concerns, practices, and technologies through intensive, analytical frameworks. Advanced design studios and seminars specific to each TI address architectural and urban problems through critical and theoretical lenses informed by emerging technologies, material explorations, design research, urban networks, cultural production, performance-driven design, and adaptive systems, among other approaches.
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OPTION STUDIO Commons in a Rural Dream: Universal Basic Income Cookbook and the New Domestic Landscape FACULTY Sam Chermayeff and Danica Selem PROJECT Communal Objects by Bennet Adamson (B.Arch. ’20), Omar Dairi (B.Arch. ’20), Samuel Gomez (B.Arch. ’20), Claire Guffey (B.Arch. ’20), Aileen Han (B.Arch. ’20), Zhengxi (Keren) Hou (B.Arch. ’20), Isa Brañas Jarque (M.Arch. ’19), Jun Youp (Ted) Kim (B.Arch. ’19), Dylan Manley (B.Arch. ’20), Maureen O’Brien (M.Arch. ’19), Junsik Oh (B.Arch. ’20), Ziqing (Becky) Xu (B.Arch. ’20)
A+D
Architecture and Discourse
T heory, criticism, publishing, cultural production, design research, history, contemporaneity
Architecture North Light
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A+E
Architecture and Ecology
Chimney Stack Sustainable
practices, soft infrastructures, materials research, environmental simulation, computational design, digital fabrication, performance-driven design
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Commons in a Rural Dream (previous page): What are we beyond a force for labor? So much of history is a story for capital gain. The studio posits that universal basic income is the next path to independence. Money replaces the land as the resource from which we thrive, think, and create. Paradoxically, this change reconnects us to land, a resource that we continue to have in abundance. We can begin to imagine what a world without labor would look like. The idea of the center and edge condition, which defines the contemporary metropolis, will also change. Rural environments may become as valid as urban ones, from a cost point of view. And while cities force a certain communal experience, rural living doesn’t. We can reimagine the rural living landscape and the idea of private and public, creating the specific individual in relationship to the new commons.
A+E
Project Zero [or Less] (above): Applying sustainable strategies to an existing design practice is not enough; architecture cannot continue as we know it. Project Zero investigates a return to the first principles of ecological thinking. By rethinking the normative approach to site responsiveness and to the design process itself, the studio aims to produce an architecture that not only behaves sustainably but also communicates the fact that it does—in other words, to produce a new ecological architectural language. The ability to embed environmental modeling tools directly into the design process presents a paradigm shift toward integrated and intelligent design processes. Architecture is an organism that directly responds to the stimuli of its surrounding environment in both its form and function. The surrounding environment, in turn, is semipermanently transformed by the new construction.
A+U
The Sectional City (page 26): Built on rugged terrain and situated at the confluence of the Yangtze and Jialing rivers, Chongqing is geographically compelling and urbanistically complex. Mapping strategies investigated and revealed the stratification of the city’s fabric and infrastructural systems. The studio explores the spatial, cultural, and infrastructural stratification of traditional and contemporary urban city fabric in Chongqing, developing alternate systems of urban housing and innovative construction methods to negotiate the city’s unique spatial, topographic, and urban milieu.
Equinox
25 Program 1 ENTRY 2 CAFÉ 3 LECTURE/MEETING 4 LABS 5 OFFICE 6 METHANE STORAGE/GENERATOR 7 ANAEROBIC DIGESTER
OPTION STUDIO Project Zero [or Less] FACULTY Timur Dogan and Caroline O’Donnell PROJECT Swaying Udders by Christopher Yi (M.Arch. ’19)
Winter December ’21
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The Anthropocene Style (page 27): Architecture and urban design are traditionally primarily based on climate, comfort, and health issues, as is evident in the treatises of Vitruvius or Alberti, who write about wind and solar exposures, humidity, and temperature rates. These fundamental causes of urban design are ignored in the 20th century thanks to the enormous use of fossil energy by pumps, motors, refrigerators, heating systems, and air conditioning that all contribute to today’s greenhouse effect and global warming. Architecture and urban planning must consider the climatic foundations of their discipline. Working with climate, wind, heat, humidity, evaporation, convection, and conduction is the renewed task of 21st-century architects to build sustainable climates.
A+R
Computational Design and Representation (front cover): Material mappings represented through line drawings and renderings of urban data sets serve as a jumping-off point for the creation of analytical mapping techniques that reveal new urban relationships. A range of contemporary digital design techniques is explored through the lens of speculative intervention proposals and urban analysis. Parametric and feedback systems are created to deploy spatial algorithms and produce design proposals for a temporary structure.
A+R
OPTION STUDIO Computational Design and Representation FACULTY Fleet Hower PROJECT Underwater by Olivia Calalo (M.S. AAD ’23)
Architecture and Representation
E merging technologies, drawing fields, digital and generative design, new cartographies, media spaces, architectural publications and exhibitions, theories of representation
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OPTION STUDIO The Sectional City FACULTY Leslie Lok PROJECT No-Stop Chongqing by Jing Wang (B.Arch. ’20)
A+U
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U rban geography, typological studies, urban theory, networks, infrastructures, urban imaging, ecological urbanism
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OPTION STUDIO The Anthropocene Style FACULTY Philippe Rahm and Sarosh Anklesaria PROJECT Air Pollution by Seung Won (Felix) Seo (M.S. AAD ’19)
A+E
Architecture and Ecology
ustainable practices, soft infrastructures, materials S research, environmental simulation, computational design, digital fabrication, performance-driven design
Inside the Department
Associate Professor Carl Ostendarp (left), and art department chair Michael Ashkin (second from right), view work by Sabine Strauch (B.F.A. ’19) during final B.F.A. thesis reviews in Tjaden Hall’s Experimental Gallery.
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On Exhibition I’d like to focus on an aspect of exhibitions other than the professional significance for artists or the importance viewers find in witnessing cultural moments. Instead, I want to look at how the proliferation of promotional platforms through technological means can contribute to a false familiarity regarding artworks and art in general. The digital age has allowed artists and industry professionals to share work in ever more ways and means. This increased visibility, exposure, and access have also narrowed the sense of margin between knowing about something and knowing something. Visiting an exhibition or seeing an artwork in person is an opportunity for a body of artworks or an artwork to leave the information and knowledge realm (the “knowing about”) and, for the viewer, to possibly create a relationship with the shared information and knowledge (“knowing”). When you encounter artwork in person or see it in its original specifications, you have a stronger awareness not only of what comes across but also the way in which it has been mediated. Although one can’t truly escape from the parameters and the limitations of the platform in which something is presented, the parameters are much more prescriptive and deceptive when it comes to social media and news, which privilege certain formats and define the speed in which an image, experience, or idea is consumed. One example of this is the influence of social media on political life, where certain algorithms can be manipulated to control outcomes. Works that comply or benefit from these formats gain more traction than those that resist or deny them. The works that don’t easily comply with these new formats could be seen as being difficult, outmoded, or even antisocial, but an artwork can never be completely antagonistic to the notion of relationships—it needs to arrive at the relationship on a set of terms with which it can agree. What is most interesting and powerful about an artwork is that it is something that cannot be fully described, represented, or used. It is layered, complex, and often contradictory. The exhibition can reveal the way in which the representation, promotion, and anticipation surrounding the work may have simplified or instrumentalized it. The exhibition can also demonstrate the distance of the work from the text used to describe it, the need for it to be accepted and / or liked, and even the way an artist intended it to be. In the revealing of this complexity, we are given a chance to reassert our own presence, as our own thoughts and responses become part of the equation of the exhibition. In an essay titled “Valéry Proust Museum,” Adorno says, “In a sense, works of art return home when they become elements of the observer’s subjective stream of consciousness.” In this sense, the exhibition is an opportunity for the works to travel and to live while generating relationships to meanings and widening the set of ethical questions. By Maria Park, associate professor of art and director of AAP exhibitions and events
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1 Art assistant professor of the practice Joanna Malinowska and C. T. Jasper, installation view of The Emperor’s Canary (2017–18), two gramophones with audio recordings, dimensions variable, from Opera as the World group exhibition at Centre PompidouMetz.
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2 Nellie Congdon (B.F.A. ’19), installation view of Go Figure thesis exhibition (2019), Experimental Gallery. 3 Associate professor of art Carl Ostendarp, installation view of Corruption #2 (2018), acrylic on canvas, 35" x 45 5/8", from Quiet March to a Warring Song group exhibition at Shaker Museum, Mount Lebanon, curated by Amie Cunat (M.F.A. ’12). 4 Uncle Boy’s Landscaping, the practice of Irene Song (B.F.A. ’20) and Curtis Ho (B.F.A. ’20), installation view of Toward a Quieter Life (2019), interactive installation and performance, Experimental Gallery. 5 Jennifer Cecere (B.F.A. ’73), installation view of Cat Throne (1980) and Chandelier (1980) from Pattern, Crime & Decoration group exhibition at Consortium Museum. 6 Nadia Chernova (B.A./ B.F.A. ’20), A group of rapidly finished paintings, largest painting is 36" x 48", from Good Old Neon solo exhibition (2019), Olive Tjaden Gallery.
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7 Brice Peterson (M.F.A. ’19), Salutations (2019), aluminum trays, polyresin, plastic display objects, dimensions variable, from Six White Cadillacs thesis exhibition, Bibliowicz Family Gallery. 8 Joel Perlman (B.F.A. ’65), Roundhouse (2018), stainless steel, 168" x 64" x 72", private commission installed at The Scalpel, 52 Lime Street, London.
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9 Na Chainkua Reindorf (M.F.A. ’17), Altar (2018–19), two sculptures, glass beads, nylon thread, cotton thread, cotton fabric, 264" x 12" x 12" each, from Shrine: At the Intersection of Object and Spectacle, solo exhibition, Anthony Brunelli Fine Arts. 10 Libby Rosa (M.F.A. ’19), installation view of Sky Woman thesis exhibition (2019), Bibliowicz Family Gallery. 11 Sophie Galowitz (B.F.A. ’20), Sequence from an Imaginary Western (2018), flashe and gouache on paper, from Cold Blood solo exhibition, Olive Tjaden Gallery. 12 Ciara Stack (M.F.A. ’20), first knees, then hips, then feet (2019), ceramic, eyelets, chain, acrylic, 17" x 12" x 4-2/5", from Where’s your head at? solo exhibition, Experimental Gallery.
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Inside the Department
“Changing the World, Changing the Conversation, Changing Lives” Introduction by Jeffrey Chusid, chair of the Department of City and Regional Planning (CRP)
These phrases sum up the national and global impacts that CRP has had over the past 84 years. A small but powerful department, we exercise our influence by being involved with issues central to life in the world today—by making connections with programs across the university and the globe, and by seeking to be a leader in thought and in practice. In the next few pages, the reader will find examples of engaged learning and research, exciting new intellectual contributions, and ways in which our students extend their education beyond the classroom. In any single year, CRP faculty and students are likely to be involved with some two dozen communities around the region— and the globe—through coursework, contracts, and funded research. Applied scholarship is central to design education, and to the progressive mission that has always marked our department. That is true whether in the undergraduate URS program, or the graduate programs in planning, regional science, and preservation. Research and coursework at CRP are necessarily broad, befitting academic programs that seek to produce well-rounded practitioners. Still, there is no question that certain topics are increasingly the focus of both faculty and students. Primary among these are climate change and social inequality. Also critical are the challenges of revitalizing the “Rust Belt” cities of the postindustrial Western world, and the explosively growing cities of the Global South. All of these ideas and more can be found in the work that follows.
ABOVE Amsterdam-Food Security and Food Justice is a current Design Connect project in Amsterdam, New York. From right, project leader Sasha Anemone (M.R.P. ’20); Alberto Beltran, director of housing development for Centro Civico; and Bernadette Twente, president of Grow Amsterdam NY Inc. discuss a community garden and green space.
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Engaged Coursework and Research Coastal Climate Adaptation Workshop
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Planning for Climate Change: Field Study in the Kingdom of Tonga For more than a quarter-century, sea levels around the low-lying oceanic nation of Tonga have risen about six millimeters annually, nearly double the global average, according to the U.N. Development Programme. The nation is an archipelago comprising four main island groups inhabited by more than 100,000 residents, and coastal erosion has carved nearly 40 meters off some of the larger islands. During a spring trip to Tonga led by Visiting Lecturer Gerard A. Finin (M.R.P. ’85, Ph.D. ’91), students spoke with the nation’s leaders and residents to conduct field studies. From that research, the students prepared a planning report with mitigation recommendations for the Kingdom of Tonga’s Office of Climate Change. The students saw firsthand that the most severe ramifications of global warming appear to be approaching sooner than originally thought. Said Finin, “It became clear through meetings with parliamentarians, government ministries, civil society groups, and private sector representatives that there is insufficient planning in terms of adaptation and forward-thinking mitigation measures to prepare for the major problems that Pacific Islanders are likely to experience in the years ahead.” A second workshop examining climate change planning in the South Pacific is planned for the fall semester to continue the work begun in the spring.
In spring 2019, Assistant Professor Linda Shi taught a Coastal Adaptation to Climate Change workshop to help three coastal towns (Hull, Hingham, and Cohasset) in Massachusetts evaluate strategies for adapting to sea-level rise. Past research by Shi and Andrew Varuzzo (M.R.P. ’18) found that cities’ fiscal reliance on property tax revenues can be a major barrier to adaptation efforts that prevent or reduce coastal development. Yet, few cities have considered how adaptation choices affect cities’ finances, a key concern among elected officials. The workshop asked students to assess towns’ vulnerability to coastal flooding and evaluate the fiscal impacts of elevating houses and roads, retreating from flooded areas and building more densely inland, and restoring the coastline to become part of the Boston Harbor Islands National and State Park. Eleven B.S. URS, M.R.P., and M.P.A. students conducted extensive background, spatial, and fiscal analysis; visited the towns and presented to local stakeholders; and developed new methodologies to connect fiscal and climate adaptive land-use planning. Their findings demonstrated to local leaders the need to plan regionally for climate change and inform metro Boston’s upcoming vision planning for the region’s 101 municipalities.
1 Students spoke with residents and officials in Tonga about climate impacts to the island nation. photo / Lucas Raley (B.S. URS ’18, M.R.P. ’20) 2 Students conducted research in Hull, Hingham, and Cohasset, Massachusetts, to evaluate strategies for adapting to sea-level rise. 3 Participants in Stephan Schmidt’s workshop in Tanzania.
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Spatial Data Analysis Training in Moshi, Tanzania Geographical Information Systems (GIS) are becoming more common in subSaharan Africa as a tool for monitoring, evaluation, and analysis, and providing greater legitimacy to decision making by individuals, institutions, and organizations. However, researchers, officials, and practitioners often do not have the necessary skills or access to technology to take advantage of available data. This problem is exacerbated in developing countries, which have an extremely limited number of professionals capable of effectively using GIS and, more importantly, teaching it to the next generation of practitioners. Overcoming some of these challenges has been the purpose of spatial data training and development workshops organized by Associate Professor Stephan Schmidt. Since 2013, Schmidt has been offering summer geospatial workshops every other year at the Kilimanjaro Christian Medical College in Moshi, Tanzania, in conjunction with the Cornell Global Health Program and a number of other in-country partners. The goal of the program is to equip participating organizations and institutions with trained staff who can better incorporate spatial data into their monitoring and evaluation programs. Over the years, previous attendees have been hired to assist with running the workshop, including preparing culturally appropriate instructional materials, leading instruction, and helping to organize the field excursion. In 2020, current CRP Ph.D. student Ryan Thomas will assist and contribute to the design of test survey instruments for the workshop and facilitate sessions on spatial statistics and mobile phone data collection. Following the workshop, Thomas will work with a team of enumerators to conduct a household survey in flood-prone areas of Moshi to investigate the relationship between flood-risk perception and household flood mitigation behavior.
City and Regional Planning
Restoration of St. Roch Market, New Orleans Following Hurricane Katrina’s swath of destruction across New Orleans and the Gulf Coast in 2005, then CRP department chair Ken Reardon spearheaded a multipronged effort to help the affected communities. Over spring break 2006, CRP students and faculty traveled to New Orleans, helping to clean out homes damaged by flooding and mold. Students also identified longer-term projects aimed at helping the region rebound. Working with leaders of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), the team selected the St. Roch Market as an ideal rehabilitation project. Built in 1875, the market, though periodically remodeled in the decades since, was still the most historically intact remnant of the city’s once-thriving public market system. It was a social and economic hub for the St. Roch neighborhood and housed a variety of food vendors and small restaurants before the hurricane. After researching the building’s history in Tulane University’s archives, the building’s historical significance and former beauty became clear. Under the aegis of two historic preservation planning courses—Work Weekend and Measured Drawings—students led by Associate Professor Jeffrey Chusid got to work.
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Students prepared extensive photo and hand-drawn documentation, a historic structure report, reuse studies, and a small exhibit on the building that led to a number of individuals and groups’ involvement with the restoration. It took more than seven years, however, before the city and a developer came to agreement on a plan to restore the vacant building. A little more than a decade after the building closed, the St. Roch Market reopened as a food hall in a space restored to its glory days of the early 20th century. Today, the market has catalyzed redevelopment throughout its neighborhood and is a new old treasure for New Orleans.
Analysis of 15 cities shows that vast segments of the urban population in the Global South lack access to safe, reliable, and affordable water. On average, almost half of all households in the studied cities lacked access to piped utility water. Excerpt from “Unaffordable and Undrinkable: Rethinking Urban Water Access in the Global South,” coauthored by Victoria Beard
Intellectual Contributions Victoria Beard: Unaffordable and Undrinkable In 2015, UNICEF and the World Health Organization reported that over 90 percent of the world’s population used improved drinking water sources. But new research suggests the indicators used by UNICEF/WHO grossly overestimated the state of water access, especially in cities of the Global South. Analysis of 15 cities shows that vast segments of the urban population in the Global South lack access to safe, reliable, and affordable water. On average, almost half of all households in the studied cities lacked access to piped utility water. The new analysis featured in “Unaffordable and Undrinkable: Rethinking Urban Water Access in the Global South,” coauthored by Professor Victoria Beard, associate dean of research initiatives, also illustrates that piped utility water is the
least expensive option for most households. But reliability is crucial. Among those households that were connected to piped water in the analyzed cities, most received intermittent service, which results in contaminated water. Households that are not connected rely on self-provision or private water vendors, which are up to 50 times more expensive than public water. The paper argues that decades of attempts to increase the private sector’s role in water provision and to corporatize water utilities have not adequately improved access—especially for the urban underserved—and have led to issues of affordability and regularity/reliability being ignored. The paper explores what cities can do to ensure more equitable access to safe, reliable, and affordable water, while facing down major trends affecting water access, including population growth, degraded and depleted water sources,
Visit wri.org/wri-citiesforall/ publication/unaffordable-andundrinkable-rethinking-urbanwater-access-global-south to download the full paper.
and climate change. It highlights four key action areas for cities to improve water access: extend the formal piped water network, address context-specific causes of intermittent water service, pursue diverse strategies to make water affordable with special considerations for low-income consumers, and support informal settlement upgrading. This is the sixth thematic paper of World Resources Institute’s f lagship World Resources Report (WRR), Towards a More Equal City, a series of 15 papers that examines if equitable access to core urban services can help achieve higher economic productivity and better environmental quality for the city.
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4 Before and after: The St. Roch Market reopened about a decade after Hurricane Katrina as a food hall and catalyzed redevelopment throughout its neighborhood.
5 Led by Associate Professor Neema Kudva, the Nilgiris Field Learning Center brings together Cornell faculty strengths in research and teaching across various disciplines. 6 Brooklyn: The Once and Future City by Thomas J. Campanella.
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Nilgiris Field Learning Center (NFLC)
work with indigenous communities in the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve in South India. The NFLC allows the Keystone In a recent article titled “Slow Conservation Foundation to create new programs to in the Nilgiris Field Learning Center: An meet the needs of the communities they Integrative Model of Education, Research, work with and to grow the next generaand Practice” in the journal Current tion of leaders among community youth. Conservation, the core group of program faculty who include researchers and practitioners noted that “The NFLC is Brooklyn: The Once and intentionally structured around the Future City expertise and experience of varied groups to bake knowledge pluralism, experience, Thomas J. Campanella takes a long and interdisciplinarity, and diversity into engaging look at his hometown in every learning interaction. By bringing Brooklyn: T he Once and Future City Global North university students to (Princeton University Press, 2019), a book Kotagiri to live, study, and conduct field that spans some 400 years of history and research with tribal peers from the features the characters, places, and infraNilgiris, we invite and structure cultural structure in a city that has had its share collisions that present opportunities for of ups and downs—emerging today (for fundamental reflections on what consti- better or worse) as a hipster haven with tutes valid knowledge, the fluidity of global cachet. cultural norms, and the sense of self in The book was an eight-year labor of community” (Wolf, Kudva, et al., 2019). love for Campanella, associate profesLed by Associate Professor Neema sor of city and regional planning, who Kudva, who brought her research and now splits his time between his boyhood practice on collaborative planning and home in Marine Park and Ithaca. As such critical pedagogies to the project, the it unveils many hidden gems buried in NFLC is a radical collaboration that Brooklyn’s rich history. These include provides transformative learning expe- Deborah Moody, a 17th-century planriences for all participants: community ner who created the town of Gravesend, members, students, professionals, and among the first in America to guaranfaculty (originally from Cornell only, tee religious freedom; ill-fated efforts to but now including Syracuse University create a deep-water seaport in Jamaica and the University of Hawai‘i) who work Bay and the world’s greatest pleasure alongside each other to engage in, give dome at Coney Island; and New York back to, and benefit from the work they City’s first municipal airport. There are do at the NFLC. Now in its eighth year, the detailed descriptions of racetracks and NFLC brings together Cornell’s strengths amusement parks, as well as highways in research and teaching across vari- and housing projects. ous disciplines with the NGO Keystone Brooklyn’s continuously evolving Foundation’s strength, knowledge base, population is well documented here, and experience built over 25 years of from Native Americans and Dutch
traders to throngs of European immigrants who carved out neighborhoods of their own, and from a middle-class mass exodus in the 1970s and 80s to today’s gentrification. “One of the main goals was to present the city as a memory palace, to show the extraordinary richness of individual places, many of which have long forgotten or hidden significance,” Campanella says. “The neighborhoods in Brooklyn each have meaning and significance— there are layers of history everywhere.” This book will appeal to those with a penchant for history and urban development, but Campanella believes it will resonate most strongly with Brooklynites, both past and present. “It was an excavation project to show people what can be found in their backyards. It’s for Brooklyn—if people there never look at their street the same way again after reading my book, then I will have done my job.”
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City and Regional Planning
Award-Winning Dissertation “The Phoenix Keepers: An Anthropology of Futurity in Detroit City Hall,” the dissertation of James Macmillen (Ph.D. CRP ’19) received the 2019 Guilford Prize. Although administered through Cornell’s English department, the Guilford Prize may be awarded to a doctoral student in any discipline “whose thesis is judged to display the highest excellence in English prose.” According to the dissertation abstract, “Urban planning is a progressive endeavor. Planners strive to improve cities, to make
them more equitable, beautiful, sustainable, and resilient. This aspirational quality reveals a particular orientation towards time—a culture of ‘progressive futurity’ at the core of the profession, animated by visions of desirable urban futures and strategic claims about how these might be reached. Although planners in the United States rarely talk openly about ‘progress,’ an intrinsic progressivism remains in American planning. Without it, planning’s identity and legitimacy would disappear. This dissertation examines how this progressive futurity confronts a slow crisis of urban decline. It follows the City of Detroit’s
urban planners as they grapple with the consequences of population loss, economic collapse, and infrastructural decay. I suggest that the magnitude and duration of Detroit’s decline—stretched across the planners’ careers—has steadily eroded their capacity for, and their faith in, effective planning interventions. As a result, their working relationship to the future bears little resemblance to the progressive futurity of the wider profession.” After graduation, Macmillen was appointed as an assistant professor at the University of Michigan’s Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning.
Transforming Student Lives Building Better FloodResilient Housing in Tbong Khmum District in Cambodia U.N.-HABITAT/ANUSHI GARG (M.R.P. ’20)
Last spring, I was an intern with U.N.Habitat in a rural district in Cambodia called Tbong Khmum, which is located along the Mekong River. The largest issue for the communities in Tbong Khmum is the effects of flooding. Every year during the monsoon, the river levels rise and although most houses are built on stilts, the ground floor still floods. Residents, therefore, have to rebuild year after year, using all of their savings and keeping them in poverty. Eight of the poorest and most vulnerable villages in Tbong Khmum were selected for the U.N.-Habitat project, the goal of which was to identify and reconstruct the most vulnerable houses as well as those of families with elder residents, infants, or the disabled. We first conducted community mobilizing workshops in each of the villages. We held elections and chose a team of representatives to enable better coordination and oversight, and gathered more information about sanitation and living conditions. The second phase was community mapping. There are no existing maps of the villages and vulnerable houses could not be accurately located. Our goal was to map every house and building on the knowledge of the elected representatives and create lists of the families in
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each household. We used locally available resources to make the maps—ropes, chalk, bottles, plastic, and other materials. We then walked around each village checking and detailing the new maps. The mapping stage was a great learning experience and engendered a strong sense of democracy and empowerment within the community, especially among the women who emerged significantly more knowledgeable and engaged. For the next step, the team will design a prototype structure with community input and village-based carpenters will be trained to construct the new houses over the next several months. The internship was an insight into local Khmer culture, resilience, creativity, and strong community. All major decisions were made in conjunction with the community, which taught me the value
of community engagement and the role of a planner as a facilitator and coordinator. The experience was challenging but also enriching, and introduced me to the relevance of regional planning in rural communities.
Understanding Flood Planning and Mitigation DELTARES/ONAM BISHT (M.R.P./M.L.A. ’20)
My exit project focuses on the topic of flood adaptation and mitigation planning, and I was incredibly fortunate to spend my summer working at Deltares, an independent research organization in The Netherlands that provides flood management consultancy solutions to projects worldwide. With The Netherlands having more than two-thirds of its area
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7 Anushi Garg (M.R.P. ’20) and villagers used ropes, chalk, bottles, plastics, and other waste materials to map areas impacted by flooding in the rural district of Tbong Khmum, Cambodia. photo / Anushi Garg
9 Tim Dehm doing volunteer clean-up at an old landfill that was acquired by his internship host agency, Western Reserve Land Conservancy. photo / provided
8 Onam Bisht’s (M.R.P./ M.L.A. ’20) internship in The Netherlands was spent conducting a literature review for international project sites on climate-risk data, as well as other projects. photo / Onam Bisht
into a community space. This experience grounded a lot of the information I was 8 gathering from interviews and gave me a real sense of what it takes to design and maintain just two lots. On the days I wasn’t biking from intertrips with my supervisors to understand the centuries-old Dutch practices of flood- view to interview, I was able to volunteer management and their deep-rooted at a few events hosted by the conservancy. I helped clean up an old landfill that the cultural ideology of “living with water.” Spending the summer in The conservancy acquired and plans to turn Netherlands was an opportunity of into a park, and a few weeks later I facila lifetime. Not only did I gain a lot of itated a conversation between residents knowledge about the existing landscape on the same landfill during a citywide of flood-mitigation efforts in different event called Common Ground. One day I regions worldwide, but this kind of study shadowed one of the conservancy’s land also helped me develop a methodology for stewards, and another I walked the streets of Lorain surveying properties. Sometimes my master’s project. I would get tours of neighborhoods from long-time community organizers. Blight Removal in Cleveland Through this experience, I’ve glimpsed THRIVING COMMUNITIES—WESTERN the intricacies of planning and designing RESERVE LAND CONSERVANCY/TIM DEHM in a legacy city, intricacies that I hope to —ANUSHI GARG (M.R.P. ’20) (M.R.P./M.L.A. ’20) understand better as my career advances. Last summer, I was an intern for Thriving I’ve also gained an appreciation for the vulnerable to flooding, it is seen as a Communities, a project of the Western relationship between land and memory, leader in adapting to rising sea-levels and Reserve Land Conservancy, whose efforts and how conservation of places is often have focused on blight removal in also the conservation of stories, tradithe changing climate. My internship gave me the opportu- Cleveland and other urban centers tions, and the nebulous qualities that make a place feel like home. nity to understand some of the innovative throughout Ohio. My primary task was to develop a tools and techniques used in f loodmanagement planning while working strategy for vacant land repurposing with a multidisciplinary team of water throughout Cleveland and consider experts, including planners, engineers, how vacant lots should be managed scientists, and designers. My projects after blighted structures had been included conducting a literature review removed. The approach needed to take for international project sites on climate- into account the scale of vacant lots in risk data, with a focus on flood risk, Cleveland—more than 30,000 residenscanning and summarizing existing tial parcels—and address the economic, adaptation strategies, and carrying out environmental, and social needs of the neighborhood. Through dozens of actor analysis for present stakeholders. Working at a large institution like interviews with people whose work in Deltares had other benefits. Besides government, nonprofits, or in the private regular skill-based workshops and sector touched vacant land, I learned conferences, I got a chance to meet some what to focus on. I also had the opportunity to work visiting design students from Maryland Institute College of Art, who presented with a community development corporaand discussed the studio projects that tion, the County Land Bank, the council they had developed in collaboration member’s office, and neighbors to repur9 with Deltares. I also got to go on field pose several vacant lots in Slavic Village
All major decisions were made in conjunction with the community, which taught me the value of community engagement and the role of a planner as a facilitator and coordinator.
New Hires
John I. Carruthers, CRP John I. Carruthers has been hired as an associate professor in the Department of City and Regional Planning, effective July 1. Carruthers’s areas of expertise include economic geography, urban and regional economics, environmental quality of life, and geospatial and econometric analysis. Before joining the CRP faculty, Carruthers was the director of the Sustainable Urban Planning Program at George Washington University, a program he founded and led to accreditation from the Planning Accreditation Board. He previously served as an economist in the Economic Development and Public Finance Division of the Office of Policy Development and Research at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), and has held faculty positions at the University of Maryland, the University of Washington, and the University of Arizona. Carruthers has published widely in both regional science and urban planning. His recent scholarly papers and publications include “Growth Management and the Spatial Outcome of Regional Development in Florida, 1982–1997,” coauthored with Ralph B. McLaughlin and Marlon G. Boarnet, in Growth Management in Florida (2017); and the chapter “Exploring Innovation Gaps in the American Space Economy,” coauthored with Gordon F. Mulligan, Neil Reid, and Matthew R. Lehnert, in Regional Research Frontiers—Vol. 1: Advances in Spatial Science (The Regional Science Series), edited by Randall Jackson and Peter Schaeffer (Springer, Cham, 2017). He is presently working on a book titled Hedonic Seoul: A Revealed Preference Exploration of Quality of Life in Seoul, Korea for the Springer series “New Frontiers in Regional Science: Asian Perspectives.” Carruthers received his Ph.D. from the University of Washington in 2001; an M.S. from the University of Arizona in 1998; and a B.A. from Hunter College, City University of New York, in 1996.
Felix Heisel, Architecture Felix Heisel has been hired as an assistant professor in the Department of Architecture, effective January 1, 2020. Heisel’s work centers on the systematic rethinking of our built environment as resource storage in a sustainable cycle of use and reconfiguration—a radical paradigm change toward new application methodologies of recycled and cultivated resources borrowed from their technical and biological cycles for a period of time before being returned into circulation once more. Heisel was the Department of Architecture’s fall 2017 Strauch Visiting Critic in Sustainable Design. Currently, he is head of research of sustainable construction at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology Germany and the Future Cities Laboratory in Singapore. Previously, he acted in this capacity as the assistant professor of architecture and construction at ETH Zürich in Switzerland and Singapore, where he built up the Advanced Fibre Composite Laboratory.
Heisel’s recent publications include Addis Ababa: A Manifesto on African Progress, coedited with Dirk E. Hebel, Marta H. Wisniewska, and Sophie Nash (Ruby Press, 2018); and Cultivated Building Materials: Industrialized Natural Resources for Architecture and Construction, coedited with Hebel (Birkhäuser, 2017). He is the recipient of honors that include two Beyond Bauhaus awards (2019); materialPREIS (2019); and the shortlist for Beazley Design of the Year Award (2018). His recent presentations include Symposium on Sustainable Construction, the American University in Cairo (2019); and Round Table Resource-Efficient Building, German Federal Ministry of the Interior, Building and Community, Berlin (2019). Heisel graduated from the Berlin University of the Arts and has taught and conducted research at universities around the world, including Harvard GSD; the Berlage Institute; the Ethiopian Institute of Architecture, Building Construction, and City Development; and ETH Zürich, both in Switzerland and Singapore.
Manuel Shvartzberg Carrió, Architecture Manuel Shvartzberg Carrió joined the Department of Architecture as an assistant professor, effective July 1. He will teach classes on the history and theory of architecture and advise graduate students in the history of architecture and urban development program. Shvartzberg Carrió’s areas of research and expertise include intersections between architecture and geopolitics, decolonization, capitalist systems, and technology. Currently, Shvartzberg Carrió is a graduate fellow at the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society at Columbia University, and he will defend his doctoral dissertation at Columbia Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation, where he led the Critical, Curatorial, and Conceptual Practices in Architecture thesis program. Shvartzberg Carrió has also served as research coordinator for the Architecture Lobby, a nonprofit activist group that addresses labor and architecture. Shvartzberg Carrió’s recent publications include two book chapters, titled “Palm Springs and the Nomos of Modernity: Prefabricated Steel Houses, Automation, and Settler Colonialism in Postwar America, 1943–1968,” in Productive Universals— Specific Situations: Critical Engagements in Art, Architecture, and Urbanism (2019, Sternberg Press), edited by Anne Kockelkorn and Nina Zschocke; and “Infrastructures of Dependency: U.S. Steel and Architectural Expertise in Palm Springs, California, and Ciudad Guayana, Venezuela, 1940–1965,” in Systems and the South: Architecture in Development (forthcoming, Aggregate Architecture Collaborative), among others. Shvartzberg Carrió is the recipient of a 2019 Writing Citation of Special Recognition as a Graham Foundation Carter Manny Award Finalist and a 2018–19 Michigan-Mellon Fellowship in Egalitarianism and the Metropolis at the University of Michigan.
Alumni and Students ’17
The 2018 CFAA cohort during a desk critique in L. P. Kwee Studios.
Mentorship Benefits Both Alumni and Summer Architecture Program Scholars “My life has been enriched by a succession of caring mentors, one after another, and for that I am grateful,” said Samuel Ososanya (B.Arch. ’17), a designer at BOKA Powell in Denton, Texas. “I approach every mentorship with this in mind, sharing as much time and knowledge as I can.” Ososanya is an alumni mentor for the Cornell Future Architect Award (CFAA) program, which gives merit-based scholarships to high school students from underrepresented backgrounds who are interested in attending the Introduction to Architecture Summer Program. An essential component of the program is to match each CFAA recipient with an alum who earned a professional architecture degree from AAP. CFAA was established in 2016 with seed funding from Bill ’69 and Catherine Perez and has received continuing support from several firms, alumni, and friends of AAP. In 2017, AAP’s Alumni Committee on Diversity initiated the mentorship component of the program with the goal of establishing a meaningful connection between alumni and students that reverberates through the years. “It’s exciting to see alumni engage with these young scholars,” said AAP’s Director of Admissions Maureen Carroll. “It’s a new way for them to stay involved.” According to Carroll, the alumni mentorship program was developed to provide high school students from underrepresented backgrounds access to advantages that they might not have otherwise had. Whereas some high school students might secure internships
with professional designers and firms, for CFAA recipients, “mentorship before, during, and after the summer program was our approach to create the kind of access that was missing,” she said. After successfully applying for a CFAA scholarship during their junior year of high school, each student is matched with an alum in the same geographic area. They meet at the student’s high school and usually tour the mentor’s firm, office, or project site. Communication continues during the six-week summer program at Cornell, and if the student elects to apply to architecture schools, the mentor offers advice for developing their portfolio or preparing for an interview. Grace Lee Sawin (B.Arch. ’91), a Chicago member of the Cornell Alumni Admissions Ambassador Network and founder of Chicago School GPS, is the mentor for Danilo Velazquez and Yamaris Martinez, who completed the 2019 Introduction to Architecture Summer Program. “I encouraged them to dive wholeheartedly into the summer program experience and think outside the box,” Sawin said. “It was great to see them both so eager, excited, and somewhat nervous about the opportunity,” she said. Sawin will continue to correspond with both her mentees this fall. Ricardo Zurita (B.Arch. ’84), principal of Ricardo Zurita Architecture and Planning, P.C. in New York City, was matched with Juan Lopez (B.Arch. ’23), who was among the second cohort of CFAA students in the summer of 2017. Lopez went on to successfully enroll in the Department of Architecture’s
undergraduate program and completed his first year in spring 2019. “As a first-generation student, the rigor and challenges of this experience can be overwhelming without having people to turn to who understand your journey,” Zurita said. Lopez relied on conversations shared with his mentor as he faced some of those initial challenges. “I did not have much experience in design, but Mr. Zurita advised me on what to expect from the summer program and my application to the B.Arch. program,” Lopez said. “With his help, I began my first semester feeling prepared and inspired.” For the CFAA students and mentors, the rewards of mentorship truly work both ways. Ososanya mentors 2018 CFAA recipient Octavio (Sebastian) Contreras of El Paso, who is now a first-year B.Arch. student. In August, the two of them discussed preparations for Contreras’s first year. “After the call, I wanted to enroll all over again,” Ososanya said. “I asked him to share some of his adventures so I could relive it all through him.” “Having been connected to my mentor was the most valuable thing I gained through this program,” said Contreras. “[Ososanya] has become somebody I can trust and talk to about my future. The opportunity to be a CFAA recipient opened countless doors for me—in connections, friendships, and as a student.” By Patti Witten
Get Involved as a Mentor Developing and facilitating alumnistudent mentorship opportunities is vitally important to AAP Connect, the college’s office of career services. Recognizing the valuable role that mentorship plays for students, Associate Director Scott Scheible says AAP Connect is exploring new tools, programs, and approaches to broaden the pool of alumni mentors. Whether it’s sharing insights with small groups of students during workshops, hosting summer interns, or conducting practice interviews with job-seeking students, there are several ways for alumni to get involved as mentors.
Learn more at aap.cornell.edu/ resources/jobs-internships.
Alumni Projects Panda Icon Triptych, by art alum Peter D. Gerakaris (B.F.A. ’03), was a special commission for architecture alum William Lim’s (B.Arch. ’81, M.Arch. ’82) Living Collection, in Hong Kong. The work was the centerpiece of a solo pop-up exhibition by Gerakaris titled Salon Icon, which appeared at the members-only Society for Domestic Museology in New York City last winter, with composer Trevor Gureckis. The exhibit title references Gerakaris’s Icon Series—an ongoing body of paintings with gold leaf on panel, inspired by the Cretan-Venetian School of Iconography, which transplants endangered and exotic species from around the globe into this luminous context. According to curator Heather Topcik, “The event was a visual, auditory, and culinary trip to Byzantium.”
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Alumni at Work on Education Projects in Developing Countries Fulbright University Vietnam
SHoP, where Erik Gerlach (B.Arch. ’04) is 2 a senior design associate, broke ground this summer on Fulbright University Vietnam (FUV), the country’s first inde- act as a model for responsible growth pendent, not-for-profit institution of both locally and internationally.” Dana Getman (B.Arch. ’04), an assohigher education. FUV is an outgrowth of Fulbright Economics Teaching Program— ciate principal at SHoP, is also a lead on now the Fulbright School of Public Policy the design team. Getman said that while and Management—established in 1994 by iconic campus buildings may become linked to the identity of a university, the Harvard Vietnam Program. After an international competition FUV’s stepped, open forum at the center in 2017, SHoP was selected to master of the main building provides a place plan and design the flagship campus on where students can gather, discuss, a 37-acre site located within Saigon High- debate, and perform. “The exterior is designed as a lantern, Tech Park in District 9 of Ho Chi Minh City. The campus was designed in tandem lit from within so that this gathering with the development of the school’s space—and the students themselves—act programs to support Fulbright’s mission as the image and identity of the instituto provide a world-class education rooted tion,” she said. in the culture, values, and traditions of Vietnam. Phase I, which is slated for comple- Plaksha University tion by 2022, features new academic and student life buildings and a central lawn Plan A, a firm founded by Aaron Schwarz that form the hub of the campus. A main (B.Arch. ’80) in 2015, was retained by a gateway building at the head of the lawn group of philanthropists in India to design will house an amphitheater, the student Plaksha University, a new engineering center, and the library. and technology university whose foundGerlach says the design ref lects ers aim to remedy a quality gap in India’s crucial foundational lessons analyzed engineering education. The project site is from buildings on Cornell’s Arts Quad, as a 50-acre plot in the growing technology well as figure-ground sequences derived and engineering hub in the metropolitan from Western and Eastern case studies. area of Chandigarh, Mohali, and “The active design process is part of a Panchkula, collectively known as Tricity. multifaceted approach toward developing In a press release, Schwarz said, a campus that is a teaching tool in itself,” “We designed the academic spaces for Gerlach said. “As a whole, the process Plaksha’s educational approach with strives to set an example of sustainable nonsiloed buildings that integrate planning and engineering practices and student and faculty space. Plan A’s design
’04 1 Erik Gerlach and Dana Getman of SHoP developed the plan for Fulbright University Vietnam, which broke ground this summer.
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2 Plaksha University, under construction in the Tricity area of Chandigarh, India, is designed by Plan A, a firm founded by architecture alumnus Aaron Schwarz.
breaks down traditional hierarchies by combining discipline-specific spaces and encouraging interaction between faculty and students.” To that end, engineering laboratories, maker spaces, and fabrication areas are mixed together within the central campus buildings to encourage student-faculty collaboration. Informal interaction and socialization are enhanced by the design of a duallevel, semi-enclosed forum at the center of the campus that features a two-level rain garden. The lower level will provide shade in the warmer months and includes reading rooms, auditorium, internet hub, classrooms, and café spaces for students and faculty. On the top level, a series of intersecting bridges and crossings will connect the university’s academic buildings, creating seating and natural areas with an abundance of sunlight in the colder months. Chandigarh has a rich architectural history, having been designed by Le Corbusier, and serves as the capital of the Punjab and Haryana states. “Plan A’s design both embraces and subtly restructures the city’s Corbusian grid, aligning the campus internally with a self-defined central axis,” Schwarz said. “This approach both creates a sense of community within the campus and optimizes buildings for passive cooling.” To achieve net-zero building standards, Plan A has researched hybrid ventilation—mixing natural ventilation and mechanical means. The firm has been working closely with its India-based architect and engineer counterparts to better understand traditional passive methods and local construction culture. The campus will be constructed in four phases, with the first phase completed by the start of the 2021 academic year. When complete, the university will serve 10,000 students—6,000 of whom will live on campus—as well as several hundred faculty. “In India, engineering and technology education is crucial,” Schwarz said. “Educational opportunities and interest in the field have boomed in recent years, but there are not enough seats in first-class institutions in India, and some have difficulty modernizing traditional didactic and siloed teaching methodologies. This is a story about how design is helping revolutionize higher education in India to train their best and brightest in solving real-life problems.” Plan A’s design team for Plaksha University also included Yihang Yan (M.Arch. ’20), Yao Mi (B.Arch. ’19), and Kaylin Park (B.Arch. ’19) during their summer internships with the firm.
Alumni Projects
Mock-up of the Cali Histórica interactive web platform. The website will be published in Spanish.
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Proposal Reveals Invisible Histories in Cali, Colombia Aura Maria Jaramillo (B.Arch. ’13) won the Onera Prize for Historic Preservation for a proposal that will investigate and reconstruct the historical evolution of historic neighborhoods in Cali, Colombia. According to the project proposal, Cali Histórica is a pilot online interactive platform aimed at visualizing and spatializing “invisible histories” in Cali and its surroundings by expanding attributes that determine a building’s significance. A key outcome will be to introduce into preservation practice in Colombia the notion that the social histories in the built environment enrich understanding of architectural and aesthetic heritage. The $25,000 Onera Prize for Historic Preservation is awarded to a graduating student or a team from Columbia Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation’s (GSAPP) M.S. Program in Historic Preservation to conduct a
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project that tests new preservation theories in practice. The selected proposals show unique ambition, creativity, and passion, and are most likely to make an impact in advancing preservation as a form of contemporary cultural production. Jaramillo shares the prize with project coauthor Daniella Zamora. Both are recent graduates of GSAPP. “We seek to foster a sense of belonging and pride in our city focused on our architecture, our culture, and the stories of us Caleños,” the coauthors write. The project’s initial phase will reconstruct the historical evolution of Cali’s center. Future iterations will expand the platform to include other historic neighborhoods. In phase II, archival
material, scholarly research, and narratives will be collected, organized, and categorized. Finally, an exhibition is planned to coincide with the launch of the Cali Histórica interactive website. According to the coauthors, Cali Histórica has the potential to set the groundwork for future local initiatives that will advance how heritage is defined and “open avenues to include and represent the public histories in the built environment.” “We envision this project as an initial step toward increased inclusion and social justice by broadening the definition of how immovable heritage is valorized, and how communities are intrinsic to the creation of historical value,” said Jaramillo and Zamora.
After Architecture, the firm of Katie MacDonald (B.Arch. ’ 13) and Kyle Schumann (B.Arch. ’13), designed a series of entry portals to a historical site at a modern-day elementary school in Washington, DC. Completed this spring, the Camp Barker Memorial at Garrison Elementary School calls attention to the site’s past as a Civil War–era soldiers’ barracks that later became a “contraband camp”—a kind of refugee camp for those escaping slavery. According to MacDonald and Schumann, “The exterior charred wood cladding subverts the traditional white marble monument and honors the hardship and strength of the community that grew out of this camp, while the brass interior invites reflection on the site’s history.” The portals provide spaces for contemplation and are accompanied by narrative bas-relief panels by sculptor Vinnie Bagwell. photo / Sam Oberter Photography
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A view through the Mesabi Axis Lookout carved through the side of the stockpile embankment. photo / provided
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M.Arch. Alumna’s Firm Designs Mine View Overlook Park The initial phase of the Hull Rust and Hibbing Taconite Mine View Overlook Park, a project by LUCITO, the firm of Iroha Ito (M.Arch. ’15) and Andrew Lucia, opened to the public this spring in Hibbing, Minnesota. Perched on the precipice of the active mine on a decades-old mountain of mining spoils and overburden materials, the project, which began in 2016, will become the new home of the Hull Rust Mine View when completed. Phase I included the construction of earthworks and observation lookouts made from precast industrial concrete
Planning for Resiliency and Climate Change in San Francisco Bay
units. The structures frame historic mining artifacts and views to the city, the mine, and a portion of the Mesabi Iron Range, carefully chosen in order to amplify the experience of the site in relationship to its context and 125 years of continuous iron ore mining in Minnesota. The Phase I project team included LUCITO, design; SEH, civil engineering; and George Bougalis and Sons, Co., general contractor, with support from Cliffs Natural Resources and the
Iron Range Resources and Rehabilitation Board. Phase II of the project comprises a pair of two-season buildings serving as a visitors’ center curated by the Hibbing Historical Society and staffed by the Hibbing Tourist Center Senior Citizens. Like those in phase I, the phase II structures will be minimally designed with a combination of concrete, steel, and industrial construction logics. Phase II is scheduled to open in the spring of 2021.
that are built on decades of work on the natural shoreline. The report recognized that ’16 stronger storms and rising sea levels impact the effort already made, and threaten homes, job centers, and public infrastructure in bay-front communities where many of the region’s most economically vulnerable resiZoe Siegel (M.R.P. ’16) was the dents are at the greatest risk for convening editor of a summary significant flood impacts. Through the work of collabopublication on the Resilient By Design (RBD) initiative address- rative research and design teams, ing climate-related flooding in nine visions for a more resilient Bay Area were presented in the the San Francisco Bay region. Resilient by Design Bay Area publication, including “The Challenge was a yearlong design People’s Plan: Permaculture + challenge to address major Social Equity Team”; “Elevate climate change issues and San Rafael: Bionic Team”; explore long-range solutions. A and “South Bay Sponge: Field goal of the work was to bring Operations Team.” “As the Bay Area begins to climate adaptation into regional infrastructure investment efforts think about how we can make
our shoreline more resilient to the impending effects of sea-level rise, the Resilient by Design process proactively addressed this issue, connecting communities and raising awareness about natural shoreline adaptation efforts around the region,” Siegel said. The proposals have gained traction. “Now that the challenge has ended, the projects are beginning to take shape around the region,” she said. “Many have local champions and have received additional funding to move elements of the project toward implementation.”
The book is available for download at resilientbayarea.org/ book.
Alumni Projects
Coordinated by Hannah Bahnmiller (M.R.P. ’17) and artist team MxM Creative, the Sunset Boulevard Fence Art Project is a placemaking effort to improve a degraded 800-foot-long fence in a diverse, high-poverty neighborhood in the inner suburbs of Seattle. The project, funded by the Renton Municipal Arts Commission, followed a community-driven design process of public meetings and community drawing sessions with residents and local students, resulting in a combination of woven, colored privacy tape and plaques featuring community-created artworks and words that appear in the community’s diverse languages. Additional funding for the project came from the City of Renton’s Community and Economic Development Department and Rebuilding Together Seattle.
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photo / Haley Ausbun, Renton Reporter
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’11 Founded by architecture alumna Irina Schneid, SCHARC Impact workshops connect fellows with a local community in need. photo / provided
Design Fellowship Program Impacts Female Students and Communities This summer, a workshop led by Irina Schneid (B.Arch. ’09, M.Arch.II ’11) designed the Hammock Room, a mindfulness classroom at a school in Newark, New Jersey. The classroom at Sussex Avenue Renew School was an outgrowth of SCHARC Impact : Wrkshp, a 12-week social advocacy fellowship for female architecture students who seek to impact social justice through design. Founded and launched by Schneid in 2012, SCHARC Impact connects fellows with a local community in need and provides them with mentorship, project management, training, fabrication, and stipend funding to implement their design ideas. Fellowships are open to female students or recent design graduates in architecture, interior design, industrial design, furniture design, and related disciplines. A collaboration with Newark Yoga Movement, a nonprofit organization dedicated to introducing mindfulness practices to communities within Newark, the Hammock Room features a set of
interactive partitions to divide the openplan classroom into activity zones for yoga, art therapy, and writing. The partitions also serve as active interfaces and participatory learning tools, helping to engage the students within the classroom. “We show emerging designers how to harness the power of their training to better the lives of those affected by their work, and equip occupants within resource-strapped communities with access to quality interior environments,” said Schneid. “The dedicated mindfulness classroom will provide children with a safe haven in which to breathe, relax, and connect with their bodies and minds, inspiring them to take the built environment into their own hands and contribute to the reimagining of their spatial surroundings.” Past projects by SCHARC Impact include Armadillo Playmat, a “collapsoid” playmat for infants and toddlers that can be formed into various shapes to teach spatial reasoning skills; and [storey], a would-be textbook that allows children to “curate” and redesign the act and space of eating lunch by arranging and exploring its elements. The next call for SCHARC Impact fe l low sh ip appl ic a nt s w i l l b e announced in late February; applications are accepted on a rolling basis until the May deadline.
Learn more at scharcstudio.com/ impact-wrkshp.
From Historic Preservation to State Senate W. Ted Alexander (M.S. HPP ’85), who was elected last year to the North Carolina State Senate, concedes that an HPP degree may not seem initially suited for government. But he believes his Cornell degree and subsequent background in historic preservation and Main Street downtown revitalization prepared him for public service in government— first as mayor and now as senator in the North Carolina Legislative District 44 seat. “The act of historic preservation itself has taught me much about building community relationships, creating viable economic properties, and the greater appreciation of the traditions, values, and culture,” Alexander says. “Preservation by its nature is an invaluable economic development tool and strategy.” Alexander serves as a member of the committees of Appropriations on Education/ Higher Education, State and Local Government, Commerce and Insurance, and Pensions and Retirement and Aging. He will serve a two-year term in the senate.
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Two M.R.P. Alumni Lead and Consult on Buffalo Green Infrastructure Report
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Identifying sites for green infrastructure retrofits to help Buffalo address its ongoing stormwater challenge was the focus of a recent project led by Kevin Meindl (M.R.P./M.L.A. ’16). Meindl, who is the green infrastructure program manager for the City of Buffalo Sewer Authority (BSA), led a team that coauthored Rain Check 2.0 Opportunity Report: The Next Generation of Green Infrastructure in Buffalo (spring 2019). According to Meindl, the report “presents the work of an unprecedented analysis of the physical landscape conditions in the city of Buffalo, as well as the social, economic, and environmental contexts around combined sewer overflow drainage basins.” The report identified priority sewer basins for implementing green infrastructure with the goal of meeting part of BSA’s obligations under the city’s Final Long-Term Control Plan required under the Environmental Protection Agency’s policies. The report’s consulting team included fellow CRP alum Nico Azel (M.R.P. ’17), a project manager at architecture and planning firm Evolve EA, based in Pittsburgh. Evolve EA is a multidisciplinary practice that helps individuals, communities, and organizations achieve LEED and other sustainability goals for the built environment. Evolve EA was among the firms that responded to a request for proposal issued by Buffalo Sewer. Extensive GIS analysis, as well as on-the-ground fieldwork, were implemented to survey more than 450 sites and identify opportunities for green infrastructure retrofits. In addition to serving as a starting point to guide Buffalo Sewer through the next phases of planning and implementation, the report is intended to help facilitate the creation of a strong coalition of community partners to address Buffalo’s stormwater challenge. To that end, Meindl says the report is being used in discussions with property owners, community members, local organizations and stakeholders, as well as other local government entities, to advance green infrastructure in the city of Buffalo in ways that leverage the investment to maximize cobenefits and equity. “Rain Check 2.0 is very much a conversation starter and is providing the background information for discussions and in generating calls to action around green infrastructure,” he says. According to Meindl, the report is not a plan or a set of prescriptive actions, “but an imaginative, speculative, and aspirational document that identifies a set of potentials, possibilities, and strategies that are kept open-ended for continuing discussion.” He added, “In many ways, Rain Check 2.0 is a first step in a long journey to do meaningful work in these places.”
Dust and residue left by dancers on the surfaces of a rehearsal space became the centerpiece of a weeklong solo exhibition by Jorge Otero-Pailos (B.Arch. ’94, M.Arch. ’95) this spring. For Répétiteur, held at the New York City Center for the Performing Arts from April 29 to May 5, Otero-Pailos transferred the residue from the surfaces of a rehearsal space once used by the choreographer Merce Cunningham onto illuminated peelings with a sound collage accompanying each piece. A New York
photo / Showtime Comedy series Kidding, Season 1
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Architecture Degree Leads to Career in Set Design The role of architecture as a set of performative events was the subject Colin Sieburgh’s (B.Arch. ’05) fifth-year thesis project, titled Escape Space, with Associate Professor Val Warke advising. Now Sieburgh is the lead set designer on the Showtime comedy series Kidding, which debuted in fall 2018, starring actor Jim Carrey, with episodes directed by Michel Gondry. “My studies in architecture have a direct link to my work in film and TV,” says Sieburgh. “As a set designer, I work with the production designer to develop concepts and drawings for all of the constructed sets to be shot on camera.” At Cornell, Sieburgh’s studies of architecture and film were enhanced through classes taught by architecture faculty Professor Mary Woods, spring 1999 Visiting Assistant Professor Felecia Davis, and spring 2001 visiting critic Shadi Nazarian (M.Arch. ’89); the summer travel studio titled The 3D-City: Italy, France, Spain, and Portugal; the Cornell in Rome program; and the First-Year Writing Seminar analyzing Alfred Hitchcock’s film The Birds. Sieburgh’s other recent set design screen credits include Showtime’s The Affair (2017–19) and a feature film written and directed by pop singer Sia, titled Music, in theaters this fall.
Times a r t review s aid Répétiteur “preserves both the fingerprints and the spirit of Cunningham and his company in their rehearsal space.” The exhibition was held in the Harkness Studio, New York City Center—as part of the center’s inaugural program of visual art commissions, as well as the Merce Cunningham Centennial—in honor of the 75th anniversary season. photo / courtesy of Paula Lobo and SOE Studio, © Jorge Otero-Pailos
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Alumni Projects
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photo / Andres Orozco
The innovative design for Empire Stores, a group of seven historic warehouses located on the waterfront next to the Brooklyn Bridge, earned Jay Valgora’s (B.Arch. ’85) firm, STUDIO V Architecture, a Merit Award as well as Best of New York State Award at the 2019 AIA New York Design Awards in January. In addition to STUDIO V, the winning team included S9 and Perkins Eastman as associate architect, and landscape designer Future Green Studio. The four- and five-story structures were originally built between 1869 and 1885 as coffee warehouses and used until 1945, before sitting vacant for more than a half-century. In 1977, the New York Landmarks Preservation Commission designated Fulton Ferry as a historic district, protecting Empire Stores from demolition. In 2013, Brooklyn Bridge Park held a competition won by STUDIO V’s design, with developers Midtown Equities and HK Organization, for the adaptive reuse of Empire Stores. The project opened to the public in 2017 as an integral part of New York City’s Dumbo neighborhood and the waterfront development in Brooklyn Bridge Park. According to Valgora, the contemporary design combines innovative elements with historic restoration, including a public passage slicing through the historic fabric that creates a spiraling sequence of spaces culminating in a rooftop public garden. Inspired by the art of Gordon Matta-Clark (B.Arch. ’68) and the “Carcieri” drawings of Piranesi, these public spaces feature rotating compositions of stairs, bridges, terraces, and balconies contrasting the exposed stone walls and masonry arches, and culminate in a rooftop park overlooking the Manhattan skyline. photo / provided
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M.Arch. Designs Junzi Kitchen Restaurants “I always enjoyed taking on hospitality projects when I was working at an architecture firm,” says Xuhui Zhang (M.Arch. ’14), director of real estate development and architectural design for Junzi Kitchen, a budding, “fastcasual” restaurant group based in New York City. “But before working with the Junzi team as an owner-plus-designer, the moment of project completion and hand-off to the client felt like being kicked out of my own party when it was just about to start.” With Junzi, Zhang is able to see his design ideas fulfill this project’s mission. While he leaves the creation of the noodle bowls to his partners, Zhang oversees the interior/exterior design and the real estate decisions for the expanding chain, whose Northern Chinese bings (wraps and fillings) and noodles made with healthy, seasonal ingredients are popular with young professionals and college-age students. Junzi Kitchen began at the Yale Entrepreneurial Institute in a collaboration between graduate students from varied disciplines such as forestry, management, and art. The team, led by cofounders Yong Zhao, Wanting Zhang, and Ming Bai, grew to include students and foodies with entrepreneurial expertise, including culinary director and chef Lucas Sin, who ran pop-up restaurants out of his dorm at Yale. After meeting the Junzi team at one of Sin’s pop-up restaurants in 2014, Zhang was invited to design the first store, which opened in 2015 near Yale. “I wanted to be not only part of the space design but the creation of a holistic user experience for a brand,” Zhang said. Chinese philosophy holds that a junzi is a person with integrity, honesty, and curiosity. It’s also the guiding principle for the team. In the wake of Junzi’s growth over a four-year period, reviews and other feature stories have appeared in Forbes, Vogue, and Food and Wine, which said, “For the cofounders of Junzi Kitchen, wraps and noodle bowls are more than just lunch—they’re cultural ambassadors.” Junzi’s success has allowed them to open in three more locations—in Morningside Heights near Columbia University, Greenwich Village near NYU, and Bryant Park in midtown Manhattan (pictured above). Traditional cooking methods and seasonal ingredients remain the trademark of Junzi’s cuisine, and the pop-up theme continues with weekend after-hours menus and a chef’s table series. Says Zhang, “Designing a hospitality brand is a project with no completion date, and I’m enjoying working on it.”
In the News
Awards, Grants, Appointments, and Competitions Alumni Kamalika Bose (M.A. HPP ’13) won an iGen 2019 Award for the top 50 Architects and Designers in India from ITP Media and Publishing’s Architect and Interiors India magazine. Min Bu (B.S. URS ’12, M.R.P. ’14) accepted the 2019 Grand Award for Community and Regional Planning/Jane Jacobs Award for her work with the Caoyang New Village Neighborhood Revitalization Plan, in Shanghai, China. Julie Buffalohead (M.F.A. ’01) received a 2019 fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, U.S. and Canada. Olalekan Jeyifous (B.Arch. ’00) was named the 2020 featured artist in the Waterfront Park and Interactive Public Art Installation, Site See: New Views in Old Town series, in Alexandria, Virginia, for the 2020 spring season. Anna Kuchera (B.Arch. ’18) received honorable mention in the 2019 Fair y Tales Drawing Competition from Blank Space, for a project based on work she did in the fall 2016 architecture seminar Drawing Housing Manifestos taught by Assistant Professor Leslie Lok. Mean Noodles, a restaurant designed and owned by Kevin Lim (B.Arch. ’09), received the Will Ching Award from the International Interior Design Association. After Architecture, the firm of Katie MacDonald (B.Arch. ’13) and Kyle Schumann (B.Arch. ’13), received four grants for bamboo innovation research: “ Smart Cross-Laminated Bamboo,” $13,000, AIA Arnold W. Brunner Grant, Center for Architecture, American Institute of Architects New York, June 2019–May 2020 “ Retooling Bamboo Tectonics: From Vernacular Aesthetics to Milled Material System,” $30,000, AIA Upjohn Research Initiative, American Institute of Architects, December 2018–June 2020 “ S mart Cross-Laminated Bamboo,” $25,000, Major SEAD Grant, Intelligent Infrastructure for Human-Centered Communities and Creativity + Innovation Initiatives, Virginia Tech, July 2019– June 2020 “ Tooling Bamboo Growth: Design and Grow with Computer Numerical Control,” $3,000, Creativity and Innovation Grant, Virginia Tech, November 2018–October 2019 Weiss/Manfredi, the firm of Michael Manfredi (M.Arch. ’80), was recently selected as one of three finalists for Reimagining La Brea Tar Pits, an international competition for the famed museum and park in Los Angeles. Diller Scofidio + Renfo and Dorte Mandrup (Copenhagen) are the other two finalists. Mandrup was the Strauch Visiting Critic in Sustainable Design in fall 2018. Artist, athlete, and activator Laura Nova (B.A./ B.F.A. ’96) was one of four artists selected for the 2019 New York City Public Artists in Residence program. Nova will work with the NYC Department for the Aging. Robert (Bob) O’Brien (B.Arch. ’69) and Grace Chiang (B.Arch. ’81), principals of Chiang O’Brien Architects, DPC of Ithaca, won an AIA Southern New York Design Excellence award for the firm’s Cornell Health project. Recently elected as a Scholarship Member of the Salmagundi Club, Maggie O’Keefe (B.F.A. ’19) won the “red dot” jury award for the class Concours Exhibitions at the Art Students League of New York, in New York City. Her work was included in the Red Dot Exhibition, Phyllis Harriman Mason Gallery, July 3–17. Amanda Williams (B.Arch. ’97) was appointed the inaugural Smith College Museum of Art Artist-inResidence in June. Peter Wissoker (Ph.D. CRP ’18) received the Best Dissertation in Economic Geography Award from the Economic Geography Specialty Group of the American Association of Geographers for his dissertation Three Essays on Real Estate, Finance,
and Planning: Homebuilding, Life Insurer Lending, and Retail in an Age of Financialization.
Best Practices,” by the American Planning Association in April.
Sonny Eric Xu (B.Arch. ’13) was named a Kohn Pedersen Fox Paul Katz Fellow for 2018 for his research proposal Hybrid Infrastructural Ecologies for Sydney. Xu received a $25,000 grant to support a two-month stay in Sydney, Australia, and to conduct ongoing research based on his B.Arch. thesis, The Sublime and the Artifice.
Mary N. Woods, professor emerita of architecture, and Vani Subramanian won a grant in May 2019 from the Clarence S. Stein Institute to complete their documentary film on migration and Indian cinema halls.
Faculty Esra Akcan, associate professor in architecture, received the Frieda L. Miller Fellowship from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University for her research proposal Right-to-Heal: Architecture in Post-Conflict and Post-Disaster Societies. Assistant professors Suzanne Lanyi Charles, CRP, and Leslie Lok, architecture, each received AffinitoStewar t research grants from the Cornell President’s Council of Cornell Women for proposals concerning housing. Architecture faculty Leslie Lok and Timur Dogan were part of a Cornell team that received one of eight innovation grants for strengthening proposals or developing collaborative teams. Their project was Learning with Chongqing: Sustainable Urbanization and Housing Models for Urban-Rural China.
AAP dean J. Meejin Yoon and Eric Höweler (B.Arch. ’94, M.Arch. ’96) received a $10,000 2019 Arts and Letters Award in Architecture from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in April.
Students Karina Acosta Ordonez (Ph.D. RS ’20) received a Center for the Study of Inequality Seed Grant for her project, A Spatial Inequality Breakdown of Child Poverty in Colombia. Allison Arteaga (B.F.A. ’21) was awarded the Create Change Fellowship through the Laundromat Project, which advances artists as change agents in their communities. Allison Bernett (M.Arch. ’20) and assistant professor of architecture Timur Dogan received a $5,000 grant from the Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future for the project Early Design Simulation Framework. The project addresses climate risk and guides architects in the earliest stages of the building design process.
Jennifer Minner, associate professor in CRP, For the second year in a row, a team of Cornell CRP secured two grants to bring Aboriginal artist students won the American Planning Association’s Jonathan Jones for a weeklong artist residency that Student Design Competition. This year’s project, Fruit included a talk for the joint American Indian and Pad, was an affordable housing marketing and Indigenous Studies and Department of City and educational campaign for Fruitvale, California. The Regional Planning colloquium, “ Indigenous team included Lera Covington (M.P.S. RE/M.R.P. Knowledges and Art-Making Practices.” ’20), Kevin Kim (M.R.P./M.L.A. ’20), Jeanette Petti Cornell Council for the Arts Faculty Grant, $2,500 (M.R.P./M.L.A. ’19), and Dylan Stevenson (Ph.D. for Jonathan Jones: Artist-in-Residency and CRP ’23). Cultural Exchange, May 2019–present Engaged Opportunity Grant, Engaged Cornell: Tim Dehm (M.R.P./M.L.A. ’20) and Krizia Calmet $5,000 for “Socially Engaged Art and Indigenous, (M.P.S. RE/M.R.P. ’19) were part of a Cornell Baker Urban, and Environmental Histories: Cultural Program in Real Estate team that received an Exchanges on Haudenosaunee Homelands,” honorable mention in the annual Urban Land Jonathan Jones, artist, March 2019–present. Institute (ULI) Hines competition for Encore, a redeThe project team included, among others, sign plan for a site in Cincinnati, Ohio. Suzanne Minner; Jolene Rickard, history of art and visual Lanyi Charles, CRP, was the faculty advisor. studies; CRP department chair Jeffrey Chusid; Maria Teresa Moreno Arriola (B.Arch. ’20) took associate professor of art Maria Park; and second place in the 2019 Gensler Diversity students and alumni Martin Abbott (Ph.D. CRP Scholarship competition with her project Urban ’23), Skye Hart (B.S. URS ’18, M.R.P. ’19); and Forest: A Buffalo Incubator. Dylan Stevenson (Ph.D. CRP ’23). Ph.D. candidates Ana Ozaki (HAUD) and Shriya Spring 2019 Strauch Visiting Critic in Sustainable Rangarajan (regional science) were among several Design Philippe Rahm was part of a team led by Cornell doctoral candidates awarded scholarships OMA, the firm of Milstein Hall architect Rem from the Mario Einaudi Center for International Koolhaas, on the project Agenti Climatici, winner of Studies to work on their dissertations with help from a competition hosted by ArchDaily, Strelka Institute, faculty mentors and intensive workshops in the and Strelka KB for the redevelopment of two Einaudi-SSRC Dissertation Proposal Development disused railway yards near Milan, Italy. Program. Jolene Rickard, associate professor of art, Sonora R. Rodriguez (M.R.P. ’19) was the recipient Department of History of Art and Visual Studies, of the American Planning Association’s Latinos and and director of the American Indian and Indigenous Planning Division 2019 scholarship and presented Studies Program, received the Graduate and her research “Latinas and Indigenous Women in the Professional Student Assembly Faculty Teaching, Planning Professoriate” at the 2019 National Advising, and Mentorship Award in May. Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies Stephan Schmidt, associate professor in CRP, and conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in April. Ph.D. candidate Ryan Thomas received seed fundLibby Rosa (M.F.A. ’19) was one of 40 painters ing from the German Academic Exchange Service selected from almost 1,000 applicants to appear in to explore polycentric urban regions in Europe, the M.F.A. annual issue of New American Paintings, along with colleagues at the Technical University at no. 141. Dortmund in Germany; and funding from the Institute for African Development to conduct a CRP doctoral candidate Seema Singh was selected training workshop for local governments in for the Young Leaders in Sustainable Transport Tanzania, in conjunction with the Kilimanjaro Program by the Partnership on Sustainable, Low Christian Medical College at Tumaini University Carbon Transport, and the Volvo Research and Makumira in Moshi, Tanzania. See page 35. Educational Foundations for her work in the field of sustainable transport and climate change. Professor Mildred Warner, CRP, and regional science Ph.D. candidate Xue Zhang (M.S. RS ’17) CoCo Tin (B.Arch. ’19) received the Kohn Pedersen were part of a team awarded Best Contribution to Fox Traveling Fellowship for her proposal to the Planning Profession for “Livable Communities research functioning sanitoriums from Finland to for All Ages: International Planner Engagement and Japan.
In the News
Articles and Books Alumni
Faculty and Staff
Jeff Ayars (B.F.A. ’13) and Dan Rosen (B.F.A. ’13) wrote and starred in An Auteur Is Born (A Star Is Born parody), produced by Comedy Central on February 23
Iwan Azis (Ph.D. RS ’84), visiting lecturer in CRP, interviewed in D+C Development and Cooperation, February 22
Julie Buffalohead (M.F.A. ’01), featured in the New York Times “The Hand of Native American Women, Visible at Last,” May 31
Associate Professor Thomas J. Campanella, CRP, “The Brooklyn Heights Promenade Was a Robert Moses Head Fake,” New York magazine, July 23
Aretian|Urban Analytics and Design, the firm of Assistant Professor Suzanne Lanyi Charles, CRP, Jeremy Burke (B.Arch. ’11) and Ramon Gras, “Assessing the Effect of Mansionization on published the report “Atlas of Innovation Districts,” Suburban Single-Family House Sales Prices,” in MIT Technology Review, Spanish language, July 29 Journal of Planning Education and Research, 2019 William Lim (B.Arch. ’81, M.Arch. ’82), featured in an interview titled “Meet the Tribe: William Lim” in Gen.T Asia Tatler, June 20 Ann Lok Lui (B.Arch. ’10) and spring 2018 visiting critic Rozana Montiel, featured in “The New Wave of Female Powerhouses Are Pushing the Boundaries of Professional Practice,” Archinect, March 8 Gordon Matta-Clark (B.Arch. ’68), James Siena (B.F.A. ’79), and Alan Saret (B.Arch. ’66) are among the artists featured in A Handbook of the Collections: Herbert F. Johnson Museum, 3rd ed. (Cornell University Press, 2018). After Architecture, the firm of 2013 B.Arch. graduates Katie MacDonald and Kyle Schumann, featured in “Next Progressives,” ARCHITECT magazine, May 10 Emmanuel Pratt (B. Arch. ’02), Sweet Water Foundation cofounder, and executive director, featured in Next City, June 10 Greg Prichard (M.A. HPP ’11), “Exhuming a Pyramid of Petrol along the ‘Golden Mile,’” Hidden City Philadelphia, February 15 Kenneth M. Reardon (Ph.D. CRP ’90), Building Bridges: Community and University Partnerships in East St. Louis (Social Policy Press, 2019) 1 Melony Swasey (B.S. URS ’04), featured in “Meet REW’s 2019 Leading Ladies,” Real Estate Weekly, June 13 Mei-Lan Tan (B.Arch. ’16) and Victor Lefebvre, profiled in “Reinventing the Everyday,” Design Anthology, June Sulaiman Wasty (Ph.D. CRP ’88), Degeneration of Public Services: A Strategic Commitment to Ignorance, self-published, April
Mark Cruvellier, the Nathaniel and Margaret Owings Distinguished Alumni Memorial Professor in Architecture and senior associate dean for academic affairs, coauthored The Structural Basis of Architecture, 3rd ed. (Routledge, 2018) 2 Assistant Professor Timur Dogan, architecture, quoted in “New York City Passes Historic Climate Legislation,” Huffington Post, April 18 Assistant Professor Samia Henni, architecture, edited the book War Zones (gta Verlag, Zurich, 2019) 3 Neema Kudva, associate professor in CRP, and students featured in The Hindu, April 24 An exhibition of work by the late Professor Emeritus Eleanore Mikus (1927–2017), art, and her student Rosy Keyser (B.F.A. ’97), reviewed in Artforum, April 2 Associate Professor Jennifer Minner, CRP “ Assembly and Care of Memory: Placing Objects and Hybrid Media to Revisit International Expositions,” Curator: The Museum Journal 62(2): 151–76 M inner and Martin Abbott (Ph.D. CRP ’23), “Conservation Logics that Reshape Mega-Event Spaces: San Antonio and Brisbane Post Expo,” Planning Perspectives online, March 8 Minner and Wylie Goodman (M.R.P. ’17), “Will the Urban Agricultural Revolution Be Vertical and Soilless? A Case Study of Controlled Environment Agriculture in New York City,” Land Use Policy 83 (April 2019); see Goodman’s testimony to New York City Council’s Land Use Committee under Exhibitions, Presentations, and Lectures
A comparative analysis of former faculty Colin Rowe (1920–1999) and Peter Eisenman’s (B.Arch. ’55) studio teaching as a form of theoretical practice, by Michael Jasper, in From Composite Building to Partial Figure: Variations in the Teaching of Colin Rowe and Peter Eisenman Associate Professor Jenny Sabin, the Arthur L. and Isabel B. Wiesenberger Professor in Architecture and associate dean for design initiatives, and Max Vanatta (B.Arch. ’16), part of a multidisciplinary team that published “Dynamic DNA Material with Emergent Locomotion Behavior Powered by Artificial Metabolism,” in Science Robotics, April 10 Professor Michael Tomlan contributed to “2019’s Best Big Cities to Live In,” in WalletHub, July 16 Professor Mildred Warner, CRP Austin Aldag (M.R.P. ’18), Yunji Kim (Ph.D. CRP ’17), and Mildred E. Warner, “Austerity Coalitions or Pragmatic Municipalism? Local Responses to Austerity in New York State,” Environment and Planning A: Economy and S pace 51(6) 1287–1305 C ory L. Mann and Mildred E. Warner, “Power Asymmetries and Limits to Eminent Domain: The Case of Missoula Water’s Municipalization,” Water Alternatives 12(2): 725 Xue Zhang (M.S. RS ’17, Ph.D. RS ’17), Mildred E. Warner, and Stephanie Firestone, “Overcoming Barriers to Livability for All Ages: Inclusivity Is the Key,” Urban Planning 4(2): 31–42 J. Meejin Yoon, Gale and Ira Drukier Dean of AAP Featured in “Ladies in the Room: With Women at the Helm of Several Architecture Schools in the U.S., Where Does Gender Disparity Go from Here?” Archinect, July 16 Quoted in “Architects Reflect on the Bauhaus at 100,” Architectural Record, June 1 Featured in “Höweler + Yoon Casts Off Traditional Disciplinary Blinders and Looks at the Big Picture,” in Metropolis, May 9
Professor Jonathan Ochshorn, architecture, chapter titled “Experiencing Urban Infrastructure in Tianjin,” in Narrative Inquiries from Fulbright Lecturers in China: Cross-Cultural Connections in Higher Education, 1st ed. (Routledge, 2019) 4
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Exhibitions, Presentations, and Lectures Alumni Kamalika Bose (M.A. HPP ’13), “Rural Landscapes, Resilient Cultures: Conservation and Continuity of Living Heritage,” World Heritage Day lecture at Victoria Memorial Hall, Kolkata, April 18 Elizabeth Corkery (M.F.A. ’13), On The Wall, solo exhibition, Providence College Galleries, May 1– July 26 Milton S. F. Curry (B.Arch. ’88), “Architecture and the Egalitarian Turn,” Architectural League of New York annual meeting address, Ford Foundation Center for Social Justice, New York City, June 24 Kim Day (B.Arch. ’77) spoke on the executive panel at the 13th annual Women’s Leadership Conference, August 5–6 at the MGM Grand Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. Brian Dunn (M.F.A. ’13), Parallel Botany, solo exhibition, Hamiltonian Gallery, June 29–August 3 Paula Elliott (M.F.A. ’75) exhibitions in London and Wisconsin: Drawing Distinctions, Part II, The London Group, the Cello Factory, London, April S olo exhibition, Furlong Gallery, University of Wisconsin–Stout, September–October Laura-India Garinois (B.Arch. ’17), Live Jacket, at Thessaloniki Design Week, Thessaloniki, Greece, May 5–12 Wylie Goodman (M.R.P. ’17) testified before the New York City Council’s Land Use Committee on behalf of proposed legislation to create a comprehensive urban agriculture plan for New York City, June 11. Her testimony was based on a paper coauthored with Associate Professor Jennifer Minner, CRP, “Will the Urban Agriculture Revolution Be Vertical and Soilless? A Case Study of Controlled Environment Agriculture in New York City.” Andrew Hart (M.Arch.II ’13) cocurated the group exhibition Visible Cities, which included work by Yi-Chieng (Iken) Cheng (M.Arch. ’13), at Da Vinci Art Alliance in Philadelphia, June 21–30 Hannah Levy (B.F.A. ’13), Bone-in, solo exhibition at Jeffrey Stark, New York City, May 19–August 11 After Architecture, the firm of Katie MacDonald (B.Arch. ’13) and Kyle Schumann (B.Arch. ’13), conference papers: M acDonald: “Digital Postmodernism: Making Architecture from Virtual Tropes” and Schumann and MacDonald: “Barriers for Bamboo: Stigma and Perception in the Western Cultural Context,” in Proceedings from the 2019 Architectural Research Centers Consortium Conference, Ryerson University, Toronto, May 29–June 1 Schumann and Ryan Johns: “Airforming: Adaptive Robotic Molding of Freeform Surfaces through Incremental Heat and Variable Pressure,” in Intelligent and Informed, Proceedings of the 24th International Conference of the Association for Computer-Aided Architectural Design Research in Asia 1 (2019): 33–42 M a c D o na l d a n d S c huma nn: “ S tr u ctur a l Per formance of Faced Calcutta Bamboo (Dendrocalamus Strictus) for use in Joined Structural Assemblies,” in Proceedings from the 2019 International Sustainable Buildings Symposium, Dallas, July 18–20 M acDonald: “The Projection of the City: How Time-Based Media Redefines the Agency of Mapping,” Urban Inventories Conference and Exhibition: Urban Documentation as Design Project, Centre de design, Montreal, March
Cofounded by Emma Osore (B.S. URS ’09), the workshop “Spaces and Places 2019: People Power Justice” for urbanists and community planners was hosted in April in Oakland, California, by BlackSpace Manifesto. Ifeoma Ebo (B.Arch. ’02) of the NYC Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice is an advisory board member of the collective. Joseph Podlesnik (M.F.A. ’92), Acts of Looking exhibition, photographic work, Stockton University Art Gallery, Galloway, New Jersey, January 30– February 12 Rezwan Razani (M.R.P. ’94), founder of Footprint to Wings, showed Race to Zero Carbon: Coaching Clinic Movie, a documentary film she directed and wrote, at the 2019 EcoCinema Cafe Marathon Film Festival, John Jay College, April 15; and the Montclair Public Library on April 18 Amanda Williams (B.Arch. ’97), the Smith College Museum of Art Summer Artist-in-Residence 2019, Open Studio, June 27; see also Awards, Grants Jim Zver (M.F.A. ’69), group exhibition The Next Big Thing, Studio Channel Islands Art Center, Camarillo, California, June 1–July 20
Faculty and Staff Associate Professor Esra Akcan, architecture “ Intertwined Histories,” invited presentation, Ph.D. Dialogues, Yale School of Architecture, April 18 “ R ight-to-Heal: Democracy from Above and Below,” Columbia University, May 3 “ O pen Architecture: Migration, Citizenship and Urban Renewal,” invited lecture, ETH, Zurich, Switzerland, May 16 Robert W. Balder (B.S. URS ’89), Gensler Family Sesquicentennial Executive Director of AAP NYC, and Assistant Professor Linda Shi, CRP, participated in “Return to the Classroom: Innovating Cities,” a series of minilectures and a cross-disciplinary panel discussion at Cornell Tech, March 30. Professor Victoria Beard, CRP, and Assistant Professor Timur Dogan, architecture, joined other Cornell faculty in another session titled “Return to the Classroom: Advancing Urban Sustainability,” at the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University, May 29. Leslie Brack, instructor in the department of art; Shera D’Elia, social media manager for AAP Communications; Marsha Taichman, visual resources librarian, Mui Ho Fine Arts Library; Bernard Yenelouis (M.F.A. ’12); and Magdalena Zink (B.Arch. ’19) were part of the group exhibition Strewn Forgotten Gathered ReImagined, at the Community School of Music and Art, Ithaca, June 7–July 26 Visiting associate professor in architecture Naomi Frangos, solo exhibition, In Search of Contoured Playground, the Noguchi Museum, August 21, 2019–February 2, 2020 Associate Professor Samia Henni, architecture Cotaught with Mario Gooden, Mpho Matsipa, and Anooradha Iyer Siddiqi, the seminar “Roundtable | (Anti/Post/De)-Colonial Practices,” at The Cooper Union Ir win S. Chanin School of Architecture, March 22 “ A rchitecture of Counterrevolution,” Centro Cultural de Belém Foundation, Lisbon, Portugal, May 21
Jill Magid (B.F.A. ’93), film, The Proposal, documentary of famed Mexican architect Luis Barragán opened May 24 at the IFC Center in New York City with filmmaker Q&As
Assistant Professor of the Practice Joanna Malinowska, art, group exhibition, Art et Presse, libres échanges, Château de Penthes in Geneva, Switzerland, April
Former art professor Eleanore Mikus (1927–2017) and Rosy Keyser (B.F.A. ’97), Rosy Keyser and Eleanor Mikus, at Parts & Labor Beacon, New York, May 25–July 7
Jennifer Minner, associate professor, CRP C opresented the paper “How Urban Spaces Remember: The Essay Film as Archive for Protest and Resistance” with Martin Abbott at the “City, Essay, Film” interdisciplinary symposium at University College London, June Gave an invited talk titled “Mega-events: Impact Craters and Reservoirs of Memory” in the School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning
Jennifer Nichols (B.F.A. ’04), solo exhibition, Dream Baby Dream, at Deborah Berke Partners in New York City, April 25–June 7 Maggie O’Keefe (B.F.A. ’19), group show at Dacia Gallery’s Summer Group Exhibition, July 10–20
colloquium series at Arizona State University in Tempe, March P resented “Landscape and Memory at Recent Past Expo: Observations from World’s Fair Sites of the Late ’60s–’00s” at the “Preserving the Recent Past 3” conference, Los Angeles, March Jonathan Ochshorn, “Flexibility and Its Discontents: Colquhoun’s Critique of the Pompidou Center,” BLACK BOX: Articulating Architecture’s Core in the Post-Digital Era, 107th ACSA Annual Meeting, Carnegie Mellon University, March 28–30 Carl Ostendarp Frozen Gesture: Gesten in der Malerei, Kunst Museum Winterthur, May 18–August 1, Winterthur, Switzerland, curated by Konrad Bitterli, Lynn Kost, and Andrea Lutz Zentrified!, Thomas Park Gallery, New York City, January 9–February 12, curated by Ken Johnson John Reps, professor emeritus in CRP, curated Mapping the New York Metropolis exhibition of drawings and prints from settlement through the middle of the 19th century, West Sibley Exhibition Hallway, West Sibley Hall, March Assistant Professor of the Practice Jaret Vadera, art, gave a talk about his practice titled “Aliens, Code-Shifters, and Rude-Mapping” at Cornell South Asia Program, February 28 Professor Emerita Mary N. Woods, architecture Keynote lecture on imagery of urban ruin and renewal in Bombay/Mumbai at a conference on architecture as visual memory organized by Professor Ela Kacel (Ph.D. HAUD ’09) at RWTH Aachen University, January 31 S poke on women architects in India for Kacel’s seminar at Bahçeşehir University in Istanbul, May 10; and also at Frame Conclave’s conference on Indian modernities in Goa, on August 17 J. Meejin Yoon, Gale and Ira Drukier Dean Keynote speaker at the 2019 Association of Architectural Educators conference hosted by the University of Westminster in London on April 24–26 Yoon’s firm Höweler + Yoon presented “Culturally Coded: Höweler + Yoon’s Recent Architectural Works in China” at the Asian Art Museum, San Francisco, March 14
Students The student-run organization Association held a specially themed exhibition titled Association: The Volumes: Planning into the Future, which recognizes the planning department’s past contributions to its journal, Association, as well as the great diversity of works that the publication is known for; February 18–March 8, West Sibley Exhibition Hallway.
Voices: Students
Using Big Data to Amplify the Voice of Marginalized Community Members By Isaiah D. Murray (B.A./B.S. URS ’20) I went into urban planning with the mission to learn how to plan a space for a community that reflects their values and culture. In theory, this should include everyone’s input but I quickly found that not to be the case. When I participated in Design Connect during my first year at Cornell, we were required to have meetings with the community to plan their space. It was obvious that many members of the community were not attending—because meetings were scheduled during the middle of the workday. Knowing the history of urban inequality and discrimination, I found this to be unjust. From that moment on, I began to ground my hunch that people were being left out of decision-making processes, and started brainstorming how they could be represented. There are more ways than a community meeting to engage the public in a discourse about the neighborhood’s built environment. I knew that the majority of people use social media and that most people own a cell phone. I embraced technology and big data as an avenue to harness opinion and sentiment about what should and should not be included in the future of a community. In the fall of 2017, I became interested in network theory and started doing research with the Social Dynamics Lab in the information science and sociology departments, observing the political leanings of millions of people based on their Twitter posts. From this experience, I learned that small bits of information can be connected to other data sets creating a fuller picture of group dynamics. I took this concept and applied it to a project I worked on at the Urban Future Lab, a think tank in San Antonio, my hometown, in the summer of 2018.
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The Urban Future Lab has undertaken a community-driven pilot project on San Antonio’s southside to activate its untapped potential in business and culture. Upon researching the area, very little data on the assets, economy, and social networks of the southside existed, thus limiting how to go about this reinvigoration. The lack of data inspired an investigation of methods to collect information directly from the effected communities, with the goal of providing this data to the communities first so they can be informed about their future and become active participants in developing community-driven strategies for economic revitalization and development. I was tasked with developing the concept for an app that would facilitate commerce, dialogue, and culture creation. This app was conceptualized to record the assets and value of the community, but this information would double as a defense in the face of onset development that could gentrify the area. We strived to acquire collective community knowledge—data generated by the community for the community, with the aim of increasing citizen agency and improving the frameworks in which it operates. More recently, I spent a summer in New York City interning with Measure of America, a nonprofit organization that aggregates more than 250 city indicators at the borough and community district levels to make city data more accessible and digestible. This exploratory tool is not intended to remedy city issues, but rather bring them to light so they can be addressed. From this experience, I was able to assign a statistic to inequality, which would then serve as a benchmark from which to progress. The statistics
2 1 Murray, center, while 2 Isaiah D. Murray working for the Urban (B.A./B.S. URS ’20). Future Lab during the photo / provided summer of 2018. photo / Isaiah D. Murray
gave clarity to which inequalities are currently the most pressing. When I began exploring how to involve more members of marginalized communities in community discussion, I thought it would be extremely difficult to bring all of their opinions and desires into the open. But using big data with a focus on those who are marginalized, we can achieve a more equitable approach to designing cities and communities in the future. Creating channels for marginalized people’s data to be collected and protected will be essential to the success and growth of cities as we know them today. Data is a way to give a voice to those who do not have one.
CORNELL AAP This magazine is published twice yearly by the College of Architecture, Art, and Planning at Cornell University, through the Office of the Dean. College of Architecture, Art, and Planning Cornell University 129 Sibley Dome, Ithaca, NY 14853-6701 (607) 254-6292 aapcommunications@cornell.edu aap.cornell.edu
EDITORS Rebecca Bowes Elise Gold EDITORIAL COORDINATOR Patti Witten CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Rebecca Bowes Jeffrey Chusid Edith Fikes Blaine Friedlander Neema Kudva Linda Shi Patti Witten Jay Wrolstad COPY EDITOR Laura Glenn DESIGN KUDOS Design Collaboratory™ PHOTO William Staffeld (unless noted) DISTRIBUTION COORDINATOR Sheri D’Elia © October 2019 Cornell University Printed by Villanti Printers, Inc, Milton, Vermont. Environmentally certified to the Forest Stewardship Council® Standard. Printed on FSC Certified Rolland Enviro Satin paper, which is manufactured using 100% post-consumer, recycled fiber. Printed using Toyo 0% VOC, soy-based inks.
COVER Olivia Calalo (M.S. AAD ’20), Underwater (2019), digital time-progressive drawing created and coded using the sketchbook software Processing. Created for the M.S. AAD summer studio Computational Design and Representation, taught by Visiting Critic Fleet Hower (see page 25). INSIDE COVER William Jihrel Smith (B.F.A. ’19), Personal Identification (2018), calcium carbonate, enamel, acrylic, and oil on canvas, 60" x 84", from the student exhibition PROCESSED #001, November 12–17, 2018.
The Campus March for Climate Emergency was held on September 20 to coincide with the Global Climate Strike. The march began at Rand Hall, where “Touchdown” read a declaration while the Climate Emergency Flag was raised on the roof. The students then proceeded to Ho Plaza to join the Cornell Climate Justice gathering before heading to the Ithaca Global Climate Strike downtown. The Campus March for Climate Emergency was commissioned as part of the Preston Thomas Memorial Lecture Series titled “EARTH: Projections 50 Years after Earth Art,” organized by Assistant Professor Tao DuFour. The Climate Emergency Flag visualizes the planet’s carbon budget in a series of three concentric circles—the thickness of each is proportional to CO2 emissions.
Cornell University 129 Sibley Dome Ithaca, NY 14853-6701 aap.cornell.edu
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ARCHITECTURE ART PLANNING FALL 2019
Fall 2019 FEATURES
The Mui Ho Fine Arts Library 6 Informed Decision-Making and Design 12 BRIEFS
Art at AAP NYC 20 Preliminary Perceptions of a Planner 21 Alumni at Work on Education Projects in Developing Countries 43 SECTIONS
In Review 2 Voices Mimi Zeiger (B.Arch. ’94) 11 Donald Greenberg 18 Isaiah D. Murray (B.A./B.S. URS ’20) 52
Inside the Department Architecture 22 Art 28 Planning 34
Alumni Projects 42
Big Data: Informed DecisionMaking and Design
In the News 49