AAP News 12

News12 Milstein Hall Celebration

Dean’s Message AAP News is published twice yearly by the College of Architecture, Art, and Planning at Cornell University, through the Office of the Dean.

College of Architecture, Art, and Planning Cornell University 129 Sibley Dome Ithaca, NY 14853-6701 (607) 255-5317 aap_newsletter@cornell.edu Aaron Goldweber Rebecca Bowes contributing writers Barbara Adams, Daniel Aloi, Rebecca Bowes, Gary Frank, Aaron Goldweber, Sherrie Negrea, Mitch Paine (M.R.P. ’13), Nancy Tompkins design Studio Kudos copy editor Laura Glenn photography William Staffeld (unless otherwise noted) distribution coordinator Sheri D’Elia cover The Forsythe Company’s Brock Labrenz performs Nowhere and Everywhere at the Same Time in Rand Hall, in March. editor

assistant editor

© September 2012 Cornell University Printed on Rolland Enviro 100 Satin, a Forestry Stewardship Council stock.

Printed by Monroe Litho, Rochester, New York. Monroe Litho is certified by the Sustainable Green Printing Partnership and is an EPA Green Power Partner operating on 100 percent wind power.

It is hard not to beam Cornell red when reflecting on the past half year: The university’s successful bid to found a technology-centric graduate campus in New York City will be seen as a historic inflection point. With technologies for the built environment as one of the three planned academic hubs of the new campus, AAP has a great deal to contribute to this enterprise, and a great deal to get out of it as well. From remote sensing technologies to high-performance building envelopes to precise energy-modeling tools, the planning and architecture disciplines are very much part of the academic vision for the campus.

There are many synergies between this unique, graduate-level research incubator and our existing studio-based program, and it is clear that New York City is developing further as an essential node in AAP’s tripartite geography.

There has also been a significant change in real estate studies at Cornell. As of July 1, the graduate real estate program became jointly administered by AAP and the School of Hotel Administration. The conviction that creative and sustainable development requires deep understanding of real estate finance and a solid grounding in urban design, planning, and preservation inspired this move. Our collective goal is to cultivate a special type of real estate talent, capable of tackling our most urgent urban issues. This endeavor was given an enormous boost by a generous naming gift by Lisa and Richard Baker that will enable the program to compete for the very best faculty and students in the field (see page 2).

The college is still reverberating from our inauguration of Milstein Hall in March. It was likely the largest gathering of AAP alumni in college history, and without doubt the most boisterous. There were many highlights that weekend, from a design jury with Frances Shloss, a proud B.Arch. alumna from the class of ’45, to a lecture by the inimitable nonagenarian John Reps, to a remarkable site-specific choreography by William Forsythe that took over much of the first floor of Rand Hall, to a 1,000-people-strong dance party for alumni, faculty, students, and friends. My thanks go to all of you who came to campus to reunite with classmates and faculty, meet students, and kick the tires of our new addition.

Increasingly, due in no small part to Milstein Hall’s provocative spatial opportunities, AAP is being sought out by our neighbors in the visual and performing arts as a site for creative projects. This is a welcome development, as I am intent on positioning AAP as a locus of critical artistic production and debate and as host for regular performances, exhibitions, installations, and projections for the benefit of our students and all of Cornell.

In this spirit, we decided to feature the Forsythe Company’s Brock Labrenz on the cover of this issue to signal that AAP remains a haven to that broad category of aesthetic practices dedicated to the infinite complexity of bodies moving through space.

Kent Kleinman Gale and Ira Drukier Dean of Architecture, Art, and Planning

Fall 2012 2 News&Events

1 Real Estate Program Gift 2 Spring 2012 Guest Speakers and Panelists 3 Sustaining Sustainability 4 Design Practice in Informal Cities 5 Gift for Sibley Renovations 6 New Faculty in AAP 7 Pollock-Krasner Grants 8 AAP and Museum Collaborate on Successful Exhibitions

8 Profiles 1 Shea Hembrey (M.F.A. ’07) 2 Ryan Shedd (B.S. URS ’12)

10 Celebration Milstein Hall

12 Students 4

1 Year of the Dragon 2 Student News 3 SMART Trips 4 2012 Commencement Awards 5 Sustainable Design in Latin America 6 Finger Lakes Winery 7 Restoration at Lyndhurst

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16 Studios 1 Iceland 2 Rwanda 3 Oregon

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20 Faculty&Staff

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1 Faculty Updates 2 Faculty Awards 3 Air Quality 4 Books 5 Sabin Named USA Fellow

22 Alumni 22

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1 Lenaghan Receives Grant 2 Cornell Silicon Valley 3 Calder Project Space 4 Kaplan Inducted as FAIA 5 New Book on Influential Southern Architect 6 Arthur Gensler Visit 7 Lee Exhibits on Three Continents 8 Chan in Hong Kong

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Spring 2012 Guest Speakers and Panelists

$11M Gift Puts Real Estate Program in AAP and School of Hotel Administration Cornell’s Program in Real Estate has been restructured, thanks to an $11 million gift from Lisa and Richard Baker ’88. The gift will more than triple the program’s current $5 million endowment.

The renamed Baker Program in Real Estate is now housed in and governed by the two schools most directly aligned with teaching, research, and professional careers in the field of real estate—AAP and the School of Hotel Administration (SHA).

Since its founding in 1997, the program has reported to the provost’s office rather than to a particular school or college.

“It’s already an excellent program, one of the top real estate professional programs in the country,” said John Siliciano, senior vice provost of academic affairs. The new funding “allows it to move even further.”

The new structure, he said, allows the Baker Program in Real Estate to train those seeking careers in the field of real estate. The two-year professional program offers a master of professional studies (M.P.S.) and a dual M.P.S./M.B.A. degree.

“We thought that a commitment like this would bring greater focus, both at . . . and outside of Cornell, to the opportunity to learn about real estate at Cornell,” said Richard Baker, a member of the advisory boards of the Real Estate Program and SHA. “I think this is going to help elevate Cornell’s program to one of the premier real estate programs in the United States.”

“Two colleges have joined forces to host a unique program that builds on AAP’s renowned expertise in shaping our constructed environment and SHA’s deep strength in real estate finance,” said Kent Kleinman. “Lisa and Richard Baker have made a transformative gift that will catapult real estate studies at Cornell to the very pinnacle of the field.”

The program will have physical space in both schools, which will collaborate to offer a comprehensive set of ancillary and career services.

Having the real estate program in both colleges “gives the students studying and learning about real estate the opportunity to take advantage of all the dynamic real estate exposure and opportunities that exist at the School of Hotel Administration [and] of the natural relationship that occurs between real estate and architecture,” Baker said.

The School of Hotel Administration hosted Cornell’s first real estate courses. Thanks to the Bakers, “we are now able to build upon SHA’s historical expertise in real estate finance and asset management,” said Michael Johnson, dean of SHA. The Bakers’ total gift is $12 million, including $1 million for the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art. “We hope this gives more students the opportunity to have a career in the real estate industry,” said Lisa Baker, noting that learning about the industry is difficult for those not already in a family business, such as the Baker family. “We do everything as a team, and we’re really happy to be doing this,” she said.

Richard and Lisa Baker are owners of the Hudson’s Bay Company, which is the oldest continuously operated retail company in the world.

Hudson’s Bay Company operates Lord & Taylor, The Bay, Home Outfitters, and Topshop Canada. The Bakers also are active contemporary art collectors and producers.AAP

Victoria Beard Lourdes Beneria James Biber Karla Britton Elliott Bronstein and Jacque Larrainzar Bernard Cache Mario Carpo C. Ondine Chavoya Steve Christer and Margrét Harðardóttir Marie Cieri Brad Cloepfil Lia Gangitano John Gaventa M. Arthur Gensler Davydd J. Greenwood K. Michael Hays Faye Hirsch Renata Hejduk Steven Holl Pamela Jerome CJ Lim Bart Lootsma Sandro Marpillero and Linda Pollak Mary McLeod Fionn Meade Faranak Miraftab James Nisbet John Ochsendorf Kyong Park William Pedersen and Michael Van Valkenburgh Bartolomeo Pietromarchi Ashley Rawlings Andrew Rumbach Mi Shih Gregory Sholette Paul Smoke Mark C. Taylor Wolfgang Tschapeller Urbanaarchitettura and Microcities Sandy Winters Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries aap.cornell.edu/events B.Arch. ’57

M.R.P. ’07, Ph.D. ’11

Symposium Focuses on “Sustaining Sustainability” “Sustaining Sustainability: Alternative Approaches in Urban Ecology and Architecture,” this year’s Hans and Roger Strauch Symposium on Sustainable Design, took place in early February, and included presentations from a variety of scholars, practicing architects, and conservationists.

Focusing on how the accelerating transformation of the natural environment by humans will impact the built environment, the symposium looked at questions of how architecture can evolve to include the necessary insights, knowledge, concepts, and working methods of a nonanthropocentric model that favors the interaction of species with the built environment.

Lectures were delivered by a diverse group of researchers and practitioners spanning multiple disciplines from biology to architecture, who share a common concern for what keynote speaker and coorganizer Michael Hensel has labeled “sustainability fatigue.” In his talk, Hensel, who is the head of the Research Center for Architecture and Tectonics at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design, called for a nonanthropocentric architecture agenda, defining humans equal to and not separate from nature.

Presenters included Richard Bonser of the School of Engineering and Design at Brunel University; Dana Cupkova and Kevin Pratt of Epiphyte Lab and AAP’s architecture department; Efren Garcia Grinda and Cristina Diaz Moreno of AMID.cero9; Jonas Lundberg, a founding member of Urban Feature Organization; John Marzluff, professor of wildlife science at the University of Washington; Claudia Pasquero and Marco Poletto of ecoLogicStudio; Birgir Sevaldson, professor at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design and principal researcher in the OCEAN Design Research Association; and David Zeigler, professor and biology department chair at the University of North Carolina. Moderators included coorganizer Mark Cruvellier, architecture department chair and associate professor; architecture professor Jonathan Ochshorn; and architecture assistant professor Jenny Sabin. Sabin also wrote a detailed recap and analysis of the symposia, titled “Towards a Complete Architecture: The Big Rethink Campaign Introduces a New Theoretical Framework for Architects,” which appeared in the March 2012 issue of Architectural Review.

The symposium was made possible by a gift from Hans Strauch (B.Arch. ’80) and Roger Strauch (’78), which supports continued engagement with the topic of sustainability through funding the annual symposia as well as a visiting professorship for a three-year period.AAP

Milstein Hall in the News The opening of Milstein Hall garnered press coverage in a wide variety of international print and online publications, including: The Wall Street Journal Art in America The Architect’s Newspaper Domus Arch Daily Architectural Record Bauwelt GA Document

Shloss Gift Initiates East Sibley Hall Renovations A gift from Frances Shloss (B.Arch. ’45) is enabling the college to begin renovations on the third floor of East Sibley Hall. Shloss’s $1.3M gift allowed the college to start construction this summer on new architecture studios and faculty offices, and replacement and enhancement of the skylights that extend across the entire length of the floor.

This project is the next step in the college’s plans to create studio and faculty office space on the second and third floors of East Sibley, which will promote greater flow and connectivity within the architecture department and across AAP. In addition to this gift, Shloss has also provided support for a custom-designed and -fabricated food cart that will be operated on the West Plaza of Sibley Hall. Students from all three AAP departments are working to design and build the cart, which will open this semester.

“It is not often that you meet an alumna with such a continued commitment to the excellence of her alma mater,” says Dean Kent Kleinman of Shloss’s two most recent gifts. “Over the years, Frances has given to a variety of important projects that add to the beauty of the Arts Quad, including elm and redbud tree plantings, a terrace, benches, and a garden, and now she is giving to facilities that are at the core of AAP’s teaching and learning: studio space, faculty offices, and, of course, delicious food.”APP

Symposium Explores Design Practice in the Informal Global City On April 12 and 13, the Abby and Howard Milstein Auditorium buzzed with hundreds of participants in the 2012 Preston H. Thomas Memorial Symposium, “Design Tactics and the Informalized City.” The international conference hosted diverse speakers and panelists who explored how pervasive informality in global cities has implications for the work of designers focusing on building and renewing cities for all people. Keynote talks were delivered by Alfredo Brillembourg from Urban-Think Tank; Teddy Cruz of Estudio Teddy Cruz and the University of California–San Diego; Neil Gershenfeld from MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms; and Harvard Graduate School of Design’s Rahul Mehrotra.

Organized by faculty members from architecture, city and regional planning, and landscape architecture, and attracting practitioners and thinkers in urban design, media and product design, and engineering, the symposium demonstrated how elements of the informalized city—self-built architectures and urban agglomerations, ambivalent landscapes, nomadic and temporal-spatial manifestations—present significant questions for working practices and ways of representing urban phenomena, the appropriate medium and matter of design, and conceptions of agency, constituency, and purpose.

The Preston H. Thomas Memorial Symposium series is funded through a gift to AAP from Ruth and Leonard B. Thomas of Auburn, New York, in memory of their son, Preston. Additional support for the symposium was provided by Cornell’s Institute for Social Sciences and the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies.

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AAP Welcomes New Faculty Members Jeffrey Chusid, adjunct faculty member in CRP since 2005, has been appointed to a tenure-track position as associate professor in the area of historical preservation and planning. His recent book, Saving Wright: The Freeman House and the Preservation of Meaning, Materials, and Modernity, was awarded the 2012 Historic Preservation Book Prize by the Historic Preservation Center at Mary Washington University. (Read more about the book on page 21.)

Assistant Professor Jeremy Foster has joined the faculty of the architecture department in a tenure-track position. Previously a visiting critic and lecturer in AAP, since 2008, Foster has been an assistant professor of landscape architecture in Cornell’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. His research focus includes the history and theory of landscapes, cities, and built environments.

Bill Gaskins has joined the art department as a visiting associate professor with a multiyear term appointment. Gaskins’s work examines issues such as race and representation, contemporary art and the politics of visual culture, and the artist as citizen.AAP

Coordinators Lily Chi, associate professor of architecture, Cornell AAP Jeremy Foster, assistant professor of landscape architecture, Cornell CALS Neema Kudva, associate professor of planning, Cornell AAP

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Caroline O’Donnell, Richard Meier Assistant Professor of Architecture, Cornell AAP

Speakers Milton S. F. Curry, Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, University of Michigan Richard Dobson, Asiye eTafuleni and Warwick Junction Urban Renewal Project.

“Pragmatism in Practice” Rupali Gupte, Kamla Raheja Vidyanidhi Institute for Architecture.

“Provisional Practice” Maurice Mitchell, London Metropolitan University. “Architect as Detective, Narrator, and Craftsperson”

Ashkin and Perlman Receive PollockKrasner Foundation Grants

Sabine Müller, SMAQ. “Mini and Many: Drawing Actions that Shape the City” Priti Parikh, Development Vision 2020, Imperial College Business School.

“Slum Networking” Alessandro Petti, Decolonizing Architecture Art Residency, Al-Quds/Bard College Jerusalem. “The Camp as Political Project” Marjetica Potrcˇ, University of Fine Arts Hamburg. “A Dry Toilet in Caracas and a Community Garden in Amsterdam: A Vision of the Future City and the Artist as Mediator” Yoshiharu Tsukamoto, Atelier Bow-Wow, Tokyo Institute of Technology.

“Spatial Practice of Public Space” Sarah Williams, Columbia University Spatial Information Design Lab. “Data Sequence: Communicating Science, Society, and Policy of Places by Exposing the Invisible”

1 Photo: Paul Porter/ PatrickMcMullan.com.

2 Kent Kleinman and Frances Shloss. Photo: Jason Koski/ University Photography.

3 Michael Ashkin.

4 Joel Perlman. Photo: provided.

Michael Ashkin, associate professor of art, and Joel Perlman (B.F.A. ’65) were both awarded prestigious Pollock-Krasner Foundation grants for the upcoming year.

For Ashkin, this is the second time he has been selected for the award, having first received the distinction in 1997. Ashkin also recently received a residency at the MacDowell Colony for the second consecutive year.

Perlman is a renowned sculptor who has produced commissioned pieces for the Winter Olympics and the Whitney Museum of American Art, and has served as a member of the Cornell University President’s Council.

The foundation, named after abstract expressionist painters Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner, was established in 1985 to provide financial assistance to visual artists and arts organizations worldwide. Since its inception, the foundation has awarded over 3,500 grants totaling in more than 54 million dollars to artists in more than 70 countries. Grants are awarded to professional and personal visual artists based on the dual criteria of artistic merit and financial need.AAP

News12 | Fall 2012

AAP and Museum Collaborate on Successful Exhibitions

This past January, the Department of Art faculty, students, and AAP staff came together in an unprecedented effort that brought in high-level international practitioners and highlighted a renowned collection . . . all at the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art. Exhibitions by Iftikhar Dadi, associate professor and art department chair, and Carl Ostendarp, visiting assistant professor and director of graduate studies, art, were featured shows that ran in the museum from the end of January to the beginning of April. Neither would have happened without extensive involvement from M.F.A. students, Rand Hall shop staff, and even the AAP IT office.

“Lines of Control” Symposium March 3 and 4, 2012 Laylah Ali Salah Hassan Amar Kanwar Saloni Mathur Naeem Mohaiemen Aamir Mufti Sandhini Poddar Jolene Rickard Sumathi Ramaswamy Bhaskar Sarkar Shuddhabrata Sengupta Seher Shah

Lines of Control Lines of Control, cocurated by Dadi and Ellen Avril, chief curator at the Johnson, included more than 40 works of video, prints, photographs, paintings, sculpture, and installations by international artists. The exhibit was part of an ongoing project initiated in 2005 by Green Cardamom, a London-based, nonprofit arts organization that was founded by Dadi’s cocurator Hammad Nasar. At the heart of the exhibit was an investigation of the historic upheaval of the 1947 partition of India that spawned the nations of Pakistan and later Bangladesh; but works branched out widely into border and territory issues in places ranging from Israel and Palestine to the local Cayuga Nation.

“One of the distinctive things about this exhibit is that most of the artists couldn’t actually come to Ithaca to install their site-specific works,” says Dadi.

“Most of them sent either instructions or other renderings and asked that we install, and, in many cases, create the work based on their vision. And the evolution that took place between the original vision and the final product was, in some cases, quite significant.”

Noa Lidor’s Wailing Wall, a 6.2' × 6.3' × 0.7' sculpture was one such piece.

Originally modeled using British-style salt blocks, Dadi and Daren Kendall (M.F.A. ’12) quickly realized that they would not be able to get the same materials in the U.S. “We decided to bring a local response to the project,” says Dadi. Kendall, Baseera Khan (M.F.A. ’13), and Gaby Wolodarski (M.F.A. ’13) ended up creating and installing locally sourced salt blocks that utilized Cayuga Salt Mine materials.

Another piece, All Along the Watchtower, by Nadia Kaabi-Linke, involved a similar evolution. After seeing the space for the installation of her piece, an 18-foot-tall shadow meant to resemble a tower overlooking the gallery, Kaabi-Linke, one of the few artists to come to Ithaca, realized that her original idea of building the tower, sketching its shadow, and then removing the structure was not feasible. Kendall, along with fellow M.F.A. students Piotr Chizinski (M.F.A. ’12) and Brian Dunn (M.F.A. ’13), worked to find a solution; the end result was a different yet more powerful piece than the artist originally envisioned.

“Using a digital model of the watchtower in AutoCAD, we created a threedimensional rendering of the shadow to find out exactly how it would exist when projected into the corner of the gallery,” says Kendall. “Once we got the size and proportions right, it was printed as a full-scale template, with help from Andrew Dankel [AAP IT support specialist]. Dunn helped transpose that drawing onto the wall and floor, and a master painter then airbrushed it onto the floor and walls.

. . . Initially there were concerns about whether the paint would come off the gallery floors, but after a few successful materials tests, everyone was put at ease!”

Involvement from other AAP groups was also integral: Sophie Ernst’s installation, HOME: Senan, Zarina, Sami, and Gulzar, which combined projection screens and intricate models, required extensive input from AAP IT Projects Leader Andre Hafner; The Translator’s Silence, by Raqs Media Collective, had to first be custom printed in Ithaca, and then laser cut on a special vellum, as overseen by AAP students Kendall and Bernard Yenelouis (M.F.A. ’13); and Decolonizing Architecture/Art Residency’s The Red Castle and the Lawless Line required the expertise of Chris Oliver and Frank Parish from the Rand Hall shops and digital fabrication lab to do the fabrication of the wall and the three-dimensional printing of the models on the top.

Khan then helped with installing the models.

“It was an all-AAP effort,” says Kendall. “The discussions we were having with the artists, the back and forth between all of us—combined with the technical intricacies of putting together a multifaceted, multimedia event—was a really unique experience.”

The catalog from the exhibit, which was produced

by Green Cardamom, published by the Johnson Museum, and utilized many photos taken by Yenelouis, acknowledges the student input. Says Dadi, “It’s not common practice to mention students in these catalogs, but the students were a key part of the process . . . and in this case, the exhibit was largely the process.”

Catalogs can be purchased at museum.cornell.edu/publications.html

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“Using a digital model of the watchtower in AutoCAD, we created a three-dimensional rendering of the shadow to find out exactly how it would exist when projected into the corner of the gallery.”

Daren Kendall (M.F.A. ’12)

1 Photo: Robert Barker/University Photography.

2 Photo: Bernard Yenelouis (M.F.A. ’12).

3 Photo: provided.

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4 Gaby Wolodarski (M.F.A. ’13) installing Noa Lidor’s Wailing Wall. Photo: Bernard Yenelouis (M.F.A. ’12).

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Fat Cakes/Myopic Void

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At the same time that Lines of Control was on exhibit, Ostendarp’s exhibit, Fat Cakes/Myopic Void, was also installed. Although this was his third major curatorial project that combined paintings, sculpture, and works on paper from a museum’s collections with his own murals and soundtracks of a wide variety of musical genres, Ostendarp says it was different and better than the others because of the people and the place.

“The Johnson Museum was great to work with,” says Ostendarp. “They were extremely flexible, and I had a degree of knowledge about what they had in their collection that made pulling the show together much easier. It was also incredibly helpful to have funding from the Cornell Council on the Arts.”

Ostendarp chose works from the Johnson Museum’s collection by a variety of artists, including Andy Warhol, Helen Frankenthaler, Mary Heilmann, Dan Christensen, Nicholas Krushenick, and Alex Hay. The selected works were displayed in two galleries first covered by Ostendarp’s two-color, drip-pattern murals. The murals were first formatted and digitally printed at the final scale by Graham McDougal, then-lecturer in art, and then painted by Ostendarp with the assistance of museum staff and Amie Cunat (M.F.A. ’12) over a period of seven weeks.

“Ostendarp’s project not only recontextualized works from the museum’s permanent collection in provocative ways, it also demonstrated how an artist’s research-based practice results in a powerful, affective installation,” says Andrea Inselmann, curator of modern and contemporary art at the Johnson Museum.

Ostendarp also had assistance from Chizinski, who helped compile and edit the soundtrack, as well as Yenelouis, who took photos for the AAP website and a catalog of the exhibit.

“This level of student involvement at the Johnson Museum hasn’t happened before,” says Ostendarp. “I think it’s a wonderful complement to the NYC grad student exhibit that happens each year, and a wonderful way for students to get hands-on experience with some professional practice. And [Johnson Museum director] Stephanie Wiles’s willingness to engage in a dynamic and interactive relationship with the university is a wonderful opportunity that I hope more people are able to take advantage of.”APP Rebecca Bowes

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News12 | Fall 2012

Spin Olivia Woo (B.F.A. ’15), Wind It (\wind\ or \wīnd\) (2011), acrylic, 12" × 12" spinnable canvases.

Shedd Aspires to Help Cities Recover and Rebuild Through a Career in Planning At the end of the summer of 2005, Ryan Shedd (B.S. URS ’12) headed to the west coast of Florida for a family vacation. What he got instead was Hurricane Katrina. The family rode out the storm in their hotel room, and, after flying home to Westchester, Pennsylvania, Shedd turned on the television and watched the images of New Orleans—the city of his birth—flooded to the rooftops after the levees built to protect the city failed.

The devastation of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina gave Shedd a new perspective on the way cities are built. “It forced me to think about the places we live in and how they are structured,” he recalls. “The storm, when it passed over, ripped off the front cover, and you could see how everything underneath it worked, and in the case of New Orleans, how it didn’t work.”

When Shedd arrived in Ithaca a year later to visit Cornell, where he had intended to study classics, his mother picked up a brochure about the College of Architecture, Art, and Planning.

Driving back to Pennsylvania, Shedd looked at the booklet and realized that he was more interested in urban and regional studies than Latin.

“I had all these feelings about the places I lived,” says Shedd, who has moved all over the country, from San Francisco to Santa Fe to Rochester, Minnesota. “But I didn’t think of planning as a profession. It was through applying [to Cornell] that I learned about it and realized the importance of how I felt about where we live.”

While taking courses on physical planning and global cities, Shedd assumed a leadership role within the Department of City and Regional Planning. During his sophomore and junior years, Shedd served as one of two faculty dean liaisons who are assigned to attend faculty and curriculum committee meetings and present the input of students on issues in the department.

This year, Shedd became president of the Organization of Urban and Regional Studies (OURS), and helped the undergraduate group plan trips to Syracuse last fall and Cleveland this spring. The visits to the cities allow students to meet with developers, planners, and school administrators to discuss issues their communities are addressing.

“Ryan really stands out by being very organized, level-headed, and easy to get along with but also someone who gets things done,” says Ann Forsyth, former professor of city and regional planning and the former OURS adviser. She adds that Shedd has been an outspoken advocate for

New Orleans in her classes and has even brought in Creole food for the students to sample.

Besides planning the trips, Shedd has helped revive the OURS website by creating a blog on the site, cornellours.wordpress.com. Under his leadership, the group is also working on creating a network of alumni from the department whom students could contact as a resource for career development.

As he prepares to graduate, one of the memories Shedd will carry with him is the semester he spent in the Cornell in Rome program in the spring of 2011. The focus of his work in Rome was shadowing several community organizations that were creating a public garden on a tract of property on the city’s outskirts and revitalizing a park near an ancient monument.

“I loved it,” Shedd says. “It was just a great opportunity to get involved and explore a new urban environment.”

Another transformative experience for Shedd was an internship he had last summer with Rust to Green New York State, a program based in Cornell’s Department of Landscape Architecture that is promoting green practices in developing urban renewal plans in Utica and Binghamton.

For his internship, Shedd was assigned to the program in Utica, and worked on the issue of food access and mobility.

Shedd said the internship allowed him to learn about food systems, their connection with land use planning, and the challenges poorer communities face in accessing food. “The sad reality is that many people can only afford things on the dollar menu or cheap snacks out of their corner store for nutrients, if there are any nutrients at all,” he says.

Because of his passion for urban design and land use planning, Shedd is hoping he will find a job in municipal government or a private company in a large city. “I’m not picky,” he says.

“Whether it’s India, China, or New York City, I just hope it will be someplace that ties into my interests.”AAP Sherrie Negrea

Man of One Hundred Artists

When the vaporetto drew up to the stop for the Venice Biennale, Shea Hembrey (M.F.A. ’07) couldn’t bring himself to disembark. He’d spent weeks touring Europe, absorbing the latest works of contemporary artists, but felt repeatedly disappointed. So that October day in 2007, he stayed on board, all day long, in fact, taking profuse notes on any scrap of paper he could find and dreaming up the art exhibit he really wanted to see.

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That night at the hotel, Hembrey dumped “a mountain of paper” onto the bed, his jotted ideas for his next project—a curated show of multiple artists, the ideal biennial. Then he stuffed all his notes into a bag and didn’t look at them again until the project was nearly done.

The fruit of two years’ intensive labor at breakneck speed, from 2008–10, Seek: 100 in 2011 didn’t turn out to feature the works of dozens of artists he’d yet to discover; Hembrey soon realized he didn’t have the resources for such a venture. But he had his hands and his imagination. What resulted was his fictional creation of more than 100 distinct artists of different styles, training, ages, ethnicities, and nationalities––all newcomers, outliers, or outsiders. “Most of them are some version of me,” he says.

Hembrey not only invented rich backstories for 100 artists, he also produced their bodies of work—up to four pieces for each—and then assumed the duties of two imaginary curators. In his curatorial role, Hembrey learned that “some really good, quiet, thoughtful work doesn’t document well.” His playful send-up of the art world pervades the Seek project, from the catalog’s first image, a dogand-feet photo echoing fellow humorist Elliott Erwitt. But throughout, the satire is so gentle it’s close to homage.

Staggering in size and complexity, the show—viewable only as a complete artwork in a handsomely photographed 412-page catalog—was developed in Hembrey’s secluded New Jersey studio in near-secret. He’d sometimes ask friends and family to collaborate—being photographed or, in one work, dancing on a gravesite—saying only that it was for “a large interdisciplinary project.”

The conceptual enterprise was so huge, Hembrey says, that “the secret of it kept feeding it.” Only two people knew about the work when he’d finished, and only a dozen knew

by March 2011, when, after a friend recommended him, he

was featured in a TED Talk. Hembrey’s charming 18-minute lecture publicized the project instantly, leading to much online debate, a December 2011 New York Times Magazine feature, and myriad project offers.

Hembrey’s journey to Seek began long before his M.F.A. years at Cornell. As a child in rural Arkansas, Hembrey learned sewing and embroidery from his aunts, and carpentry and a serious work ethic from his father, who told him, “If you’re going to make anything, it has to be crafted with perfection.” Always attracted to many media— “When I studied art, I wanted to do everything”—Hembrey was delighted that the Seek project allowed him to work with materials like clay, silver, and gemstones (as well as earth and excrement).

Hembrey discovered painting in college, double-majoring in art and English. After a master’s degree in painting at Arkansas State and a year studying Maori art in New Zealand, extensive travel, and several grants and residencies, he returned to graduate school at Cornell, in part because an M.F.A. would allow him to teach. Hembrey appreciated the art program’s interdisciplinarity—and the guidance of Buzz Spector, then chair, along with painter Stan Taft, art history chair Kaja McGowan, and printmaker Elisabeth Meyer.

Having drawn on Cornell’s media facilities to their fullest, Hembrey recalls his professors teasing him about how he’d turned this into a really great residency for himself.

But teaching undergraduates turned out to be the core of Hembrey’s Cornell education. “The seniors were so sharp and so serious about their work,” he says, “always passionate, always questioning their choices. There would often be someone sitting on the couch in my studio, crying, ‘Why is it so hard?’”

To Hembrey, they were asking the right questions. Why art matters is the real subject, he believes. “Too often, the

power and primacy of it aren’t talked about in art school.”

Hembrey laughs about sounding “new-agey,” as he recalls the importance of childhood rituals. “I was the one who led the funeral for every animal that died”—things had to be done and look in a particular way.

Like ceremony, art honors life and death. “We seek power in art, seek meaning,” Hembrey says, enjoying the word see in Seek. “To me, what I do is holy—it’s as important as breath.”

Hembrey shares his spiritual beliefs about art matterof-factly. He’s clear and grounded, articulate and relaxed, and so completely present it’s hard to imagine him assuming multiple personas, one artist at a time, each with a different identity and urgency. “I knew so much about every person,” he says of his Seek inventions, that the two months he took writing the book’s text were a lesson in concision.

While Hembrey shaped one artist’s work—painting, sculpture, or installation—he’d be sourcing materials and prepping for the next. Sometimes he did a couple of paintings in a day. “I’m a fast technician,” he admits.

“Growing up, having to do your chores—there’s no reason to dawdle.”

Shaping the work of some “darker” artists, he was glad to move on to more joyous ones. Each persona demanded that he work differently, abandoning what was natural to him, getting in touch with the new artist’s emotions. “It’s an amazing art education,” he says, “to be forced into a year not as yourself.”

Now back to his own detailed painting, preparing for his September show at Manhattan’s Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery, Hembrey is exploring dark matter, dark energy— “the god element.” “Getting that window of magic is so important,” he says. “Sometimes art can grab you—but often you have to open up and wait.”AAP Barbara Adams News12 | Fall 2012

Hundreds Gather to Celebrate

Milstein Hall

From lectures by Rem Koolhaas, John Reps (M.R.P. ’47), and William Forsythe to a special address by Lord Peter Palumbo to an exhibition of work by Simon Ungers (B.Arch. ’80) to a party unlike any the college has thrown before, Celebrate Milstein Hall energized the AAP community as 500 alumni and guests reconnected with 300 faculty, students, and staff for an exhilarating weekend in March.

Year of the Dragon Cameron Neuhoff (B.Arch. ’16) and Peter Feng (B.Arch. ’16) were design co-chiefs who, along with their 56 first-year architecture classmates, constructed the 100-foot dragon that paraded through campus on Dragon Day 2012.

Photo: Lindsay France/University Photography.

HAUD graduate students enrolled in Associate Professor D. Medina Lasansky’s History Practicum (ARCH 6805) curated an online exhibition—Archi-Tourism—for Kroch Library. The exhibition features materials housed in the Kroch Rare and Manuscript Collections. Included in the exhibition are photographs by Cornell cofounder Andrew Dickson White taken during a trip to Egypt. White, who is often credited with helping to establish the architecture department in 1871, also contributed to the university’s renowned architectural photography collection. Learn more at: rmc.library.cornell.edu/Architourism/

Laura Amaya (B.Arch. ’13) was selected as a member of the Hunter R. Rawlings III Cornell Presidential Research Scholars. Each year, 20 applicants from each graduating class are selected to conduct sponsored undergraduate research ($5,000 in funding and up to $4,000 per year in aid) based on their research proposals and academic achievements. Amaya’s project explores the conditions of informal settlements in Colombia, Venezuela, and Brazil, and looks for ways in which these settlements can instruct formal design. The project also looks at how formal interventions in these areas can improve the standard of living of urban dwellers.

CRP Ph.D. candidate Lesli Hoey’s paper was selected along with approximately seven others that will be published as part of a graduate student academic paper competition. The competition was cosponsored by the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Comparative Urban Studies Project, USAID’s Urban Programs Team, the International Housing Coalition, the World Bank, and Cities Alliance. Hoey will be joining the faculty at the University of Michigan in the fall as an assistant professor in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning.

The Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies Annual Photo Competition 2011 awarded Lindsay Carter (M.R.P. ’12) an honorable mention for her photo, Water and Urban Agriculture. The photo, taken in the summer of 2011, when Carter traveled to Cotonou, Benin, on an Einaudi International Research Travel Grant to study urban agriculture, is of a young gardener working with his father on a commercial vegetable plot at Cocotiers, an open space adjacent to Cotonou’s main airport.

Colin Budd (B.F.A. ’15) was selected as the Cornell champion of the 2012 Microsoft Fireze/ BXT Innovation Challenge. The competition pulls together students from top university programs in business, design/arts, and technology and challenges them to come up with innovative solutions to a problem area that is of significant strategic value to Microsoft—in this case, the Bing search engine. The first round of the competition was held at the teams’ home universities. More than 10 Cornell teams entered the competition and worked on a new concept and business plan for Bing. After winning the university competition, Budd’s team traveled to Microsoft headquarters. There, they were reorganized into teams with students from other schools to compete for the overall grand prize. Budd, while not on the team that won the grand prize, was recognized as one of the contest’s best designers, and was the youngest competitor to be offered an internship with Microsoft. Thao Ly Bui Tran ’12, a student in the Cornell School of Hotel Administration, was part of the team that won the grand prize: each member took home three top-of-the-line Microsoft products. If their ideas are eventually used in an actual product, Microsoft will then make a monetary donation to the winners’ home universities.

A project titled Wavepier by Katie MacDonald (B.Arch. ’13) and Kyle Schumann (B.Arch. ’13) recently won an honorable mention in the Hernesaari Urban Furniture Competition in Helsinki, Finland. The competition was organized by the European Architecture Students Assembly and the City Planning Department of the City of Helsinki, and aimed to design a series of urban furniture for the up-and-coming Hernesaari district, located in the southwestern shores of downtown Helsinki. Wavepier was also selected to be part of the ongoing exhibit on display in Helsinki this summer.

Students

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An essay written by Bernard Yenelouis (M.F.A. ’12) titled I am the daughter of Earth and Water, was published in Pastelegram, print issue #1. It can also be seen online at pastelegram.org/features/55

Carly Dean (B.Arch. ’14) received honorable mention in the annual Udall scholarship competition. Dean is a leader of Schoolhouse South Africa, a student-led project of Cornell University Sustainable Design (CUSD) that designed and constructed the first formal preschool for a development in Gauteng, South Africa. She is a student editor for the Cornell Journal of Architecture and a contributor to the Cornell Daily Sun, a teaching assistant in the Rand Hall Fabrication Lab, and a student manager at the Carol Tatkon Center. The scholarship provides tuition for undergraduates intending to pursue careers related to the environment, and to American Indian undergraduates pursuing careers in health care or tribal public policy. This scholarship is sponsored by the Morris K. Udall and Stewart L. Udall Foundation, an independent federal agency established by Congress to honor Arizona Congressman Morris K. Udall and his brother Stewart L. Udall, Secretary of the Interior under the Kennedy and Johnson administrations.

This year, 80 students from 70 colleges and universities were named Udall Scholars on the basis of their leadership, service, academic achievement, and commitment. Christopher (Kit) Dobyns ’13, Arts and Sciences, also won a scholarship.AAP

SMART Trips Send CRP Students and Faculty Around the World

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Every winter, the Cornell International Institute for Food, Agriculture, and Development (CIIFAD) sends dozens of Cornell students around the world to work on critical health and development projects. The program, called Student Multidisciplinary Applied Research Teams or SMART, connects students with NGOs and government agencies working on projects in the developing world.

This year, seven CRP students and one faculty member participated in five SMART trips on three continents.

1 Kenya George Homsy, Ph.D. candidate in CRP, traveled to Kenya, and worked with the producers of an “edutainment” program that embeds sustainable development messages in a soap opera. The group spent five days in rural villages talking to farmers about the show called Makutano Junction.

“The trip provided me with a new perspective,” says Homsy. “Their knowledge of the local and global environment was impressive, likely outstripping that of many Americans. Though my research now focuses on U.S. domestic issues, I consider it a crucial piece of my education to visit with people who will be on the forefront of impacts as our climate shifts.”

2 Zambia Becky Gershon (M.R.P. ’12) was joined by three other Cornell students and four Zambian students for a project with Catholic Relief Services (CRS) in the city of Mongu. CRS is working to improve its existing agricultural programs in the region.

Based on a framework developed by a Cornell nutrition professor, the students and local staff interviewed government officials and other local leaders on four main topics: health, nutrition, agriculture, and livelihood. The group also held focus groups in three small villages around Mongu.

3 Dominican Republic Marshall McCormick (M.R.P. ’13) traveled to the Dominican Republic to work with Cambiando Vidas, a small organization that requested a feasibility study for farming cooperatives in the country. The study is part of a larger effort to form a federated union of co-ops to access lower interest rates, larger markets, and cheaper inputs. The team spent two weeks traveling around the capital, San Juan, visiting various farm properties and meeting with farmers.

“The experience allowed us to understand the importance of cooperative development and the role that cooperatives can play in furthering development goals,” says McCormick.

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2012 Com mence ment Awards

4 Honduras Kris Goddard (M.R.P. ’12), Maren Hill (M.R.P. ’13), and Ben Koffel (M.R.P. ’12) joined a group of undergraduate civil engineering students on a trip to Honduras in support of AguaClara, a Cornell engineering organization that designs gravity-fed water treatment plants that can be built with locally available materials and simply operated.

The group’s chief tasks were to document the success of the project and to develop communications and marketing materials for AguaClara. Over the course of the two-week trip, the students visited several communities with operating plants and met with local water board officials to learn more about the governance models that have made the plants successful.

“It was a fantastic experience to collaborate so closely with engineers and to understand both the technology and the governance structures that enable successful municipal service delivery in emerging markets,” says Koffel.

Mildred Warner, professor in CRP, joined the group to investigate the governance models that go along with the technology.

University Award

Art Awards

Merrill Presidential Scholar Tansy Pui Ki Mak (B.Arch. ’12)

John Hartell Graduate Award Daren Kendall (M.F.A. ’12) Faculty Medal of Art Roxanne Alexandra Yamins (B.F.A. ’12) Department of Art Distinguished Achievement Award Lauren L. Cruvellier (B.F.A. ’12) Charles Baskerville Painting Award Amie Kana Cunat (M.F.A. ’12) Elsie Dinsmore Popkin ’58 Art Award Seung Bum Paik (B.F.A. ’12) Post-Baccalaureate Art Award Frederick Greis (B.F.A. ’12) Seung Paik (B.F.A. ’12) Roxanne Yamins (B.F.A. ’12)

College Awards Charles Goodwin Sands Memorial Medal Justin M. Hui (B.Arch. ’11), silver Austin S. Beierle (B.Arch. ’11), bronze Anton Krisitian Dekom (B.Arch. ’12), bronze Frederick Howard Greis (B.F.A. ’12), bronze Edith Walker Smith-Williams (B.Arch. ’12), bronze Michael Rapuano Memorial Award Baseera Kauser Khan (M.F.A. ’12)

Architecture Awards Alpha Rho Chi Medal Daniel J. Marino (B.Arch. ’12) Melissa Ann Constantine (M.Arch. ’11) American Institute of Architects Henry Adams Medal and Certificate of Merit Nicolas M. Martin (B.Arch. ’12) Angela Afandi (M.Arch. ’12) American Institute of Architects Certificate of Merit Andrew David Heumann (B.Arch. ’12) Yu Ying Goh (M.Arch. ’12) William S. Downing Prize Kyle Schumann (B.Arch. ’13) Clifton Beckwith Brown Memorial Medal Nicolas M. Martin (B.Arch. ’12) M.Arch.2 Award for Outstanding Performance in Architecture Owen Huang (M.Arch. ’12) The Eschweiler Prize Award for Merit and Distinction in M.Arch.1 Design Studio Yu Ying Goh (M.Arch. ’12) Suzanne Theresa Lettieri (M.Arch. ’11) Hyun Seok Kang (M.Arch. ’12) The Richmond Harold Shreve Award Suzanne Theresa Lettieri (M.Arch. ’11) Zongye Lee (M.Arch. ’12)

City and Regional Planning Awards Thomas W. Mackesey Award Thane Gavin Maxwell (M.R.P. ’12) Zachary Michael Patton (M.R.P. ’12) American Institute of Certified Planners Outstanding Student Award Rebecca Elizabeth Baran-Rees (M.R.P. ’12) John W. Reps Award Jonathon Arthur Rusch (M.A. HPP ’12) Urban and Regional Studies Academic Achievement Award Timothy David Becker (B.S. URS ’12) Evan Joshua Preminger (B.S. URS ’12) Peter B. Andrews Memorial Theses Prize Gregory Prichard (M.A. HPP ’11) Kermit C. Parsons and Janice I. Parsons Scholarship Rebecca Kari Gershon (M.R.P. ’12) Caitlin Packard Vollmer (B.S. URS ’12) Department of City and Regional Planning Graduate Community Service Award Cymone Deborah Bedford (M.R.P. ’12) Dhanya Elizabeth Elias (M.R.P. ’12) Thane Gavin Maxwell (M.R.P. ’12) Ariel Beau Morales (M.R.P. ’12)

5 Thailand In partnership with students from King Mongkut’s University of Technology Thonburi, Haden Springer (M.R.P. ’13) and the Thailand SMART team worked with a small governmentsupported community enterprise in the village of Ban Dong Bang. The team conducted a value-chain analysis of the village’s bamboo charcoal soapmaking operation.

Subteams conducted research on each stage of the value chain to assess conditions, identify weak points, and offer recommendations to improve the efficiency of production, quality of product, and marketing opportunities. Findings were presented at meetings with the Dong Bang District Government and senior leadership of the Government of Thailand’s BiodiversityBased Economic Development Office.

“This experience gave me the opportunity to grapple with many challenges associated with implementing placebased local economic development strategies,” says Springer. “I can confidently say that the program provided a bridge worth crossing between the classroom and practice.”AAP

Robert P. Liversidge III Memorial Book Award Christopher Glenn Hayes (M.R.P. ’12) New York Upstate Chapter of American Planning Association Award for Outstanding Student Project Planning for Natural Gas Drilling in the Marcellus Shale: What Communities Need to Know Thomas Roger Knipe (M.R.P. ’11) Vera Bartolome Diaz (M.R.P. ’11) Christopher Smith (M.R.P. ’11) David Jeremiah West (M.R.P. ’13) Ethan Warsh (M.R.P. ’11) Austin Zwick (M.P.A. ’12) Urban and Regional Studies Community Service Award Marc Kristopher Dominianni (B.S. URS ’12) Ryan M. Shedd (B.S. URS ’12) Portman Graduate Student Award Vidhee Garg (M.R.P. ’13) Pamela Mikus Graduate Fellowship Rafia Usmani (M.R.P. ’12)

Landscape Architecture Awards American Society of Landscape Architects Award of Honor Benjamin David Helmes (M.R.P./M.L.A. ’13) American Society of Landscape Architects Award of Merit Benjamin Charles Hedstrom (M.L.A. ’12) Rebecca Jane Montross (M.L.A. ’12) Christina A. Twomey (M.L.A. ’12)

Students

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Sustainable Design at Work in Mexico and Central America An interdisciplinary team of eight Cornell University students traveled to Huatusco, Mexico, during spring break to observe and study sustainable technologies. The research trip was made by members of Sustainable Neighborhood Nicaragua (SNN), an international project orchestrated by Cornell University Sustainable Design (CUSD) in partnership with SosteNica, the Sustainable Development Fund of Nicaragua.

Graduate and undergraduate students from a variety of majors including city and regional planning, engineering, horticulture, and landscape architecture visited the small rural town five hours from Mexico City. Their fieldwork was focused in Las Cañadas, an ecovillage within Huatusco.

There, students learned about green technologies and looked to put new knowledge immediately into practice. The SNN members explored many aspects of local sustainable practices such as energy use, waste management, food systems, graywater systems, and rainwater capture.

Katherine Li (M.L.A. ’13) found inspiration in the green practices. “What made this experience so unique was that we were able to integrate these sustainable methods every day. We used compost toilets, cooked with wood-fired stoves and solar ovens, and reused the graywater after washing our clothes and dishes,” says Li. Nora Wright (M.R.P. ’13) and Inna Kitachik (M.R.P. ’13) also made the trip.

In the first weeks of summer recess, students traveled to the site of the future development in Nicaragua. Using knowledge gained during the trip to Mexico, they plan to create a sustainable model for affordable housing. Their goal is to design and build the first housing cooperative in Nicaragua to integrate ecological technologies that reduce dependence on fossil fuels and create greater resilience in the face of climate change.

The project is centered on the design and construction of a 30-house cooperative, including a community building. Following the research and design phases, CUSD will participate in the construction of the community building and one of the 30 homes. This joint effort will explore the unique design challenges facing those in Nicaragua, and other developing countries, who seek to offer affordable housing that departs from conventional building practices by promoting responsible household management of limited natural resources. Equally important to this project is the creation of a design that can be passed on to the community itself, such that the 30 families, after constructing the community building, can continue with the project after CUSD leaves. The development, when completed, will be Nicaragua’s first microloan fund program to combine sustainable technologies with affordable housing.

The team plans to have their research and design phase completed by the spring of 2013, and to begin construction immediately thereafter.

For more information, visit cusd.cornell.edu/ snn/ or send an email to cusd@cornell.edu with questions or comments.AAP

Barrel

Accessibility Open Air Space 1 Photo: provided.

Mia Kang (M.Arch. ’14) designed her Seneca Lake winery, Memory of Time, for Associate Professor Vince Mulcahy and Visiting Critic Luben Dimcheff’s comprehensive design studio. Kang says, “The interstitial space between the structure and the earth is [important for] the concept of this winery.”

2 Photo: provided.

3 Photo: Krystyn Silver.

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HPP Work Weekend Restoration at Lyndhurst In mid-April, 35 CRP students gave up their weekends in the name of historic preservation, contributing their time and talents to help restore the majestic Lyndhurst Estate.

The estate, located in Tarrytown, New York, is the former home of several notable figures, including former New York City mayor William Paulding and 19th-century robber-baron Jay Gould. One of the first properties owned by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, Lyndhurst is comprised of a number of historically significant structures, including an 1838 mansion designed by architect Alexander Jackson Davis, and 15 other buildings of iron, stone, wood, and brick built in a variety of styles.AAP

News12 | Fall 2012

Three of the 2012 spring semester’s option studios for upper-level B.Arch. and M.Arch. students had a common central concern: investigating the fundamental relationship of architecture to the ground/landscape. As is evident from the adjoining feature articles and images, these studios were led by individuals with diverse interests as well as professional and academic backgrounds— from Allied Works’ Brad Cloepfil and Brent Linden to Studio Granda’s Margrét Harðardóttir and Steve Christer together with Associate Professor Andrea Simitch to Kigali Institute of Science and Technology’s Tomà Berlanda—who engaged the general topic with quite distinct programmatic agendas and site locations, from a music festival complex located in the wilderness of southwest Oregon’s Klamath Basin region to “urban farming” prototypes on a barren Icelandic island near Reykjavik to urban wetland development strategies within Rwanda’s capital city.

Whether the unifying theme was deliberately set or an accidental occurrence is open to postmortem debate: What is not is its relevance to contemporary architectural design concerns. There is everincreasing recognition and acceptance within our society at large as well as within the profession that we are in the midst of fundamental change in global climatic and socioeconomic conditions, as well as living in (and building for) an increasingly urban living environment.

Perhaps as a consequence, there is a parallel desire to preserve and sensitively engage the “natural” landscapes that remain. Having three studios that explicitly deal with these issues, therefore, could not have been a more timely occurrence—and one that is likely to be repeated often in the future.

Mark Cruvellier Department Chair and Nathaniel and Margaret Owings Professor of Architecture

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Icelandic Farmhouse

Examining the Future and Imaging of Farming

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Kelp, whiskey, birds, and mushrooms are not concepts typically associated with farming. But they were some of the varied responses to the challenge posed by the spring Icelandic Farmhouse option studio, led by Andrea Simitch, associate professor of architecture, along with Steve Christer and Margrét Harðardóttir, founders of Studio Granda in Iceland.

Students were asked to redefine “farming” and propose an architectural response to that concept using Engey—a deserted island that lies 2-1/2 kilometers from Iceland’s capital Reykjavik—as the site.

Students spent the first weeks of the semester using mostly their imaginations to delve into these projects.

“We deliberately chose a place that has very little information published about it,” says Simitch. “The students were forced to make assumptions about such things as scale, materials, and environment before traveling to Iceland to see the site in person.” And once there, many of their assumptions were proved wrong.

“Things like weather and landscape just couldn’t be accessed until they were on site,” says Simitch. “These sensual perceptions can only be experienced in person . . . and many of the students had to adjust their expectations for the project.”

The vastness of the landscape also caused many students to rethink their work.

“It’s a very powerful environment,” says Christer. “Whatever you do on this landscape will be small when compared to the vista around it, but it will also be extremely noticeable because there are no other structures. So it will have a big impact visually. This project is really driven in many ways by the land . . . and by the weather, for which architecture is really an overcoat.”

The final projects presented a wide variety of interpretations and options, with almost all projects blending an informed understanding of the place with a firm grasp of future needs. Runsheng Lin (M.Arch. ’13) proposed a constellation of osseous structures that provide the infrastructure for both seaweed farming and the farmhouse itself; the proposal by Jacqueline Liu (B.Arch. ’13) blurred the boundary between water and land, offering a series of aquatic landscapes that alternate as mussel farming basins and recreational lap pools; and Ida Tam’s (M.Arch. ’13) project included a laboratory that farms dinoflagellate, a bioluminescent phytoplankton, and a farmhouse that is a glowing crystalline shard cut into the island’s rocky perimeter.

Says Harðardóttir, “Even though the trip experience is recorded on film and in sketchbooks, the true nature of the ‘site’ is often forgotten upon returning to the comfort of the studio. It is to the credit of this group that the spirit of Iceland pervaded the work, and was omnipresent on the wall in the final review.”

Studios

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Designing for the “African City”

Wetlands Challenge in Kigali, Rwanda Rapid population growth, wetlands conservation, a controversial master plan for a city in the global south, and a completely blank slate for project parameters were the challenges facing students in Tomà Berlanda’s Kigali: Urban Wetlands option studio.

An advanced research design studio for M.Arch.2 students, the course asked participants to develop and define a project that addressed the “edge” conditions of an urban wetland located in central Kigali, Rwanda, that is currently being used for agricultural and environmental purposes. Berlanda, a visiting critic who moved to Ithaca from Kigali, tasked the students with linking the basic human activities that currently exist in the site with an architectural intervention of their choice, and with defining how that intervention could benefit the inhabitants of the area.

The first seven weeks of the semester were spent learning about Kigali and the site remotely. The class then traveled to Rwanda for six days; and for most of the students, the in-person experience of a city in Sub-Saharan Africa was transformative.

“After visiting Kigali, our projects almost felt inappropriate,” says Akiko Suzuki (M.Arch. ’12). “Given the food and water needs of the population, conservation of the natural ecology seemed like a luxury.”

“Leading this studio certainly presented a number of significant challenges,” Berlanda agrees. “How to introduce students to a very remote reality; how to avoid gross cultural blunders; and ultimately, how to encourage students to keep working and believing in the fact that good design can really make a difference, after their visit to Kigali gave them a sense of how hard the reality of life in those conditions can be.”

The final responses to the project ranged widely, and the most successful were those that produced not just objects, but systems that incorporated a way to improve the living conditions of the residents around the wetland site. David Chessrown Jr.’s (M.Arch. ’12) Power Strip features the insertion of an infrastructural armature within the specific topography of a ravine that operates as a structuring element for urban growth and community improvement; Banana Network, by Yihua Li (M.Arch. ’12), consists of a planning strategy and landscape conservation intervention linking private courtyards and gardens to larger agricultural spaces dedicated to the growth of banana trees; and Kigali Wetland, by Suzuki, aims to bring together a redefinition of an agricultural boundary, a water management solution, and the opportunity for new public programs to be easily recognized.

Berlanda was pleased with the final projects. “Overall, I think that the great engagement by the group led to final results that reflect a high-quality operative research product of a design studio, and are a testament to the effectiveness of process in architectural education.”

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1 Students visit Claudio Parmiggiani’s sculpture, Iceland Lighthouse.

Photo: Donald Solomon Silberman (B.Arch. ’13).

2 Jacqueline Liu’s mussel farm for the Iceland studio.

3 Students tour Rwandan wetland drainage works. Photo: provided.

4 Akiko Suzuki’s Rwanda project includes public community spaces.

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5 Jeremy Tan’s elevated music hall for the Oregon studio.

Remote Oregon

6 Students at Allied Works’ Maryhill Overlook. Photo: provided.

Land-Based Architecture Is the Focus of Allied Works Studio

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“We need to get back to using the land as the starting point of the design process, not as a leftover,” says Brad Cloepfil, principal of Allied Works and co-instructor of Amplifier: Three Acts of Immanent Architecture option studio, a spring offering that gave students a chance to present a role for architecture that was intimately bound to the place where it manifested.

In this studio, that “place” was the Klamath Basin region in southern Oregon. Students were charged with examining three sites and the cultural, environmental, and experiential landscapes that characterized each; the goal was to select one on which to build a venue for a national music festival.

All three sites were located in a remote wilderness— but even though the sites were remote, it didn’t mean they were pristine. What appeared to be “natural” to those unfamiliar with the landscape had, in many cases, been worked hard for purposes such as grazing, controlled burns by the Bureau of Land Management, water management, and agriculture.

“Getting the students to see that land as all being used was a challenge . . . what appeared to be ‘natural’ was in many ways unintentional landscape architecture,” says Allied Works’ Brent Linden, who cotaught the studio with Cloepfil.

After seven weeks of classroom preparation, the studio visited the sites on a 10-day trip to Oregon.

They soon learned that working in the “natural” environment presented a unique set of challenges— beginning with accessing the sites.

“Brad and Brent have adventurously let us choose our sites before the trip,” says Noah Ives (M.Arch. ’12).

“And simply getting to them was often a challenge! Dirt

roads had practically become swamps from an excess of rain, some sites were buried beneath 10 feet of snow, and a few simply didn’t seem to be on any map.”

In addition to access, several other natural factors interfered with the students’ original plans. On some sites, trees obscured what looked on paper like an open vista. In other sites, trees were absent because of recent controlled burns, but would be a major presence in 60 years.

“The scale of the landscapes and their features dwarfed most traditional architecture,” says Ives. “We found Ponderosa pines that were over 100 feet tall . . . they made the forest road and [planned] welcome center seem insignificant in comparison.”

But the trip underscored an essential question for the studio: How can architecture engage with the landscape? In the end, the most successful projects were those that proposed structures that merged with the surroundings. Jeremy Tan’s (B.Arch. ’13) music hall is an elevated structure that matches the proportions of its the towering pine trees; the performance halls and dormitories in Lauren Borah’s (B.Arch. ’13) proposal are set directly into the slopes leading down to a picturesque stream, and include grass roofs that can’t be distinguished from the surrounding hillside from above; and the lakeshore setting of William Smith’s (M.Arch. ’12) project features buildings designed to reflect the solidity of the shore as well as the open sky overhead “Architecture starts from a mile away; it’s land, vegetation, air, and light first. Then it’s the building.

And, overall, I think the students really embraced this,” says Linden.

News12 | Fall 2012

Two Views Serena Lee (M.Arch. ’12) drawing and 3D print from the AAP NYC Fall 2011 M.Arch.1 studio with Thom Mayne.

Trans Jasmine (Woo Jung) Oh (B.F.A. ’15) explored gender identity in her final project for Introduction to Digital Media.

Caroline O’Donnell, the Richard Meier Assistant Professor of Architecture, has won the Europan 11 competition in Ireland, one of 17 European countries that participated in the international contest this year.

In May, the Cornell University Board of Trustees affirmed the promotion to associate professors with tenure for Michael Ashkin, art, and Stephan Schmidt, CRP.

Susan Christopherson, professor in CRP, made the summary remarks at a conference titled “Internationalization for Job Creation and Economic Growth: Increasing Coherence of Government and System Policies at a Time of Global Crisis.” The conference was held in April at the SUNY Global Center in New York City.

Christopherson also had several recent articles published, including “Frack or Bust,” cowritten with colleagues David West and Thomas Knipe (M.R.P. ’11), which appeared in Planning in April; “Job Creation Strategies to Accelerate the Return of U.S. Manufacturing” appeared in the Winter 2012 issue of Progressive Planning; and a CARDI Report, “The Economic Consequences of the Marcellus Shale Gas Extraction: Key Issues,” was published and brings together many of the policy briefs from her Green Choices Website.

Assistant Professor Mike Manville, CRP, has had several recent interviews and articles. He spoke about traffic congestion in an interview titled “Taking a Toll,” which was published in the January/February issue of the Cornell Alumni Magazine; in April, he discussed the design of healthy communities on NPR affiliate WSKG in Binghamton in April; “The Price Doesn’t Matter if You Don’t Have to Pay: Legal Exemptions and Market Priced Parking,” written by Manville and Jonathan Williams appeared in the Journal of Planning Education and Research in February; and his article titled “People, Race and Place: American Support for Person and Place-Based Urban Policy, 1973–1978,” was published in the February issue of Urban Studies.

Work by Maria Park, assistant professor of art, is featured in the entrance lobby of the new Sheikh Zayed Tower at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland. Park’s site-specific commission, CN-JH1, is one of three works Park created for this building and the new Charlotte R. Bloomberg Children’s Center as part of an “Art + Architecture” initiative curated by Nancy Rosen. This initiative encompasses more than 500 pieces of art by over 70 artists. Other artists with work in the project include Polly Apfelbaum, Spencer Finch, and Byron Kim. The dedication ceremony of the new building was held in mid-April, and the building will open to the public on May 1, 2012.

Architecture department chair Mark Cruvellier has been promoted to full professor and is now the Nathaniel and Margaret Owings Professor of Architecture, a title traditionally held by the architecture department leadership.

Kieran Donaghy, professor and department chair, CRP, published an article titled “Models of Travel Demand with Endogenous Preference Change and Heterogeneous Agents,” in Geographic Systems (2011, 13:1, 17–30).

An editorial titled “Planning’s Dirty Little Secret and Its Implications: Beyond ‘Communicative Planning,’” written by John Forester, professor and director of graduate studies, CRP, was published in the November 2011 issue of Planning Theory and Practice.

Elisabeth Meyer, associate professor of art, recently exhibited in the Warehouse Gallery in Syracuse. Black Night/White Night, on display from November to mid-February, consisted of a drawing embroidered onto organza fabric hanging from the ceiling and covering the windows. The fabric’s patterning evoked a net, coordinates, and a limitless plane. The transparent quality of the organza allowed the viewer access to layered space through the piece.

The work addressed the issue of geographical displacement. Meyer developed the concept for this exhibition while at a residency in the Baer Art Center in Iceland, and traveled to India to oversee the production of the embroidery. The project was supported in part by the Cornell Council for the Arts.

An article titled “Putting People at the Center of Climate Change Adaptation Plans: A Vulnerability Approach,” by Neema Kudva, associate professor, CRP, and Andrew Rumbach (Ph.D. CRP ’11), was published in the December 2011 issue of Risk, Hazards and Crisis in Public Policy.

Pierre Clavel, professor emeritus, with colleague Jennifer Clark, coedited Progressive Planning’s Winter 2012 special issue on manufacturing, and cowrote its introduction.

Visiting critic of architecture David Salomon’s scholarship on architectural pedagogy and practice appears in two recent publications.

“Experimental Cultures: On the ‘End’ of the Design Thesis and the Rise of the Research Studio,” which documents the history of thesis in architecture schools and recent alternatives to it, appeared in the November 2011 issue of the Journal of Architectural Education (JAE). The paper served as the basis for an invited talk on the same topic delivered at the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture conference in March 2012. Another essay, “Plural Profession, Discrepant Practices,” appears in the recent anthology The Sage Handbook of Architectural Theory, edited by C. Greig Crysler, Stephen Cairns, and Hilde Heynen.

An article titled “Getting the Policy Right: Urban Agriculture in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania,” by Assistant Professor Stephan Schmidt, CRP, was published in the January issue of International Development Planning Review.

The Religious Imagination in Modern and Contemporary Architecture, coedited by Visiting Associate Professor Jim Williamson, architecture, was recently reviewed in the Journal of Design History (25, 1:17–118). The review, written

by John Gendall of Parsons The New School for Design, calls the book “a welcome contribution to the scholarship of modern architecture.”AAP

Donaghy Forecasting Impacts of Globalization on Air Quality

Faculty Awards 2012 Watts Prize for Faculty Excellence Recognizes distinguished achievement in undergraduate teaching and honors dedication, concern for education, and demonstrated technical expertise in any artistic practice offered in the department curriculum. Mindy Watts (B.F.A. ’03) established the prize for Cornell faculty in gratitude for her excellent education in fine arts.

ROUTLEDGE STUDIES IN DEVELOPMENT AND SOCIETY

Each year, the recipient of this award is nominated by department students and selected by a committee of faculty to receive the distinction and a monetary contribution to the recipient’s research/practice effort.

Assistant Professor Caroline O’Donnell, Richard Meier Professor of Architecture

Protecting Biological Diversity The Effectiveness of Access and Benefit-sharing Regimes Carmen Richerzhagen Social Development Critical Themes and Perspectives Edited by Manohar S. Pawar and David R. Cox

India’s New Economic Policy A Critical Analysis Edited by Waquar Ahmed, Amitabh Kundu and Richard Peet

172544-Shucksmith et al

Martin Dominguez Award for Distinguished Teaching

Development Poverty and Politics Putting Communities in the Driver’s Seat Richard Martin and Ashna Mathema

Towards Sustainable Rural Regions in Europe Exploring Inter-Relationships Between Rural Policies, Farming, Environment, Demographics, Regional Economies and Quality of Life Using System Dynamics Edited by John M. Bryden, Sophia Efstratoglou, Tibor Ferenczi, Karlheinz Knickel, Tom Johnson, Karen Refsgaard and Kenneth J. Thomson Global Trends and Regional Development Edited by Nikolai Genov

Alternatives to Privatization Public Options for Essential Services in the Global South Edited by David A. McDonald and Greg Ruiters

Rural Transformations and Rural Policies in the US and UK Edited by Mark Shucksmith, David L. Brown, Sally Shortall, Jo Vergunst and Mildred E. Warner

ISBN 978-0-415-89010-6

Rural Transformations and Rural Policies in the US and UK

Kieran Donaghy, CRP chair, has been making significant contributions to pioneering research efforts that will help develop essential tools for planners.

In 2008, the U.S. Department of Environmental Protection (EPA) solicited assistance with a project titled Future Air Quality Analysis and Decision Support Tools in Light of Global Change Impacts and Mitigation.

With colleagues Natalie Mahowald from the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Max Zheng of the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, and Peter Hess of Biological and Environmental Engineering, Donaghy responded to the EPA’s request and is developing a method for simulating regional air-quality outcomes under potential future conditions.

The method developed by Donaghy combines multiple simulation models: it links global climate chemistry models and regional air-quality models, incorporating dynamic commodity flow, transportation, and emissions models that account for changes in infrastructure that might result from economic pressures or local and national policies. The objective is to be able to predict the interactions of climate, land use, the economy, transportation infrastructure, technology, power, fuel sources, emissions, and policy decisions.

Donaghy’s component of the project is focused on the creation of a dynamic commodity-flow model that characterizes the behaviors of shippers and carriers associated with emissions over space and time. The idea is to use “spatial time-series data” to forecast emissions patterns produced by structural changes. However, a tremendous amount of groundwork has been required to even generate such data, and that has been an important aspect of Donaghy’s work thus far. Seeking out those involved in similar exercises, including graduate students, has helped propel some of this work forward. In particular, Donaghy notes that the contributions of Jialie Chen, a Ph.D. student in Regional Science, have been invaluable. Donaghy and Chen recently presented preliminary results of their research at the National Urban Freight conference in Long Beach, California.

The project is funded for a period of four years and will culminate with the transfer of all data and modeling techniques to the EPA.AAP

Edited by Shucksmith, Brown, Shortall, Vergunst and Warner

Associate Professor Gregory Page, Art

Faculty&Staff

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ROUTLEDGE STUDIES IN DEVELOPMENT AND SOCIETY

Rural Transformations and Rural Policies in the US and UK Edited by Mark Shucksmith, David L. Brown, Sally Shortall, Jo Vergunst and Mildred E. Warner

www.routledge.com

Rural Transformations Rural Transformations and Rural Policies in the US and UK (Routledge), coedited by CRP professor Mildred Warner, David Brown, Sally Shortall, Mark Shucksmith, and Jo Vergunst, was published in February. The book, part of the Routledge Studies in Development and Society series, examines the transformations of rural society and economy in the U.K. and U.S. during the last halfcentury, and explores the significance of these trends and changes for community sustainability, quality of life, and the environment. Contributors discuss differing approaches to rural policy in two advanced capitalist societies often thought to be similar, and show how fundamental differences in rural policy approaches of the U.S. and the U.K. are based on different social ideologies and values that shape policies relating to rural areas.AAP

Sabin Named USA Fellow

Photo: Jason Koski/University Photography.

Jenny Sabin, assistant professor of architecture, was named a United States Artists (USA) Fellow in Architecture and Design. The $50,000 USA grants are awarded each year to 50 outstanding performing, visual, media, and literary artists.

“While in L.A. to accept the fellowship, I was overwhelmed by the company that I was in,” says Sabin; current and past fellows from architecture and design include Ada Tolla and Giuseppe Lignano; Teddy Cruz; Greg Lynn; Neil Denari; and Elena Manferdini, a past visiting critic in architecture.

There were also other luminaries from dance, literature, and theater arts.

The USA Fellows are awarded after a lengthy process that includes an initial nomination, formal application, and peer panel review. Founded in 2006,

Saving Wright the USA has awarded more than $15 million in annual grants, and is second only to the MacArthur Fellowship for total funds awarded. Fellows are allowed to use the funds in any way they wish.

Sabin, whose work focuses on the intersection between architecture and science, is the principal of Jenny Sabin Studio, an experimental design studio, and is also a cofounder of the hybrid research and design unit, LabStudio. She recently delivered a keynote address at Ambiance ’11, an international conference that focuses on the interaction between technology, art, and design.

Sabin joined the Cornell faculty in August 2011.AAP

Saving Wright: The Freeman House and the Preservation of Meaning, Materials, and Modernity (W. W. Norton), a new book by Jeffrey Chusid, associate professor in CRP’s Historic Planning Preservation program, focuses on Frank Lloyd Wright’s Freeman House, a home built of concrete blocks in 1925, in the Hollywood Hills of Los Angeles. The book, which is a case study of the 85-year-old residence, recently won the prestigious 2012 Historic Preservation Book Prize, premiated by the University of Mary Washington Center for Historic Preservation, for providing the year’s “most significant contribution to the intellectual vitality of historic preservation in America.”AAP

News12 | Fall 2012

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Lenaghan Named Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant Recipient Andrew Lenaghan (B.F.A. ’87), of Brooklyn, has received a Joan Mitchell Foundation 2011 Painters & Sculptors Grant for $25,000.

According to its press release, “The Foundation selected nominators nationwide dedicated to supporting artists who are underrecognized for their artistic achievements and whose career would benefit from the grant. . . . Nominators and jurors include prominent visual artists, curators, and arts educators.”

The Joan Mitchell Foundation was established in April 1993, as a not-for-profit corporation following the death of Joan Mitchell in October 1992. It assists the needs of contemporary artists and seeks to demonstrate that painting and sculpture are significant cultural necessities.AAP

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Alumna Designs New Calder Project Space

1 Self-portrait in the Garret II (2007), oil on linen, 82" × 60”. © courtesy of the artist and George Adams Gallery, New York.

2 Carl Bass ’78 speaks at CSV. Photo: Sam Fontejon.

The recently unveiled 4,000-square-foot “project space” for a selection of Alexander Calder’s work was designed by Stephanie Goto (B.Arch. ’01). Located one floor above the Calder Foundation in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood, the new gallery is recovered from an industrial penthouse made up of three connected rooftop sheds. Goto focused on maintaining the viable structure of the existing building, uncovering painted-over skylights, and developing a flow between the spaces.AAP

3 Photos: provided.

4 Dan Kaplan (center) with Norman L. Koonce, FAIA, chancellor (left) and Jeffery Potter, FAIA. Photo: Oscar Einzig Photography.

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5 Robert M. Craig. Photo: provided.

Cornell Silicon Valley Event Designs for the Future “The way we represent the world through art is a form of technology—everything is design, and in a sense, art,” said Dean Kent Kleinman in his introductory remarks at Cornell Silicon Valley’s (CSV) March 14 event, “Designing the Future: Cornell and the Technology of Today and Tomorrow.” Kleinman was one of 20 speakers, including Cornell President David Skorton, to address some 500 Cornell alumni, parents, and friends at the annual conference, which was held at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California. Talks focused on product and gadget design, experiential and media design, and designing connected and sustainable cities of the future.

President Skorton gave an overview of Cornell’s future New York City tech campus. With hubs of concentration on social media, technology for a healthier life, and the built environment, the New York City campus ultimately will be home to 2,500 graduate students and 280 faculty, he said.

“It’s a startup, a real startup, and represents the first time a complete campus has been built ‘on contract’ with a municipality,” said Skorton.

During his panel discussion, which explored designing connected, “smart” cities of the future, Don Greenberg, professor of computer graphics, predicted that “In the future, the designer and artist will command the greatest space.”

Other speakers included Behance founder and CEO Scott Belsky ’02; Hod Lipson, associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at Cornell; Jon Rubinstein ’78, former chairman and CEO of Palm Inc.; and Laura Weiss ’85, executive at Taproot Foundation.

CSV is part of the Cornell Entrepreneur Network (CEN), the university’s multicity business networking program that offers alumni the opportunity to learn from world-class speakers and meet Cornellians with similar business motivations. CEN hosts approximately 100 events each year, across the country and around the globe. Learn more at cen.cornell.edu.

Excerpted from the Cornell Chronicle story by Nancy Tomkins, principal at Words By DesignAAP

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Kaplan Inducted as FAIA Dan Kaplan (B.Arch. ’84) was inducted as an AIA Fellow during the 2012 AIA National Convention and Design Exposition in Washington, DC, in May. Though his trademark Adidas sneakers were absent, Kaplan was in great spirits and reconnected with many classmates and friends during the festivities.

Around 100 architecture alumni—representing five decades—enjoyed the AAP-hosted reception at the Renaissance Hotel.AAP

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Arthur Gensler Visits Arthur Gensler (B.Arch. ’57), founder of Gensler, speaks with Dean Kent Kleinman about the firm’s global architecture, design, and planning practice, in the Abby and Howard Milstein Auditorium in April.

During his visit, Gensler also met current architecture students to discuss the future of the industry.AAP

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New Book Focuses on Influential Southern Architect Robert M. Craig’s (Ph.D. ’73) new book details the role of history in design for one of the 20th-century’s most influential Southern architects: Francis Palmer Smith. Craig, a professor emeritus of architectural history at the Georgia Institute of Technology, is the recipient of AAP’s first conferred Ph.D. in architectural history and has written extensively about architecture in the American South.

Craig’s latest book, The Architecture of Francis Palmer Smith (University of Georgia Press), explores the rich career of Smith as the principal designer of Atlanta-based Pringle and Smith and as an academic eclectic who created traditional, history-based architecture grounded in the teachings of the École des Beaux-Arts. Smith and his colleagues believed that architecture is an art and that ornament, cultural reference, symbolism, and tradition communicate to clients and observers and enrich the lives of both.

After studying at the University of Pennsylvania, Smith moved to Atlanta in 1909, to head the new architecture program at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He would go on to train some of the South’s most significant architects, including Philip Trammell Shutze, Flippen Burge, Preston Stevens, Ed Ivey, and Lewis E. Crook Jr. In 1922 Smith formed a partnership with Robert S. Pringle. In Atlanta, Savannah, Chattanooga, Jacksonville, Sarasota, Miami, and elsewhere, Smith built office buildings, hotels, and Art Deco skyscrapers; buildings at Georgia Tech, the Baylor School in Chattanooga, and the Darlington School in Rome, Georgia; Gothic Revival churches; standardized bottling plants for Coca-Cola; and houses in a range of traditional “period” styles in the suburbs.AAP

News12 | Fall 2012

Alumni ’09

Working from Germany, Yujin Lee’s (B.F.A. ’09) work has appeared in several recent international exhibitions. In a Vacuum, a selection of Lee’s drawings at Gallery DOS in Seoul, Korea, in July, was Lee’s first solo show in that country. She also exhibited her art in several group shows, including NordArt 2012, which included work from 250 international artists held at Kunstwerk Carlshütte in Büdelsdorf, Germany and Everything Is Index, Nothing Is History at the Invisible Dog Art Center

in Brooklyn. Pictured here is a selection from her Telescope Series on view in Berlin’s Freies Museum last fall.

In addition, Lee curated Drawing Show: No Illusion at Kreuzberg Pavillon Kassel in Kassel, Germany, in August. The group show included work by Hither Yon, a group comprised of recent Cornell graduates Eric Ross Bernstein (B.Arch. ’11), Jeremy Collins Burke (B.Arch. ’11), Kirk N. Finkel (B.Arch. ’11), and Michael S. Lee (B.Arch. ’11).AAP

When Karl Chan (B.S. URS ’10) came to Cornell, he was already interested in cities. Things like skyscrapers, transportation, and financial centers—common terms in his native Hong Kong—were what made up the city as he knew it. And while he was keen to learn about allocating land, he didn’t know that he would find his true passion in an area described in a new term for him: public space.

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Karl Chan Works for Public Spaces in Hong Kong

“Public space is a term I honestly had never really heard of . . . because no one in Hong Kong ever talked about it!” he says.

However, when Professor Ann Forsyth required her students to read William Whyte’s City: Rediscovering the Center, a book about public space in the U.S., Chan began to understand that public space was not just an academic idea, but a reality that people interact with every day. His semester abroad with the Cornell in Rome program further opened his eyes to the possibilities of public space. Contrasting sharply with Hong Kong, Italy’s abundance of piazzas teemed with people using the space for relaxation, recreation, eating, socializing, and sightseeing. To better understand the causes for the dynamics of these places, he chose to focus his honors thesis on public space in Hong Kong.

Following graduation, Chan returned home and started working with a developer. He enjoys the work but says, “If I didn’t do anything with public spaces, then I would feel like I had wasted my time in CRP.” So, after sending out over 1,000 emails to various university departments in Hong Kong, 12 young people joined his call to action and created the Hong Kong Public Space Initiative (HKPSI).

Many parks and open spaces in Hong Kong are provided by the private sector, but often have locked gates and limited access. Though the government tries to provide some space, it often simply designates open space and misses the opportunity to provide a social gathering place. In an effort to remedy this, Chan and his team set out to educate Hong Kong residents about the potential of creating a more vibrant city through public spaces.

As part of this effort, HKPSI conducts public space workshops with local secondary schools. Beginning with a field trip to the central business district of Hong Kong to look at the current state of the urban area, the students then participate in a place-making workshop in which they design their idea of a public space. The HKPSI team guides the students through this process and then brings stakeholders in to meet with the students about their proposed public spaces.

Recognizing the “discovery on their faces” when they end up with a finished idea, Chan believes that, like himself, the students have learned to appreciate the need for well-used public space, especially in Hong Kong.

Recognizing that there is currently no system in place to estimate the quality or quantity of available public spaces in the city, HKPSI is also in the process of creating a public space database for Hong Kong, which includes locations, reviews of the spaces, and public comments. Chan hopes HKPSI will inspire enough action using this grassroots approach to create spaces that are on par with the High Line in Manhattan.

Eventually, Chan would like to turn HKPSI into a social enterprise with the ability to create new public spaces. Of special interest to Chan are subway station entrances. “Maybe I could, in all the subway stations, actually create public spaces instead of just pathways,” he said, noting that these often overlooked entrances could become performance spaces, flea markets, or other places for people to earn a little bit of money. In 10 years, he hopes to be courageous enough to give it a try. Given how much he has already accomplished in the short time since his graduation, that hope is not too much of a stretch.AAP

Jon Atkinson, Untitled Map Abstract (2012), lithography print.

Rome Art Students Win Bean Prize for Study in Rome

Emily Greenberg (B.F.A. ’13), Michael Picos (B.F.A. ’13), and Anne Wu (B.F.A. ’13) were selected as the 2011– 12 recipients of the David R. Bean Prize in Fine Arts.

The three undergraduate art students studied with the Cornell in Rome program during the spring 2012 semester.

The prize was established in memory of David Richard Bean ’71 by his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Albert Bean ’43. David graduated from Cornell with a degree in government administration. While a student, he

spent time in Europe and was enchanted with Florence, and had planned to study art. The annual prize provides financial support for travel in Europe, and each prize recipient is given a copy of Bean’s writings and artwork.

The 2012–13 recipients have also been selected and will study in Rome during the fall 2012 or spring 2013 semester. The winners are Jon Atkinson (B.F.A. ’14), Vincent Chong (B.F.A./B.A. ’14), Jihyun (Joy) Jeong (B.F.A. ’14), Natani Notah (B.F.A. ’14), and Christine Pan (B.F.A. ’14).AAP

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