Message from the Dean 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 Daniel Aloi, Kenny Berkowitz, Rebecca Bowes, Vineet John (M.R.P. ’13), Aaron Goldweber, Karen Chi-Chi Lin (B.Arch. '13), Haylee Madfis (M.R.P. ’14), Sherrie Negrea, Dana Yates design Studio Kudos copy editor Laura Glenn photography William Staffeld (unless otherwise noted) distribution coordinator Sheri D’Elia cover Richard Meier's lecture brings a full house to Milstein Hall auditorium. Robert Barker / University Photography editor
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I write these lines with a heavy heart. Within the span of just a few short days in February, we lost two members of the AAP community. Kevin Pratt, a much beloved and influential architecture assistant professor, died on February 19. A week later, we received the tragic news of the passing of URS student Joseph Quandt, class of 2015. As the AAP community came together to mourn these losses, the true bricks and mortar of the college became vividly clear: we are, first and last, a community of compassionate individuals. We hold strong positions, we work hard, and we are not immune from raising our voices at one another for values we hold dear. But you would have been very moved, as was I, to see AAP react as one unified body during this difficult time. The focus of this newsletter is, in fact, our people. Although we experienced a lull in faculty recruitment during the economic downturn, I can now report spectacular faculty appointments in all three departments during the past year. In the last issue of AAP News we told you about Jeremy Foster joining the Department of Architecture, and Jeffrey Chusid joining CRP. To that list we now add Associate Professor Victoria Beard, who joined CRP with tenure; and Carl Ostendarp, a longtime visiting faculty member who is now on a tenure track as an assistant professor of art. Adding to the ranks of the tenured faculty via internal promotions are associate professors Michael Ashkin (Art) and Stephan Schmidt (CRP), whose profile we feature in this issue. These many appointments at various ranks address not only the need to ensure excellent future faculty, but provide an important demographic overlap with senior faculty members. Continuity and institutional legacy should not be overlooked, even as we evolve and shift our scholarly foci. Our students continue to display extraordinary levels of accomplishment measured on an international scale, with intellectual ambitions that stretch the boundaries of the college disciplines. An inspiring example of this is Emily Greenberg, a stellar B.F.A. junior and Rawlings Presidential Scholar, who is pursuing a dual degree in English. Emily demonstrates the wealth of opportunity that Cornell offers an ambitious and expansive mind, and embodies the special type of self-aware, intellectually grounded, and creatively gifted artist that we believe represents the future of studio art. This notion of creative scholars stretching the conventional limits of their field is, of course, nothing new to AAP, and so we augment this issue with the work of architecture alumnus Matthew Bannister, founder of the award-winning firm dbox, and current faculty member in our New York City program, where he teaches a seminar on visual representation. Finally, the arc is complete when our distinguished alumni return to campus—as Richard Meier did this fall—to meet with students and faculty, discuss their own creative legacy, and prod the next generation of AAP students to go out and make their mark. So while we are exceptionally saddened by the recent losses our community has suffered, I know that the people of AAP will continue the promise of those who came before.
Kent Kleinman Gale and Ira Drukier Dean of Architecture, Art, and Planning
Art department chair Iftikhar Dadi during fall semester’s M.F.A. crit in Tjaden Hall.