CLASS OF 1958 REUNION

Reunion time is fast approaching! Come and join your Class of 1958 reunion on April 30-May 2 here on UT campus. The Texas Exes is hosting this three-day event, and registration is already under way. So, log on to the reunion web site to sign up, view and print a schedule of reunion activities, and make your travel plans.

During the three-day reunion, hosted by Texas Exes, 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.

SUPPORT UTSOA

FRIENDS OF ARCHITECTURE

TOUR OF SEATTLE - JULY 17-20, 2008

Join the Friends of Architecture for a walking tour through some of Seattle's most compelling downtown buildings, neighborhoods, and public spaces.

This exciting tour will be led by Professor Larry Speck, a former Dean of the School of Architecture and founding Director of the Center for American Architecture and Design. His work can be seen in many of Austin's public and private buildings--from the Barbara Jordan Passenger Terminal at Austin Bergstrom International Airport to the Austin Convention Center and the CSC office buildings. Professor Speck is a principal architect with PageSoutherlandPage and a former resident of Seattle.

While in Seattle, we'll spend three nights at the Alexis Hotel in the heart of downtown, minutes from the famous Pike Place Market, Space Needle, Seattle Waterfront and Aquarium, Symphony Hall, and nationally acclaimed, award-winning theaters.

Among the highlights of our upcoming tour:

• OLYMPIC SCULPTURE PARK by Weiss Manfredi --
  This convergence of art and urban design has won numerous awards including the American Institute of Architects 2008 Institute Honor Awards for Architecture, the American Society of Landscape Architects 2007 Professional Awards: General Design Honor Award, and the Harvard University Graduate School of Design's Veronica Rudge Green Prize in Urban Design. Tour attendees will enjoy a private lunch at the Seattle Art Museum's Art Lab in the Paccar Pavilion.


• CITY HALL by Bohlin Cywinski Jackson and Bassetti Architects --
  In addition to serving as an impressive 201,000 sq. ft. functional space for employees, citizens, and visitors, City Hall also incorporates environmentally friendly features such as a green roof to soak up rainwater, solar panels, and an under-floor air distribution system. Our guide through City Hall is Lucia Athens, Program Manager, Institutional Projects and Urban Green Liaison for the City of Seattle. Lucia, an alumna of our school, helped establish the nation's first green building program in 1991 at the City of Austin, and in 2004, Sustainable Industries Journal named Lucia one of the top 25 most influential people in green building in the Northwest.


• ST. IGNATIUS CHAPEL on the campus of Seattle University --
  Co-principal-in-charge of the Chapel project, Tom Kundig, will serve as our tour guide through this amazing realization of architect Steven Holl's "A Gathering of Different Lights" concept, which won a design award from the New York Chapter of the American Institute of Architects. Tom is the winner of five National AIA Institute Honor Awards and a recipient of a 2007 Academy Award in Architecture from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

We'll also enjoy some of Seattle's cuisine culture as we gather for a welcome dinner at the Dahlia Lounge, named by Food and Wine as the "Quintessential Seattle" restaurant. The Dahlia Lounge was founded by chef Tom Douglas, winner of the 1994 James Beard Foundation Award for Best Northwest Chef. During dinner, we'll hear from former Seattle City Council President Peter Steinbrueck, a member of the American Institute of Architects who was inducted into the AIA College of Fellows in 2006. In 1999, Steinbrueck won the Young Architect Award from the American Institute of Architects for public policy affecting housing, homelessness, civic design, historic preservation, and the environment.

Spaces are filling quickly, so log on to the Friends of Architecture website for membership details and tour registration.

Friends of Architecture would like to thank our Corporate Silver members and supporters Curtis & Windham Architects and Lucifer Lighting Company.

Events

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

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). The final City Forum of the semester will be April 25.

• April 25, Bjorn Sletto and the students of Applied GIS,
  "Risk & Vulnerability: A Participatory Assessment"

The students of Applied GIS: Participatory Approaches to Environmental Justice will present the results of a participatory assessment of risk and vulnerability in the informal settlement of Los Platanitos, Santo Domingo Norte, Dominican Republic. They conducted architectural surveys, mental and field mapping, interviews, and a community survey to identify areas and populations that are particularly vulnerable to flooding.

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

The second edition of Fritz Steiner's book The Living Landscape: An Ecological Approach to Landscape Planning has just been published in a paperback edition by Island Press and includes a new preface by the author.

Lecturer Nik Nikolov's essay titled "Cinearquitectura: exploraciones de la vision y la arquitectura en el cine" will be published in the May 2008 issue of Spanish-language A3: Revista de Arquitectura y Urbanismo (PUCP, Lima, Peru). The essay features Design V projects by undergraduate architecture students Anca Clinoc, Joey Cox, Kayla Lyssy, and Emily Teng.

In the beginning of 2008, the work of Associate Professor Juan Miró's firm Miró Rivera Architects continued to receive both national and international acclaim.

In January, the Pedestrian Bridge was one of only two projects to receive an award for architecture in the first-annual London International Creative Competition. The L.I.C.C. was founded to help facilitate contact between uniquely talented artists and an international audience. The L.I.C.C. attracted thousands of entries from 95 countries in diverse categories including photography, art, sculpture, and architecture. The other winner in architecture was the "National Swimming Center" for the Beijing Olympics, designed by PTW of Australia. The winning entries will be featured in both a publication and an exhibition at London's Alma Enterprise Gallery in May.

In February, Miró Rivera Architects received three design awards. In the 2008 Custom Home Design Awards competition, the Pedestrian Bridge and the Guest House received a Grand Award and Merit Award, respectively. The judges chose only 21 projects from a highly competitive field of more than 480 entries. In addition, The Stonehedge Residence received a Merit award in the ninth-annual Residential Architect magazine's design competition. Among the 1,346 entries submitted, only 36 winners were chosen. The winning projects for each competition represent the very highest standards in custom home design and craftsmanship. All three winning projects will be featured in the May issues of Custom Home and Residential Architect. The firm will also be honored at an awards dinner held concurrently with this year's AIA National Convention in Boston in May.

The work of Miró Rivera Architects along with Austin artisan, Jim Thomas, was displayed at the Austin Center for Architecture in the exhibition titled "Value Added: The Synergy of Local Design." The Architectural Artisans Collaborative and the AIA co-sponsor the exhibition. The goal of the exhibition is to demonstrate the synergy of local artisans and architects working together. The display ran from January 14 through March 27 and a panel discussion was held by the collaborators on February 16 at the Austin Institute for Architecture.

Anne Beamish's book Learning from Work: Designing Organizations for Learning and Communication was just published by Stanford Business Books. Beamish is a former Assistant Professor in Community and Regional Planning at UTSOA. She is the Director of archNet, a research group within the Design Laboratory in the School of Architecture and Planning at MIT concerned with the application of design principles in a range of contexts.

ALUMNI NEWS

ALUMNI UPDATES

Bang Dang [B.Arch. '98], of Dallas-based Cunningham Architects, won the $5,000 first prize in the La Reunion TX competition.

As David Dillon explains in his April 7, 2008, article in Architectural Record's online site, "In 1855, a band of French socialists, many of them artists and craftsmen, established a utopian community called La Reunion in Dallas, just west of downtown. They were inspired by the writings of philosopher Charles Fourier, who had nothing helpful to say about Texas weather, Texas soil, or Texans generally. Within four years the community failed and its members scattered."

"Now, a fledgling Dallas arts organization, La Reunion TX, is trying to revive a piece of that earlier experiment through a design competition for an artists' colony near the original settlement. It attracted 68 entries from 17 countries, including England, Germany, Japan, Brazil, and Bangladesh. Michael Pannacci, of Brooklyn, Ontario, took second place, while Ines Fernandez and Lucia Perez, of Madrid, Spain, won third. Sofia Fernandes and Tiago Carvalho, of Rotterdam, won the $1,500 prize for sustainability, a key part of the brief."

"The program called for studios, apartments, classrooms, and performance space tucked into 35 acres donated by a Dallas couple. The site is wooded and rolling and provides many opportunities for creative seclusion. 'Our goal is to bring artists from around the world to work in Dallas,' explains the organization's executive director, Sarah Jane Semrad, 'but also to give back to the city through education, collaboration, and outreach.' These residencies could range from a week to a year, and ideally be fully subsidized."

"The winning scheme consists of a multi-purpose building that incorporates the remains of a concrete train trestle, and a series of spare studios and studio apartments set delicately into the landscape, with only their piers touching the ground. This restraint was decisive for jurors. "'Most tried to do too much,' says Dallas-based architect Max Levy, 'but this one is all about withdrawing from distraction in order to draw closer to your work.'"

Stan Haas [B.Arch. '73] was among the seven Austin Arts Hall of Fame inductees recently named by the Austin Critics' Table.

As reported in Jeanne Claire van Ryzin's blog in the Austin American-Statesman, "Those celebrated for their long-time commitment to Austin's arts community are long-time philanthropists Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long, whose arts patronage of the Austin Symphony Orchestra and in particular the Long Center for the Performing Arts, named in their honor after they donated $22 million to the recently completed $77 million center."

"Other inductees this year are architect Stan Haas of Nelsen Partners Architects, named for his design of the Long Center; Craig Hella Johnson, director and founder of the Grammy-nominated choral group, Conspirare, and Tina Marsh, innovative jazz vocalist and founder of the Creative Opportunity Orchestra. Capital City Comedy Club owner Margie Coyle and arts patron Don Howell were also named to the Austin Arts Hall of Fame."

"The Arts Hall of Fame awards will be presented June 2 at the annual Critics' Table Awards ceremony. The free event is open to public and starts at 7 p.m. at Capital City Comedy Club."

"The Austin Critics' Table is an informal group of arts critics and writers from the Austin American-Statesman and the Austin Chronicle who each year present awards for outstanding achievement in the arts."

Monica Penick [Ph.D. in Architectural History '07] just received official notice that she has been awarded an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation /ACLS Recent Doctoral Fellowship. This PostDoc award comes with 12 months of generous funding to support research and writing. The end result will be a publishable book manuscript based on her dissertation.

On April 9, at a crowded Art Talk Austin event held at LOFT, in the 2nd Street District, the winners of Art Alliance Austin's and AIA Austin's Temporary Outdoor Gallery Space (TOGS) Ideas Competition were revealed. The Grand Prize ($1,000) was awarded to Amy Wynne [M.Arch. '06] and Mark Leveno [M.Arch. '07] from Los Angeles, California.

Over the past several months, 269 submissions came in from over 20 countries and were culled down by a panel of jurors that was comprised of Louise Harpman (Specht Harpman and Associate Dean at the School of Architecture, University of Texas at Austin), Dana Friis-Hansen (Austin Museum of Art), Elizabeth Dunbar (Arthouse), Goil Amornvivat (TLC's Trading Spaces), and Wally Workman (Wally Workman Gallery). (You can listen to a radio interview with the jurors on KUT, as part of "John Aielli Unleashed," conducted the day the winners were announced.)

Art Alliance Austin's vision for the TOGS project is that the winning design will be built for Art City Austin 09, unifying the annual outdoor exhibit, provide prestigious gallery space for selected artists, removing barriers to artist participation, and showcase emerging professionals within the architecture community. Selected winners' concepts were exhibited at LOFT throughout Art City Austin 08 and at AIA-Austin Center for Architecture following the festival. This collaborative project is also supported by Austin Foundation for Architecture and PageSoutherlandPage.

ALUMNI CONNECTIONS

We want you to stay involved and connected to the School, so join us for one of our many upcoming Alumni Events:

• 50-Year Alumni Reunion in Austin - April 30 through May 2, 2008
• AIA Alumni Reception in Boston - Thursday, May 15, 2008
• Houston Alumni Reception at The Grove Restaurant - Thursday, October 9, 2008
• TSA Alumni Reception in Fort Worth - Thursday, October 23, 2008

More details will become available on the School of Architecture Alumni web page as the events approach. If you have questions, please do not hesitate to contact Stacy Manning at 512.471.0617 or via email at smanning@austin.utexas.edu.

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!

Stay in touch with former classmates--update your records and contact preferences 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!

STUDENT HONORS, SCHOLARSHIPS, AND AWARDS

Third-year architecture student, Anne Herndon, who serves as the School of Architecture Student Government Representative, received the award for University of Texas Student Government Representative of the Year. Anne's work has benefited UTSOA with inexpensive nighttime parking for students in the University Co-op garage and is continuing with her efforts to bring a coffee vending machine into the school, among other countless involvements.

M.Arch. student Billy Antozzi was selected to show his work at the Graduate Student Film & Photography Showcase, United States Art Authority/Spiderhouse, 2908 Fruth Street, in Austin, on April 17. His film titled "Umbilicus" was produced in Lecturer Nik Nikolov's fall 2006 seminar, "The Cinematic Threshold." Billy is currently on professional residency in Genova, Italy. His film is posted on YouTube.

Community and Regional Planning student Elizabeth Walsh has been offered a National Science Foundation IGERT (Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship) award for her doctoral studies. The award includes $30,000 a year in support for two years. Associate Professor Bob Paterson and Assistant Professor Bjorn Sletto will be her mentors for the proposed focus of her work.

BLOOMhouse GOES TO MCDONALD OBSERVATORY

McDonald Observatory is preparing to add a new eco-friendly facility--the award-winning, solar-powered "BLOOMhouse."

UTSOA students designed and built the BLOOMhouse to compete in last year's Solar Decathlon, a biennial event sponsored by the Department of Energy, BP Solar, the American Institute of Architects, and Sprint. They set the house up on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., to compete against solar homes from 19 other colleges and universities from across the world.

The 550-square-foot BLOOMhouse generates all of its own power. In the Solar Decathlon, the house placed first in use of hot water, second in engineering, and did well in several other judged categories. The house also won BP Solar's design award, for which seven universities submitted design plans that met specific criteria for commercial, economic, technical, and overall efficient design aspects. The prize was state-of-the-art solar panels for the house that were not yet available in the U.S. market.

Next month, students from the BLOOMhouse team will travel to McDonald Observatory to reconstruct the house on the Mount Locke site of the decommissioned Millimeter Wave Telescope. It will be used for staff housing, and faculty from UT's School of Architecture will continue to study the home's energy efficiency.

Future plans include an updated display at the Frank N. Bash Visitors Center to feature information on the BLOOMhouse and solar energy.

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 and Alumni 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