Student News In September, two intaglio prints by Vittoria Cutbirth (B.F.A. ’16) were selected for the inaugural National Student Works on Paper Online Biennial 2015, organized by William Paterson University in New Jersey. The contest was juried by Lily Prince, an associate professor of painting and drawing at William Paterson University. The exhibition, which was open to all undergraduate and graduate art majors, aimed to create a national forum for art students and their departments in order to encourage communication between students, an awareness of trends and possibilities, and a dialogue between faculty and art departments. The online exhibition featured works of 20 artists from 15 art departments around the country. In October, Sarah Dougherty (M.R.P. ’16) received a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation’s Asian Cities Climate Change Resilience Network. Dougherty plans to use the grant to research and coauthor a paper on the gender dimensions of climate change vulnerability and resilience planning in Indonesia. Dougherty’s project furthers research begun over the summer with John Taylor and his organization, Yayasan Kota Kita (YKK), an Indonesian NGO. Dougherty returned to Indonesia in December to meet with participants from YKK’s workshops to better understand three key areas: what the gender dimensions of climate vulnerability are in coastal Indonesian cities, particularly for the most vulnerable people; data availability, communication, and uses of genderdisaggregated vulnerability metrics in Kupang and Makassar; and the extent to which gender dimensions are included in municipal climate change planning and how responsiveness might be improved. Fluid Pavilion, a project by B.Arch. students Charisse Foo (B.Arch. ’18) and Hanxi Wang (B.Arch. ’18), was featured in an article titled “The Best Student Work Worldwide: ArchDaily Readers Show Us Their Studio Projects,” which appeared in ArchDaily on August 3. Created for the spring semester class In Construction: From Sheet to Form, taught by visiting critics Martin Miller and Sasa Zivkovic, Fluid Pavilion was an exploration of the ability of the thermoforming process to program memory into sheet plastic, to acquire a new resting state after deformation, and to then flex back to this deformed state. The final installation displayed the ability of plastic to be both rigid and organic while maintaining the lightness of a transparent enclosure. Work by Andrew Fu (B.Arch. ’15) was recently presented at the Second International Conference on Food Design at The New School in New York City. Fu’s project was titled Castle to Shack: The Hamburger and Its Associated Architecture, and was developed as part of his B.Arch. thesis. In addition, a spring 2015 project by Fu and Michelle Chen (B.F.A. ’13) was featured in Domus magazine in August. For Display Purposes Only is a series of hybrid food objects that “embrace the superficiality and absurdity of contemporary consumption.” Zeynep Göksel (M.R.P. ’16) was part of a team that received an honorable mention in the Gowanus by Design competition. The two-part competition asked participants to first map and present conditions relevant to the Gowanus area in a Gowanus “atlas”; and then to use that analysis as the basis for a design of an urban field station that is open to the public. The atlas, a collective mapping of the watershed surrounding the canal, will be used as a planning tool to facilitate the community’s grassroots collaboration in the continuing evolution of the neighborhood. Göksel’s team entry was titled Who Owns Gowanus? Students and faculty from CRP’s Historic Preservation Planning program gathered at 421 North Albany Street in Ithaca in September, each holding a “This Place Matters” flag, to show support for the building in the highly competitive National Trust for Historic Preservation’s National Treasures program, in which the house is now being considered for inclusion. The building was the original meeting place of the Cornell student study group that eventually became Alpha Phi Alpha, the first African-American, Greek-letter, intercollegiate fraternity in the U.S. The long-vacant, two-story frame house has fallen into disrepair and is condemned by the City of Ithaca. If 421 North Albany Street is selected, the National Trust could play a significant role in saving the house by providing legal and planning assistance to the property owner. John Lai (B.Arch. ’17), Cameron Neuhoff (B.Arch. ’16), and Rand Hall Shop Manager Dan Salomon joined together over the summer to form Building Community at Cornell, a new student group that aims to establish relationships beyond the university through a shared interest in making. The group hopes to create interactions between students and local artisans and tradespeople; explore buildings in the region that exemplify exceptional workmanship; and engage
in various building projects outside of the classroom setting that use locally sourced materials in new and creative ways. During the fall semester the group organized several outings, including a field trip to Trumansburg, where they visited the Hammerstone School of Carpentry for Women, the Carman Road Artist Quarters, and the studio of architect Jonathan Ferrari; a bench-building workshop for young students in Dryden; and a field visit to design a community garden for Cornell professor Jane Marie Law. Students from CRP Assistant Professor Jennifer Minner’s workshop, Sustainable Adaptation of Large Modern Footprints, presented their poster Spirits of Visions Past at the 2015 American Planning Association national conference and won a first-place poster award. Students presenting at the conference include Brian Byrd (M.R.P. ’16), Mike Catsos (M.R.P. ’15), Hector Chang (B.S. URS ’14), Rashmi Gajare (M.A. HPP ’18), Gabriel Halili (M.R.P. ’15), Irene Hung (M.R.P. ’15), Linshuang Ma (M.R.P. ’15), Daniel Mckenna-Foster (M.R.P. ’15), Robert Rivera (M.R.P. ’16), M.R.P. candidate Isaac Robb, Rachel Shindman (M.R.P. ’15), and Taru (M.R.P. ’15). Aaron Ong (B.S. URS ’17) spent his summer at the Winter Research Scholars Program at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia. He worked with Associate Professor Winnifred Louis in the School of Psychology, where he studied the impact of unpunished hate crimes on people’s levels of individual and group victim blaming. His resulting research is in a paper that is currently under review for the journal Social Justice Research. Ong received funding for the trip as a Rawlings Cornell Presidential Research Scholar. A project by Min Keun Park (B.Arch. ’17) titled Wallspace was a finalist in the 2015 Think Public Space competition. This year’s competition focused on a comprehensive revitalization of public spaces in the city of Zagreb, Croatia. Wallspace proposed a series of walls that each occupy a unique program reflecting the culture of Zagreb. Located in the Ban Jelačić Square, the proposal seeks to draw attention to the entire city as an opportunity for architecture to respond to today’s conflicting times. Park also had work included in a publication titled Dear Architecture: Letters on Love, Apologies and Gratuitous Selfies. The book contains select entries to a contest of the same name, conceived of by Blank Space. The Dear Architecture competition challenged designers to “begin an all-encompassing dialogue on architecture” through a written letter. A publication titled “Do You Wanna Be Happy?” by Michael Raspuzzi (B.Arch. ’16) was published by the Aesir Lab Think Tank in December. Part of the Aesir Center for Civilization, Aesir Lab is a research organization and digital publisher of perspectives aimed at exploring paradigms that can inform current discourse in architecture, landscape architecture, and urban design. Founded by Alberto Embriz-Salgado (B.Arch. ’14), the group’s research addresses a variety of topics that seek to bring awareness to models for a more suitable society, including the formulation of walkable, healthy, and happy cities. Annie Schentag, a Ph.D. candidate in HAUD, recently completed the National Register nomination for the Elmwood Historic District (East), which represents the largest historic district ever to achieve this status in the city of Buffalo. Schentag spent the summer working with Buffalo-based Clinton Brown Company Architecture, as head of research and writing for this governmental document. By submitting this nomination to the New York State Office of Historic Preservation, Schentag has successfully listed more than 1,000 individual properties in the city of Buffalo on the National Register of Historic Places. Schentag was also recently hired as the new curatorial assistant for the Buffalo Architecture Center, a new museum opening in September 2016. The museum is located inside the historic Buffalo State Asylum for the Insane, a 480,000-square-foot hospital complex designed by H. H. Richardson in 1880. The building is currently undergoing substantial rehabilitation efforts, and is scheduled to open in September 2016 as home to a boutique hotel with 88 guest rooms, a conference center, and the Buffalo Architecture Center. In what represents the first museum devoted to Buffalo’s architectural history, Schentag is currently designing a 3,000-square-foot permanent exhibition that addresses the city’s unique contributions to architectural and urban design history on a global scale. Lily-Love Toppar (M.Arch. ’15) was named a finalist for the Skidmore Owings & Merrill (SOM) Foundation’s 2015 Travel Fellowship for Kimbilio, her thesis project. Toppar’s thesis advisors were Professor Henry Richardson and Associate Professor Esra Akcan from architecture. The SOM Foundation received submissions from students representing 38 U.S. schools.
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CRP Summer Internships: From Mexico to Cleveland “My internship with the Thriving Communities Institute gave me an opportunity to interact with municipal and nonprofit organizations that are all committed to a successful rejuvenation of the city,” says M.R.P. candidate Isaac Robb. Robb was one of 35 students to participate in the M.R.P./M.A. Cooperative Internship Program during the summer of 2015. Arranged with assistance from AAP Connect, the internship program provides CRP students with an opportunity to gain valuable professional experience while working in their specific fields of interest. This year’s internships included placements across the country and around the globe. For his internship with the Thriving Communities Institute, Robb focused on providing support for the City of Cleveland Property Survey project, which began in spring 2015. He also worked on a statewide research project that attempted to quantify the number of vacant and distressed properties throughout Ohio. Chiapas, Mexico, was the placement site for three other students: Alia Fierro (M.R.P. ’16), Maria Jeldes (M.R.P. ’16), and Melissa Strelec (M.R.P. ’16). The trio worked for Foro Para el Desarrollo Sustentable (Forum for Sustainable Development), an organization that has been collaborating with the United Nations Development Programme since 2005, in response to Hurricane Stan, with the goal of helping disadvantaged communities prepare for and weather future natural disasters. “Being in Mexico was an extraordinary opportunity for me to learn not only about the organization’s projects—which I feel have broadened my horizons in international planning—but also about the larger social context in Chiapas and Mexico,” says Jeldes. “Issues like forced displacement and land grabbing have become more common in the region . . . so it’s essential for groups like Foro to be involved to help reduce vulnerabilities in households and communities in the long term.” The summer internships can also lead to career opportunities for students. Robb’s internship led to a second placement—in September, he began a one-year fellowship with the Western Reserve Land Conservancy, the parent organization of the Thriving Communities Institute.AAP