LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE PROGRAM RECEIVES
THREE ASLA AWARDS

Three teams from the UTSOA Landscape Architecture Program have received 2008 Texas American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) Student Design Competition awards.

An Honor Award for Design and an Honor Award for Analysis and Planning were both won by Michael Averitt.

An Honor Award for Analysis and Planning was won by the team of Cameron Campbell, Eli Pearson, and Erin Tyson.

The "Beyond the Walls" project (at right) by Campbell, Pearson, and Tyson is a proposal for the establishment of an archeological park outside Sevastopol, Ukraine, that seeks to recreate the spatial experiences of a cultural landscape that has been contested and occupied for thousands of years. The park was the site of ancient Greek agricultural plots, farmhouses, and systematic division walls. Beyond the Walls proposes interventions to address stakeholder concerns, to establish a regional precedent for an archaeological park, and to combine management and display of cultural and natural resources.

The awards will be presented at a banquet on Thursday, April 3, during the ASLA Texas Chapter Annual Conference in Fort Worth.

CLASS OF 1958 REUNION

Calling all members of the School of Architecture Class of 1958!

The Texas Exes is hosting a three-day reunion event on April 30-May 2 here on the UT campus. A full packet of information (including a schedule of each day's events) will be coming to you by mail from the Texas Exes within the next few days, or you may visit the reunion website to begin making your plans.

During the three-day reunion, you will have an opportunity to visit the School of Architecture, hear updates on the school's programs, and visit with faculty and students.

If you have questions about the 50-Year Alumni Reunion events, please don't hesitate to contact Whitney Airaudi at 512.471.3808 or toll free at 1.888.628.0003.

EXPLORED: UT

On Saturday, March 1, the University hosted Explore UT, and thanks to the organizational efforts of our co-chairs Assistant Dean Jeanne Crawford and Lecturer Marla Smith, the School of Architecture was well represented.

Over 1,000 visitors passed through the school that day. The Goldsmith Hall courtyard became a children's playland. One side held a huge maze constructed from cardboard boxes. The other side was packed with small forts, and the loggia became a building block city. Student work was displayed in the main review room, and the west patio became a fantastic t-shirt design arena. We provided hourly tours and presented information on becoming an architecture or interior design student. It was a very, very busy day.

Our student volunteers and organizers, especially members of Undergraduate Architecture Student Council and Alpha Rho Chi, really put a face on the school and made the entire day possible. A big thank you to everyone who helped with Explore UT in any capacity--we could not have pulled the day off without you!

SUPPORT UTSOA

FRIENDS OF ARCHITECTURE

Make your reservations now for FOA's upcoming Seattle tour on July 17-20, 2008. Professor Larry Speck will serve as our guide for a walking tour of vibrant and lively downtown Seattle. We're putting together an exciting itinerary with destinations such as the Seattle Art Museum, Olympic Sculpture Park, the Seattle Public Library, and St. Ignatius Chapel, to name a few.

Tour attendees will be staying at the beautiful, newly renovated Alexis Hotel in downtown Seattle. Seattle has become a hotbed of contemporary architectural activity with new buildings by international stars like Holl, Koolhaas, and Gehry, along with extraordinary local firms such as Miller/Hull and LMN Architects. Spaces are filling quickly, so log on to the Friends of Architecture website for membership details and tour registration.

STAFF UPDATE

The School of Architecture is pleased to welcome our new Associate Director of Constituent Relations, Stacy Manning. Stacy joins our school after a four-year tenure at the College of Natural Sciences, where she most recently served as an Assistant Director for Development. In addition to serving as the Director of the Friends of Architecture program (FOA), Stacy will also be the school's liaison for alumni relations and will direct Annual Fund and corporate programs.

Please don't hesitate to contact Stacy if you have any questions about FOA membership, tours, or events at 512.471.0617 or smanning@austin.utexas.edu.

Events

For the latest updates, check out the online UTSOA Calendar.

LECTURE

Wednesday, March 19
Goldsmith Hall 3.120, 5:00 p.m.

Shannon Nichol
Gustafson Guthrie Nichol Ltd.
Seattle, Washington
Sponsored by the Kamrath Lectureship

"Intuition and Integration in Landscape"

Shannon Nichol will discuss the design process behind several recent projects by Gustafson Guthrie Nichol. Her site-specific landscape designs can be found in cities throughout the world. Shannon's clear, distinct concepts have inspired and unified complex, interdisciplinary projects, from rooftop parks to neighborhood masterplans. Her work has been widely recognized for its fluent relationship with distinctive architectural contexts and for incorporating high intensities of use into fluidly cohesive environments.

Shannon is a founding partner of Gustafson Guthrie Nichol. Recent examples of Shannon's work as Design Partner may be found in such projects as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation campus, Chicago's Lurie Garden at Millennium Park, Boston's North End Parks, and the McCaw Hall Opera House in Seattle.

EXHIBIT

February 11 through March 21
Mebane Gallery
Goldsmith Hall

"Lessons from Rome:
The Work of Robert Venturi, Tod Williams, Thomas Phifer, and Paul Lewis"

Curated by Assistant Professor Smilja Milovanovic-Bertram.

Exhibit made possible through a grant from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts.

LECTURE

Monday, March 24
Goldsmith Hall 3.120, 5:00 p.m.

Liat Margolis & Alexander Robinson
Cambridge
Sponsored by the Jessen Lectureship

EXHIBIT

March 24 through April 25
Mebane Gallery
Goldsmith Hall

"AD Stenger: Houses"

LECTURE

Monday, March 31
Goldsmith Hall 3.120, 5:00 p.m.

Marcelo Ferraz
Brazil
Sponsored by the O'Neil Ford Chair

LECTURE

Wednesday, April 2
Goldsmith Hall 3.120, 5:00 p.m.

Milton Braga
Brazil
Sponsored by the O'Neil Ford Chair

LECTURE

Monday, April 7
Goldsmith Hall 3.120, 5:00 p.m.

Eero Koivisto
Sweden
Sponsored by the Swedish Excellence Endowment

LECTURE

Monday, April 14
Goldsmith Hall 3.120, 5:00 p.m.

Antoine Picon
Cambridge
Sponsored by the Herbert Greene Lectureship

LECTURE

Wednesday, April 23
Goldsmith Hall 3.120, 5:00 p.m.

Petra Blaisse
The Netherlands
Sponsored by the Brightman York Lectureship

CENTER LUNCH FORUM SERIES

The Center for American Architecture and Design hosts a Friday Lunch Forum Series from 12:00 to 1:30 in the Battle Hall Conference Room (room 101).

The aim of the series is for faculty and students to meet in an informal atmosphere to debate topics and to share ideas about history, practice, theory, and new directions for architecture. Forum topics/titles are confirmed a week prior to each forum date. Visit the Center web site for updates. The spring 2008 schedule includes:

• March 21, Larry Speck
• April 4, Mirka Benes
• April 19, Keenan Smith

The Friday Forum is also webcast live (visit the Center's web site), and you are invited to call in live with questions or comments during the discussion at 512.471.9890.

CITY FORUM SERIES

City Forum is an urban issues speaker series hosted by the School's Community and Regional Planning Program. The bi-monthly program features discussions of contemporary urban issues with national and local perspectives. During the spring of 2008, the program will be held on selected Fridays from 12:00 noon until 1:30 p.m. in the Texas Union Board of Directors Room, 4.118 (on Guadalupe Street between 22nd & 24th Streets). Upcoming speakers include:

• March 21, Jana McCann, Principal, ROMA Design Group,
  "The Downtown Austin Plan," (note time & venue change this week: 12:30 p.m., Goldsmith Hall 3.120)
• March 28, Greg LeRoy, Executive Director, Good Jobs First

The City Forum schedule is available at: http://www.utcityforum.org. For more information on the City Forum Speaker Series or to be added to the email list, contact Anna Glover at glover16@yahoo.com.

EXHIBIT

February 1, 2008, through August 15, 2008
Visual Resources Collection
Sutton Hall 3.128 (Monday-Friday, 8-5)

"Landscape Architecture's History:
Marrying Research and Teaching through the Camera's Eye"

During the course of her academic career, Professor Mirka Beneš has documented a wide range of landscapes and supporting materials such as rare prints, maps, drawings, and written documents. From Professor Beneš' extensive slide collection, a group of almost 8,000 teaching slides--used in support of her two lecture courses in the history and theories of landscape architecture--were selected, cataloged, and digitized by the school's Visual Resources Collection (VRC). The selection of images in this exhibit represents a small sampling of images selected from the group that are available for use by the university community as part of the VRC's online Image Collection.

Mirka Beneš is Associate Professor in the School of Architecture, The University of Texas at Austin, which she joined in 2006. Her teaching covers the whole history of landscape architecture and gardens, and she publishes on Baroque Rome, Italian and French gardens, agrarian landscapes, and modernist landscape architecture. From 1988 to 2005, she taught at the Graduate School of Design, Harvard University.

FACULTY SCHOLARSHIP AND AWARDS

Associate Dean Louise Harpman served as a juror for La Reunion, Texas, an international architectural competition to design an artists-in-residence community. Over 160 entrants from six continents submitted proposals for the sloped and wooded 35-acre site in the Oak Cliff area of Dallas. The jury was chaired by Mark Gunderson, AIA, and also included Max Levy, FAIA; Rick Lowe, founder of Project Row Houses; and Rick Brettell, Professor of Art History at the University of Texas at Dallas. The final dinner was hosted by Cindy and Armond Schwartz at their home in Dallas, Texas. Advisory Council member Frank Aldrich joined the evening's festivities.

Design-build work by Senior Lecturer Steve Ross and UTSOA alum Jack Sanders [M.Arch. '05] for Liz Lambert's (San Jose Hotel, Austin, and Thunderbird Hotel, Marfa) new El Cosmico lodging development in Marfa was published in the November issue of Dwell Magazine.

Additionallly, Ross recently provided a interview for inclusion in the documentary, "Snakebit," a film on Sambo Mockbee and the early days of Auburn University's Rural Studio. Additional interviews have been provided by architects Steve Badanes, Peter Eisenman, and Richard Meier. The film is directed by Sam Wainwright Douglas. Douglas' previous films include "Bound To Lose," a documentary on the 1960's psychedelic folk rock legends, The Holy Modal Rounders.

"Foam Sword Friday," a "culture-jamming" performance project for Ross' seminar course, "Housing America: An Ideological Critique of the American Dream," created by UTSOA graduate students Patrick Winn and Josh Conrad, was featured on PBS (KLRU) "Docubloggers" program. The show highlighted the project as an example of "flash mobs." The program was televised on January 24.

Dr. Steven Moore, Bartlett Cocke Regents Professor in Architecture, lectured at the Clemson University School of Architecture on 29 February where his topic was "Materializing a Sustainable World: Facts, Values, and the Truth." In the week following spring break, Moore will deliver a series of lectures in Great Britain. The first two will be at Northern Architecture, a Civil Society Institution at New Castle-upon-Tyne ("Regionalism, Sustainability, and Design Thinking," followed by "Building a Nonmodern, or Sustainable Region"). The third lecture will be at Northumbria University, also at New Castle-upon-Tyne ("Transdisciplinary Design: Narrative as a Tool in Sustainable Development"). The final lecture will be delivered at the Manchester University School of Architecture ("Austin, Texas, as a case of Sustainable Development").

All of these lectures, including the Clemson visit, are part of an international discussion related to the creation of a consortium of EU/US Universities and Civic Society groups interested in the research of architecture and cities using methods derived from Science and Technology Studies.

ALUMNI NEWS

ALUMNI UPDATE

Heather DeGrella, LEED AP [M.Arch. '98], with Lake/Flato Architects in San Antonio, Texas, for 9 years, was named the 2008 Chair of the USGBC Central Texas Chapter. She is married to alum Nathan Campbell [M.Arch. '99].

ALUMNI CONNECTIONS

The School of Architecture is continuing its effort to find (and maintain) the most accurate contact information for all of our alumni. From young alumni receptions to 50-year reunions, and everything in between, we hope you will stay in touch. Would you like to mentor a student? Do you need to hire a fellow Longhorn? Looking for networking or continuing education opportunities? We can help, but we need to know how to reach you!

Alumni may update their records and contact preferences and search for fellow graduates by logging on to the University's online alumni directory.

Thanks for helping us improve our relationship with you. We look forward to hearing from you!

CONTACTS

In this fast-paced world, there's a lot of news to keep up with. We know you are doing great things, and we rely on you to not only share your stories, but to also keep us up-to-date on your contact information so that we can share our stories with you. Alumni, please send your news and contact updates to our new Associate Director of Constituent and Alumni Relations, Stacy Manning at smanning@austin.utexas.edu. Students, faculty, and staff may send updates to eNews editor Pamela Peters at p.peters@mail.utexas.edu.

UT-Austin School of Architecture
soa.utexas.edu

Dean's Office
512.471.1922, fax 512.471.0716

Center for American Architecture and Design
christinewong@mail.utexas.edu, 512-471-9890

Center for Sustainable Development
teresacarr@mail.utexas.edu, 512.475.7995

Assistant Dean for Development
Julie Hooper, jhooper@austin.utexas.edu, 512.471.6114

Assistant Dean for Undergraduate Programs
Jeanne Crawford, jcraw@mail.utexas.edu, 512.471.0109

Graduate Program Coordinator
Rosemin Gopaul, gopaul@austin.utexas.edu, 512.471.0134

Associate Director of Constituent Relations,
Stacy Manning, smanning@austin.utexas.edu, 512.471.0617

Director, Career Services Center
Carrie O'Malley, carrie.omalley@austin.utexas.edu, 512.471.1333

Publications Editor
Pamela Peters, p.peters@mail.utexas.edu, 512.471.0154

Events Coordinator
Barbara Terrell, bdt@mail.utexas.edu, 512.471.8187

Materials Lab
http://soa.utexas.edu/matlab, 512.232.5969

Visual Resources Collection
http://soa.utexas.edu/vrc/, 512.471.0143

Architecture and Planning Library
www.lib.utexas.edu/apl/, 512.495.4620

Webmaster
Christopher Rankin, crankin@mail.utexas.edu, 512.495.4620

UTSOA Mailing Address
The University of Texas at Austin
School of Architecture
1 University Station B7500
Austin, TX 78712-0222