Carnegie Mellon School of Architecture EX-CHANGE 2018

School of Architecture: EX-CHANGE CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY – 2018

Studio Name: DEGREE–YEAR

Main Question

EX-CHANGE was an exhibition and series of discussions organized by the Carnegie Mellon University School of Architecture Studio Committee on May 4-5, 2018.

Sarah Rafson, Editor & Ann Kalla Visiting Professor, 2017-18 Meredith Marsh, Marketing & Communications Manager Juan Aranda, Design Assistant Jakob Uhlenhopp, Editorial Assistant Alexander Michael Wang, Curatorial Assistant Photography & Video: Christina Brown, Jai Sawkar, Christoph Eckrich Event Assistants: Mariana Alberola, Longney Luk, Liale Nijem, Olivia Werner Student Representatives: Aditi Thota, Isadora Martins, Christoph Eckrich, Cassandra Howard, Alison Katz, Alyssa Mayorga, Annie Rantilla, Anthony Kosec, Anthony Nitchie, Atefeh Mahdavi, Catherine Zanardi, Chase Kea, Damini Methur, Jai Sawkar, Clara Zhao, Jakob Uhlenhopp, Kelly Li, Kyle Wing, Phillip Kuehne, Roshni Krishnan, Yidan Gong, Zain Islam-Hashimi EX-CHANGE Moderators: Adam Kor, inter-punct, BA 2018 Students: Nihil magnihicabo. Ebis aut quidunt aliqui id mod magnimi, quam faciis untum Molly Wright Steenson, K&L Gates Associate Professor of Ethics & occatis re praTechnologies comnit eria in enecaerum Computational the School cust of Design rendiamenis ut quia cus, quas aut alia arciis

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“ I was struck by your students’ ability to unmake the mythology of the architect in a way, by not understanding service and artistry as mutually exclusive.

Amy Kulper

“ The generalist inside me wants to solve everything, but to make a project truly special, architects will still need to specialize in one thing.

Ming Fung

“

I would encourage you to build more affect into the ambivalence of not executing everything, while holding on to the love of the real that I appreciate about the work here.

Mitch McEwen

TABLE OF CONTENTS 5

Guest Critics

6 Introduction 7

PART 1: REPORTING BACK

Spring EX-CHANGE Discussion

CORE SIX STUDIOS 9

How does an architect learn to balance the priorities of site, program, materials, precedents & representation in the design process?

Foundation II: Architecture Design Studio B.Arch, First Year

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If program is, by itself, insufficient as the final arbiter of design decisions, what guides our choices? How do we design for anticipated uses while creating adaptable architecture with core qualities that endure?

Elaboration II: Architecture Design Studio B.Arch, Second Year

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In architectural pedagogy, how much consideration should be given to practical constraints?

Integration II: Advanced Construction Studio B.Arch, Third Year & M.Arch 4th Semester

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PART 2: GENERALISTS & SPECIALISTS

Spring EX-CHANGE Discussion

ADVANCED SYNTHESIS OPTION STUDIOS 23

Does film offer architects a mode of representation or a generative field of imagination?

Moving Image Liquid Thought

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How can traditions of illusionism in architecture inform contemporary design & technological interface?

Low Relief

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How does understanding the building traditions of Venice, Vicenza & Verona vis-a-vis Palladio & Scarpa impact exploration of architectural space & detail?

THESES

Palladio Institute and Archive

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How can deconstruction & material reuse become strategies to maintain cultural identity, affordability & a sense of place in the face of urban change?

UDBS: HOME RE_DEFINED Advanced Synthesis Option Studio, Integrative Design, Arts, and Technology (IDeATe), Architecture– Engineering–Construction Management (AECM)

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How can community organizations, public agencies & issue-based civic engagement initiatives inform & inspire the design process?

How can urban designers act as mediators to curate negotiations & conversations between stakeholder groups?

Master of Urban Design Thesis

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What are the implications of designing permanent structures to house art forms that are fleeting & ethereal?

Frozen Music, The Architecture of Performance: Sibiu International Theater Festival New Theater

Is the answer to an architect’s question necessarily a building?

B.Arch Thesis

How does the design outcome change, as architects move beyond singular authorship & open up the design process to include a wider community?

Urban Acupuncture for Manchester, Pittsburgh/ Urban Collaborative Studio

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How can research contribute to building energy conservation while ensuring occupant comfort, satisfaction & performance (and vice versa)?

MS & Ph.D. in Building Performance & Diagnostics

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Ph.D. in Architecture–Engineering–Construction Management

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How can we mobilize computational ideas & technologies to rethink our relationship to design, matter and the built environment?

MS & Ph.D. in Computational Design

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Can excess data become a tool to create bespoke architecture at no extra cost?

MS Advanced Architectural Design Thesis

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PART 4: REALISM & ABSTRACTION Spring EX-CHANGE Discussion

Urban Systems Design Studio Master of Urban Design

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What is the relevance of scientific inquiry in exploring new design strategies for the architecture of our changing planet?

Interbreeding Architecture MS Sustainable Design, M.Arch

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PART 3: PUBLIC-FACING PROFESSION Spring EX-CHANGE Discussion

77 NEWS 87

AWARDS & HONORS

Guest Critics

MING FUNG, AIA, is principal and co-founder of Los Angeles-based Hodgetts + Fung. She is Director of International Programs at SCI-Arc where she was formerly Chief of Academic Affairs and Director of Graduate Programs. She has taught at Yale University, The Ohio State University, and Cal Poly Pomona. She served as president of the ACSA, president of the AIA Los Angeles and presidential appointee to the National Endowment for the Arts Council. In 2006, Fung received an AIA Gold Medal, and Hodgetts + Fung was awarded the Firm of the Year Award by the AIA California Council in 2008.

AMY KULPER is an associate professor and head of the Department of Architecture at the Rhode Island School of Design. She has taught at Cambridge University, the University of Pennsylvania, UCLA, SCI-Arc, and the University of Michigan. During her time in Ann Arbor, she was a four-time recipient of the Donna M. Salzer Award for teaching excellence. Kulper served as Design Editor of the Journal of Architectural Education for six years.

Her teaching and research focus on the intersections of history, theory and criticism with design.

V. MITCH McEWEN is an assistant professor at the Princeton University School of Architecture where she leads research associated with the Embodied Computation Lab. She was an assistant professor at the University of Michigan’s Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning from 2014 to 2017. As principal of McEwen Studio and co-founder of A(n) Office, an architecture collaborative of studios in Detroit, Los Angeles and Brooklyn, McEwen has received commissions from the U.S. Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale, the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, and the Istanbul Design Biennial.

Introduction

In December 2017, the Carnegie Mellon University School of Architecture (SoA) inaugurated EX-CHANGE, an end-of-semester exhibition celebrating student work. In May 2018, the school opened the second EX-CHANGE, an exhibition inaugurated by a day of discussions with Ming Fung, AIA, principal and co-founder of Los Angeles-based Hodgetts + Fung and director of Academic Affairs at SCI-Arc; Mitch McEwen, assistant professor at Princeton University School of Architecture, principal of McEwen Studio and cofounder of A(n) Office; and Amy Kulper, associate professor and head of the Department of Architecture at the Rhode Island School of Design.

EX-CHANGE reflects on the critical questions posed by SoA studios and programs — inquisitive energy captured again here in the pages that follow. The discussion accompanying the exhibition of student work, deftly moderated by Molly Wright Steenson and Adam Kor (B.A. ’18), covered issues of pedagogy and practice that were framed by the questions posed by each studio and program. Those questions that structured the exhibition provide the backbone for this publication as well, which is organized into three sections: Core 6, showing work from the first three years of the undergraduate programs; Advanced Synthesis Option Studios (ASOS), showing upper-year undergraduate work; and Thesis, which included work from the B.Arch and graduate programs.

Mixed between the student work here are excerpts from the EX-CHANGE conversations. These discussions brought a critical outlook to the SoA’s work, inviting voices from within the school and the broader architectural community to engage with the guest critics. Fung, Kulper and McEwen each reflected on one of three concurrent morning sessions they attended, which were packed with student presentations based on collective “critical questions” of the studios.

Additional respondents enriched these discussions—Kent Suhrbier (B.Arch ’92), Bea Spolidaro, Spike Wolff, Ray Gastil, Akhil Badjatia, Dan Lockton, Jakob Marsico (MTID ’14) and Daragh Byrne added additional perspectives from across campus and the city.

In Kulper’s words, EX-CHANGE truly was “a poignant institutional moment” of reflection, situating the SoA’s work in questions of pedagogy, technology, abstraction and the future of practice. This booklet, we hope, offers a window into the dynamic work and thought that takes place in the school each semester.

Reporting Back

SPRING EX-CHANGE DISCUSSION

ADAM KOR Welcome to EX-CHANGE. We would like to begin the conversation with a brief report from our guest critics on their observations of the three sections they were a part of this morning — Ming with the sequence of studios from the first three years known as “Core 6,” Amy with the undergraduate Advanced Synthesis Option Studios (ASOS) and Mitch with the theses from undergraduate and graduate programs. You each saw different aspects of the work that we’ve done over the semester. Let’s start with Ming.

MING FUNG There were many projects within each design studio. You can see the challenge of attempting to address every single National Architectural Accreditation Board criteria within the first three years. Students have to understand site, program, material and construction detailing, all within six studios. Overall, the students were extremely confident in the way that they presented their work, and I applaud you for that. Already in your third year you know how to defend your projects. I’m looking forward to seeing how you present your projects in your fifth-year thesis projects.

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AMY KULPER I reviewed the Advanced Synthesis Option Studios. Every studio I saw also had some version of engaging the past, whether it’s how they bring in the history of film, an explicit use of precedent or an acknowledgment of the history of an urban context or institution.

For me, the synthesis piece was the most interesting. I saw an incredible diversity of topics that ranged from Palladio and Scarpa in one studio to another that grappled with questions of historical and contemporary techniques of plaster fabrication, and another that dealt with incredibly contemporary issues of augmented reality and the kinds of technologies that they engage. Yet what interested me the most were the ways in which the notion of synthesis ran really beautifully across all of the studios.

I thought that there was a fascinating synthesis of mediums. I liked the agility and seamless translation between analog and digital forms of representation. In the core studio work, one wall shows digital renderings, and right behind them are material model explorations. I suspect there are some interesting conversations here around that mode of synthesis.

MF The consistency of design resolution here is also very clear, but I wonder if there’s another level of poking and questioning that could happen. Whether it’s questioning how we approach context, for example, or how we look at building typology. Is there such a thing as a building typology? We are changing, and culture is changing, so programs must change, too. How do we challenge that? It’s more than just adopting the neighborhood materials or providing adequate air and light. For architects, all of those things are absolutely important to address. But in terms of the discipline of architecture, there is something beyond problem-solving buildings.

AK This makes me think about a colleague, Deane Simpson, who makes a really beautiful argument for why architects should be generalists. He looks at the structure, the flat hierarchy of skunkworks, a model in which the most expert engineer is put in the room with the guy who’s going to put the rivets in the metal. He discusses the way in which communication of that kind is really critical to the education of an architect.

One way to envision these questions as a school is to question the possibility of the flat hierarchy and the conversations that The takeaway here was how as an institution you could take could happen across the school. I saw this in various studios’ a group of students who declare very different and unique engagement with technical and historical areas. These seem to interests — by virtue of their selection of an option studio — and be the places where CMU gains real traction. If an education create conversations around what the synthetic component allows you a broad overview in order to understand a flat of the studio is. For example, a studio working on community hierarchy, where pieces might start to work together, thats one engagement and the building of portable classrooms can still of the real values in the curricular structure that I’m seeing here. engage with one that’s doing an opera in Romania.

Or at least, one of the real potentials of it.

MITCH McEWEN I was in the room with the thesis projects from the Bachelor of Architecture, Master of Science, and Ph.D. programs. This is a very distinct place. A number of projects I saw were Ph.D.-level intensity, which I could imagine also being housed in another field such as engineering, computer science, policy or economics, yet they were all housed here.

I think that this university is in a really interesting place to define what the education of a generalist is for the 21st century. The discipline as a whole is changing the way that the generalist is constituted. The most important questions used to be, “Do you read a lot?” “Do you have access to certain kinds of figures?”

Now we have much more of a facility with measurement — not just computation, but the more technical aspects of how we enter into the episteme. Carnegie Mellon would be one of the universities to stake that question out differently than Yale or other places that may still be reading the same musty books.

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Architecture Design Studio: Foundation II BACHELOR OF ARCHITECTURE – FIRST YEAR

How does an architect learn to balance the priorities of site, program, materials, precedents & representation in the design process?

The second studio in the SoA’s B.Arch program explores how materials, geometry, context, experience and performance criteria can be harnessed to yield new and surprising insights about space and architecture.

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Instructors: Kai Gutschow, Akhil Badjatia, Putu Dawkins, Jon Holmes, Talia Perry, Brian Peters, Ann Ranttila, Jennifer Szczesniak Students: Tsz Wing Clover Chau, Jianwei Cheng, Kimberlyn Cho, Minyoung Cho, Joanne Chui, Aditi Dhabalia, Juhi Dhanesha, Jonah Dubin, Emily Edlich, Victor Eraslan, Emmanuelle Father, Steven Fei, Isabella Giammatteo, Maya Greenholt, Paul Greenway, Jenna Guo, Ammar Hassonjee, Xiaotian He, Lukas Hermann, Veronica Hernandez Garrido, Yuxin Huang, Fanjie Jin, Grant Johnson, Sungmin Jung, Maia Kamenova, Sarah Kang, Elijah King,

Shanice Lam, Jasmine Lee, Zhengyi Li, Samuel Losi, Xindi Lyu, Taisei Manheim, Han Meng, Hagan Miller, Vishaka Nayak, Timothy Nelson-Pyne, Ke Ning, Julita Przybylska, Mohammed Rahman, Robert Rice, Carly Sacco, Jai Sawkar, Shariq Shah, Shaelin Spahle, Lingheng Tao, Vivian Teng, Melissa Thomas, Yangjian Wang, Olivia Werner, Yichen Xu, Yingying Yan, Rohan Zeng, Jieli Zhao, Grace Xuanying Zhong, Ellen Zhu

From top: Project 1a by Vivian Teng (B.Arch ’22), Project 1b Folding Chair by Xindi Lyu (B.Arch ’22), Project 1c Urban Mapping by Shanice Lam (B.Arch ’22).

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Architecture Design Studio: Foundation II BACHELOR OF ARCHITECTURE – FIRST YEAR

Top left: Project 3, Pavilion Section, Adam He (B.Arch ’22). Top right: Project 3, Pavilion, Shanice Lam. Lower left: Project 3, Site Analysis, Xindi Lyu. Lower right: Project 3, Pavilion Model, Ellen Zhu (B.Arch ’22).

Opposite: group discussing Project 2, Stick Space Divider.

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The studio begins with a series of mini-projects, aiming to improve observation skills by examining artifacts across scales as a means of introducing students to the process of working iteratively in a variety of media. The second project is a month-long woodshop assignment of a full-scale space divider. Along with developing carpentry skills, this project aims to further develop students’ design process and iterative knowledge, along with developing ideas of tectonic construction and how a subunit can create a system. The final project applies lessons from the semester with a greater emphasis on site forces, human experience and assembly of materials. The goal is to create poetic and memorable experiences and to learn to clearly communicate the program.

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Architecture Design Studio: Elaboration II BACHELOR OF ARCHITECTURE — SECOND YEAR

How do we design for anticipated uses while creating adaptable architecture with core qualities that endure?

This studio explores the rich potential of matter to inform architectural thinking and physically instantiate architectural ideas.

We rely upon curiosity, critical thinking and reflection to consider how materials and systems are constructed and utilized to substantiate design intent. The studio explores methods of design that foreground material systems to address questions of architectural performance and human experience.

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Instructors: Jeremy Ficca, Jeff King, Jennifer Lucchino, Eddy Man Kim, Liza Cruze, Manuel Rodríguez Ladrón de Guevara Students: Harrison Branch-Shaw, John Butler, Shirley Chen, Andrew Chong, Fallon Creech, Takumi Davis, Vincent Derienzo, Yinhui Dong, Colleen Duong, Christoph Eckrich, Edward Fischer, Erin Fuller, Vanshika Gandotra, Gisselt Gomez, Owen Haft, Kirman Hanson, Tanvi Harkare, Martin He, Grace Hou, Cassie Howard, Stephanie Huang, Gil Jang, Grace Ji, Romi Jin, Leah Kendrick, Yoo Jin Kim, Jihee Kim, Claire Koh, Ryu Kondrup, Jessica Kusten, Taylor Latimer, Evan Lehner, Jonathan Liang, Michael Longo, Rachel Lu, Longney Luk, Alyssa Mayorga, Xiaoying Meng, Alejandra Meza, Jacob Moskowitz,

Daniel Noh, Emmanuel Nwandu, Isabella Ouyang, Hsiao Tyng Peck, Anthony Ra, Arula Ratnakar, Angelina Shi, Brandon Smith, Kathy Song, Steven Sontag, Louis Suarez, Kevin Thies, Yin Jie Tian, Swetha Tulluri, Alex Wang, Emily Wein, Crystal Xue, Minghao Yang, Carmen Yu, Curran Zhang

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Architecture Design Studio: Elaboration II BACHELOR OF ARCHITECTURE – SECOND YEAR

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How might architecture’s materiality condition human perception? How can the model reveal the unexpected and transform one’s understanding of their work? In our post-digital age, what is the value of a material laden design process? Through a rigorous process of modeling and prototyping, we interrogate and explore architecture’s form, material and structure in service to a material gestalt in which the sum is greater than its parts.

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Integration Studio II: Advanced Construction Studio

BACHELOR OF ARCHITECTURE – THIRD YEAR, MASTER OF ARCHITECTURE — FOURTH SEMESTER

In architectural pedagogy, how much consideration should be given to practical constraints?

The final studio in the sixsemester sequence concerns detailed development and refinement of architectural design, informed by the integration of structural, enclosure, environmental and material systems with the process of construction.

Students are expected to comprehensively articulate concepts and develop designs with more precision and in greater detail than done in previous studios and courses.

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Instructors: Steve Lee, Stefani Danes, Lori Fitzgerald, Mick McNutt, Erica Cochran Hameen, Jeff Davis (M.Arch) B.Arch Students: Cotey Anderegg, Christina Brown, Eric Chen, Zhi Tao Chen, Xin Chen, Jonathan Cheng, Kornrat Euchukanonchai, Alessandra Fleck, Austin Garcia, Jamie Ho, Min Young Jeong, Kevin Jiang, Lingfan Jiang, Denise Jiang, Alison Katz, Christine Kim, Alina Kramkova, Yugyeong Lee, Aaron Lee, Alex Lin, Zhuoying Lin, Kelly Lu, Benita Nartey, Jihoon Park, Rachel Park, Nika Postnikov, Michael Powell, Shariwa Sharada, Ryan Smith, Scarlet Tong, Monica Toren, Ophelie Tousignant, Alvin Wong, Kai Zhang, Selena Zhen, Christine Zhu

M.Arch Students: Mariana Alberola Rezza, Nikhita Bhagwat, Maddi Johnson, Liale Nijem, David Suchoza III, Bryan Trew, William Ulmer

Opposite, top: Detail, process work. Below: Sectional perspectives and wall section details, Christina Brown (B.Arch ’20).

Next page — Top and middle left: Wall sections and sectional perspective, Michael Powell (B.Arch ’20). Bottom left: Sectional perspective, Cotey Anderegg (B.Arch ’20). Bottom right: Wall section, Ophelie Tousignant (B.Arch ’20). Opposite: Assorted models on view at EX-CHANGE exhibition.

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Integration Studio II: Advanced Construction Studio

BACHELOR OF ARCHITECTURE – THIRD YEAR, MASTER OF ARCHITECTURE — FOURTH SEMESTER

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This semester, students worked with the Environmental Charter School (ECS) of Pittsburgh to explore concepts for the design of their next generation of middle schools.

A fundamental aspect of ECS is to teach ecological literacy. To this end, students and teachers must be provided the opportunity to actively engage in the operation of the building — from passive strategies to active strategies to measuring and verifying performance.

Each of the five studio sections worked in a distinct Pittsburgh neighborhood and demonstrated how the ECS vision for the future of middle schools can be fulfilled through a comprehensive architecture proposal.

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Generalists & Specialists SPRING EX-CHANGE DISCUSSION

HAL HAYES Ming, I wonder if you think of yourself, your practice or the practice of architecture in general as one of specialized expertise or generalization?

MING FUNG I would like to think that we can do both.

Ultimately, having an expertise in one thing is important, but every single architectural project is going to ask a particular question that you will need to address. The generalist inside me wants to solve everything, but to make a project truly special, architects will still need to specialize in one thing.

I think, for all of us, it would be difficult to ignore that architecture exists within the city. This is a challenge throughout architecture education. There has always been a divide between urban planning and architecture programs, in which we have not really been asking the question, “What is architecture in the future?” It is interesting to me that now those kinds of discussions are taught in other disciplines rather than architecture. It goes beyond the visualization of the city — and I think that is an important question that needs to be discussed right now.

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MOLLY WRIGHT STEENSON I’d ask then, what are the disciplinary edges? As an industrial designer, I know that people in my field also bridge into architecture. We’re interested in cities and houses and buildings and the mesoscale. Architecture doesn’t often have a good response to the question, at least in terms of architectural education, which can — although here it doesn’t — lead to some pretty ham-fisted and clumsy projects when it comes to dealing with humans and how they interact with technology.

MITCH McEWEN We talked in the thesis reviews about institutional culture and institutional methods, and that’s where the CodeLab came up. I wonder if that’s related to what you’re saying, because there’s a way in which you can be educated in the liberal arts or generalists, with access to engineering, but an architecture degree prepares one for a career — whether that’s landscape architecture, facade design, or any number of different modes.

I mean, my own practice has been growing in Detroit in a way that’s fairly conventional after starting off in a very unconventional way. We have been bemoaning the siphoning off of the conventional roles of the architect to other professionals for some time now, but I think there’s an upside to that picture as well. When I look at my students, they have lots of choices with how they can use their education. They could work in architectural research, with climate change or medical labs. They have overlapping skillsets to do very minute research tasks — looking at the level of bone marrow, for example, is very architectural, they tell me — or user interface design or architecture. We saw this in the ’90s, but now there’s a different kind of computational valency. This idea of expertise is going to morph throughout students’ careers.

Those middle schoolers describing their lives and what happens on each porch in Manchester allowed these students to read the neighborhood in a way that none of their architectural tools could have. And now the middle schoolers might imagine their classrooms to finally be architecture.

In fact, there was another beautiful thing that came out of the Urban Acupuncture review. When pressed about the role of architecture in their project, the students answered that they now understood architecture to be a service profession. That is a really fantastic outcome for a studio—to understand the role of the architect in precisely that way.

ART LUBETZ But, if that’s all we are, service providers, what about the art of architecture?

AK The students articulated it much more beautifully than just about seeing themselves as service providers — they said they understood their role to be in the service of the client.

I was really struck by it, because Mabel Wilson described the ways in which the figure of the architect is a White male European construct. She talked about the contested territory around understanding architects to be public intellectuals who never actually engage in the building or making of things.

I was struck by your students’ ability to unmake the mythology of the architect in a way, by not understanding service and artistry as mutually exclusive. If I were to invert the question, I would ask, is it not possible for beauty to come out of service and engagement with the community?

BEATRICE SPOLIDORO We design buildings without understanding exactly who we’re designing for. I know some studios deal with different neighborhoods in Pittsburgh. But do we really understand the human experience? Is there a way to help make it more evident through these types of projects?

AMY KULPER I saw that beautifully in some of the studios here. I think your question was bracketed between two things.

One, Adrian Forte talks about the term, “the user” and the ways in which functionalism allows us to instrumentalize the occupant of architecture in precisely those terms. The other is closer to Jonathan Hill’s work. He never uses the term “user” — he refers to “creative denizens” — and discusses the ways in which it then opens up some of the questions of the work we were seeing. For example, in the Urban Acupuncture studio, the students wonderfully articulated the ways in which they choreographed meetings with the students of a charter middle school and learned to rescript the neighborhood.

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Architecture Design Studio: Moving Image Liquid Thought ADVANCED SYNTHESIS OPTION STUDIO

Does film offer architects a mode of representation or a generative field of imagination?

This studio explores experimental film with related theoretical texts and uses these findings to speculate on a new architecture.

While the resulting designs are represented through film, modeling, drawing and material construction are used in the preparatory stages. The course considers new potentialities for an architecture composed through an understanding of time and space.

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Instructors: Mary Lou Arscott, Anna Henson Students: Kerrian France, Hannah Martinez, Matthew Radican, Elle Bai, Meghan Chin, Ai Fukuda, Josh Kim-Biggs, Marina McIntosh, Catherine Zanardi

Opposite, stills from top to bottom: “12” by Elle Bai (B.Arch ’18), “Murus Latrinae” by Meghan Chin (B.Arch ’18), “Industrial Oasis”

by Kerrian France (B.Arch ’19), “Dissolve” by Ai Fukuda (B.Arch ’18).

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Architecture Design Studio: Moving Image Liquid Thought ADVANCED SYNTHESIS OPTION STUDIO

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This studio considers the design of public spaces for the most intimate bodily rituals such as drinking, urinating, defecating, washing, laundering and carrying out ritual absolutions. The studio’s title denotes the joining of the potential of physical principles to be connected with a rich narrative of memory, dream state, fantasy and the surreal. The challenge in this studio’s design process is to explore the language of film and integrate an understanding of the sensory body in movement into an architectural composition.

Above: “Journey to the Top” by Lexi Yan (B.Arch ’19). Below: “Working Title” by Catherine Zanardi (B.Arch ’18). Opposite page, stills from top: “Say Hello” by Josh Kim-Biggs (B.Arch ’18), “The Barn” by Hannah Martinez (B.Arch ’19), “Liquid Transition: Miami Beach Vessels” by Marina McIntosh (B.Arch ’18), “Supplementum” by Matthew Radican (B.Arch ’19).

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Architecture Design Studio: Low Relief ADVANCED SYNTHESIS OPTION STUDIO

How can traditions of illusionism in architecture inform contemporary design & technological interface?

Hosted by the Carnegie Museum of Art’s Heinz Architectural Center, Low Relief studied the material cultures of deceit in architectural design and construction.

The studio explored architectural illusion not just as a visual technique, but as a precise shaping of physical material and the blending of hybrid media forms in three dimensions.

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Instructors: Joshua Bard and Francesca Torello Students: Annabelle Swain, Bingxuan Liang, Gargi Lagvankar, Hang Wang, Harsh Kedia, Lim Xin Hui, Rachel Muse, Samson Lui, Shan Wang, Stephanie Smid, Zain Islam-Hashmi This studio was part of the exhibition Copy + Paste: Hall of Architecture organized by Alyssum Skjeie, Program Manager for the Carnegie Museum of Art’s Heinz Architectural Center.

Opposite, details of Low Relief student work.

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Architecture Design Studio: Low Relief ADVANCED SYNTHESIS OPTION STUDIO

Low Relief in the Carnegie Museum of Art’s Heinz Architectural Center.

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Low Relief’s motivating framework coincides with the proliferation of virtual reality in contemporary media and positions the built environment as a protovirtual interface. The studio engaged in material play with architectural plaster, exploring its usage throughout history as a medium for architectural deceit and highlighting how architecture augments our reading and perception of physical space.

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Architecture Design Studio: Palladio Institute and Archive ADVANCED SYNTHESIS OPTION STUDIO — WINNER OF THE FERGUSON JACOBS PRIZE

How does understanding the building traditions of Venice, Vicenza & Verona vis-a-vis Palladio & Scarpa impact exploration of architectural space & detail?

This studio introduces how details can inform and elaborate a project’s conceptual underpinnings.

Instructors: Gerard Damiani and Francesca Torello

Located on the southern edge of Piazza Matteotti, the Headquarters of the Palladio Institute is a place of exhibitions, scholarly research and tourist orientation to the works of Andrea Palladio in Vicenza.

Students: Adam Shong Jing Kor, Elizabeth Levy, Kelly Li, Miranda Ford, Sally Sohn, Zane Birenbaum, Sophie Chaeyun Lee, Emily Melillo, Erica Frank, Jakob Uhlenhopp

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Guest Critic and Guide: Mark Shapiro

Opposite: Project by Adam Kor (B.A. ’18), Kelly Li (B.Arch ’19), Elizabeth Levy (B.Arch ’19), Miranda Ford (B.Arch ’19), Sally Sohn (B.Arch ’19). Top, Exterior Perspective from Piazza. Left; Site plan, Lower Left; Transverse section, facing north. Right; Plans.

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Architecture Design Studio: Palladio Institute and Archive

ADVANCED SYNTHESIS OPTION STUDIO

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Project by Jakob Uhlenhopp (BA ’18), Sophie Chaeyun Lee (B.Arch 2019), Emily Mellilo (B.Arch ’19), Zane Birenbaum (B.Arch ’19), Erica Frank (B.Arch ’18). Top left, Exterior perspective from piazza; Bottom left, site plan; Top right, longitudinal section (facing east); Bottom right, facade details.

Opposite: Select student travel sketch books, showing Andrea Palladio’s Teatro Olimpico (left) and Carlo Scarpa’s Canova Museum and Cast Gallery (right).

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The building is a modern work of architecture with a clear expression of its construction methods while integrating the fundamental principles found in the works of Andrea Palladio. This studio performs a comprehensive study of the formal systems of Andrea Palladio, contrasted with the detailing methodology of Carlo Scarpa.

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Architecture Design Studio: Urban Acupuncture for Manchester, Pittsburgh ADVANCED SYNTHESIS OPTION STUDIO

How does the design outcome change as architects move beyond singular authorship & open up the design process to include a wider community?

This studio pursues “Urban Acupuncture,” seeking neuralgic points of design interventions that promise to trigger the incremental transformation of an urban condition.

Working in collaboration with the Manchester Academic Charter School and the nonprofit Grounded in Pittsburgh, this studio

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developed an urban strategy framework for the vacant lots surrounding the school in the neighborhood of Manchester on Pittsburgh’s North Side.

Instructor: Stefan Gruber Teaching Assistant: Paul Moscoso Riofrio, Woodshop: John Holmes Students: Victor Acevedo, Rebecca Baierwick, Serra Cizmeci, Irfan Haider, Xiaoyu Jiang, Junhee Kim, Isadora Martins, Pam Pan, Katelyn Smith, Jessica Sved, Aditi Chandrash Thota

Opposite, above: Community engagement with MACS students, exploring the Manchester neighborhood. Below: Earth Day community celebration in Manchester.

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Architecture Design Studio: Urban Acupuncture for Manchester, Pittsburgh ADVANCED SYNTHESIS OPTION STUDIO

Left: I. Haider (B.Arch ’19), I. Martins (B.Arch ’19), A. Chandrash Thota (B.Arch ’19) map Manchester’s social milieu. Right: Manchester Porches.

Reimagining vacant lots as playscapes. Left: Proposal by J. Kim (B.Arch ’18), A. Chandrash Thota. Right: Workshop with MACS students.

Designing and fabricating the “Roaming Porches.” Right: Proposal by P. Pan (B.Arch ’18), J. Sved. Left: Students in woodshop.

The mobile porches will roam the neighborhod activating diverse sites accross the neighborhood. Right: Visualization by J. Sved. Left: I. Haider and S. Gruber, Lucian & Rita Caste Assistant Professor, moving porch to community garden. Opposite: Earth Day community celebration in Manchester.

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From the inductive reading of the urban milieu, through weekly community engagement workshops with middle school students, to the re-envisioning of the parking, playscape and community garden, the participatory design process led to the proposal of outdoor classrooms in form of “Roaming Porches.� The studio developed and built an outdoor classroom, a library lounge and lab/mud kitchen that can be taken to different sites around the neighborhood. The urban design framework will provide a foundation for the design and implementation of the playscape under the direction of Grounded Strategies this summer.

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Architecture Design Studio: Frozen Music, The Architecture of Performance — Sibiu International Theatre Festival ADVANCED SYNTHESIS OPTION STUDIO

What are the implications of designing permanent structures to house art forms that are fleeting & ethereal?

This studio challenges students to understand inherent rhythms of program, mass, occupancy, structure and systems in complex buildings.

Interdisciplinary teams of architecture, drama and arts management students researched the theater building typologies, sociocultural contexts of Transylvania and

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performing arts festivals operations. Collaborating with project artistic directors for the Sibiu International Theatre Festival, students developed program and planning guidelines for a three-venue, 1,500-seat performance center.

Studio documentation will be incorporated in the professional competition guidelines for the actual project.

Instructors: Hal Hayes, Dick Block (Drama), Cindy Limauro (Drama & Architecture), Kathryn Heideman (Arts Management) Students: Anthony Nitche, Anirudh Anand, Delaney Lam, Gunn Chaiyapatranun, Henry Yoon, Jai Kanodia, Ritchie Ju, Ryan Auld, Victoria Yong, Yang Gao

Opposite, from top: Parti and concept diagram by Anthony Nitche (B.Arch ’18), Piata Unirii at sundown by Victoria Yong (B.Arch ’19), various massing models.

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Architecture Design Studio: Frozen Music, The Architecture of Performance — Sibiu International Theatre Festival ADVANCED SYNTHESIS OPTION STUDIO

Top: Longitudinal section by Gunn Chaiyapatranan (B.Arch ’19). Lower right: model detail by Yang Gao (B.Arch ’19). Sectional perspective, first floor plan, rendering of National Theater and Piata Mare by Anthony Nitche (B.Arch ’18).

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Discussion followed the dialog between musical/ architectural terms and tropes such as texture/tectonics; rhythm and harmony in the combination and integration of interdependent design elements and conceptual threads; form/morphology; and composition and structure designed to find a successful mean between the opposite extremes of unrelieved repetition and unrelieved alteration.

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Urban Design Build Studio: HOME RE _DEFINED

ADVANCED SYNTHESIS OPTION STUDIO, IDEATE, MASTER OF ARCHITECTURE–ENGINEERING–CONSTRUCTION MANAGEMENT (AECM)

How can deconstruction & reuse become strategies to maintain cultural identity, affordability & sense of place in the face of urban change?

The HOME RE_DEFINED studio expands on research and design work developed in the RE_CON 01 Housing Prototype and the HOME Inc.UBATOR design/engagement tool toward implementation.

The focus of this Urban Design Build Studio (UDBS) centers on demonstrating viable strategies for the de-concentration of poverty. The studio explores

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universal affordability through modular prefabrication methods that can support replication at scale through multiple development scenarios and ownership models.

Tyan, Ethan Young, Yingyang Zhou (UDBS); (AECM) Mason Sofia; (UDBS Reality Computing/IDeATe) Sophie Chen, Nurie Jeong, Symone Lessington, Alejandro Murillo, Angelo Pagliuca, Rajita Pulivarthy, Vera Schulz, Ben Scott, Aijin Wang, Joseph Wang, Alexander Woskob

Instructors: John Folan and Thomas Corbett (IDeATe) Students: Chaz Barry, Jacob Clare, Mounica Guturu, Timothy Khalifa, Yash Khemka, Anthony Kosec, Sophie Nahrmann, Yoon Oh, Cassidy Rush, Gautam Thakkar, Jay

Above: Excerpt from matrix illustrating a constellation of physical and social conditions related to concentrated poverty.

Below: GIS Mapping contextualizing Pittsburgh amongst areas of concentrated poverty in the US (left) and the Allegheny Mountain and Great Lakes region (right).

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Urban Design Build Studio: HOME RE _DEFINED

ADVANCED SYNTHESIS OPTION STUDIO, IDEATE, MASTER OF ARCHITECTURE–ENGINEERING–CONSTRUCTION MANAGEMENT (AECM)

Left: Modular spatial strategies to create housing appropriate to urban condition. Right: Energy production and water harvesting systems implemented into a three-story, market-rate housing prototype.

Materials will be harvested from building deconstruction. Shown here, reclaimed brick masonry and high-performance concrete panels in RE_CON 01.

Left: Exterior of RE_CON 01 housing prototype and variations with mixed income easement development strategy proposed for the East Liberty neighborhood of Pittsburgh. Right: Concept for virtual reality tool developed for the HOME INCUBATOR, allowing users to explore housing proposals.

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Collaboration with students in the IDeATe Reality Computing program involved the use of advanced visualization practices to enhance the efficacy of participatory design practice using virtual and augmented reality. The primary constellation of considerations that inform the studio’s work are 1) necessity/ need, 2) social justice and 3) opportunity for proactive systemic change. That constellation is influenced by additional pragmatic filters that include constructability, investment costs, life-cycle costs, durability and fundamentals of creating spaces that elevate the human condition and spirit.

Exterior developmental view of the HOME INCUBATOR, a mobile, deployable community engagement center for raising public awareness about issues of housing and concentrated poverty.

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Urban Systems Design Studio MASTER OF URBAN DESIGN — FIRST YEAR

How can community organizations, public agencies & issue-based civic engagement initiatives inform & inspire the design process?

This studio introduces the role of urban systems as elements of place-making and sustainability in the urban environment from the environmental, social, economic, physical and institutional perspectives.

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Instructors: Stephen Quick, Kristin Kurland (Heinz College), Tom Corbett (Entertainment Technology Center) and Lu Zhu Students: Jianxiao (David) Ge, Chase Kea, Rebecca Lefkowitz, Sai Narayan Ramachandran, Deepanshi Sheth, Sujan Shrestha, Chi Zhang

Opposite, top: Final presentation boards for Deepanshi Sheth (MUD ’19), Chase Kea (MUD ’19) and Rebecca Lefkowitz (MUD ’19). Below: Final presentation boards for Sujan Shrestha (MUD ’19), Sai Narayan Ramachandran and Jianxiao Ge (MUD ’19).

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Urban Systems Design Studio MASTER OF URBAN DESIGN — FIRST YEAR

Top right: Analysis of the social, economic and ecological conditions along Pittsburgh’s BaumCentre Corridor. Lower right: Final presentation boards for Chi Zhang (MUD ’19), along with maps by the studio. Below: MUD 1 work on display at EX-CHANGE 2018. Opposite: Jonathan Kline, Associate Studio Professor, experiences the studio’s final design ideas for the Baum-Centre Corridor in virtual reality.

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This studio evaluates the complex and multi-dimensional systems and scales inherent in cities through data research, triple bottom line, opportunity-challenges analytics, performance metrics, urban typologies/ models and critical thinking. Coursework is computercentric, using GIS and other data-based platforms and software to 3-dimensional and virtual reality simulation and evaluation of design models from the scale of the intimate urban place to the region at large.

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Interbreeding Architecture: Computational Techniques for Shaping the Built Environment MASTER OF SCIENCE IN SUSTAINABLE DESIGN, MASTER OF ARCHITECTURE

What is the relevance of scientific inquiry in exploring design strategies for the architecture of a changing planet?

The Master of Science in Sustainable Design (MSSD) is a postprofessional researchbased graduate program focused on enabling deep technical expertise, critical thinking and investigation of innovative sustainable strategies for the design of the built environment.

It critically investigates environmental issues related to architecture and urban systems at the intersection

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of building science, design and technology. Students explore technical and cultural aspects of sustainable thinking while enabling actionable expertise in sustainable design methodologies.

InterBreeding Architecture is a project-based design course that engages ecological behaviors and sustainable performance metrics to underpin creative exploration of matter, organization and form.

Instructor: Dana Cupkova Students: Yang Gao, Shannon Iacino, Xin Hui Lim, Roshni Krishnan, Yash Khemka, Amanda Rosen, Harshavardhan Vinjam, Veronica Wang

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Interbreeding Architecture: Computational Techniques for Shaping the Built Environment MASTER OF SCIENCE IN SUSTAINABLE DESIGN, MASTER OF ARCHITECTURE

MSSD SYNTHESIS PROJECT 2016 Edible Wallscapes - Shannon Iacino This research constructs and analyzes edible faรงades, examining their thermal performance and the greater social impact they may have in terms of agriculture, education and community engagement.

MSSD PROJECT 2017 Tactile Flows Yash Khemka, Harshavardhan Vinjam, Roshni Krishnan This project explores tactile manipulation of concrete mass as architectural proposition that effects adaptive thermal comfort as a passive strategy for the built environment.

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Centered around a belief that architecture is fundamentally a part of larger planetary ecology, InterBreeding Architecture is a core design course of the MSSD program. The course speculates about the translation of performative contingencies into objects, environments and functional morphologies informed by data sets and simulation. It engages design processes in which systems’ performance metrics underpin exploration of organization and form. InterBreeding Architecture investigates adaptive dynamic behaviors as a basis for design ideas through material investigation and testing.

MSSD SYNTHESIS PROJECT 2017 Pittsburgh’s Storm Waters - Amy Rosen Data mapping and visualization strategies uncover causalities between regional and local water problems in Pittsburgh, leading to an integrated set of design strategies for a more resilient city.

Paper Deltas - Xin Hui Lim 2017 3D GIS data is reinterpreted using a series of material explorations to produce new tangible effects within the surface of flat paper through speed, depth, and intensity of laser cutting paths.

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Public-Facing Profession SPRING EX-CHANGE DISCUSSION

ANTHONY NITCHE From a student’s perspective, I feel there should be some caution around working within communities. The school releases undergraduate students who’ve barely dipped their toes in design into a community.

For example, as second-year students we were asked to build armatures to help people grow food. The intent was really wonderful and provocative, but the outcome didn’t serve the need. The community was angry. To what degree should we claim authorship over a project with someone else in mind? At this early phase of our careers, are we ready to actually make an impact?

MITCH MCEWEN I like this example of failing the community, because it relates to what I saw in some of the graduate programs, an attempt to totalize the project to the point where it’s not just design, it’s fabrication, it’s construction, it’s on the site, it’s community engagement and it’s also maybe real. The real is valued so much here in the school, which I really appreciate. I haven’t seen a single surrealist drawing today. No one’s just working on images here, and that’s what’s really strong.

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There’s such a value on the real that the ambition then is to engage with the real, be out there in the world, get something physically built, get a neighborhood changed. The B.Arch thesis is already doing this. They stage the provocation of whatever the hypothesis and the thesis is in a relationship to a society, a political process, to whatever the stakes are.

The challenge is to do that in the way that still values the drawings, the model, the design process, so that when you go to the community, what you’re showing them is a model, and you’re not trying to build the whole thing and say, “Here’s your tomatoes. Whoops, they fell.”

The critical theorist Homi Bhabha made me think about affect differently. He talked about affect in relation to the anxiety of futurity. He says that in order to want a future, there’s a kind of anxiety, because if we really want it, then we acknowledge that there’s another person there, a kind of citizen who is not like us. We won’t know what that future is until we get there.

If there’s no anxiety, you’re totalizing and assuming, “you’re exactly like me, I know what we’re doing, let’s go.” You’ve closed out that futurity. What Bhaba’s saying is that through affect, the anxiety of that futurity acknowledges ambivalence and makes that ambivalence a place of action. You can go into a community and say, “I’m executing something. I don’t know really what’s going to happen.”

I would encourage you to build more affect into the ambivalence of not executing everything, while holding on to the love of the real that I really appreciate about the work here.

MING FUNG I think that working with the community offers a different way of analyzing and designing the final project. You can absolutely learn that in third year. Whether you are actually going to do something for the community, that is not part of the equation as much as the fact that that there’s a certain comprehensiveness and understanding of how to approach a project and understand the neighborhood. “Community” doesn’t necessarily mean this old, ethnic monolith. I come from Los Angeles, and we have a lot of communities. Chinese, Vietnamese, just about every ethnic group and culture, and that’s really fascinating because each comes with a different lifestyle. It’s about understanding how people live, what that means, what kind of market they like — because they’re all very different.

The second thing is that there are a number of historians right now who talk about a phenomenon called “presentism,” which asks whether we ever get out of this moment. Is futurity something we even think about, or are we occupying an omnipresent present? Your generation of students is so bogged down with global ecological, political, economic issues, how do you step outside of this moment?

Only being able to engage the future as a problem, I would say, is another part of the question of perennial crisis that we occupy right now, that we can only see our engagement with the world as problem-solving, which is equally troubling.

MM Related to that, this is why I appreciate Bhaba’s specific idea of affect, because then this mode of anxiety and future is not oppositional to imagination. Imagination’s actually part of it. I saw a lot of imagination here, especially in the B.Arch thesis, which was incredibly imaginative with a lot of methods and techniques and a very open-ended approach to output.

DAN LOCKTON To build on the earlier discussion of generalism in architecture, it seems like many of the student projects — both the ones that are responding to a particular site or a context and ones that are about developing tools to enable someone to do something in a place that may not exist yet — are in some way about applying skills to translate imaginaries of futures into a place. People have ideas about what the future could be like, and architects find ways to partially make those real. Or they develop tools to allow people to help make them real. It’s like a partial reification of imaginary futures, and that sounds good.

MM That’s totally it. Also, something you see here that you don’t see in other schools is that students acknowledge themselves as subjects implicated in those futures. Even the way the students communicate with each other, asking “Is your mental health ok? Put your notes here.” There seems to be a sense that, “here’s a facility for making a future accessible, and I’m in that future,” which is very political. It’s something that Afrofuturism talks about, that just to say Black people will exist in the future is somehow a subgenre of science fiction.

AMY KULPER I really like Mitch’s characterization of futurity.

It’s a question that we also struggle with. The first thing I want to say is that when I was training to be an architect, the future was really different than the future that students are encountering now. I would encourage you to imagine the future not with the imaginary of the future that I operated in.

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Bachelor of Architecture Thesis

Is the answer to an architect’s question necessarily a building?

The thesis students from the School of Architecture’s Bachelor’s of Architecture program interrogate value— social, cultural, economic, ecologic—as it pertains to contemporary spatial practice.

Capitalist value influences not only the profession’s ongoing fascination with sanitized understandings of building in the sociospatial landscape,

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but also its (in)ability to consider mediums that offer alternative readings on the cataclysmic trajectory of the path that it carves.

projects offer a clearance of processes, ideas and practices drawn from this education.

They give a public face to the candid adaptation of architectural skills as a form of critical practice, cultivating space for their expanded use.

The thesis exhibit “Clearance” provided a space for this necessary discussion, emphasizing the importance of a transhistorical conception of space as both the producer and the product of culture.

They seize the latencies such a view offers in shaping a situated understanding of the contemporary built environment. Further, the

Instructors: Mary-Lou Arscott (fall), Christine Mondor (spring) Students: Nickie Cheung, Sinan Goral, Nadia Islam, KelliLaurel Mijares, Ivy Faye Monroe, Cesar Neri, Trent Wimbiscus, Kyle Wing, Francis Yang

Exploring Vacancy in Wilkinsburg, PA Nickie Cheung For some time now, well-endowed individuals and organizations have controlled the production of space, but in neighborhoods with high vacancy, one can leverage the architectural design process to amplify the voices of ordinary individuals who are interested and willing to express their unique interpretations of space.

To oppose the stratifying speed of neighborhood revitalization, architects can engage public spheres that are typically uninvolved in the process. By forefronting community engagement and incremental progress in the design process, it is possible to empower individuals to collaborate in the re-production of their spaces.

Transcending Bounds Addressing Issues of Marginalization within and of the Muslim Community through Mosque Design Nadia Islam This thesis explores mosque design in relation to social and spatial barriers present in its microsettings along with the nature of its fluidity throughout history in efforts to form approaches to demarginalization of and within the Muslim as well as question what a mosque can be.

The American Mosque is in need of more careful consideration of worshipper identity, building character and cultural context. The need to address these present social and spatial barriers has been long existent. The status quo of mosques must be challenged such that the communal atmosphere is revived through demarginalization.

This thesis aims to serve as yet another catalyst for bringing about awareness and open discourse about these pressing issues and addressing them in a medium where the issue becomes apparent visually and most obviously.

Mycelium as a Remediator of the Anthropocentric Condition: Rethinking the Brute Force Implications of Progressive-Assembly with Organic Self-Assembly Sinan Goral Through empirical, anthropological and narrative investigations, this thesis probes the ways in which architects might challenge modernday progressive assembly with mycelial self-assembly.

Mycelium directly acknowledges new directions that architects must consider. The integration of mycelium into architecture and manufacturing is still rather embryonic. In response, this thesis investigates mycelial self-assembly and its empirical implications for a soft, computable and adaptable architecture. Co-sponsorship of the thesis by the FRFAF and the AIAS has enabled the research to propose mycelium as an antianthropogenic material to replace petrochemical dependency and to suggest organic self-assembly as a method superior to mechanized progressive assembly. By oscillating between modes of inquiry, this thesis makes every attempt at exposing the awesome merits of mycelium.

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Bachelor of Architecture Thesis Subverting Borders Examining Barriers in Urban Space KelliLaurel Mijares Spatial conditions faced by those marginalized in the Second Ward of Houston, Texas convey the existing attitudes and biases that amplify an underlying, and often insidious, bordering within the city, containing barriers not visible to the greater population. Atrocities of the Mexico–United States border bleed far from the edges of the geospatial line, constructed as we know today in 1853, deep into the infrastructure of our cities.

This thesis seeks to subvert notions of bordering by reworking and challenging existing understandings of data reading to reveal the experience of persons affected by these conditions in intersection and overlap of infrastructural and urban environments to those outside of this community by making the hidden visible and to refine a vocabulary of urban elements that considers the perceptual implications and administrative controls to physical barriers in the built environment.

Art Capital Mapping Postwar New York City Art Culture Ivy Faye Monroe A city is a plural mythology made of the many insubstantial fantasies of culture, infrastructure, imagination and reality that create its image. This thesis considers the image of post-World War II New York as the art capital of the world and searches the underlying narratives of urban planning, infrastructure and economy for the tides of changes that create the stage upon which the city makes and remakes itself.

In the wake of WWII, New York assumed the role of the undisputed art capital of the world. So many ideas and artistic movements rose and fell in the waves of dominant style. The artists, citizens and capital that inhabited the city’s imbricate networks of transit, economy and legislature alternatively created and defied the rules of inhabitation.

And in the specialized ecology of New York, architecture took on new roles of mediator and medium, of obstacle and object, and became the ruleset behind the possibility space that was New York.

Mexico 44 Speculative Futures of the Chiapas Highlands CĂŠsar Neri By engaging in the spatial transformation of colonizing identities, this thesis dispels notions of Western universality in an increasingly globalized context using speculative critical design narratives.

Mexico 44 is a catalyst for the collective redefining of our relationship to these prevailing structures of coloniality. Through the elaboration and execution of speculative critical design narratives, the thesis aims to engage in the spatial transformation of individual identities with hopes of fostering a dialogue that translates the argument put forth by the indigenous communities of Chiapas. The spaces, graphics and products exhibited in the showcase propose a future of mass-commodified indigenous identity in the face of a hyperWesternized Mexican State. By capitalizing on the fetishization of the autochthonous, the project questions our conceptions of cultural, political and economic autonomy in the act of cultural subversion.

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Life at the Crossroads Emergent Landscapes and the Cultural Politics of Automobility Trent Wimbiscus By calling forth the fluidity of situated aesthetics under the infrastructural conditions of the site, the work offers an alternative reading of Breezewood, Pennsylvania, not as a failure of the cultural values of modern infrastructural development, but rather as a site for the radical reinterpretation of our understandings of the production of that culture.

This thesis posits that the nature of Breezewood as a microcosm of uneven conditions can be studied to understand the relationship between mobility and the production of culture at a manageable conceptual scale. By categorically documenting the historical materialization of this paradoxically unique “everyspace” of the highway, this project seeks to read the production of culture under automobility not as an absolute manifestation of the ideology of progress, but rather as mutable under sociospatial and aesthetic landscape conditions that are, necessarily, of conflicting interests.

Oikonomikos / Polis The New Politics of Living Kyle Wing Housing will always be in crisis under contemporary neoliberalism.

Reconfigurations of living — understood spatially, socially, politically and through economics — can promote more communal understandings of property and space, lessening the cultural conflation of house and commodity, subverting the power given to real estate by market-driven economies, in pursuit of a more equitable and just form of housing. This thesis investigates ways this system can be dismantled. Reconfigurations of living, as understood spatially, socially, politically and through economics can promote more communal understandings of property and space, lessening the cultural conflation of house and commodity, subverting the power given to real estate by market driven economies, in pursuit of a more equitable and just form of housing. As Margaret Thatcher once professed, “Economies are the method; the object is to change the soul.” This project asks, can the polis, the collective good, can politics change the soul?

Existential Schema Francis Yang We can build a stronger connection between meaning and form through a purely qualitative design method. My main motivation for this thesis originates from my personal background — a crisis of identity during the age of rapid industrialization — a crisis caused by the serious conflict between ancient tradition and modernity and between East Asian and Western civilization. To further facilitate this process, the new method will be additive, so that the early stage of design can be more focused on the expression of the narrative.

Subsequently, the new method will be narrativeoriented, as the narrative will be used as a guide to find the potential in design. In order to further develop the design method, I proposed to design a crematorium in Gifu, Japan. The typology was chosen because of the rigors of its design in terms of both the qualitative and quantitative aspects: For a crematorium, experience and technical performance are equally important.

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Master of Urban Design Thesis

How can urban designers act as mediators to curate negotiations & conversations between stakeholder groups?

The second year of the MUD program is a research-based studio sequence focusing on the bottom-up transformation of cities.

Building on two foundational Pittsburgh-based design studios about placemaking and urban systems, students engaged in a collective research project that helped them to theoretically and politically position their design practice in a broader societal context.

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Instructors: Jonathan Kline (spring), Stefan Gruber (fall) Students: Lu Zhu, Paul Moscoso Riofrio, Chun Zheng, Ernest Bellamy, Tamara Ariel Cartwright

Opposite, from top: Ernest Bellamy (MUD ’18), Part of the patch • works, Miami neighborhoods display of imagery, context and data in the “Clearance” thesis exhibition at the Miller Gallery (left) and representation of the IDEA box (Interdisciplinary Design for community Engagement & Actions box) in action at the scale of Miami’s Liberty City neighborhood (right).

Paul Moscoso Riofrio (MUD ’18), experiencing informality in the “Clearance” exhibition (left), menu of communal programs that introduces the first trade-off between community and the state in Quito, Ecuador (right). Chun Zheng (MUD ’18), Mobile Street Encroachment on view in “Clearance” exhibition (left), structural components of the Mobile Street Encroachment for Lilong, Shanghai (right).

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Master of Urban Design Thesis

Yidan Gong (MUD ’18), participants in workshop with residents, the communitiy committee and urban planners (left), and cooperative uses between different stakeholder groups for the project, “Commoning Gejiaying Village Amidst Metropolitan Wuhan.”

Tamara Ariel Cartwright (MUD ’18), “Hotel to Home: Commoning the Princess Hotel,” diagrams reimaging the use of the abandoned Princess Hotel on Freeport, Grand Bahama. Finding domesticity through the appropriation of non residential spaces (right).

Lu Zhu (MUD ’18), “Incremental Community,” showing how incremental development is built on efficient use of market resources in Pittsburgh’s Hazelwood neighborhood. Diagram showing a growth scenario (right). Opposite: collage of case studies from “An Atlas of Commoning.”

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This positioning unfolds from case study research and the articulation of a hypothesis culminating in an individual design project that acknowledges the balancing act of negotiating top-down planning and the self-organizing behavior of cities. The fall semester focuses on collective case study research on global practices of urban commoning and the articulation of an individual thesis and project proposal. The spring semester supports students in developing their respective design projects.

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Master of Science and Ph.D. in Building Performance and Diagnostics

How can research contribute to building energy conservation while ensuring occupant comfort, satisfaction & performance (& vice versa)?

In their thesis projects, students investigated various topics ranging from developing thermal comfort profiles from occupant biosignals using machine learning algorithms to data imputation strategies to support better analytics for energy conservation.

The students work on these topics for two The BPD program is intended for practitioners, semesters starting with literature review researchers and educators in architecture and to identify gaps in the domain of interest to conducting physical experiments and the building industry who wish to be leaders simulations during the second semester. in advanced building technologies and their integration for performance. It is a quantitative In the 2018 thesis projects, students and science-based program to prepare investigated controls, simulation and data sustainability leaders for careers in practice, research and public policy, and those pursuing analytics, from: thermal comfort profiles from occupant bio signals using machine a Ph.D. in building science.

SoA graduate programs in Building Performance & Diagnostics (BPD) have long led the world in the integration of advanced building technologies that sustainably reshape the built environment.

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learning algorithms to data imputation strategies to support better analytics for energy conservation. These two semester thesis projects identify gaps in the domain of interest, develop computational tools and conduct physical experiments to demonstrate a positive contribution to improving the performance of integrated building systems for occupants.

Instructors: Vivian Loftness and Azizan AbdulAziz Students: Linhao Li, Larry Xianla Li, Chen Xu, Shihao Zhang, Wanni Zhang

Modeling Thermal Comfort Profiles from Biosignals and Indoor Environmental Quality Wanni Zhang

Different classifiers have different accuracy rates to predict thermal comfort preferences.

Under similar temperatures, people feel warmer when the temperature is increasing and feel cooler when the temperature is decreasing.

Thermal Demand Prediction Algorithm based on Wrist Temperature and Heart Beat Linhao Li Recurrent neural network can help increase the testing accuracy, especially when subject is relatively more sensitive to the thermal environment.

Summary of the testing accuracy for worst cases with/without LSTM

Accuracy comparison between baseline and LSTM Model of User5

Occupant-driven HVAC Control Framework Shihao Zhang

Thermal preference profile of 6 users

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LIGHTING BEST PRACTICES FOR $ PROFIT

PLANET

PEOPLE

POTENTIAL LIGHT ENERGY SAVINGS

Keeping the lights on in commercial buildings consumes 37% of all electricity use in the U.S. The low cost/quick-payback nature of lighting upgrades makes lighting retrofits a critical part of any advanced energy retrofit, able to reduce energy requirements by 10–85 percent.

32% MANAGE BLINDS FOR LIGHT AND SHADE

13%

PROVIDE OCCUPANCY SENSORS FOR VACANCY CONTROL

Manage your office’s venetian blinds to provide abundant natural light and views, while reducing glare and providing shading in summer.

Use occupancy sensors to automatically turn lights off when closed offices, conference rooms, copy rooms, bathrooms and storage areas are vacated, but let you turn on the lights as needed when daylight is inadequate.

30%

85%

HARVEST DAYLIGHT

UPGRADE TO LED FIXTURES

Use daylight sensors for automatic dimming or on/off control of lighting in perimeter offices spaces to reduce the use of electric light when natural light is sufficient.

Replace existing incandescent or fluorescent lights with high performance LED fixtures and add IP network controls and dimming to take advantage of daylight, task control, schedule control, and more.

40%

LOWER AMBIENT LIGHT AND PROVIDE TASK LIGHTS Reduce the overhead ambient light levels by 50% to provide gentler light levels for computer based work, meetings and phone conversations, and provide LED task lights to shine brighter light directly on the less frequent paper based tasks.

PROVIDE INDIVIDUALLY ADDRESSABLE BALLASTS

Install ballasts or controllers that make each fixture individually controllable from your desktop or smart phone, so occupants can select the level they need for different activities, time of day, or work schedules.

PRIORITIES

GIVEN $ PROFIT

PLANET

Harvest Daylight

Lower Ambient Add Task Light

Manage Existing Blinds

Buy High Performance Blinds

Digitally Addressable Controls

LED lamps

LED Fixtures and Integrated Controls

Occupancy Sensors

EXAMPLE INITIAL COSTS $ per workstation

$190

$196

$2

$542

$630

$480

$900

$130

$40

$64

$18

$30

$96

$104

$165

$68

ENVIRONMENTAL SAVINGS $ associated with energy savings

$16

$16

$6

$9

$27

$17

$36

$21

$620

$198

$472

$472

$1,516

$2,490

$2,490

PAYBACK PERIOD IN MONTHS

PROFIT + PLANET + PEOPLE

PROFIT

PROFIT + PLANET

HUMAN SAVINGS $ through productivity & health gains 85 80 75 70 65 60 55 50 45 40 35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0

217 167 79

65

61

57

55

54

Occupancy Sensors do not affect occupant health or performance so PEOPLE do not change the payback period.

48 41

37 29

3

23 13 8

1

1

CALCULATING THE TRIPLE BOTTOM LINE FOR PAYBACK: WWW.EEBHUB.ORG/RESEARCH-DIGEST

A triple bottom line calculation allows us to capture the speed of payback based on three benefits to individuals and society: Profit = savings from lower energy bills and maintenance savings; Planet = savings from reduced environmental impacts; and People = savings from increased productivity and health.

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PEOPLE

ENERGY AND FM SAVINGS $ per workstation

PAYBACK PERIOD

65%

0

5

2

4

Calculations are based on a 15-year lifecycle. The “profit” payback numbers are based on a 100,000 sq. ft. office building with 3-5 floors, an existing 6.8kWh/sq. ft. of annual lighting energy use, and maintenance savings.

The “planet” payback numbers are based on the national average price of electricity at $0.10/kWh and CMU estimated environmental costs of electricity - at $0.01/kWh for CO2 emissions; $0.012/kWh for SOx emissions; $0.003/kWh for NOx emissions; $0.001/kWh for Particulates PM10; and $0.004/kWh for water costs.

The “people” payback numbers are based on the assumption of 500 occupants with a national average salary of $45,000 working for 256 days per year, and a host of productivity and health studies that can be found in the final report.

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Integrating Financial, Environmental and Human Capital - the Triple Bottom Line for High Performance Investments in the Built Environment Rohini Srivastava, LEED AP BD+C, Ph.D. Dissertation Residential and commercial buildings account for almost 40 % of total U.S. energy consumption and U.S. carbon dioxide emissions (Pew Center, 2009). Nearly all of the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the residential and commercial sectors can be attributed to energy use in buildings, making high performance energy efficient buildings central to addressing diminishing resources and transitioning to a green economy. However, energy efficiency in buildings receives inadequate attention because first least cost decision-making as opposed to life cycle cost analysis (Romm, 1999). When life cycle analysis is used, it typically captures only the ‘hard’ financial cost benefits of operational energy and maintenance savings, but rarely includes environmental capital or human capital savings.

This dissertation proposes an empirical approach to triple bottom line calculations that integrates the economic, environmental and human cost benefits to accelerate investments in high performance building technologies. The development of a new methodology for capital expenditures in investments in the built environment can provide compelling arguments for decision makers and encourage the widespread adoption of high performance building technologies. If we only look at first cost data from vendors, first bottom line simple paybacks for 12 energy retrofit measures ranges from 2-20 years - with energy and facility management savings. When the environmental benefits are included, simple paybacks were accelerated to 1.5-18 years.

Most strikingly, when human benefits are included - from reduced headaches and absenteeism to improved task performance or productivity - paybacks for investments in energy efficiency in US offices are often less than one year.

Ph.D. in Architecture–Engineering–Construction Management

Exploring Communication in Multidisciplinary Building Design Teams Olaitan Awomolo, Ph.D. Dissertation Communication is a challenge in multidisciplinary building design teams.

The nature of the team, in which each team member contributes knowledge and skills from their disciplinary domain, combined with the fragmented building design process, makes exchanging information among disciplines difficult. Addressing this challenge is important because communication impacts project outcomes.

While effective communication mitigates project risk, contributes to conflict resolution, and reduces project waste and errors, ineffective communication can result in project failure.

Dr. Awomolo’s research contributes to our understanding of multidisciplinary building design team practice by developing a framework to explore communication within the team. Then, it applies the framework to three case studies to explore the effects of functional diversity on building design team communication and outcomes.

The framework and the case study insights provide building design researchers and practitioners with insights into building design teams, their communication, and their outcomes. They are intended to be a necessary first step towards improving building design team practice.

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Master of Science and Ph.D. in Computational Design

How can we mobilize computational ideas & technologies to critically rethink our relationship to design, matter & the built environment?

The MS Computational Design is a postprofessional researchbased program investigating design opportunities and critical perspectives at the intersection of design and computation.

Over two intensive years, students develop research projects ranging from the applied to the speculative and from the critical to the poetic. Recent student work explores topics in design including artificial intelligence, architectural robotics, computational making, digital fabrication, responsive environments, shape grammars and tangible interaction.

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The program adopts a broad view of computation as a vehicle of design inquiry and as a key subject of critical analysis and debate in contemporary architecture. It is well suited to highly inquisitive applicants who are interested in challenging disciplinary boundaries, pursuing a unique research agenda and acquiring the conceptual and technical skills needed to conduct research at the highest levels of scholarly rigor and creativity.

Faculty: Daniel Cardoso Llach (MS track chair), Ramesh Krishnamurti (Ph.D. track chair), Josh Bard, Dana Cupkova, Eddy Man Kim, Daragh Byrne, Jose Pertierra, Golan Levin, Molly Wright Steenson, Kyuha Shim.

Students: Atefeh Mahdavi, Camille Baumann-Jaeger, Cecilia Ferrando, George Zhu, Javier Argota Sanchez-Vaquerizo, Rachael Tang, Yingxiu Lu, Yuqian Li

What You See is What You Get: A DataInformed Workflow in Design for Architecture and Urbanism Javier Argota Sanchez-Vaquerizo, MS Thesis Common approaches to architectural and urban design practice are based on disciplinary expertise informed by design intuition.

Computational and informational techniques can expand this repertoire by offering new testing and evaluation tools to address design problems. This research leverages computer vision with statistical, computational and urban design techniques to reveal relationships between spatial features and patterns of spatial use. Three case studies in Madrid and Pittsburgh are studied through two types of analysis. The first one develops a bivariate analysis between parameters from data that describe the layout and use of each location to identify correlations between spatial features and utilization patterns. The second uses machine learning techniques for spatial clustering supported by matching temporal signatures of the detected occupations by the developed computer vision algorithms. The proposed analytical framework yields new types of data about people’s interactions with their urban built environment, which can be useful to inform design and policy decisions more effectively and to define and explore new urban design scenarios.

Towards a Machine Learning Framework for Spatial Analysis Cecilia Ferrando, MS Thesis How can we build a Machine Learning model of learnable spatial rules? How would a Machine Learning framework prove a useful tool in the analysis of architectural qualities? Asking whether it is possible to build an AI design assistant, this thesis researches a Machine Learning framework for spatial analysis of floor plans. It shows that Machine Learning algorithms trained on large datasets of plan configurations have the potential to characterize abstract architectural qualities in terms of quantifiable spatial features. Two commonly adopted techniques used in spatial analysis are isovists, introduced by Michael Benedikt (1979), and graph theory, explored in architecture by Christopher Alexander but dating back to 18thcentury France. These are contextualized within space syntax, the set of theories and methods studying spatial configurations and their cultural implications. Such techniques convey visual connectivity, hierarchy and accessibility in architectural space. This thesis uses a Machine Learning algorithm to look at the quality of architectural privacy in homes. By presenting a novel AI approach to spatial analysis of the floor plan, this thesis opens the floor to both analytic and generative applications of Machine Learning in architecture.

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Master of Science and Ph.D. in Computational Design Make Models Great Again: Interactively Generating Simplified Editable Models from 3D Scanned Meshes Wumengjian Zhu, MS Thesis 3D scanning is a technique that collects data from real-world objects to construct digital three-dimensional models. Although integrating these techniques into the early phases of design is tempting (architect Frank Gehry, for example, famously digitized physical models to facilitate his designs) it is difficult to achieve in practice. Professional scanners and photogrammetry software often generate complex meshes with millions of elements that must be simplified in order to be editable.

Current mesh simplification methods are either difficult to control, or they generate hardto-manipulate triangle meshes. This thesis implements, optimizes and evaluates a new interactive mesh simplification workflow based on Variational Shape Approximation, which generates easier-to-control, designer-friendly simplifications. To test the potential of this tool in design, a new plug-in “iSimp� for Autodesk Maya was developed and evaluated by a group of designers in a workshop, who used it to turn physical models into editable digital representations.

HADEN: Using Virtual Reality as an Expressive Medium for Spatial Design Qiaozhi Wang, MS Thesis Recent developments in virtual reality have brought a resurgence of interest in incorporating virtual reality with ComputerAided Design to help designers express spatial and formal ideas. However, current computer-aided design interfaces are not intuitive enough for designers to be creative in the conceptual stage of spatial design.

This thesis explores the use of virtual reality as an intuitive and expressive spatial design medium through the physical embodiment of design interfaces. It proposes a design system, HADEN (HAptic DEsign iNterface) which provides passive haptic feedback by overlapping real and virtual objects using a motion tracking system. This novel tangible user interface not only improves one’s sense of presence in VR but also increases the affordances of the virtual interface.

Designers can freely generate spatial designs and explore new design alternatives and ideas at the same time.

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DeepCloud: the application of a datadriven generative model in design

Ardavan Bidgoli and Pedro Veloso, Ph.D. in Computational Design Widely used computational and parametric design systems require designers to explicitly define design procedures and, in some cases, the boundaries of a “design space.” This project proposes a new kind of generative system that synthesizes new designs by processing a database of existing solutions.

Drawing from recent advancements in machine learning literature and applications of learning techniques in design, the new system, “DeepCloud,” combines an autoencoder architecture for point clouds with a web-based interface, and an analog interface, to enable an intuitive generation of design alternatives based on data.

Embodied Interfaces for Fabrication Machines

Madeline Gannon, Ph.D. in Computational Design Computer-aided design/computer-aided manufacturing (CAD/ CAM) systems have radically transformed how our world is digitally conceived and physically produced. Although CAD/CAM processes have become more computationally sophisticated over time, how a designer communicates an idea to a CNC machine has remained relatively unchanged. In the existing CAD/CAM communication pipeline, digital geometry is the only means of translating an idea into a physical artifact. However, geometry cannot adequately encapsulate all the technical and conceptual abstractions, nor the external, sensory information that often helps to influence more analog processes of making.

This research demonstrates the untapped potential for contextaware modes of interaction to facilitate broader streams of humanmachine communication in digital design and fabrication. It presents strategies to embed sensory information into digital workflows so that fabrication machines are embodied with a greater understanding of what they are being asked to do. It decomposes the standard CAD/ CAM pipeline into four areas of investigation: geometry, interface, material and machine.

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Master of Advanced Architectural Design Thesis

Can excess data become a tool to create bespoke architecture at no extra cost?

Digital technology has already started to use excess data and computation to design and fabricate reality as it appears.

The resolution of detail is closer to nature than ever, with all of its apparent randomness and irregularity. The standardization of the Industrial Revolution is obsolete — additive technology now allows us to individually design, calculate and fabricate each voxel. As each voxel is individually 3D printed, each

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can be unique. Today we can 3D print any given volume of a given material at the same volumetric cost, based on its resolution, not on geometry or configuration.

Advisor: Jeremy Ficca Student: Manuel Rodríguez Ladrón De Guevara

Opposite: Upper left, Multi-resolution method: arxel nomenclature. Bottom left, Multi-resolution method: multi-material fabrication. Right, Free Oriented Additive Manufacturing technique

This thesis aims to develop the concept of an “arxel” — a digital architecture unit — and its implementation in construction technology. Through a holistic process compounded by input parameters, geometry generation, topology optimization, FEM analysis, feedback loops and robotic fabrication, this procedure intends to democratize the fabrication industry and implement bespoke design and manufacturing in emerging markets.

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Realism & Abstraction SPRING EX-CHANGE DISCUSSION

ADAM KOR We talk about the future that we’re expecting in our discipline and what kind of futures you’re foreseeing and speculating. In terms of our curriculum, are we preparing our students for those kinds of scenarios and disciplinary questions?

MITCH McEWEN In terms of the future of architecture, in Detroit where most of my work is sited, I’m learning a lot from landscape architecture. The whole city is learning from and embracing landscape. Different sites and moments will stretch you in different ways through your careers. Carnegie Mellon seems like a place where students are prepared for that stretching in a distinct way.

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I know there’s a concern that architecture schools prepare students for jobs at Google more than architecture practice, but if I could boil down my impressions of the curriculum, I think there’s room for more architecture, less building.

What I mean by that is, when I talk to my colleagues in the English department, they don’t complain if their alumni are running advertising firms or directing Hollywood films rather than writing novels. An English major prepares you for all of those things. Because what we learn is so specific in terms of episteme and technique, we sometimes forget that our discipline prepares you for much broader engagement with the field.

AMY KULPER You’re reminding me of one of my favorite quotes by Boullée — “In order to execute, it is first necessary to conceive… It is this product of the mind, this process of creation, that constitutes architecture…” For him, the art of construction was secondary to the notion of framing and modelling architecture to bring perfection to any building.

privileged. The studios don’t assume that there’s a wealthy situation and then posit architecture as a luxury object. Those two things are really powerful in architecture today.

AMY KULPER I was really fascinated by the guises of realism across the studios and the ways in which that also seemed to be a real common and interesting thematic. As the Low Relief studio students presented their work about plaster and deceit, I started to think about the roles of plaster in masking imperfections, and the ways in which they were dealing with realism or masking realism. The urban design students talked about wireframes and texture maps as being real. And in architecture, we would say exactly the opposite.

They’re the least tectonic forms of representation, there’s no weight to them, they’re pictures projected on frames.

I think there’s a dilemma, no matter what school of architecture I visit, in the ubiquitisation of architectural possibility that is tied to the culture of the digital. The potential de-skilling of the architect emerges from the MING FUNG In terms of speculation, it’s interesting to see curiosity surrounding the degrees of abstraction we deploy. the thesis projects, because the foundation years seemed to The ways in which the tools that produce that abstraction use be very focused on the pragmatic aspects of design. From first the image, the literal flattening of spatial thinking as currency. year through third year, students immediately addressed the The moments that I get anxious are when every school’s site, the context, the space, and the tectonic. Projects were version of abstraction lines up. That’s a red flag that we aren’t increasingly more complex, not only in scale and pragmatic pushing the tools that we’re deploying. aspects of design, but also in research. No discussion was abstract.

MF I think that the education of an architect is more than just a building. That’s really important to talk about, and that’s MM I think there’s a hint of abstraction in the models. The what I’m seeing here. It allows you to make choices beyond drawings deal with site and situate the project in terms of a narrow career path. My question now is, “What is next?” program, but the models here are not always sited and are We have a whole new generation examining the way we live actually incredibly abstract, investigating in a very different and interact. For example, virtual reality has been ongoing for way. If I could make the link between what I saw in the B.Arch at least twenty years and we are still not able to use it in any thesis and the early work, it’s the models. The thesis then meaningful way — eventually we will. Is that going to be part teaches the models how to draw themselves, which doesn’t of what we learn down the road? Do we embrace more and always involve the typical plan or elevation, but maybe a game more technology, not for the abstraction, but to actually make or series of relationships. the world more real?

It seems like there is room for realism to take over some of that pragmatism you noticed. But it also feels like there are two particular things about the work here, maybe from being in Pittsburgh or from not arising out of a liberal arts curriculum.

The first thing is that students never assume the ground to be flat. If the ground is flat, there’s an argument about the ground being flat. And that feels like Pittsburgh.

The second thing I noticed is that students don’t assume the world to be wealthy. It doesn’t mean that every community is constituted as a “community” — we all know that “community” tends to mean people of color and people who are not

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NEWS THE MASTER OF ARCHITECTURE DEGREE PROGRAM RETURNS Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Architecture has reintroduced its master of architecture (M.Arch) degree program to provide a studio-based, first professional degree program to educate tomorrow’s leaders in architecture-related careers.

“We created the master of architecture program to respond to the growing trend of the profession becoming more global, technical and research-based and the growth toward more graduate programs,” said Kai Gutschow, program track chair of the master’s degree program. “In the past the school has focused our undergraduate program on design and our graduate programs on research. The new studio- and design-based graduate program is an opportunity to bridge those approaches.”

The program accepts candidates from a variety of degree programs and experience levels, including nontraditional backgrounds, with a passion for studying architecture. The program is offered in two tracks: Track 1 is a three-year/six-semester, full-time program for applicants without prior architecture experience. Track 2 is an advanced standing, two-year/four-semester, full-time program for applicants with a rigorous fouryear preprofessional degree in architecture or equivalent in a closely related field or professional experience.

For enrollment in the 2017–18 academic year, admission was limited to students who qualified for Track 2. Gutschow said both the number of applications and the number of students who accepted offers of admission were greater than expected, leading to a successful launch this August.

The new M.Arch program combines CMU’s 100-year tradition of training architects in the broad core competencies of the profession with the opportunity to engage with elective coursework shared with other research-based masters programs. The core of the curriculum are design studios. Students this year are taking either the Environment, Form and Feedback studio followed by an advanced construction studio or a year-long studio in Urban Design Build Studio (UDBS), where students will design and build a house in a Pittsburgh community each year.

The program’s small size allows students to shape individual educational agendas and career paths as they interact directly

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with leading-edge research projects in the school and community and around the world.

“In a crowded and competitive marketplace of graduate architecture programs, we want to build off the strength of the existing programs in the school specifically and CMU more generally,” said Steve Lee, SoA professor and head. “The M.Arch program will provide a strong foundation in the practice of design and technical fundamentals and also will encourage students to begin to focus on the school’s long-standing expertise in sustainability, computation and design by taking coursework and developing ties with faculty and students associated with these other graduate programs.”

Lee said M.Arch students will further benefit from access to the wealth of learning and research spaces available in the school including the Intelligent Workplace, Computational Design Lab, Design Fabrication Laboratory and the Urban Design Build Studio’s PROJECT RE_.

The M.Arch program is designated as a STEM program in Architectural and Building Sciences/Technology (CIP code 04.0902).

With this new designation, international M.Arch graduates are eligible to extend their F-1 visas for up to three years after graduation in order to work in the United States. The Department of Education Classification of Instructional Programs codes for these programs allow international students to apply for an OPT extension.

STUDENTS AND FACULTY DEVELOP TOOL TO VISUALIZE URBAN FUTURES Graduate students and faculty from the SoA and Entertainment Technology Center (ETC) at Carnegie Mellon University are developing a tool for urban planners that taps into the technology used in video games. The street-level, immersive and interactive experience allows city planners to develop plans quickly, make changes and share their ideas with the public.

The 3D Visualization Project is a research project led by CMU’s Remaking Cities Institute (RCI), partnering internally with the School of Architecture, Heinz College of Information Systems and Public Policy, the Entertainment Technology Center and the School of Design and externally with the Department of City Planning of the City of Pittsburgh. Collaboration funding for the project comes from The Deloitte Foundation, The Heinz Endowments and CMU’s Metro21: Smart Cities Institute.

This spring, a group of graduate students in the Master of Urban Design (MUD) program tested the prototype and other 3D and virtual reality software on the Baum-Centre business dis-

SoA News, Awards & Announcements 2017-18

trict. The MUD urban systems studio applied the 3D software to a series of data and design projects, including virtual reality place-making, that the research team identified as potentially useful for urban and city planning. After the testing, the CMU research team will work with Pittsburgh City Planning to decide what software is most useful for various scenarios.

tersection of multiple disciplines of study. Take these concepts and wrap them up in a truly caring community of people, and you have a recipe for success. I use these principals in the businesses I create and manage.

These gifts are part appreciation for what I have gotten from the university and part hope that it can make a difference to those attending now. I found and continue to find that students get personal attention from faculty and are encouraged to explore new and unique paths to find solutions to problems. They are taught to think rather than accept what has come before — that inspires me. For the past 40 years, when I reach a roadblock in my thinking or cannot find a solution to a problem, I come to campus and just look around. New ideas abound, and people are kind enough to share their thoughts. This gets my own thinking moving forward again. I would feel a great loss if CMU were not a continuing part of my life.

Sincerely, Jim Halpern, B.Arch ’81”

SoA DEDICATES THE HALPERN STUDIO FOR ARCHITECTURE IN MARGARET MORRISON On December 8, 2017, the SoA hosted a reception celebrating the unveiling of a plaque outside of the 3rd floor studio in Margaret Morrison Carnegie Hall. The studio, now The Halpern Studio for Architecture, is named in honor of a generous gift from alumnus Jim Halpern (B.Arch ’81) and Lisa Ficarelli-Halpern. Mr. Halpern reflects on the gift and its meaning: “Carnegie-Mellon has helped me create a wonderful life for my family. Since graduation, now almost 40 years ago, CMU has allowed me to keep in touch and have helped me critically think through many of the ideas I have used to create a thriving business. Specifically, my mentors Professor Volker Hartkopf and Professor Vivian Loftness as well as my good friend Steven Lee, have assisted me, and this has been invaluable.

Giving back to CMU makes me feel part of something great and growing. My children have decided they wanted to be students at CMU. Now that they are also part of it, I feel proud to continue to be part of the community.

AIA FILM HONORS URBAN DESIGN ASSOCIATES This year marked the world premiere of a new short film by the AIA, “Urban Design Associates: The David Lewis Legacy.” David Lewis, Bill Bates and Ray Grindroz spoke to a full house of supportive attendees in the panel discussion “Communities by Design.”

Frankly, CMU’s growing reputation makes it easy to have pride in association. The university is a world leader in technology advances that inspire entrepreneurial behavior. My experience as a student taught me that cutting-edge research occurs at the in-

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NEWS CONT.

the 2018-19 AIAS National President. Rosen has a long history of leadership within the organization, beginning with her election to the AIAS CMU board and eventually the AIAS National Board of Directors, first as Northeast Quad director, and now as president.

When asked what AIAS has contributed to her professional and personal life, Rosen credits the AIAS with planting the seed for the need to be more well-rounded. Andrew Caruso (B.Arch ’07), who served as AIAS national president from 2007 to 2008 echoes the sentiment, explaining that part of going to architecture school is becoming aware of one’s presence in and potential influence on a larger conversation. Caruso sees architecture students connecting with one another as an important part of their journey through college, and AIAS was a seminal part of that collective experience for him.

“Looking back at my decision to come to CMU, this would have been one of the leading reasons for me to enroll,” said Caruso, reflecting on the organization’s potential to become a vehicle to inform students about the educational and professional environment they are about to step into.

AIAS NATIONAL PRESIDENT CONTINUES CMU’S LEGACY OF LEADERSHIP Leadership, design and service – these are the founding pillars of the American Institute of Architecture Students (AIAS), a national, student-run organization “dedicated to providing unmatched progressive programs, information and resources on issues critical to architecture and the experience of education.”

Therefore, it is only fitting that the organization has become a central part of student culture in Carnegie Mellon’s School of Architecture. AIAS CMU has been a fixture at the SoA for nearly half a century. In that time, the student-run chapter, supported by a faculty advisor and the school as a whole, has gone on to become highly decorated at the national level.

Rosen stands on the shoulders of a host of SoA giants who have established a three-decade-long legacy of national leadership in the AIAS. These Carnegie Mellon alumni have progressed from serving as student leaders to becoming leaders in the profession, exemplifying how the AIAS specifically, and CMU in general, set students up for achievement and influence. In 1990, David Kunselman (B.Arch ’90) became the first AIAS National vice president to hail from CMU, followed by Christine Malecki West (B.Arch ’93) in 1993. The next generation of leaders came in 2002, as the election of Lawrence Fabbroni (B.Arch ’01, M.S. ’02) as AIAS National President gave AIAS CMU the impetus for an extremely active run in national leadership. Fabbroni was followed by Katherine Bojsza (B.Arch ’03, B.S. ’03) serving as the 2003-04 National vice president, and Caruso’s term as the 2007-08 National president.

If the past is truly prologue, Rosen’s term as President will prove to be a catalyst for leadership and advocacy in the generation of torchbearers that finds her at its head. “We are designers, we are leaders, we are advocates,” Rosen declared during her presidential campaign at FORUM 2017. “We are movers, we are shakers, we are change-makers. We are the American Institute of Architecture Students.”—Chitika Vasudeva

AIAS CMU is not unfamiliar with success. The organization has accomplished much, at both the chapter and the national levels, including hosting AIAS FORUM in 2001 and the Northeast Quad conference in 2016 and winning the Chapter Honor Award at FORUM 2016. The most recent feather in its cap is the election of former Chapter President Amy Rosen (B.Arch ’17, MSSD ’17) as

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SoA News, Awards & Announcements 2017-18

Aaron Betsky, president of the School of Architecture at Taliesin, and Victor “Trey” Trahan, founder and CEO of Trahan Architects, back to the SoA to reflect on the semester’s work with architects, educators and students.

COLLABORATION GROWS BETWEEN PHIPPS & SoA STUDIO It was sunny but barely 10 degrees as Michael Bechtel, edibles coordinator at Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens, checked out what remained under cover on the Rooftop Edible Garden he maintains. Architecture students from Carnegie Mellon University created the hoop houses as part of a collaborative project with Phipps. Teams of students designed each of the unique structures, and they became a topic of conversation with visitors to the garden through the winter after they were installed in October.

The afternoon began with an exhibition of student work in the College of Fine Arts, curated and presented by representatives from fourteen studios ranging from the first-year Foundation Studio to the Master of Urban Design studio. After a brief tour through short presentations, the school gathered for a moderated conversation between SoA students, faculty and the two guest speakers.

Covering a myriad of issues, the conversation was framed within questions that students had been asking in and about the studios, coupled with reflections from the Fall Lecture Series, specifically Betsky’s Make It Alive: Beyond New Buildings lecture and Trahan’s presentation on Fragmenting Ecologies. Fueled by the work on display, the panel addressed the much-discussed issue of representation in — and beyond — architecture. How do students let the unique qualities of a site influence the design process and also communicate those qualities accurately?

The first-year work sparked a discussion about context and place as Betsky applauded how the assigned paintings were “picked apart and…turned into architecture, which was beautiful,” although he conceded that “the painting itself was lost.”

The guests stood by the priorities they had demonstrated during their earlier visits and presentations. Trahan emphasized the repercussions of architecture beyond the site and suggested that designers spend as much time, if not more, thinking through design decisions as we do executing them. Betsky similarly lamented the lack of respect for the existing context in contemporary representational practices and the obsession with the “jewel-like render” of brand-new proposals. “If you would believe your drawings, all of the world is inhabited by (white) people of the ages 20 to 33, well dressed enough to be in product commercials,” he contended of student drawings. Meanwhile, Trahan encouraged risk-taking, his own life and path exemplifying the lessons and potential of embracing failure.

FALL EX-CHANGE WITH AARON BETSKY & TREY TRAHAN The end of the 2017 fall semester brought students and faculty together to present EX-CHANGE, the School of Architecture’s first ever end-of-semester open studio reception and discussion. Thus starts a new semester’s-end tradition to showcase the diverse and deeply inquisitive work at Carnegie Mellon’s School of Architecture. EX-CHANGE brought fall 2017 lecturers

Aiming to help situate the school within the context of pedagogy and the profession, the panel went on to discuss the specifics of the pedagogical model at Carnegie Mellon’s School of Architecture: the situation of the program between technology and the arts, the question of the kinds of professionals the school is producing, and the need for students to be more radical in addressing relevant architectural issues. While Betsky hailed the architectural design studio as “one of the most brilliant inventions of the post-Enlightenment era,” he scrutinized its educational goals. Betsky held that “solving the truss problem is not what your graduate education should be about.” As Trahan noted the profession’s loss of “confidence in taking risks,” Betsky advised students to consciously pursue a diverse skill set and ask what they can do with an architectural education “besides working in an office to design the next tallest skyscraper.” In

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all, the discussion praised the studios for their strong work in preparing students for architecture practice but challenged students to discover voices and positions that are not as polite — to make radical design decisions that may not always work yet have the potential to provoke radical change in existing systems.

—Chitika Vasudeva

CMU SoA professors Francesca Torello and Joshua Bard researched the casts and created the framework and the content for the app then worked with a team of students from CMU’s Entertainment Technology Center to develop it. Together, they combined an understanding of history, architectural design and applied technology. “Three branches of knowledge intersected to make this a meaningful application of augmented reality,” Bard said. “That collaborative spirit and overlap of shared skill sets in the CMU community make projects like this possible.”

On top of the tablet’s camera view, the app can show users 3D scans of the plaster casts, 3D models of the original buildings from which the casts derive, and historical information on the original buildings. Augmented reality allows the user to access these layers of information without detracting from the museum experience. “Being in the gallery with other people is part of what a museum is about,” Torello said. “You’re not by yourself with a webpage in front of you. You’re there having an experience, and, on top of that, you can access all of this content.”

Torello said that is important because, while the Hall of Architecture is grand and impactful, many people do not understand the meaning behind the pieces, and the appreciation for the craft of plaster casting has been lost. “The public is often not aware of how a copy can be valuable in and of itself,” Torello said.

“In antiquity, for example, the Romans were making copies of Greek sculpture. So, the idea of seriality is, in reality, part of art history. In our society the authenticity of the art object has more importance, so these pieces have lost part of their clout.”

AUGMENTED REALITY APP PUTS MUSEUM VISITORS IN TOUCH WITH ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY

Plaster ReCast is one of the projects featured in “Copy + Paste: Hall of Architecture,” an eight-month study of the museum’s Hall of Architecture. Over the course of “Copy + Paste,” curators, technologists, students, architects and artists are testing ways of presenting information about the collection. The museum plans to use activities and visitor feedback to inform future efforts.

Alyssum Skjeie, project lead for “Copy + Paste” and program manager for The Heinz Architectural Center in CMoA, said the museum is curious to see how visitors react to the app and to find out whether certain features of the app enhance visitors’ With the tap of a tablet, a Carnegie Mellon University-created experience better than others. “The whole idea is to provide visaugmented reality app puts museum visitors in touch with the itors with information that they want, need and have asked for,” stories behind historical plaster casts like those taken from the Skjeie said. “This is a great way to test that.”

Tower of the Winds in Athens or the Assyrian Palace of Nineveh, She said CMoA’s work with CMU not only has allowed it to denear modern-day Mosul, Iraq. velop an app covering a space rich with associations, it also is Visitors to Carnegie Museum of Art’s (CMoA) Hall of Architec- bringing CMU students back to the museum for a second HAture are testing the app, called Plaster ReCast, through May 6. CLab. The app already works with three casts in the hall’s architectural plaster cast collection, which is the world’s third-largest and CMU students will join the “Copy + Paste” effort in January includes monumental replicas of portions of buildings and frag- through an architecture studio led by Bard. A couple days a week ments from across the Western world. Three more will be added within one of the museum’s galleries, students will work on projects that ultimately will become part of the exhibition. They will in the spring. explore the material culture of architectural plaster, examining its historic importance and possible robotic applications.

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The studio also will give the public a chance to talk with students, Bard said. Through that, he hopes museum visitors can learn more about the design process and create a public dialogue around it.—Julianne Mattera

AIAS FREEDOM BY DESIGN CHAPTER LAUNCHES HOME WEATHERIZATION KIT PROJECT

tiatives such as caulking and weatherstripping your home can reduce infiltration rates by 20 percent, which can amount to significant savings on utilities, reducing the need to make tough choices about which bills to pay. The FBD chapter will be putting together weatherizing kits for people in need from the East Liberty, Larimer and Homewood communities in Pittsburgh. These kits are addressing a need for information on how to perform these energy- and cost-saving initiatives and providing the materials necessary to do so.

The Kits The weatherization kits will contain door sweeps, window plastic, weatherstripping, electrical socket insulators and an instructional booklet. The booklet adds a resource not only to those who receive the kit but also those who are not initially reached. Through this publication, the project hopes to give residents some information to help them reduce the cost and energy consumption throughout winter. These kits are targeted towards low-income renters who cannot make permanent alterations to their homes.

Distribution The weatherization kit will be distributed through the chapter members’ connection with community centers at events that will feature workshops that demonstrate how each of the components work as well as a platform for answering questions on other initiatives individuals can take to improve their energy savings. Additional booklets will be left with the local liThe American Institute of Architecture Students (AIAS) chapter braries to be distributed as a resource to other community memat Carnegie Mellon School of Architecture is launching a new bers, and an online version will be available for distribution as chapter of Freedom by Design (FBD), the AIAS community ser- well. The hope is that the people who receive the kits will be able vice program. FBD, in partnership with the National Council of to live more comfortably in the winter without having to dig into Architectural Registration Boards (NCARB), uses the talents of their food or rent budgets. architecture students to radically impact the lives of people in their community through modest design and construction solu- Long-Term Goals This is not a project that will solve the problem tions. The program embraces efforts to provide both design-build at a large scale, but it aims to provide a solution for the immediand engagement solutions to address five barriers: physical, ed- ate season and provide access to easily digested information on what longer-term solutions residents could pursue should they ucational, environmental, socioeconomic and cultural. become a homeowner or move in the future. This is intended to FBD encourages students to serve their communities by ad- be the beginning of an annual initiative for our chapter as new dressing issues with design solutions. It provides real-world members join Freedom by Design and have a lasting relationexperience through working with clients, learning from local li- ship with communities in Pittsburgh. In doing this every year, the censed architects and contractors and experiencing the practi- chapter will develop a sustained relationship and presence within the community that is critical to pursuing other larger scale cal impacts of architecture and design. build projects in the future.

The FBD team is composed of a diverse group of students from first year to fifth year. While they differ in background, what unites them is their desire to give back to Pittsburgh. Some of them are more interested in the design/build aspect of FBD, while others are more intrigued with the idea of making information accessible to those in need. Their first project aims to connect these preferences to give the community a physical and informational resource.

JEREMY FICCA TO COCHAIR ACSA MEETING IN PITTSBURGH

The Issue: The Real Cost of Heat In Pittsburgh 66 percent of working families make the choice between paying for rent or paying for utilities. When the house you are renting is poorly maintained, and you can’t afford to make the repairs, much of the heat you are paying for will go out the window. Simple ini-

Associate Professor Jeremy Ficca will co-chair the 2019 ACSA Annual Meeting to be held March 28–30, 2019 at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. Titled Black Box: Articulating Architecture’s Core in the Post-Digital Era, this conference will bring together academics from North America and beyond.

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HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT There is no sitting down, relaxing and eating popcorn at Stefan Gruber’s traveling movie theater in Downtown Pittsburgh. Gruber, the Lucian and Rita Caste Assistant Professor and chair of the Master of Urban Design program at the SoA, prompted passersby to climb on bikes and produce a public cinema. His pedal-powered, pop-up movie theatre, “Hiding in Plain Sight,” was on display at Four Gateway Plaza in Downtown Pittsburgh in Nov. 2017. Visitors were asked to ride a bicycle to generate power to show a variety of short films.

“I was interested in how public space is increasingly defined by people absorbed by their phones. So I began thinking about how I could feed our obsession for moving images while having people actively engage with one another,” Gruber said.

SoA HOSTS COMPUTATIONAL DESIGN: PRACTICES, HISTORIES, INFRASTRUCTURES SYMPOSIUM

The Computational Design: Practices, Histories, Infrastructures symposium was a two-day event at Carnegie Mellon University that examined computation as a subject of both scholarly and creative inquiry in architecture and other design fields. Along with the exhibition Designing the Computational Image, Imagining Computational Design at the Miller Gallery (on view Sept.

22–Nov. 12, 2017), the symposium situated contemporary design The installation was created by STUDIOGRUBER, an architec- methods in relation to broader histories, disciplinary frames ture and urban design office with a specific interest in the de- and sociotechnical infrastructures. The speakers, workshops sign and activation of public space through civic engagement and demos combined key scholarly voices and practice-based and community participation. The office is part of the Pittsburgh researchers from the United States and abroad to examine comDowntown Partnership’s BetaBurgh program, which promotes putation as a subject of both critical and creative inquiry in arinnovative ideas to test and launch products and services within chitecture and other design fields. The event was organized by the downtown marketplace. assistant professor of architecture Dr. Daniel Cardoso Llach and took place at the Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry.

Among the films being shown include the 1926 “Anemic Cinema”

by Marcel Duchamp, the 1987 “The Way things Go” by artist duo Fischli and Weiss and the historic clips by William G. Beal from the archives of the Senator John Heinz History Center. Short films curated by Pittsburgh Filmmakers were also shown.

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“Multiple performers on stage were sitting or standing in a custom-fabricated rig. From a distance they appear to be still,” said Marsico. “As the performance evolves, it becomes apparent that the performers are moving on a micro scale; their movements are being captured and magnified on the large projection screens.”

“At the core of the festival is a sense of true transdisciplinary involvement,” Kim said. “It involves works that cross all disciplines within CFA and illustrates what we mean when we talk about the intersection of the arts and technology.”

WATS:ON? FEATURES WORKS THAT FOCUS ON PHYSICAL AND PERCEPTUAL SPACE

Carnegie Mellon’s biennial Jill Watson Festival Across the Arts (wats:ON?), celebrates the creative accomplishments of the late Jill Watson, a professor in the School of Architecture who was working toward a master of fine arts degree when she perished in the crash of TWA Flight 800 on July 17, 1996. The festival is dedicated to Watson’s love of all art forms and her advocacy for engaging varied groups of people in the arts, whether they were her students or a broader community audience. wats:ON? is sponsored by the Jill Watson Family Foundation and CMU’s College of Fine Arts.—Pam Wigley

The wats:ON? Festival opened Nov. 2–4, with visual, sensual and perceptual exhibits and performances. Spike Wolff, wats:ON? artistic and executive director and special faculty in the College of Fine Arts, curated the festival titled SHIFT, with Eddy Man Kim, assistant professor in the School of Architecture.

The festival has been a staple in the CMU community since it began in 1997. Wolff has curated the festival for seven years and calls wats:ON? “accessible to all.” “The works will appeal to arts people, tech people and, in general, people who love and support the creation of great art,” Wolff said.

The event brought to campus an art exhibition by renowned artist Hadi Tabatabai and performance art titled “Body Drift.”

CMU’s Miller Gallery hosted Tabatabai’s work in an exhibition titled “Transitional Spaces.” An original work — the largest piece Tabatabai has created — also titled “Transitional Spaces,” was installed in the College of Fine Arts’ Great Hall. Wolff described Tabatabi’s grand creation as “elegant in its simplicity.” Several large panels featured intricate threadwork that Tabatabai painstakingly made by hand to create an indeterminate sense of space.

KALLA PROFESSOR SPARKS CONVERSATION ON ADVOCACY AND ACTIVISM

On April 2, 2018, Ann Kalla Visiting Professor Sarah Rafson addressed a full auditorium in Margaret Morrison Carnegie Hall – the building that originally housed the Margaret Morrison Carnegie School for Women – to discuss advocacy and activism in architecture. The sixth lecture of the 2018 SoA Spring Lecture Series explored a two-way street for discourse involving a “Body Drift” was an immersive audiovisual performance by Ja- Q&A with SoA alumna and activist Carol Crandall (B.Arch ’81). kob Marsico (MTID ’14) and Chris Carlson that used video-driven Rafson’s message was one that resonated strongly with the audianimation and multichannel sound to examine the subtle shifts ence. The lecture’s focus on two generations of activism demonthat take place in the development and degradation of sensory strated what the profession can learn about inclusivity in archiperception. The performance mirrored human growth and evo- tecture and how it may evolve. lution, involving performers of various ages. Three large screens featured an audiovisual experience that surrounded the audi- Rafson studied at the University of Toronto before going on to earn her master’s degree at Columbia University’s Critical, Cuence. The presentation differed every time. ratorial and Conceptual Practices in Architecture program. She

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is the founder of an architectural editorial and curatorial agency called Point Line Projects. Founded in 2016, the company focuses on providing publication and curatorial services for a diverse set of clients ranging from architects to firms and museums. Point Line Project’s latest project is an exhibit titled “Now What?! Advocacy, Activism & Alliances in American Architecture since 1968,” organized in conjunction with ArchiteXX. This exhibition focuses on the history of activism in the architecture community to further the interests of women, LGBTQ and minority architects.

The bulk of Rafson’s lecture explained the process of curating this exhibition. In tandem with the lecture, Rafson led a more intimate Q&A session with Carol Crandall to involve the audience in the discussion. Crandall is a partner of Crandall Ritzu Architects and a consultant at LCM Architects in Chicago. She is the co-founder of CARYATIDS, a feminist collective of designers in Chicago who curated an exhibit titled “More Than the Sum of Our Body Parts,” in response to the 1993 AIA national convention. The exhibition called attention to the struggles of women in the workplace. Audience members at the SoA lecture were curious to learn more about Crandall’s journey as an activist and asked if she had always been interested in activism. Crandall reflected on how she only developed an interest after seeing inequality firsthand upon entering the workforce and stressed the importance of getting involved early in one’s professional career when there is “nothing to lose.”

Engagement and discussion continued well after the event into the hours and even days following the lecture. Energized by the discourse around activism during the talk, the entire SoA community gathered for a postlecture reception, where conversation revolved largely around the attendees’ reactions to the still-fresh topic of engaging with activism in their lives. At the Back2Front discussion later that week, Rafson facilitated the conversation and engaged in dialogue focused on the efficacy of advocacy in architectural assembly organizations, such as the AIA and AIAS. Students explored how they might practice more meaningful activism at the university level. The common theme of the conversation throughout the reception and discussion was simple: “Now What?!”

AELAN B. TIERNEY (B.ARCH ’92) NAMED FIRST FEMALE PRINCIPAL AND PRESIDENT OF KUHN RIDDLE ARCHITECTS Aelan B. Tierney, AIA, LEED AP has been named the first female principal and president of Amherst, Massachusetts-based firm Kuhn Riddle Architects. In this new capacity, Tierney will continue to work on architectural project design while also taking on a larger role in day-to-day management of the firm, focusing on business growth and maintaining a strong connection with clients and business partners.

Tierney has been an architect at Kuhn Riddle Architects since August 2005. While at Kuhn Riddle, Tierney played a lead role in a number of educational, commercial and residential projects including the Olympia Oaks multifamily affordable housing in Amherst, the PVPA Charter School Theater in South Hadley and projects at American International College, Western New England University and Elms College.

JEN LIU (MTID ’17) CREATES WEARABLE TECHNOLOGY TO BRING HIGH TECH TO MUSHROOM HUNTING Jen Liu developed tools that allow foragers to collect data on environmental conditions while they hunt for fungi. In recently published research, she describes her project to build wearable technology into this hobby. Her designs include a walking stick that stores samples of dirt and a glove that takes soil moisture readings when you dip your fingers into the earth. Liu recently presented these technologies at a conference in Montreal in April along with study co-author Daragh Byrne of the CMU SoA and CU Boulder assistant professor Laura Devendorf.

Through Rafson and Crandall, different generations and personalities geared towards activism shared the stage to address issues of the present. Our time has many parallels to the era in which Crandall decided enough was enough and spoke out.

Rafson’s exhibition is sure to spark new discourse on the role of advocacy in today’s architectural profession. —Bryan Trew

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SoA MOURNS MILDRED KIRK NEWTON (B.ARCH SCHMERTZ (B.ARCH ’17) NAMED TO AIAS CRIT ’47), GROUNDBREAKING EDITORIAL TEAM ARCHITECTURAL EDITOR Schmertz was the first woman to become editor-in-chief of a professional architectural publication in the United States. The daughter of architect and folk musician Robert Schmertz (B.Arch 1921) — who also wrote the Carnegie Mellon fight song — Mildred received her B.Arch at the SoA in 1947. She started working at Architectural Record in the art department, working her way to become the publication’s editor-in-chief. Over the course of her long career, Mildred interviewed and reported on some of the most influential architects of the 20th century.

Kirk Newton has been selected as the Design Editor for the 2018 AIAS CRIT Editorial Team. Kirk comes to CRIT after spearheading the graphic identity for Forge, the 2016 Northeast Quad Conference hosted by Carnegie Mellon University. His resume also includes the 2016 Design Award for Excellence in Representation for 4th year, along with the marketing of CMU SoA’s 2016 and 2017 Lecture Series.

“As [CRIT’s] very first design editor, I’m ready to be a little irreverent, a little unapologetic and to upend all expectations of what a student-run publication looks like!” – Kirk Newton

CAROLINA TAMAYO (B.ARCH ’17) UNVEILS TABLES DESIGNED FOR DFAB LAB ALUMNI AT BCJ DESIGN TWO NEW BUILDINGS FOR CMU

Carolina Tamayo unveiled a set of tables she designed for the SoA’s dFAB Lab. The design and production of these pieces was made possible through the Burdett Assistantship, which Carolina was awarded as part of the 2016 Fourth Year Design Awards.

The $5,000 award from the Burdett Fund is intended to support projects and activities that enhance the winning student’s future work. Of Carolina’s award submission (a retrospective of her work as an architecture student), Assistant Head Mary-Lou Arscott said: “Tamayo’s development from her early years’ work is evident. Her distinctive concern is to expose structure and to frame space in a lyrical way.” This design approach is evident in the pieces she created for the space.

Architecture firm Bohlin Cywinski Jackson (BCJ) recently released designs for two new buildings set to debut on the CMU campus in 2020. ANSYS Hall and TCS Hall are designed for col- “The tables are a great addition and resource for the Lab,” says laborative research and maker-based learning. The buildings will dFAB Lab Manager Terry Hritz. “Carolina did an amazing job be utilized by faculty, graduate students and undergraduate stu- throughout the process of design and fabrication.” dents across multiple disciplines.

The tables have been well received by users of the space, and are Both projects are led by SoA alumni: Design Principal Gregory already being put to good use by the faculty and students.

Mottola, FAIA (B.Arch ’91), and Principal in Charge Kent Suhrbier, AIA (B.Arch ’92). Mottola and Suhrbier have contributed to many BCJ projects, both nationally and in Pittsburgh, including the Robert L. Preger Intelligent Workplace at CMU. ANSYS Hall is designed to be a 36,000-square-foot, four-story facility for CMU’s College of Engineering. The project is scheduled for completion in the summer of 2020.

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AWARDS & HONORS

STUDENT AWARDS George W. Anderson, Jr. Award The George W. Anderson, Jr. Award recognizes graduate students studying in the School of Architecture who demonstrate through their work “an exceptional level of attention to detail and dedication to beneficially impacting the community” through a completed project.

1st Place Winner: Roshni Krishnan, MSSD ’18 Project Title: Hostels for Hope | 1st Place Award: $3,000 | 2nd Place Winners: Manuel Rodriguez Ladron de Guevara, MAAD ’18, Mass Instantiations in Architectural Design for Cost Efficient Fabrication & Shalini Priyadarshini, Ph.D.-AECM ’20, Labor Productivity and Organization Performance in Specialty Trade Construction | 2nd Place Award: $2,000 between two prizes Burdett Assistantship The Burdett Assistantship was established on December 10, 1982 in recognition of Bob Burdett’s long and outstanding service to the University and profession. The award is open to all undergraduate students pursuing their first professional degree in architecture and is intended to support projects and activities that will enhance the winning student’s future work. According to its charter, the winner of the Burdett Assistantship “shall possess love of their subject, integrity, patience, fairness, and respect for others.”

Winners: Zain Islam-Hashmi, B.Arch ’19 & Gargi Lagvankar, B.Arch ’19 | Project Title: Topographic Textures | Award: $5,000 between two prizes

Winner: Alison Katz, B.Arch ’20 on behalf of Freedom By Design CMU Chapter | Travel: Attend AIAS Grassroots 2018 | Award: $2,200 Deller Prize in Sustainable Architecture and Real Estate The Deller Prize in Sustainable Architecture and Real Estate was established by the Deller family of Quito, Ecuador in recognition of the depth and breadth of education that Adriel Deller (B.Arch ’13) received at the Carnegie Mellon School of Architecture. The award encourages architecture students to pursue nontraditional career paths, specifically to grow their skills in the specialty of design, construction and sustainability under the umbrella of the real estate business.

Winner: Gargi Lagvankar, B.Arch ’19 | Award: $4,500 and paid summer internship with the Deller Companies in Quito, Ecuador Ferguson Jacobs Prize in Architecture The Ferguson Jacobs Prize in Architecture has been established to promote continuity of the classical tradition in contemporary architectural practice. It encourages design excellence based on long-standing design principles that promote beauty and harmony in the built environment. Endowed by Mark Ferguson (B.Arch ’78) and Natalie Jacobs (B.Arch ’79), this prize is available in alternating years to students and faculty in the SoA. The prize supports projects that explore the classical tradition as vital knowledge to an architect’s education, practice and scholarship. Emphasis is placed on the dissemination of knowledge of the classical tradition and impact on the wider School of Architecture community.

Winners: Students of the Gerard Damiani Advanced Synthesis Options Studio Palladio: Institute + Archive | Award: $5,000 Payette Prize in Building Science Payette Associates, an international architecture firm in Boston, established the Payette Prize in Building Science to recognize the accomplishments of a B.Arch student that has achieved exceptional performance by integrating the fundamentals of building science in the execution of their third-year studio projects.

Winner: Timothy Khalifa, B.Arch ’19 | Award: $4,500

Alwin Cassens, Jr. Memorial Fund in Architecture EPIC Metals Competition The Alwin Cassens, Jr. Memorial Fund in Architecture was established in 2015 by Diane Cassens Cummins and Richard Cummins, and Joan Cassens Zinner (MM ’66) in memory of Diane and Joan’s father Alwin Cassens, Jr. (A ’34). The purpose of the Fund is to provide financial support to students enrolled in the School of Architecture who are traveling on behalf of the School of Architecture for conferences or other related travel in support of their academic pursuits in the area of public interest design.

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The Epic Metals Corporation sponsors the EPIC Metals competition for Carnegie Mellon third-year Bachelor of Architecture students to design an innovative object utilizing metal deck systems. Students compete for up to three prizes, which share $2,400 in prize money. The first-place team may be invited to tour Epic Metals’ manufacturing plant in Rankin, Pennsylvania.

SoA News, Awards & Announcements 2017-18

1st place: Fon Euchukanonchai & Hugh Lee | 2nd place: Christina Brown & Scarlet Tong | 3rd place: Xin Chen & Christine Zhu | Finalists: Alison Katz & Michael Powell; Liale Nijem & Mariana Alberola | Award: $2,400 between three prizes Measuring & Monitoring Services, Inc. Internship Fund The Measuring & Monitoring Services, Inc. Internship Fund has been established through the generosity of James Halpern, B.Arch ’81. The Fund provides financial support to an SoA undergraduate student who wishes to undertake a summer internship or related program under the guidance of established professionals. The internship fund recognizes the importance and advantage of being immersed for an extended period in the creative processes and organizational dynamics of an architecture firm, non-governmental organization, nonprofit organization or CMU faculty member.

Winner: Zain Islam-Hashmi, B.Arch ’19 | Internship: Domaine de Boisbuchet 16500 Lessac, France | Award: $3,000

FOURTH-YEAR AWARDS

FACULTY AWARDS Margaret B. Gruger (B.Arch ’41) Faculty Fund The Margaret B. Gruger (B.Arch ’41) Faculty Fund was established to support the needs of the School of Architecture and its faculty by supporting projects that advance the mission and reputation of the School.

Winner: Jeremy Ficca | Project Title: Graphic Outputs: Drawing, Appearing, Representing, Imaging | Award: $5,000 Isabel Sophia Liceaga Discretionary Fund The Isabel Sophia Liceaga Discretionary Fund was established to support faculty-led projects that critically engage students and advance the mission and reputation of the School of Architecture.

Winners: Daragh Byrne & Dana Cupkova | Project Title: Towards Sentient Matter: Architecture as a Mood Ring | Award: $2,000

The School of Architecture recognizes and celebrates design excellence through the Bachelor of Architecture Fourth-Year Design Awards program. The awards consist of the Luther S. Lashmit and Louis F. Valentour Traveling Scholarships, which recognize design excellence and support international travel and research. All Bachelor of Architecture students in their fourth year of studies are eligible to apply to the multi-round program. SoA faculty review submissions and select up to eight finalists to proceed to the second round, where shortlisted students stage an exhibit of their design work in the school and online. SoA faculty conduct a second jury of these finalists to select the award recipients.

Luther S. Lashmit Award | Winner: Kelly Li, B.Arch ’19 | Award: $5,000 The Luther S. Lashmit Award is given annually to a fourth-year student for the purpose of travel.

Louis F. Valentour A’49 Traveling Scholarship Fund | Winner: Elizabeth Levy, B.Arch ’19 | Award: $9,000 The Louis F. Valentour B.Arch ’49 Traveling Scholarship Fund was established for undergraduate students in Architecture who have completed their fourth year of study. The award is intended for travel outside the continental United States.

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& HONORS, CONT. VIVIAN LOFTNESS RECEIVES NESEA 2018 PROFESSIONAL LEADERSHIP AWARD The SoA congratulates Vivian Loftness on receiving the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association (NESEA) 2018 Professional Leadership Award. The award was presented during the NESEA Night event at BuildingEnergy Boston on March 8.

“Vivian Loftness never ceases to remind us that buildings are, first and foremost, for people,” reads the award inscription.

“She is a brilliant advocate for providing human comfort and well-being through elegant design. She is always generous in sharing her expertise with students, practitioners, and policymakers around the world, and she has had a profound impact on the NESEA community.”

UDBS PROJECTS WIN MULTIPLE ACSA AWARDS The Urban Design Build Studio (UDBS) team, led by Associate Professor John Folan, recieved two 2017-18 Collaborative Practice Awards from the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) for the projects CULTURAL CONSTRUCTIONS and NavADAPT LAB. Each year, ACSA honors architectural educators for exemplary work in areas such as building design, community collaborations, scholarship and service. Award winners inspire and challenge students, contribute to the profession’s knowledge base, and extend their work beyond the borders of academy into practice and the public sector.

CULTURAL CONSTRUCTIONS: The CULTURAL CONSTRUCTIONS Studio leverages the specialized assets of a diverse ensemble of actors to restore the childhood home of world-renowned playwright August Wilson located in Pittsburgh’s Hill District. In jeopardy of being lost due to decades of neglect, this

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culturally significant structure is the focus of a community driven effort to establish a new cultural hub providing programming and education in the arts for youth and adults.

NavADAPT LAB: The NavADAPT LAB Studio explored the design of adaptive environments for underserved populations with sensory, intellectual and/or limited physical disabilities in the Allegheny County region of Pennsylvania. Its focus was on collaborative development of reality computing applications in a residential context, with a specific focus on the kitchen. The overarching aspiration was to move beyond an environment that is merely smart to one that is actively adapted/augmented toward its inhabitant’s needs and capabilities. Work advanced through the construction of prototypes at three scales – furniture, the room and the home. Each component established a human centered context for the next, informed by a nuanced understanding of ergonomics and the human body.

ÖMER KARAGUZEL APPOINTED MERIT REVIEWER BY US DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY’S BUILDING TECHNOLOGIES OFFICE Assistant Professor Ömer T. Karaguzel, Ph.D., WELL AP has been recognized by the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy-Building Technologies Office (EERE-BTO) as a high-caliber expert in his field. He was recently appointed to serve as a Merit Reviewer to evaluate multi-year and multimillion dollar funding proposals for the core research and development activities to be performed by a number of national laboratories including the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). Ömer has 15 years of experience in building performance simulation and environmental design and teaches both undergraduate and graduate level courses for the CMU School of Architecture.

CINDY LIMAURO APPOINTED NEW UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR Cindy Limauro, Professor of Lighting in the SoA and School of Drama, has been appointed one of four new University Professors by CMU.

SoA News, Awards & Announcements 2017-18

AN ATLAS OF COMMONING AWARDED GRAHAM FOUNDATION GRANT Congratulations to Stefan Gruber and his team on being awarded a grant from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts for the upcoming exhibition “An Atlas of Commoning.” The exhibition, developed in partnership with the Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen(ifa) and ARCH+, opened in Berlin this June. The Graham Foundation’s support will make it possible for the exhibit to travel to Pittsburgh next spring.

DANA CUPKOVA AWARDED FOR RESTAURANT DESIGN

Students from the SoA’s Master of Urban Design (MUD) program researched the case studies for the Atlas. The team responsible for putting together the exhibition includes: Anh-Linh Ngo, Max Kaldenhoff, Mirko Gatti, Christian Hiller, Christin Rüb, Rainer Hehl, Chun Zheng, Tamara Ariel, Paul Moscoso Riofrío, Ernest The Senyai Thai Kitchen project, designed and executed in PittsBellamy, Yidan Gong, Lu Zhu and Jonathan Kline. burgh’s Shadyside neighborhood by Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Architecture faculty Dana Cupkova and Gretchen Craig of EPIPHYTE Lab, was awarded The American Architecture Prize 2017 in the Commercial Interior design category. The project was designed and produced with help from the student team of fifth-year students Trent Wimbiscus and Sinan Goral and Thomas Sterling and Colleen Clifford, who both graduated with bachelor’s degrees in architecture in 2016.

DONALD CARTER RECEIVES 2017 AIA PENNSYLVANIA MEDAL OF DISTINCTION

At the AIA Pittsburgh president’s holiday party, members congratulated Donald K. Carter, FAIA, FAICP, LEED AP as the recipient of the 2017 AIA Pennsylvania Medal of Distinction. The Medal of Distinction is the highest award bestowed upon a living AIA Pennsylvania member and honors contributions to architecture that transcend local boundaries and have been of benefit to the profession and citizens of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

Don Carter is the David Lewis Director of urban design and regional engagement at the Remaking Cities Institute at CMU. He was president of Urban Design Associates in Pittsburgh for 36 years and led many of the firm’s most complex projects. He is a fellow of the AIA, a former president of AIA Pittsburgh, and served on the board of AIA Pennsylvania. He recently edited the book “Remaking Post-Industrial Cities: Lessons from North America and Europe,” which documents 10 city case studies from the international Remaking Cities Congress that he co-chaired in 2013. Carter earned a bachelor’s degree in architecture from Carnegie Mellon and did postgraduate work at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland.

The restaurant’s ceiling, inspired by vaulted geometry of ancient Thai architecture, incorporates acoustic and lighting performance into a contemporary spatial experience. Visual layering of ceilings fins is suggestive of movement while reducing the reverberation of sound in individual vaulted zones, thus creating localized acoustic privacy within the space. The texture and color of the surface’s 275 unique vertical slats play with light to create a sense of spatial weightlessness and visual expansion.

At the same time, it appears as a continuous surface, mimicking an active body of water or, in homage to the restaurant’s name (sen yai translates to “big noodles” in Thai), a bowl of hot noodles in broth.

“At the Epiphyte Lab, we want to collaboratively materialize advanced design ideas and enable students to play within and participate in what is, essentially, a ‘pre-practice’ design laboratory, while also experimenting with realization of cutting-edge projects,” Cupkova says.

The team also won the 2017 LIT Design Awards in the Hotel and Restaurant Design category. The LIT Design Awards were created to recognize the efforts of talented international lighting product designers and lighting implementers, with the belief that lighting is an art and a science, and it is one of the most important elements of design. LIT was envisioned to celebrate the creativity and innovation in the fields of lighting products and application.

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Design grant. The funds, provided by the Armstrong World Industries Foundation, support programs that provide educational opportunities in architectural design to students who otherwise may not be exposed to architecture. The grant will support NOMA’s inaugural 2018 Project Pipeline middle school programs and CAE’s 2018 EQUIP Backpacks for elementary school students.

DARLENE COVINGTON- AIAS CHAPTER WINS DAVIS RECEIVES STAFF COMPETITION SERVICE AWARD FOR 35 YEARS AT CMU Darlene Covington-Davis, graduate program administrator, has received the Staff Service Award for 35 Years at Carnegie Mellon University. Darlene was recognized during the Andy Awards Ceremony on October 4, 2017. In her role in the School of Architecture, Darlene assists in the daily administration of the graduate programs and advising current students on administrative policies and procedures for the school and the university.

Carnegie Mellon University’s Andy Awards recognizes staff members who have demonstrated outstanding dedication and commitment to excellence. Congratulations to Darlene on her achievement!

The Carnegie Mellon University chapter of AIAS (American Institute of Architecture Students) won the 2017 Can You Dip It Video Challenge hosted by the American Galvanizers Association (AGA) and AIAS. The CMU AIAS chapter’s video earned the group $500 as the top video entry in their Quad; winners from each Quad were then invited to the finals held during the 2017 AIAS FORUM conference in Austin, Texas.

DOCTORAL CANDIDATE MALINI SRIVASTAVA RECEIVES 2018 AIA YOUNG ARCHITECTS AWARD SoA doctoral candidate Malini Srivastava, AIA, CPHC was named one of 18 recipients of the 2018 AIA Young Architects Award. The AIA Young Architects Award honors individuals who demonstrate exceptional leadership and make significant contributions to the architecture profession early in their careers.

CENTER FOR ARCHITECTURE EXPLORATIONS WINS 2018 LEARNING BY DESIGN GRANT

Malini is a principal at Design and Energy Laboratory, assistant professor of Architecture at North Dakota State University, the project lead at efargo. A talented architect whose elegant, cutting-edge projects have garnered a number of significant awards, Malini works to find solutions that marry good design with a deep-seated concern for the health and safety of a building’s occupants. She has been awarded more than $1 million in funding to investigate energy use in the built environment.

Malini also serves as the project lead of efargo, the group that won the Georgetown University Energy Prize (GUEP) competition for the city of Fargo, North Dakota this past month. efargo is a partnership formed between the city of Fargo, North Dakota State University, and the city’s utility companies in order to enter GUEP, a two-year competition in which 50 cities across the US take innovative actions in the way they understand, use and plan The SoA’s Center for Architecture Explorations (CAE) collabo- energy use reduction. rated with the Pittsburgh chapters of the AIA and National Organization of Minority Architects to win a 2018 K-8 Learning by Fargo was shortlisted as a top-ten finalist in the GUEP competi-

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tion this past year, ranking fourth in overall energy savings. The jury made the final determination of the winner based upon factors including innovation, replicability, scalability, community engagement, partnership formation and long-term impact of the methods used to reduce energy consumption. Fargo’s approach to energy savings utilized gaming techniques and related data concepts honed and refined during Srivastava’s time at CMU, which was a major factor in the win.

ARCHITECT ATHLETE MIRANDA FORD RECEIVES UNIVERSITY HONOR

The competition’s $5 million prize will be used to finance new sustainable energy projects in the community, said Srivastava in a statement following the win. She hopes to leverage the money to work toward a net-zero carbon future for the region.

Miranda Ford (B.Arch ’19) was honored for her excellence as a student scholar and varsity swimmer during the fourth annual Academic Achievement Celebration. The honor is all the more significant because of all the scholars to receive this recognition, Miranda was the only student from the College of Fine Arts to be honored during the event.

YUJIE XU NAMED 2017-18 STEINBRENNER FELLOW ZAIN ISLAM-HASHMI NAMED WINNER AT ECOLUTION FASHION SHOW

Doctoral candidate Yujie Xu has been named a 2017-18 Steinbrenner Fellow by the Steinbrenner Institute for Environmental Education and Research at CMU. Yujie received an MS in Architecture from Carnegie Mellon School of Architecture in 2015 and earned her BS from Tsinghua University in 2011. In 2017, she won first prize in the CMU Student Energy Week Poster and Multimedia Competition.

As a Steinbrenner Fellow, Yujie receives a full-year scholarship to conduct her research, titled “Data-driven Spatial-temporal Model to Analyze the Energy, Climate and Environmental Impact of Building Stock Energy Conservation Measures.” She is advised by Vivian Loftness, Azizan Aziz and Edson Severnini.

ROSHNI KRISHNAN AWARDED TOP PRIZE IN MODULE DESIGN CHALLENGE Roshni Krishnan (MSSD ’18) was named winner of the first annual Module Design Challenge competition. Roshni’s design entry, “Plug in — rethinking vertical wall system,” is based on the concept of customizing storage based on needs. Module will work with Roshni to optimize her “storage wall” to integrate the design into the company’s first homes. This June, Roshni will work with competition co-sponsers Roboto NYC to finalize the fabrication of the system.

Congratulations to Zain Islam-Hashmi (B.Arch ’19), one of four winners recognized at the Ecolution Fashion Show. The event challenges Pittsburgh-based designers to incorporate recycled and reused materials in the creation of original pieces designed for Pittsburgh Earth Day. Zain’s design “Earth-Construction-Deconstruction” made use of dirt, concrete, sand and paper in its construction.

B.ARCH STUDENTS WIN BLT ARCHITECTS DESIGN CHARRETTE Shan Wang (B.Arch ’20) and Zhuoying Lin (B.Arch ’20) won the BLT Architects Student Design Charrette, earning a grand prize of $1,000 each and summer internships with the firm. The event brought together participants to compete in teams of two under the mentorship of BLTa employee coaches. The jury made up of BLTa staff selected the winners, awarding Shan and Zhuoying each a grand prize of $1,000 and summer internships with the firm. During the six-hour-long design charrette, the teams worked to conceptualize a vibrant mixed-use development adjacent to phase one of the new Rail Park in Philadelphia. Students were asked to take into account the neighborhood’s industrial background, proximity to Chinatown, and arts scene when developing proposals for the site.

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JACOB RUSSO (B.ARCH ’14) ON TEAM AWARDED & HONORS, CONT. 2017 BIOMIMICRY DESIGN CHALLENGE STUDENT TEAMS WIN HONORABLE MENTIONS IN ACMA COMPOSITES DESIGN CHALLENGE

The AquaWeb module is a multifunctional biomimetic system to integrate water capture, filtration, storage and distribution into food production building envelopes such as greenhouses and container farms.

Two student teams from the second-year course Fundamentals of Computational Design received Honorable Mention for their entries to the Composites Design Challenge competition organized by the American Composite Materials Association (ACMA).

This national competition encourages college architecture students to find innovative ways to integrate composite constructions into architectural production. ACMA asked approximately 150 architectural students from 23 different schools to work in teams to consider the development of a composite architectural/building component or assembly. The ACMA also supported students with a generous material donation. The only awarded entries in the competition made by undergraduate students, the jury praised the two projects from the SoA for their innovative use of composites in conjunction with computational methods.

Honorable Mention: PolyMorph Faculty: Daniel Cardoso Llach, assistant professor; Humphrey Yang, teaching associate team members: Angelina Shi, Brandon Smith, Kathy Song, Louis Suarez, Yin Jie Tian, Alex Wang, Emily Wein, Curran Zhang. “PolyMorph” is an installation created by aggregating modules of resin-hardened fabric. Unique to this project was a novel type of reconfigurable mold – a sort of analog parametric device that allowed the team to create subtle variations of a single fabric mold, imprinting on the final installation the textile quality of the fabric.

Honorable Mention: compoSIT Faculty: Daniel Cardoso Llach, assistant professor; Ardavan Bidgoli, teaching associate team members: Harry Branch-Shaw, Andrew Chong, Fallon Creech, Jordan Takumi Davis, Vincent DeRienzo, Alan Fan, Edward Fischer, Erin Fuller, Gisselt Estefania Gomez. “compoSIT” is a full-scale catenary-shaped canopy and bench created through iterative digital and physical prototyping. Inspired by Frei Otto and Antoni Gaudí, this team used a wooden frame and hanging fabrics to generate the desired geometry and glass fibers and resins to harden the fabrics into a structure capable of supporting the weight of two people.

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NexLoop, an international team with members Jacob Russo, Anamarija Frankic, and C. Mike Lindsey, won the 2017 $100,000 Ray of Hope Prize for their AquaWeb innovation. The Grand Prize was awarded at the Bioneers Conference in San Rafael, California, in October 2017. Each year 5-10 finalists in the Open Category of the Biomimicry Global Design Challenge are invited to participate in the Biomimicry Accelerator program. Designed to help biomimetic solutions advance beyond the concept stage, the Biomimicry Accelerator is an intensive year-long program during which teams continue to develop their design concepts and market strategy utilizing business training, mentorship and legal support provided by the Institute and its partners. At the end of each Accelerator, one team is awarded the $100,000 Ray of Hope Prize, endowed by the Ray C. Anderson Foundation.

JOON-HO CHOI (PH.D.BPD ’09) RECEIVES NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION AWARD The SoA congratulates Joon-Ho Choi for receiving a 2017 National Science Foundation Award for his research project “Human-Building Integration: Bio-Sensing Adaptive Environmental Control for Human Health and Sustainability.” This project is a continuation of his Building Performance and Diagnostics Ph.D. thesis entitled “CoBi: Bio-Sensing Adaptive Control for Building Mechanical Systems for Ensuring Thermal Comfort.”

SoA News, Awards & Announcements 2017-18

STEPHEN WIERZBOWSKI (B.ARCH ’75) HONORED IN AIA FELLOWS CEREMONY Congratulations to Stephen Wierzbowski, AIA on his honor of becoming one of 152 member-architects elevated to the American Institute of Architects (AIA) College of Fellows this year.

This honor is awarded to members who have made significant contributions to the architecture profession. Stephen earned a B.Arch with honors from SoA in 1975. He currently serves on the boards of the CMU National Alumni Association and the CMU Chicago Area Alumni Association.

Jáuregui’s work was supported by the Delbert Highlands Travel Fellowship, a biennial award of $12,000 for alumni of the School of Architecture.

The fellowship supports the study of local collections, which Stephen Lee, head of the School of Architecture, says is in honor of its namesake. Delbert Highlands was Lee’s department head and professor when he attended the School of Architecture as a student. When Lee joined the faculty he worked with Highlands on his teaching team.

“As my professor and as my colleague, he instilled in me the importance of human experience rooted in a physical place based upon the specifics of the historical context. Hence, one did not impose a ‘style’ of architecture e.g. modernism or classicism in a location, rather one studied the particulars of the place to generate the appropriate architectural response,” Lee said.

The Highlands Travel Fellowship is the first award program from the School of Architecture to specifically target alumni.

“It is important for current students to see first-hand the trajectories of graduates to inform their own careers and to learn the influence that Delbert had on our approach to design through the presentations and exhibits of the winners. This alumni fellowship is a great way for alumni to reconnect with the school,” Lee said.

Jáuregui graduated with her bachelor’s degree from the School of Architecture in 2009, and credits her faculty mentors with helping her navigate the early years of her career.

HIGHLANDS TRAVEL FELLOWSHIP SUPPORTS LOUISA JÁUREGUI (B.ARCH ’09) Louisa Jáuregui has been digging into the history and culture of the allotment gardens — green oases — in Leipzig, Germany, since 2016. With 1.4 million of these kleingartens across Germany, Jáuregui wanted to understand their development over the past 150 years by studying their densest zone in Leipzig. Now living in Leipzig, she purchased her own kleingarten to get her hands dirty.

“Art Lubetz, during my fifth-year thesis semester, encouraged me to embrace and respect my own individual design processes and methods and not force myself to fall in line with what the majority of my peers were doing,” she said.

She also worked closely with adjunct professor Matt Plecity, who coached her on applying for internships and interview preparation. It paid off; she landed an internship with Bohlin Cywinski Jackson, where Plecity worked, and Jáuregui was later hired full-time.

“Louisa has an incredible passion for new experiences and willingness to tackle any challenge. Whether moving across the country or designing a complicated new building type, she never gets overwhelmed and embraces the excitement of the unknown,” Plecity said.

“I feel like experiencing first-hand the integration of localized agriculture with density is a lesson that will stay with me and forever impact the way I view urban planning and design, particularly when it comes to marginalized tracts of land that exist in so many U.S. cities,” Jáuregui said.

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