UT SOLAR DECATHLON 2007 DESIGN REVEAL
Project coordinator Alex Miller stands in the center of a human
sundial in Marfa, Texas. Photograph provided by the 2007 UT SolarD Team.
An invitation from the 2007 UT SolarD Team:
"Please join us on Wednesday, December 6, at 5:00 p.m., in the Goldsmith Hall lobby for the Design Reveal of our 2007 UT Solar Decathlon entry, the Bloom House. After many months of development, we will be presenting the design to the press and public. This will also be the final public event for the UT SolarD Team for 2006, and we plan on making it an event to remember! We'd like to thank all of our sponsors and advisors who have helped us get to this exciting point in the project and share the work that the team has produced with all of you. We look forward to seeing you all soon!"
The University of Texas at Austin Solar Decathlon Team is a collaborative interdisciplinary research group that provides leadership in the renewable energy revolution for a more livable, sustainable future through innovations in energy-efficient building design and environmental stewardship and competes in the biennial Solar Decathlons sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy.
Learn more at http://www.utsolard.org and http://www.solardecathlon.org.
Events
EXHIBIT
Chestnust Grove, Ritsurin Park, Takamatsu, Japan, 1625-1725. Photograph by R. James Coote.
September 11, 2006, through January 12, 2007
Visual Resources Collection
Sutton 3.128 (Monday-Friday, 8-5)
"Through the Eyes of an Architect:
Images from R. James Coote's Travels"
"Through the Eyes of an Architect: Images from R. James Coote's Travels" features digital prints from selected 35mm slides donated to the Visual Resources Collection (VRC) by Professor Emeritus R. James Coote. Along with almost two thousand slides from his personal collection, Professor Coote provided thorough descriptions of each image facilitating the creation of online catalog records; the entire donation is in the process of being digitized and will be available online for use by the University community.
From 1965-2000, Professor Emeritus Coote taught architectural design and architectural history courses to undergraduate and graduate students at The University of Texas at Austin.
CENTER FORUMS
The Center for American Architecture and Design hosts a Friday Forum Series from 12:00 to 1:30 in the Center's Battle Hall Conference Room (room 101).
Throughout the fall and spring semesters, faculty, visitors, and graduate students at the School of Architecture offer their latest work up for freewheeling discussion and debate, with subjects varying from architectural practice, design, design theory, to the arts, planning, and the politics and economics of development.
The idea is for faculty and students to meet in an informal atmosphere to debate and freely discuss topics "hot" on the minds of the speakers. Visit the Center website (http://www.utexas.edu/architecture/center/lunch_forums/) for updates. The remaining fall 2006 schedule includes:
- December 1, Timothy Parker, "Fascist/Catholic/Organic:
Luigi Moretti & La Chiesa de Concilio (1970)"
The Friday Forum is also webcast live from http://www.utexas.edu/architecture/center/lunch_forums/, and you are invited to call in live with questions or comments during the discussion at 512-471-9890.
EXHIBIT
Through February 2007
Architecture & Planning Library
Battle Hall
"Landscape Representation and the Education of Landscape Architects"
Selections from the collections of Associate Professor Mirka Benes and the Architecture & Planning Library's Special Collections.
SYMPOSIUM
March 2, 2007
Sanctioning Modernism:
A Symposium on Post-WWII Architecture
Keynote Speaker
Dennis Doordan
Professor and Chair, Department of Art,
Art History and Design
Professor, School of Architecture
University of Notre Dame
The history of modernism in architecture has been told many times over. While reductive partisan histories have been subjected to rigorous critique, a fuller picture has emerged only to result in a multiplication of modernisms--canonical, alternative, regional, and otherwise. The very conception of modernism as a historical phenomenon remains unclear. Ever present, however, is the issue of identity.
It is our conviction that the interrelation between modernism and identity--including the production, development, and interpretation of each--is in need of focused and systematic study. The years following the Second World War constitute a distinctively rich period for such study.
The symposium will address three specific settings of sanctioning modernism:
· political appropriation of modernism in official institutional architecture
· religious appropriation of modernism in ecclesiastical architecture in light of liturgical reform and theological modernism
· consumer appropriation of modernism in middle class residential architecture and furnishings
For more information, visit: http://soa.utexas.edu/sanctioningmodernism.
FACULTY SCHOLARSHIP
Visiting Associate Professor Sergio Palleroni was inducted into the Interior Design Hall of Fame on November 29. The ceremony, which drew 1500 to New York's Waldorf Astoria Grand Ballroom, honored this year's five inductees, who included Rand Elliott, Gaetano Pesce, Annabelle Selldorf, and Paul Siskin, as well as Special Award Recipient Professor Palleroni.
The Hall of Fame was established to recognize individuals who have made significant contributions to the growth and prominence of the design field. Hall of Fame members include such design legends as Mario Buatta, Clodagh, Thierry Despont, Frank Gehry, Albert Hadley, Andree Putman, Philippe Starck, and John Pawson. The Hall of Fame is self-perpetuating--that is, the membership itself chooses the annual group of new inductees.
Proceeds from the dinner will be given to the Foundation for Interior Design Education and Research (FIDER) and Architecture for Humanity, a non-profit organization that develops design solutions to global crises.
Lecturer Nik Nikolov will give a talk at the "Symposium on Architecture for the 21st Century" at Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, in early February. The paper, titled "Bonding Architecture to Seduction," analyzes vision, style, and popular myths of the architecture of villainous intent in selected films from the past four decades. Undergraduate architecture students Katie Nguyen and Samantha B. Cooke will contribute analyses of style and control in the architectural formula of the James Bond film series.
In October, Nikolov was awarded a LEED Accredited Professional status by the United States Green Building Council.
Dean Fritz Steiner contributed a chapter in the new book, Toward a Resilient Metropolis: The Role of State and Land Grant Universities in the 21st Century, just published by the Metropolitan Institute Press at Virginia Tech.
Lecturer Lynn Osgood and Associate Professor Juan Miró presented the paper, "Reclaiming the Post Industrial Landscape of Mexico City: A Blueprint for Collaborative Studios between Architecture and Landscape Architecture Students," at the ACSA Central Regional Conference Reconciliation/Remediation: Post-Industrial Transformation, hosted by the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee last October. The paper presented the results of the collaboration of an advanced landscape studio, led by Visiting Professor Mario Schjetnan and Professor Osgood, and Studio Mexico, led by Professor Miró. The studio worked on the design of a new metropolitan park at the abandoned site of the former PEMEX oil refinery in Mexico City. The paper examined ways architecture and landscape architecture studios can overlap when dealing with post-industrial sites and discussed points of intersection that can support pedagogical goals for collaborative design studios in general.
Earlier in the semester Professor Miró spoke on "Sustainability or the Art of Common Sense" at the Center Lunch Forum; on "Sustainable Development and the Preservation of Cultural Heritage: The Case of the Valley of Teotihuacan" at the conference "Sustainability in the Americas: Brazil, Canada, Mexico, and the U.S.," which examined approaches to urban sustainability throughout the hemisphere and was hosted by UT's Brazilian Center; and on "Thinker, Builder, Artist, Citizen: The Four Hats of Responsible Architects" at the Design III Forum.
STUDENT NEWS AND AWARDS
Interdisciplinary Ph.D. candidate Andy Karvonen, working with Dr. Steven Moore, has been awarded a Doctoral Dissertation Research Grant by the Social Studies of Science, Engineering, and Technology Program of the National Science Foundation (NSF). Karvonen's dissertation, "A Sociotechnical Study of Sustainable Stormwater Systems," is a thoroughly transdisciplinary study of how societies make sustainable, or non-sustainable, technological choices. One referee of the proposal commented, "This type of interdisciplinary work, which attempts to bring social, technical, and natural sciences together coherently, is important in advancing our understandings of environmental management processes." This NSF award is a major achievement for Karvonen and a first for the School of Architecture.
Connectivity diagram, Advanced Landscape Design Studio project for "Small Scale Parks in Austin" project.
On November 28, students from the Advanced Landscape Design Studio presented their class strategy for "Small Scale Parks in Austin" to the Parks Advisory Board. The presentations were delivered by Mike Pecen and Kelly Humphrey.
The strategy was well received by the Advisory Board, and the class has been asked to further share their ideas with Ricardo Soliz, Division Manager of the Parks and Recreation Department, so that they can assist in the development of the new parks department master plan that is currently underway.
Xavier Cantu, from Professor Richard Swallow's Advanced Design Competitions class, just received an Honorable Mention for his entry to the Annual Montrose Beach House and Amphitheatre Competiton, Chicago, sponsored by MCA (Metal Construction Association).
Seven judges reviewed 123 designs submitted by students from 20 universities across North America for a new beach house, waterfront amphitheatre, observation tower, and a restaurant to be located at Montrose Harbor, about six miles north of downtown Chicago. Xavier was the only student in the class to enter this particular competition.
For complete listing of winners go to http://www.metalconstruction.org/ and click on "MCA Recognizes Winners of 2006 Student Design Competition." There were 3 cash prizes and 4 non-cash honorable mentions.
Student Architecture Award 2006
Floating Box House by Peter L. Gluck & Partners. Photograph by Paul Warchol/Paul Warchol Photography.
Each fall, a jury of architecture students taking the architectural criticism seminar at the School of Architecture selects the best building completed in the previous year. Now in its fifth year, the jury of eleven students gave the award to the "Floating Box House" by Peter L. Gluck & Partners, New York City.
The shortlist for the award consisted of two other buildings--the Albert H. Ullrich Water Treatment Plant by Casabella Architects and Texas Hillel by alterstudio.
The instructor of the class, Professor Wilfried Wang, provided the framework for the jury sessions, but had neither a vote, nor commented during the jury's deliberations on any of the award candidates. The award consists of a 5" diameter bronze plaque that will be presented to the architects and the owners of the house at the beginning of December.
The members of the jury and students in Professor Wang's seminar are:
Rachel Brown, Justin Cooke, Chris Duarte, Frank Jacobus, Eddie Kopelson, Andres Lozano, Lina Hsieh, Michael Hsu (Vice Chair), Andrea Saldanha (Chair), Daniel Saenz, and Laura Smith.
The presentation of the bronze plaque to the owners and the architect will
take place at:
The Texas Union
Texas Governors' Room, Room 3.116
December 8, 2006, at 5:00 p.m.
ALUMNI NEWS
Graham B. Luhn, FAIA, [B.Arch. '60], architect from Houston, has been reappointed to the Antiquities Advisory Board of the Texas Historical Commission (THC). He also serves as an advisory member to the Architecture Committee of the THC.
Jennifer Workman Peters [B.Arch. '03], Associate AIA, senior project coordinator at Good Fulton & Farrell, was appointed as the Regional Associates Director by the Texas Society of Architects (TSA) on November 27. Peters' formal appointment to this two-year term was announced at the Texas Society of Architects 67th Annual Convention at the Dallas Convention Center on November 2-4, 2006. Associate AIA members represent a group of individuals with diverse professional goals, most notably recent graduates with a degree in architecture on the road to licensure. As the Regional Associates Director, Peters will represent TSA at the American Institute of Architects' National Associates Committee, which develops programming and recommends policy concerning associate and internship issues to the National AIA Board of Directors and AIA Executive Committee.
Peters' road to leadership at the Dallas chapter of the American Institute of Architects (AIA Dallas) began as a member of the Associates Committee, where after three years working behind-the-scenes, she assumed chairmanship of the committee last December. Under her stewardship, the committee developed a fast track program for young architects committed to licensure. The Success Teams program kicked off with 30 young architects rotating a 4-week study/testing commitment to each of the nine Architectural Registration Examinations (ARE).
IN MEMORIAM
Robert Copeland, who taught landscape architecture at the UT-Austin School of Architecture from 1972-1977, passed away on November 5, 2006. He earned degrees in landscape architecture from Iowa State and Michigan State universities. Prior to UT-Austin, he worked at Sasaki, Dawson, and Demay in Boston, and he was the Chief Landscape Architect for Hemisfair in San Antonio.
We encourage all alumni to share news with us by submitting updates to Stephanie Palmer at stephanie.palmer@mail.utexas.edu. In addition, if you know of other alumni who may not be receiving this or other SOA publications, please forward their information to Stephanie or encourage them to contact her.
STAFF NEWS
We have a new Assistant Dean for Development. Julie Hooper will start on January 2, but will begin participation in several School events before then.
Julie brings considerable development experience to our School. Most recently, she has served as Senior Director of Development and Communications at SafePlace in Austin. She previously served as Executive Director of the Colorado River Foundation and as the Executive Director of the Heritage Society of Austin and has also worked for nonprofit agencies in New York City and Georgia. Prior to working in the nonprofit sector, she managed product development for a home textile import company based in Dallas and New Delhi, India.
Julie has a Bachelor of Arts in history from Boston University and a Master of Historic Preservation from the University of Georgia.
Unfortunately, we will be losing our Development Associate, Annie Laurie Sánchez, who will be moving to Washington, D.C. Annie Laurie has been an invaluable contributor to the School and has gone beyond the call of duty many times. We'll miss her.
FRIENDS OF ARCHITECTURE
Living room of the Blue Rock Ranch in Wimberley, designed by architect Lou Kimball. Photograph by Stephanie Palmer.
On Saturday, November 11, Friends of Architecture members enjoyed a day of stunningly diverse architecture and amazing Texas Hill Country landscapes. FOA's "Ranch Roundup II" tour featured an awarding-winning residence by Overland Partners, the longhorn cattle ranch of H.C. and Lynnda Carter, and the Escobedo residence by Buda Design. The exclusive tour also included a delicious lunch at Orgeron's in Dripping Springs and cocktails and a spectacular Hill Country sunset at the Blue Rock Ranch by Lou Kimball in Wimberley.
To view the "Ranch Roundup II" photo journal, visit: http://soa.utexas.edu/foa/gallery/ranch06/.
If you missed FOA's most recent tour, please make note of our upcoming calendar. To pre-register, click on the listings below or contact FOA Director Stephanie Palmer at 512-471-0617 or stephanie.palmer@mail.utexas.edu.
WILDFLOWER CENTER GETS HOUSTON ENDOWMENT GRANT FOR HOUSTON AREA PLANT CONSERVATION
Houston Endowment has awarded the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center of The University of Texas at Austin a three-year grant to collect and conserve seeds of native plants in the Houston and East Texas area.
The grant will fund a globally important plant conservation effort, the Millennium Seed Bank Project, and will enable the Wildflower Center to ensure that critical native plant species in the Houston area, many of which are under severe pressure from development and non-native invasive plants, do not become extinct.
The grant will extend the seed collections to eight counties surrounding Houston--Harris, Brazoria, Chambers, Galveston, Fort Bend, Liberty, Montgomery and Waller--or 8,000 square miles. This is a region of exceptionally high plant diversity. About 3,400 of the 5,000 native Texas species targeted by the Wildflower Center are found in East Texas. The Center has targeted 600 species for seed collections, based on rarity, dominance in the landscape, importance to wildlife, role in the ecosystem, and other factors.
Another key part of the project is outreach and education, which will emphasize the importance of a diverse native plant population. There are 29 federally and state listed endangered and threatened plant species in Texas and almost 250 plants of special concern. Michael Eason, a botanist and Wildflower Center conservation program manager, will manage the project.
Visit the Wildflower Center web site for more information at: http://www.wildflower.org.
COLLABORATIVE AGREEMENT REACHED BETWEEN UTSOA, UT-AUSTIN, AND ARTstor
Palace of the Masks, Kabáh, Mexico,
9th-12th century, from the Hal Box and Logan Wagner Collection of Mexican Architecture and Urban Design Images, School of Architecture, Visual Resources Collection.
ARTstor and the School of Architecture at UT-Austin are pleased to announce that they will collaborate to digitize and distribute approximately 9,000 images from the Hal Box and Logan Wagner Collection of Mexican Architecture and Urban Design Images. These images richly document outdoor communal spaces in Mexico, focusing on both Pre-Columbian sites and 16th-17th century Colonial sites.
Hal Box, a practicing architect, was Dean of the School of Architecture at UT-Austin from 1976 to 1992. In 1988, Box began to study and document the 16th-17th century open air churches of Mexico under the auspices of Earthwatch with additional funding from the Graham Foundation, the University Research Institute, and the University of Texas Institute for Latin American Studies. Logan Wagner, a native of Mexico and an architect-builder with degrees in anthropology, architecture, and a Ph.D. in Latin American Studies, led the field work for the next twelve summers. Box, Wagner, and volunteer groups carried out photographic documentation, and preparation of measured drawings of open air churches and other civic spaces in the states of Morelos, Mexico, Michoacán, Yucatan, Quintana Roo, and Hidalgo. Wagner extended the study with archival research.
In reaching this agreement, Elizabeth Schaub, UTSOA Director of the Visual Resources Collection, and Max Marmor, ARTstor's Director of Collection Development, expressed their enthusiasm in collaborating to preserve this unique archive and to make its contents available for educational and scholarly use through ARTstor. "I'm very excited that the School of Architecture has an opportunity to collaborate with ARTstor. Our joint venture will result in a broader audience gaining access to unique content that finds a new life in digital form," comments Elizabeth Schaub. "Our partnership with the School of Architecture at UT-Austin will significantly advance ARTstor's effort to provide a rich body of images of Latin American architecture and art, from Pre-Columbian to contemporary, for use by teachers, students, and scholars," affirms Marmor. "We hope this will be the first of several important ARTstor projects involving the rich collections of The University of Texas at Austin."
The Visual Resources Collection of the School of Architecture at The University of Texas at Austin (http://www.utexas.edu/architecture/vrc/) is comprised of more than 235,000 slides and approximately 50,000 digital images. The main purpose of the collection is to support the teaching needs of the School of Architecture's faculty members and students.
Dean's Journal
I spent November 9-12 in Fort Worth at the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning annual conference. In addition to reporting to the Planning Accreditation Board about the MIT site visit that I chaired, I participated in several sessions that focused on the emerging "megaregion" concept. Pioneered by the Regional Plan Association and the University of Pennsylvania, megaregions are comprised of more than one metropolitan region, such as the Texas Triangle (Houston to San Antonio to Dallas-Fort Worth). In addition to RPA, Penn, and our School, scholars from Virginia Tech, the University of Michigan, Georgia Tech, Portland State, and Texas A&M are advancing megaregion research (see http://www.America2050.org).
During the past three weeks, I attended several interesting lectures in the School including those by Dietmar Eberle (November 13), Mathias Klotz (November 15), Nicholas Stanley-Price (also November 15), Ulrich Dangel (November 20), and Francisco Mangado (November 21). Dietmar Eberle described "getting the best out of every scrap of material" in his Austrian-based practice, Baumschlager-Eberle Architects.
Mathias Klotz, from Santiago, Chile, described his quite beautiful work in South America and China. His lecture was followed by Nicholas Stanley-Price, whom we co-hosted with UT's Institute of Classical Archaeology. An independent scholar in Rome, Dr. Stanley-Price asked if excavated archaeological sites should be reconstructed. He used archaeological and historic preservation examples from all around the world, highlighting East-West cultural differences. He quoted a Chinese expression to illustrate these differences: "The aim is to symbolize something invisible with something visible."
On November 20, Assistant Professor Uli Dangel described a body of innovative work by several architects in the province of Voralberg, Austria. He also curated an exhibit in the Mebane on the same topic (which includes the projects of Dietmar Eberle, among others). Voralberg is located at the intersection of Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, and Germany and was historically isolated and poor. A regional, yet contemporary, school has evolved based on a strong tradition of timber construction and ecological awareness.
Based in Navarra, Spain, Francisco Mangado described his stunning portfolio of projects. (See the book, Opere e Progetti: Francisco Mangado, Electa, 2006.) In addition to his buildings, Mangado's open space and urban design work is impressive in its ability to recover and to restore city centers and neighborhoods.
Meanwhile, I continued my involvement with Envision Central Texas activities, State Highway 130 planning, the site design of the Dallas Performing Arts district, and the Sustainable Sites Initiative (an effort develop LEED-like standards for landscapes), which is a partnership project of the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center and the American Association of Landscape Architects. Also, we've just learned that the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center received significant foundation support to help us implement our new garden master plan.
On Thursday afternoon, November 16, I participated as a panelist in the Design E2 screening and panel discussion at KLRU's Austin City Limits Stage. Moderated by Tom Spencer and sponsored by Autodesk, my co-panelists at the well-attended event included executive producer Karena Albers from kontentreal films in New York, Austin activists Susana Almanza and Robin Rather, Public Architecture's co-founder and executive director John Cary from San Francisco, and School faculty members Steven Moore and Sergio Palleroni, who are featured in the "green for All" segment. We enjoyed a stimulating discussion over the need to further sustainable and environmental design to meet the housing needs of the world's steadily growing population. The six-part series that premiered this summer has been telecast worldwide by PBS, their first such effort. Based on the success of the series, Autodesk has made a commitment to support the projection of 12 more segments. The event demonstrates the School's increasing engagement in the local resolution of global problems.
That evening, I welcomed eight mayors to the Mayors' Institute on City Design (MICD) at the Charles Moore Center for the Study of Place. Coordinated by Associate Professor Bob Paterson, faculty members Larry Speck, Hope Hasbrouck, Ming Zhang, and Sergio Palleroni contributed as resource specialists. In addition to the mayors of Beaumont, El Paso, and Waco, Texas, mayors from Rio Rancho, New Mexico; Fort Collins, Colorado; Davenport and Cedar Rapids, Iowa; and St. Joseph, Missouri; and representatives from the National Endowment for the Arts also participated. This marks the fifth MICD event in the School of Architecture in the last eight years.
—Fritz Steiner
Contacts
UT-Austin School of Architecture
soa.utexas.edu
Dean's Office
512-471-1922, fax 512-471-0716
Center for American Architecture and Design
512-471-9890, christinewong@mail.utexas.edu
Center for Sustainable Development
512-475-8013, utcsd@mail.utexas.edu
Assistant Dean for Undergraduate Programs
Jeanne Crawford, 512-471-0109, jcraw@mail.utexas.edu
Graduate Program Coordinator
Rosemin Gopaul, 512-471-0134, gopaul@mail.utexas.edu
Publications Editor
Pamela Peters, 512-471-0154, p.peters@mail.utexas.edu
Friends of Architecture Director and Alumni Coordinator
Stephanie Palmer, 512-471-0617, stephanie.palmer@mail.utexas.edu
Career Placement Director
Carrie O'Malley, 512-471-1333, carrie.omalley@austin.utexas.edu
Director of Photography
Charlotte Pickett, c.pickett@mail.utexas.edu
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
